Re: [9fans] MailRoute: Past Due Invoice for 9fans.net

["Devon H. O'Dell" <devon.odell@gmail.com>]

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TL;DR: hosted lists aren’t really a thing anymore and anyone doing it is
unlikely to do a good job at it.

I used to work for an email service / software provider and recently asked
some contacts there about this (hosted lists) sort of thing. It's really
not so much that it's not a cool thing anymore so much as marketing and
transactional messages are the only ways to make money sending email. My
former colleagues said that everyone has gotten out of the list hosting
business because they can’t find a billing model that works.

Overhead in list management is pretty high for a few reasons. One is that
people who want easy-mode lists often tend to have high support costs. The
service also tends to get abused by spammers (who are happy to pay a
pittance to force-subscribe people to a list and blast out messages), which
is hugely expensive for ESPs. This is expensive because you can't colocate
lists in IPv4 space (otherwise spammer and good sender behind the same IP
results in good sender failing to deliver messages when the IP gets added
to a DNSBL). IPv6 space with poor reputation on just a few addresses tends
to have the entire allocation blocked.

Because of this, to run such a service, you need to charge fees that aren't
really commensurate with the service provided just to handle the support
cost for easy-mode folks, support cost for folks wondering why their list
suddenly no longer gets delivered to gmail users, costs associated with
acquiring additional address space, and costs associated with spending time
to validate your customers are acting in good faith. Barring some sudden
advance in deliverability/reputation management, I don’t think that
reputable companies who can do a good job delivering messages are going
back to list hosting.

I've thought about making an improved list management system for
self-hosting, but a combination of having already been scarred by worked in
email for half a decade and ENOTIME have impeded that. If anyone else is
interested, I could probably be convinced to spend some cycles to help.

--dho

On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 07:29 Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:

> [-mailroute]
>
> Sorry about the spam to 9fans everyone. Not sure what made them think
> to add 9fans to try to contact me, and I didn't notice it was CC'ed at
> first.
>
> Running the list through mailroute has been really great for spam
> reduction. I'd still really love to move 9fans itself to a proper
> mailing list hosting place that would do the full package of list
> management and spam rejection, but those don't seem to exist anymore
> other than Google Groups, and the last time I checked, it wasn't clear
> I could make a public group on a custom domain there.
>
> Mailing lists are not the cool thing anymore, I guess. So we muddle on
> with mailroute and self-hosted mailman. Would be happy to hear about
> alternatives, though.
>
> Best,
> Russ
>
> On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 11:00 PM Skip Tavakkolian
> <skip.tavakkolian@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Anti-Spam-as-a-Service or ASaaS
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Aug 8, 2019, 2:03 PM Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Christiane,
> >>
> >> I received your voicemail and just updated my credit card information
> >> at billing.mailroute.net. Apologies for not noticing these emails
> >> earlier. I've updated my mail filters to highlight them better.
> >>
> >> Please let me know if you need anything more from me.
> >>
> >> Best,
> >> Russ
> >>
> >> On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 4:42 PM Christiane Howard <xian@mailroute.net>
> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Hi Russ,
> >> >
> >> > Please confirm receipt of this email.
> >> > We haven’t received payment for anti-spam services provided to
> 9fans.net.
> >> > I have attached the invoice which was also sent via intuit.com
> (please whitelist intuit.com if you are not receiving them and/or check
> your junk folder).
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > We offer 4 ways to pay:
> >> >
> >> > 1) This only works if you received the invoice via intuit.com.
> >> > Quick Pay: Click on 'View Invoice' then 'Pay Now' to enter payment
> information (credit card or echeck) and keep it on file for fast recurring
> payments controlled by you. *Note: Allow (whitelist) intuit.com to ensure
> delivery of invoices and payment receipts; or
> >> >
> >> > 2) Credit Card Payment: https://billing.mailroute.net (for recurring
> monthly and annual payments applied by MailRoute).
> >> >
> >> > 3) Check: Remittance address is at the top of invoice
> >> >
> >> > 4) ACH/Wire;
> >> >     Bank name: Mailroute, Inc. c/o Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.
> >> >     ABA routing # 122000247
> >> >     Account # 6301195175
> >> >     International SWIFT BIC: WFBIUS6S
> >> > ***Please Note: MailRoute does not cover wire transfer fees.
> >> >
> >> > Thank you for choosing MailRoute. We appreciate your business.
> >> >
> >> > Christiane Howard
> >> > MailRoute Billing Department
> >> > 888-485-7726, Option 3
> >> > billing@mailroute.net
> >>
>
>

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