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I guess people could change their settings? I choose not to get any emails, what’s the main reason for sending out emails?
sbbohr-
what’s the main reason for sending out emails?
It's the only notification system we have, it's reliable, cheap compared to alternatives, and means people don't have to be constantly online to see when conversations they are following have been replied to when they wish to know and potentially reply soon.
I mean... it works, we have a 99% deliverability rate, an open rate over 105% (people open some emails more than once!?) and server logs show it drives the majority of engagement.
So it's valuable, just temporarily much higher than before as people are engaging quicker (more notifications) and I've seen that the number of followed conversations is increasing (more people engaging with more stuff).
I'm fine with the costs rising if it's a valuable thing... the engagement clearly says it is. But if it's long-term costs rising then I'll engineer the costs to be lower, and if it's short / medium term costs rising then we'll absorb them but hope for a few more donations to soak it up.
Velocio
Bumping to the front page because our costs have risen.
I mean... it's OK, not the end of the world... USB > GBP hasn't helped in the last 9 months, but the real issue is this:
Does that change much? Not really, servers are fine... but it changes 1 thing, we were sending ~90k email notifications per month, and our $90 per month billing for SendGrid allows 100k emails per month... and we are now sending over 230k emails per month... so we've blown straight through our allowance (and did so last month too but I didn't notice) as you're all online chatting more. This has tripled that cost. We get charged $0.01 per additional email, are currently 130k over quota, hence additional $130 per month right no (we are on the Pro 100K plan here https://sendgrid.com/docs/ui/account-and-settings/billing/#api-plans-overage-costs )
It'll probably return to what it was after all this stuff, and it's not the end of the world now (I pay for things on credit card to soak up the fluctuations)... but if you've been having a good time on the site and don't donate and can afford £5 or £10 per month, please know such things are appreciated and do add up.
The donate link is under the LFGSS menu at the top of every page, and also here.