laphp/lampsig talk: intro to sendgrid - building a scalable email infrastructure

Learn How SendGrid Replaces Your

Outbound Email Infrastructure

Elmer ThomasDeveloper EvangelistElmer.Thomas@SendGrid.com

Prepared for

LAMPsig - Los Angeles Web Development User Group

About SendGrid• Founded August 2009

– TechStars 2009 Graduate

• Locations– Headquarters: Boulder, CO – Office: Anaheim, CA

• Venture Backed: $5.75 million– Foundry Group– Highway 12 Ventures– Angel Investors

• Dave McClure, Jeff Clavier, David Cohen, Matt Mullenweg, Scott Petry

Currently Sending Over 2 Billion Emails Every Month for Over 30,000 Customers (and Growing)!

What We BelieveEmail is...

essential to your businessthe best way to communicate with customers

We want YOU to focus on developing killer apps, not building out an email infrastructure.

The Problem

20% of Emails Missing or Caught by Spam Filters

The Problem

It is Non-Trivial to Build an Email Infrastructure.

Categories of Email

Categories of Email

Categories of Email

Example Transactional Emails• Facebook & LinkedIn Friend Requests• Twitter.com Follower Updates• Shipping Alerts • Sign Up Verifications / Double Opt-In

Why Not DIY?

What Does SendGrid Offer?

Email Deliverability On average, 20% of legitimate emails never reach the inbox.

SendGrid addresses this problem through a unique combination of technology and best practices:– Validation via DKIM, SPF and Sender-ID– Regular reputation monitoring– Dedicated IP addresses – Whitelabeling and link customization– Spam filter testing– Feedback Loops– ISP monitoring and deliverability outreach

ScalabilityOur cloud infrastructure routinely delivers over a 2 billion emails every month and is ready to scale on demand.Whether you need to send 200 emails a day or 200 million emails a day, we adjust dynamically to meet your needs.Our infrastructure eliminates the need for you to to predict, provision and maintain mail server capacity.

AnalyticsSendGrid provides powerful data and the insight you need to achieve your email objectives.

• Track opens, unique opens, clicks, unsubscribes and more.

• Segment metrics and ROI performance by email type, campaign, or custom categories.

• Monitor deliverability metrics to determine requests, bounces, delivered rates, blocks and spam reports.

Integration OptionsIntegrate with our SMTP relay or with our robust APIs for custom integration.

API set includes:– SMTP: Deliver custom handling instructions for email through a JSON header.

– Web: Deliver custom handling instructions for email through secure REST API.

– Event: Notifies a URL real-time of events such as opens, clicks, bounces, spam reports, and unsubscribes.

– Parse: Parses content and attachments of incoming email and posts it to your web application.

– OEM: Build your own product/service on top of SendGrid’s powerful email infrastructure.

Basic SMTP Configuration

SMTP API

Web API• Send mail• Retrieve lists - bounces, unsubscribes, spam reports• Retrieve statistics –

<requests>12342</requests> <bounces>12</bounces> <clicks>10223</clicks> <opens>9992</opens> <spamreports>5</spamreports> <unique_clicks>3</unique_clicks> <unique_opens>6</unique_opens><blocked>7</blocked>

• Pretty much anything that can be manipulated via the website can be done via the API - user profile information, app settings, etc.

Event CallbacksArray( [email] => brandon.west@sendgrid.com [event] => processed)Array( [email] => brandon.west@sendgrid.com [response] => 250 2.0.0 OK 1312487387 f25si6410849yhn.68 [event] => delivered)Array( [email] => brandon.west@sendgrid.com [event] => open)

Parsing Incoming Emails• Point MX record to mx.sendgrid.net• Define the hostname and callback URI• Received messages are parsed and POSTed

[attachments] => 0[dkim] => {@gmail.com : pass}[subject] => test[to] => demo@brandonmwest.com[text] => 12[from] => Brandon West <brawest@gmail.com>[envelope] => {\"to\":[\"demo@brandonmwest.com\"],\"from\":\"brawest@gmail.com\"}[charsets] => {\"to\":\"UTF-8\",\"subject\":\"UTF-8\",\"from\":\"UTF-8\",\"text\":\"us-ascii\"}[SPF] => pass

Apps for Enhancing Your Email

Email to Phone

Email to Twitter

Newsletters

Domain Keys

Event Notification

Even More Apps on SendGrid.com

Click Tracking

Open Tracking

SPAM Checker

Google Analytics

Address Whitelist

What’s New?• Infrastructure Improvements• freemail:– direct: 200 /day– Heroku: 200 /day– Rackspace: 40,000 /month – Softlayer: 25,000 /month

• Lite plan:– .10 per thousand

Superior Customer SupportPhone, chat, and email support available to all customers:– Critical Incident Support 24/7– Weekdays 7am to 7pm Mountain Time Zone

Extensive DocumentationOnline Knowledge BaseActive Support Community

Q & A

Contact me at Elmer.Thomas@SendGrid.com when you are ready to go to production and I’ll set you up with a discount.