5 ms·

I work at MailChimp. The answer is nope.

by amdev 16y ago

ez77 16y ago
Thanks for your answer. I imagined so. But I could also think of some legitimate heavy-duty users who could threaten your profitability. Is there any fine print for those cases?
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  I don't think so. The cost of running something like Mailchimp isn't in having a couple of servers and some bandwidth, I imagine; the cost is in dealing with spammers, overzealous spam-fighters and people who'd rather hit "report as spam" than unsubscribe. Number of subscribers is not a bad metric. ETA: Also see bjonathan's comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170619 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170619: Amazon, which probably offers something closer to "server and bandwidth", is much cheaper.
- cmorrisrsg 16y ago
  No fine-print. Our high volume plans for large email lists are not unlimited, but smaller lists are completely free to send as much as they want. In practice, you'll hit our anti-spam limits long before you hurt our profitability if you try to send lots of email to a smaller list.
  - ez77 16y ago
    Thanks for the explanation. I'm glad you stopped lurking, and to have tripled your karma!
prog 16y ago
As someone who doesn't know much about MailChimp, the original question seems valid. A little more detailed answer (like the one by qeorge) would have helped me understand this better. As you work at MailChimp, it would have helped if you would have given that detail.
- benchestnut 16y ago
  Ben from MailChimp here. We invested a lot in abuse prevention, well before introducing any freemium plans. The problem ESPs like us face isn't so much the "evil" spam, but the "fuzzy" spam (from clueless marketers). Our approach to dealing with fuzzy spam is here: http://blog.mailchimp.com/project-omnivore-declassified/ http://blog.mailchimp.com/project-omnivore-declassified/ an update was posted here: http://blog.mailchimp.com/update-on-omnivore-new-3-strikes-rule/ http://blog.mailchimp.com/update-on-omnivore-new-3-strikes-r... Probably shoulda brought that up in my blog post (it's usually the first question techies ask), but it's something our customers are pretty familiar with, so I left it out.

I work at MailChimp. The answer is nope.

by amdev 16y ago

I work at MailChimp. The answer is nope.

ez77 16y ago

Thanks for your answer. I imagined so. But I could also think of some legitimate heavy-duty users who could threaten your profitability. Is there any fine print for those cases?

JoachimSchipper 16y ago
I don't think so. The cost of running something like Mailchimp isn't in having a couple of servers and some bandwidth, I imagine; the cost is in dealing with spammers, overzealous spam-fighters and people who'd rather hit "report as spam" than unsubscribe. Number of subscribers is not a bad metric. ETA: Also see bjonathan's comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170619 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170619: Amazon, which probably offers something closer to "server and bandwidth", is much cheaper.
cmorrisrsg 16y ago
No fine-print. Our high volume plans for large email lists are not unlimited, but smaller lists are completely free to send as much as they want. In practice, you'll hit our anti-spam limits long before you hurt our profitability if you try to send lots of email to a smaller list.
- ez77 16y ago
  Thanks for the explanation. I'm glad you stopped lurking, and to have tripled your karma!

prog 16y ago

As someone who doesn't know much about MailChimp, the original question seems valid. A little more detailed answer (like the one by qeorge) would have helped me understand this better. As you work at MailChimp, it would have helped if you would have given that detail.

benchestnut 16y ago
Ben from MailChimp here. We invested a lot in abuse prevention, well before introducing any freemium plans. The problem ESPs like us face isn't so much the "evil" spam, but the "fuzzy" spam (from clueless marketers). Our approach to dealing with fuzzy spam is here: http://blog.mailchimp.com/project-omnivore-declassified/ http://blog.mailchimp.com/project-omnivore-declassified/ an update was posted here: http://blog.mailchimp.com/update-on-omnivore-new-3-strikes-rule/ http://blog.mailchimp.com/update-on-omnivore-new-3-strikes-r... Probably shoulda brought that up in my blog post (it's usually the first question techies ask), but it's something our customers are pretty familiar with, so I left it out.