055 send.Better() – Giving ColdFusion Email a REST with Matthew Clemente

I am talking with Matthew Clemente about “send.Better() – Giving ColdFusion Email a REST” in this episode of CF Alive Podcast. 
https://teratech.com/055-send-better-giving-coldfusion-email-rest-matthew-clemente/
Full show notes and transcript at www.teratech.com/podcast

The offerings and features varying slightly from one provider to the next; which is the best for you? As usual, the answer is that it depends, but I’ll help you find out. We’re going to cover:

The benefits provided by using a transactional email service
A pragmatic, use-driven comparison of the major players in the space
Pitfalls, considerations, and tips when configuring your DNS records and integrating a transactional email service with your application
Interacting with the actual APIs, and showing how easy they are to use with ColdFusion
Episode highlights:

But isn’t email dead?
Open, accessible, resilient
Slack, messaging
Email as in interface for your application (it’s neglected)
Transactional emails
Use cases
Purchase confirm
Mini surveys with links for options
Account creation
Email verification
Password reset
Receipts
Requested updates
Comment notifications
Weekly digests or report
Where Speed and deliverability matter
CFMAIL + SMTP settings
TLS on encrypted send
Set in your Application.cfc rather than hardcoding in each CFMAIL tag
Dev → stage → live
Mailtrap.io ← fake smtp server for mocking
Why emails on Dev servers matter and how to do them right
Send Plain text and HTML emails
Why transactional email services?
Separate from your marketing and other emails → better deliverability and speed
Lots more data on your emails is available
Which email services do you like?
Which is best (trick question, they all have specific use cases that make sense)
AWS SES – low cost, less features, harder to set up $5/50k emails
Postmark – pure transactional emails, highest deliverability, speed, great features, more expensive $50/50k emails
Spartpost – developer friendly, free tier to 10k/mo, more marketing focused $9/50k emails
Sendgrid – does both transactional and marketing emails $20/50k emails
mailGun – developer friendly, free tier to 15k/mo, detailed developer features and logging, good inbound email handling, $20/50k emails
Who NOT to use and why?
MailChimp
GetResponse
ConstantContact
Deliverability
SPF
DKIM
DMARC
Dmarc.postmarkapp.com – friendly reporting
How to test your deliverability (Mail-tester.com)
How to set a transactional email service
Use a subdomain for config but can send from your main domain
REST API or SMTP
Start with SMTP
If you need more features move to REST
Also faster
CFML wrappers exist for these
Using Web hooks in email processing
Inbound
Bounce processing
Link processing and verification
Email open processing
Zapier integration
The future of ColdFusion email
Why are you proud to use CF?
Easy to create
Community that helps out esp slack channel
WWIT for you to make CF more alive this year?
CF slack channel
CF Alive podcast
Help with Github projects
Forgebox
Go to CF conferences
Blog about CF and problems you have solved and successes you have had
What are you looking forward to at CF Summit?

Mentioned in the episode:

– Mailtrap.io ← fake smtp server for mocking ( https://mailtrap.io/ )
– Mail-tester.com
– https://senderscore.org/
– CF slack channel ( https://cfml.slack.com/?redir=%2Fmessages )
– Matthew’s slide from CFSummit 2017 ( http://slides.com/mjclemente/sendbetter-cfsummit )