http://mandrill.com/

Mandrill is a new way for apps to send transactional email. It runs on the delivery infrastructure that powers MailChimp.

Inbound Email
Set up inboxes for Mandrill to control. When they receive email, we’ll make an API call to your app with all the relevant information, so you don’t have to worry about what’s happening behind the scenes.

Webhooks Support
Create custom event notifications, keep track of new signups and unsubscribes in real-time, get a notice of every spam complaint so you can flag them in your database. You can do it all with webhooks.

Get started with SMTP in less than a minute, or use Mandrill’s API for deeper integration.

12,000 Email per month / 400 per day FREE

Rules Engine
Modify the content of email coming through Mandrill without having to involve developers. For example, you could tell Mandrill to take any email coming from confirmation@yourdomain.com, give it a new template, and add Google Analytics tracking.

Advanced Tagging and Reports
Generate custom reports based on the stats that matter to you. Add campaign tags like “confirmation email” and “mailing list,” and combine them with data Mandrill automatically tracks. Tagging allows you to graph sets of data like “bounce rate for confirmation emails to Gmail addresses.”

MANDRILL MOBILE

Meaningful Metrics
Observe trends and monitor delivery to see if you’re on track or if you need to make adjustments. Search by recipient or domain, sort sent email by bounces or rejections, and track opens and clicks.

Status Updates
Troubleshoot from wherever you are, and send status messages to recipients from Mandrill.

UNLIMITED
ACCESS

Your transactional email is generated at all hours. Mandrill is the only service with a mobile app, so you can monitor your performance even when you’re away from your desk.

http://blog.mandrill.com/

Mandrill (our new email as a service product, for those that don't know) has had an interesting history. It started as an idea about two years ago, and its path of becoming a product is an example of a growing company trying to figure out how to start something new.

tl;dr As a company grows around a product, inertia from past success can kill short-run productivity on something new. A way to get around this is to create a whole new team isolated from the core to break the inertia and force them to bet big on the new risky product.

Why Do Startups Win?

To a naive observer, it seems insane that tiny companies bootstrapped with no money and made up of a bunch of friends from college could ever build products that rival the output of huge companies. The huge companies have easy access to large amounts of money. They have built-in pools of trained experts that they've hired over the years and can afford to pay well. They have a brand that people recognize. They have man-millenia of experience building products and systems with a proven track record of success. (they're big for a reason, right?) Tiny companies have none of these things.

So why aren't big companies exploding with innovative new products? Why do they pay huge premiums to acquire tiny startups? It can't be for the idea - everybody has ideas. It would have to be for the team or the execution of the idea. With all of these advantages, why does the big company need to pay a premium for that? Why doesn't the big company just create new products from within?




(HC) HostCheetah.com "Where Kool Kats Host"