1. Deliverability. Email marketing providers like MailChimp charge a premium because they have highly trustworthy send addresses and IPs that email servers can trust. The BYO SMTP aspect of your product has the potential to ruin that for customers who aren't aware of those issues. I probably wouldn't be surprised if that aspect also makes it harder for you to clamp down on fraud, abuse, and spam. If you don't control the send server then you might not know everything that's going on from front to back.
2. Someone looking to save money can already find MailChimp competitors that are cheaper without the overhead of having to also hook up a second service to send the emails. For example, 15K contacts at mailerlite is $98/month. Or I could do something email send-based like Brevo and send 40,000 emails per month at $35. If I go with Brevo I don't have to bring my own email send service.
3. The LSV of an email subscriber is so high that the end result is you're going too far downmarket. Customers would benefit more from more effective campaigns with better deliverability, more powerful business logic, more integrations to other business platforms, etc. In other words, paying more is worth the investment. The LSV of an email subscriber is often somewhere between $10-50. So if you have 15,000 active contacts you are looking at revenue from those subscribe rover their lifetime as potentially being something like $150,000-$750,000. In that frame of reference, $230/month for MailChimp is a steal.
I'm just not sure who this is for. Sure, you do say it's for indie developers, but I think that target customer has the most options to use something else.
I think the Mom test would be applicable here. I worry that you built a product just for yourself that doesn't really appeal to anyone else. The main differentiators seem to be low price and splitting up the business logic from the send service, which to me is kind of like making someone buying an ice cream buy the ice cream cone next door.
Great points, especially on deliverability - that's the biggest trade-off with BYOSMTP. You're right that managed providers have better reputation management, which is why our hosted service is positioned as the primary offering. The open-source version serves a different need: developers who want full control or have compliance requirements that prevent using third-party platforms.
On market positioning, I think there's still room between "build your own email system" and "pay $200+/month for enterprise features you don't need." Our target isn't competing with MailChimp for high-LTV businesses, but serving the gap where small businesses outgrow basic tools but aren't ready for enterprise pricing. That said, your "Mom test" concern is valid. We're validating this with real users to ensure we're not just building for ourselves.
> I think there's still room between "build your own email system" and "pay $200+/month for enterprise features you don't need."
I don’t mean to beat the subject down but I think there is a lot less room than you are giving it credit for. I’ve already laid out how there are ample choices in the “cheaper than MailChimp” space (and I wouldn’t even consider MailChimp to be particularly “enterprise.”)
If you’ve outgrown basic tools you probably can afford MailChimp or some other sub-enterprise offering. By definition a business that outgrows basic tools is making decent money and can probably throw $200 a month at MailChimp.
1. Deliverability. Email marketing providers like MailChimp charge a premium because they have highly trustworthy send addresses and IPs that email servers can trust. The BYO SMTP aspect of your product has the potential to ruin that for customers who aren't aware of those issues. I probably wouldn't be surprised if that aspect also makes it harder for you to clamp down on fraud, abuse, and spam. If you don't control the send server then you might not know everything that's going on from front to back.
2. Someone looking to save money can already find MailChimp competitors that are cheaper without the overhead of having to also hook up a second service to send the emails. For example, 15K contacts at mailerlite is $98/month. Or I could do something email send-based like Brevo and send 40,000 emails per month at $35. If I go with Brevo I don't have to bring my own email send service.
3. The LSV of an email subscriber is so high that the end result is you're going too far downmarket. Customers would benefit more from more effective campaigns with better deliverability, more powerful business logic, more integrations to other business platforms, etc. In other words, paying more is worth the investment. The LSV of an email subscriber is often somewhere between $10-50. So if you have 15,000 active contacts you are looking at revenue from those subscribe rover their lifetime as potentially being something like $150,000-$750,000. In that frame of reference, $230/month for MailChimp is a steal.
I'm just not sure who this is for. Sure, you do say it's for indie developers, but I think that target customer has the most options to use something else.
I think the Mom test would be applicable here. I worry that you built a product just for yourself that doesn't really appeal to anyone else. The main differentiators seem to be low price and splitting up the business logic from the send service, which to me is kind of like making someone buying an ice cream buy the ice cream cone next door.