Sending newsletters in Rails 3

Question

Is it suitable to use Mail Gun to send out newsletters (bulk emails)? We are currently using Mail Gun to send out transactional emails (i.e. for confirmation emails) Works great!

We are looking at Campaign Monitor and Mail Chimp for weekly email newsletters. Are these services more suitable for this kind of task?

One thing I find more convenient with Mail Gun, is their API is much easier to work with. Especially when sending "dynamic" / more personalized emails. For example:

Hello Foo,

Your total video plays is 1,291. You have 214 total comments.

Regards,

Awesome Web

On the other hand, the UI analytics / reporting provided by Campaign Monitor and Mail Chimp make it much easier to read, especially for someone non technical. The same applies for creating campaigns and templates.

And it is simple enough to use with Rails. Since the templates are created via ActionMailer instead of from the UI (as seen with Campaign Monitor and Mail Chimp).

Are there any deliver-ability advantages for newsletters, from using one of the services, that I should be aware of?

Answer 1

Disclaimer: Since I love their service I ended up knowing them personally

If you want to use only one service to send and track all your emails, you need an all in one solution. They are not many players on this segment and I guess that the Cloud Emailing platform Mailjet would be the best for you :

• They let you send both marketing and transactional email.
• They have great analytics: really actionable and easy to use.
• They must cost about the same price as Mail Gun, or maybe even less (30,000 emails cost something like $7 for example).
• Last but not least, they optimize your deliverability (authentications, IP reputation, etc.).

On top of all this, Mailjet's API is well documented and makes you able to personalize the messages. And they even have an official Ruby Gem.

If you want a clear and objective overview of what exists, you can easily compare the different actors here.