This looks great but delivery via Amazon SES is a problem. I'm an academic and I tried to set up a work newsletter like this with Listmonk recently, but SES rejected my request to relieve me of sandbox mode for unspecified 'security reasons'. Everything was set up properly, it was under a domain under my personal name, I gave links to my profile page on my university website, ample explanation about what I would do with it (one email ever few months), that I would be the only sender, but they rejected it. So in the end I've opted for a hosted solution... anyone else had similar issues?
philip1209 · 6h ago
Postcard originally used Postmark. But, Postmark deliverability has been decreasing. And, for the open-source version, I wanted to simplify dependencies. So, I moved it to SES. It works for small lists, but won't scale to massive ones.
I welcome PRs to add additional sending providers - it wouldn't be onerous.
cornfieldlabs · 55m ago
Just 4 years ago, I was recommending Postmark to everyone who faced deliverability issues with sendgrid.
Would be nice to have just send using sendmail or what ever smtp server we chose. This is HN, and some of us have already done ip warming and to avoid any big players, as they all drop/block emails without telling their users and are not be trusted for reliable communication.
Nextgrid · 3h ago
SMTP is a must. My advice is to never bother with proprietary mailer APIs - you will need to change providers sooner or later (sometimes on short notice, if your current provider temporarily suspended you on a false positive for example), which is much easier when you just need to swap the SMTP credentials vs implementing yet another proprietary API. Plus it makes local testing easier - there's no shortage of "fake SMTP for development" projects out there.
Of course, tech bros don't want you to do it, as it reduces their vendor lock-in.
philip1209 · 3h ago
That's fair, I can add smtp config.
Really I was just concerned about configuration overload from too many options. Seems like SMTP is worth splitting out, though.
Nextgrid · 3h ago
I think SMTP is the way to go unless you're actually using specific proprietary mailer API features and there's no way to do the same via SMTP.
Solution is:
* SMTP by default
* if you want, some setup examples of using third-party mail services using their SMTP endpoint (most offer one)
Again you don't have to, it's an open-source project and you owe nothing to anyone. But if you fancy doing it, this is the way to go and will save headaches later.
pirsquare · 5h ago
postmark is a garbage now. This is coming from a previous postmark advocate and moved to SES.
SES is terrible in the past but now it is at least on-par if not better than postmark.
Only issue with SES is setup can be tedious.
toomuchtodo · 2h ago
What provider doesn’t suck in this space?
ethan_smith · 1h ago
For academic newsletters with SES sandbox issues, consider using Mailgun or Postmark which often have more straightforward verification processes and reasonable free tiers for low-volume senders.
f_devd · 4h ago
I actually had the same issue getting rejected for SES since I didn't have any reputation or something and ended up re-implementing the SES (and SNS) api for use with a regular IMAP/SMTP server, I intended to clean it up and open-source it but never got to it.
While I admire social-network-friendly websites, I am afraid that performance is too bad to allow its use instead of a social network.
Indeed it is so performance sensitive, that it has blocked my region.
Would it not be better to get a static site generator from a standard Markdown posts, and thus assure it is both performant and accessible?
sydbarrett74 · 1h ago
Thank you, philip1209, for sharing your project. Props. :)
rmujica · 8h ago
It looks amazing! thanks for sharing. I also enjoyed your self-hosting post, I might give it a try.
toomuchtodo · 10h ago
Great work Philip.
austinjp · 9h ago
Psst... it's down for me. Cloudflare error page says SSL handshake failed.
philip1209 · 9h ago
What's failing - the blog? Seems to be working fine for me and my uptime monitoring hasn't caught anything. Hopefully it's a blip!
Your original blog post links to www.postcard.page, which throws a Cloudflare SSL error, but the bare domain https://postcard.page appears to work fine.
I welcome PRs to add additional sending providers - it wouldn't be onerous.
Who's the relatively better provider now?
Edit: A useful article about IP Warm up https://blog.healthchecks.io/2023/08/notes-on-self-hosted-tr...
Of course, tech bros don't want you to do it, as it reduces their vendor lock-in.
Really I was just concerned about configuration overload from too many options. Seems like SMTP is worth splitting out, though.
Solution is:
* SMTP by default
* if you want, some setup examples of using third-party mail services using their SMTP endpoint (most offer one)
Again you don't have to, it's an open-source project and you owe nothing to anyone. But if you fancy doing it, this is the way to go and will save headaches later.
SES is terrible in the past but now it is at least on-par if not better than postmark.
Only issue with SES is setup can be tedious.
Indeed it is so performance sensitive, that it has blocked my region. Would it not be better to get a static site generator from a standard Markdown posts, and thus assure it is both performant and accessible?
My hosting setup is . . peculiar: https://www.contraption.co/a-mini-data-center/