How we built SNAILMAIL, a complete email marketing product, in three days.
One of our own products, now in early access. SNAILMAIL is email marketing for online stores that bills by the email sent, on the store's own Amazon SES account, instead of by the size of its list. It went from first commit to a working product, with campaigns, flows, forms and Shopify, in three days.
- First commit to working product
- 3 days
- Commits
- 75
- Billed
- Per send
- Sending cost
- ~$0.10 / 1,000
The challenge
Email tools for stores charge by subscriber, so a growing list costs more every month even when you send less, and the list lives in someone else's account. For a store with a large list, keeping it can run to four figures a month before a single email goes out.
What we built
SNAILMAIL sends through the store's own Amazon SES account, so sending costs about ten cents per thousand emails and the list stays the store's. We built the whole product in one push: import and segment a list, write campaigns and automated flows, signup forms, Shopify sync, recognition of returning visitors, unsubscribe and suppression handling, and a usage page showing what each send cost. Sending runs from a queue that claims batches safely and keeps to the account's sending rate, with a dry run until SES is connected.
What SNAILMAIL, email marketing billed by the send does.
- Next.js
- Neon Postgres
- Amazon SES
- Vercel
- Amazon SES
- Shopify
- Google sign-in
Your idea could be next.
Book a call and tell us what you want to build. We'll come back with a plan, a timeline and a price for your first version.