Please note: This only affects PICPIC SOCIAL CLASSIC users. This DOES NOT affect PicPic Social Event Cloud.
Read: How to setup SENDGRID with PicPic Social
Starting April 27, 2016 Mandrill is making an update to their service that will negatively impact PicPic Social Classic users. Because of their proposed changes we are going to update PicPic Social Classic to use an alternative email service provider. Here are some fast facts about whats going on if you don’t want to read the whole post.
- The changes don’t take affect until April 27, 2016
- We plan to have PicPic Social 2.5.0.0 ready by March 30, 2016 with a fix
- PicPic Social Event Cloud users are not impacted
- We will be switching from Mandrill to SENDGRID and adding the option to email via SMTP
- YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SEND EMAILS UNLESS YOU HAVE SENDGRID OR USE SMTP
- We have created a $19.99 newbie plan available for Classic users who want to move to PicPic Social Event Cloud. (Click here to learn more)
What changes will Mandrill be making?
These are some of the changes Mandrill is making that is causing us to find a new solution:
1) Mandrill will cost $30/month minimum – Mandrill will no longer be FREE SERVICE. You will need to pay for Mandrill and you will need to Pay for Mailchimp. The minimum payment would be $30/month based on their changes.
2) No more custom FROM email address – Right now you can send an email from “any” domain. For example, you can send an email to a user and set the FROM email address to be info@mycompanyname.com. With the changes to Mandrill, you can still use any from email address, but you will have to verify you have ownership of the domain. This isn’t a hard process, but it’s inconvenient and will make it extremely hard if not impossible to set the From Name if you are working with corporate clients.
For example if your client is McDonalds and you set your from email to info@mcdonalds.com, you won’t be able to use this email unless you verify ownership of the domain. With a company like McDonalds, its highly unlikely you’ll be able to get that type of verification. This is a high level example, but you could face this same type of issue with your local mom & pops who likely won’t have this level of access or knowledge. Or they won’t want to jump through the hoops.
YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SEND EMAILS UNLESS YOU HAVE SENDGRID OR USE SMTP
All of the above is in caps because it’s important. Please make sure you read the following. With PicPic Social Device Server 2.5.0.0, YOU WILL NOT be able to send emails unless you sign up for a SENDGRID account or you use your own SMTP settings.
SENDGRID
- Sendgrid is a free service
- Sendgrid allows you to send 12k emails a month for free
Sendgrid is an alternative to Mandrill and is currently free. They allow you to send up to 12k emails per month. We do not have a full tutorial yet for setting up Sendgrid with PicPic Social Classic, but get ahead start and create a free account at www.sendgrid.com. You can learn how to setup PicPic Social with Sendgrid by clicking here.
SMTP
SMTP will use your current mail provider with PicPic Social so we can send mails through your host. This works the same way as adding your email account to your mobile phone so you can download and send emails. SMTP is not really recommend because your mail provider may have strict limits on outgoing emails. For example, Hotmail has a limit on 100 emails per day with SMTP. GoDaddy has a limit of 250 email limit. You will have to contact your host to see what your limits are if you want to use SMTP.
What should we expect going forward?
We will have an update ready by March 30, 2016. It should be much sooner, but this is worst case scenario.
If you do 4 events per month or less, consider the $19.99/month Newbie plan for PicPic Social Event Cloud. (Click here to learn more)
