We are making a change to our suppression systems that you should be aware of. The SocketLabs Email On-Demand automatic suppression system dramatically increases your deliverability by automatically blocking email to addresses which have previously hard bounced or previously complained about one of your mailings.

This year, we are reinforcing our email delivery infrastructure, to make it more dependable than ever. These improvements require that we change the way we handle your attempts to deliver email to addresses that are on your suppression list.

Currently if you attempt to send email to an address that is on your suppression list, we reject your attempt at the SMTP level. That is, we refuse to accept the message from your application. Beginning on February 15th, 2011, we will no longer reject these messages at the SMTP level. The new behavior for our servers will be to fully accept the messages from your sending application, and then log and delete the message without delivering it. In the end – the result is the same.

This change will not impact the effectiveness of our suppression system and it will allow us to log more information about the messages that are suppressed, such as the message and or mailing id. However, if your applications depend on having suppressed messages blocked at the SMTP level, you will have to make whatever changes you deem necessary on or before February 15th, 2011 to accommodate for this change. Suppressed messages are treated like any other message delivery failure, and can be viewed with the other failure data from the SocketLabs Email On-Demand Control Panel or through our API. We suggest that you access this data regularly and use it to keep your local address lists clean.

I love Amazon. When recently asked, I quickly named them as one of my favorite brands. I buy everything I can through Amazon. Their fast shipping and great prices are hard to beat.

Recently we have been contemplating putting some of our resources into the Amazon Cloud (AWS) and we have therefore spent a LOT of time experimenting and testing just about all of their cloud technologies. Amazon is solving common computing problems by offering scalable solutions on a pay-as-you go basis. It is a great idea, and works well in many cases.

Enter SES

Recently Amazon has announced their new Simple Email Service (SES). SES is the latest addition to their wide range of cloud services, and it is designed to help companies deliver bulk mail. Perhaps the most notable part of SES is its price which is many times below the current industry average.

So how is Amazon able to offer the same service as SocketLabs, for a fraction of the price? I don’t think that they can – and I don’t think they want to either. Amazon’s cloud services provide decent value, but always with some level of compromise. This is not a criticism, just the nature of the business. Amazon’s services work on economy of scale. However, economy of scale does not transfer well to some services, so there is where compromises have to be made.

Economy of scale does not transfer well to email deliverability. I know this without a doubt from 15 years of experience helping hundreds of companies deliver their bulk email.

Email delivery is a complicated animal, unlike other areas of computing. It is more of a professional service, and less of a data processing service. Much like accountants, lawyers and any other professionals address the unique needs of their clients, so does SocketLabs when it comes to email delivery. Professional services do not work well in an economy of scale model because they involve real human time, not just machines and algorithms.

Email Senders Need More

I think Amazon’s idea about bringing economy of scale to email delivery is an interesting experiment. But at the price point they are working in, I just can’t see how they can offer help to confused or troubled emailers along the way.

Email senders need more than data processing. They need access to a team of experienced experts, that can answer the questions they have, and help them handle any problems that arise. I can see email senders getting frustrated when there is no human to plead their case to in times of trouble, only an algorithm.

The Value of SocketLabs Email On-Demand

• Free, professional support, including 24×7 access to a technician during any service outage situation.
• SMTP access from any email enabled application, so you can start sending with us in minutes. APIs are available, but not necessary.
• Dedicated IPs with select account plans isolate your email from the crowd and put you in control of your own reputation.
• Rich web based and API reporting of messages sent, messages failed, opens/clicks and complaints. Right down to the indivual message level.
• Open and Click tracking tells you who is opening and interacting with your messages.
• DKIM signing of your messages ensures top deliverability with the large ISPs.
• Suppression Lists, automatically block repeat email attempts to addresses which have bounced or filed a complaint.
• Message and Campaign tracking and reporting with user defined message and campaign identifiers.

We Are Still Busy Innovating

We are still busy innovating and have amazing plans for 2011 and beyond. Our code-name Nashville release is due out in weeks and will bring multi-server and multi-user management as well as a freshened UI and a few other goodies.

Please stay tuned for more information the Nashville release, as well as hints to some of the other really cool things ready to emerge from under cover.

Best regards,

John Alessi

Follow me on Twitter: @johnalessi

Corrected Charges for Suppressed Messages

You may be aware of our suppression system which blocks email delivery to addresses which are invalid or which have previously complained about your mailing. ISPs penalize you for attempting delivery to invalid addresses or addresses which have complained about your mailings, so the SocketLabs Email On-Demand suppression system is a safeguard we put in place, designed to give you the best deliverability possible.

Although it has always been our policy to charge for all messages sent to our servers (including messages we suppress) some of our billing systems were not fully updated, and because of that, suppressed messages may not have been charged properly to all SocketLabs Email On-Demand accounts. With the new update we are rolling out on January 13th, this will be corrected, and suppressed messages will be included in your message usage counts for the current billing period, going forward.

Reduced Charges for Bandwidth

SocketLabs Email On-Demand customers are now afforded a generous 128K average message size. In the past, we allowed 128K average bandwidth per message. The difference between average messages size and average bandwidth per message may seem subtle, but the new switch to base charges on messages size can represent a dramatic savings for our customers. Under the old method of charging for bandwidth, we had to charge for all bytes in and out. That meant that a 64K message would count as at least 128K, since it had to come into our servers AND go out of our servers. In addition to that, there is always overhead related to the network protocols which adds a bit more bandwidth. With the switch to billing based on message size, you get a full 128K per message.

Can I Send Messages Larger than 128K?

Yes, because we calculate your usage by averaging the total of all of your messages. For example, if you subscribe to a plan that includes 10,000 messages, you are given 1,280,000,000 bytes total. (10,000*128K). If your total usage goes over 1,280,000,000 bytes, then we bill you for the overage. Our current overage charge is $10 per gigabyte. By default any one message can be up to 10MB, however you can request a larger message limit by contacting support.