Mailgun bulk mail turning out monopolistic

Unfortunately, Mailgun badass attitude is leading all of us to their monopolistic behaviour that somehow contradicts open-source philosophy.

I recently requested Mailgun support to enable HTTPS tracking links to a subdomain (as it is published here - https://help.mailgun.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011566033-How-to-Enable-HTTPS-Tracking-Links) and they refuse to do so alleging they have already provided a “one-click solution”, but exclusive for their paid accounts.

That is obviously a euphemism for a “one-click segmentation” to take it or leave it. So now we have a huge gap between the USD9/mo Ghost Pro starter plan which only allows 500 subscribers, and the USD90/mo Mailgun Scale Plan dimensioned for 100,000 emails/subscribers (Flexible Pricing & Email Delivery Plans - Email API Service | Mailgun). Yes, as far as I know, the Scale plan is the minimum Mailgun paid account that provides the “one-click” HTTPS tracking links.

There is a huge amount of potential users that would be left out of getting advantage of Ghost newsletter and subscribing tracking links features. Is there any reliable alternative to fill up that gap?

Just to confirm that the minimum Mailgun paid account that supports one-click HTTPS tracking is Foundation starting at USD35/mo including 50,000 emails/subscribers.

Although this is mitigating news, still there is a segment forgotten by the offers.

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Mail gun deplatformed and permanently deactivated my account with no explanation. The customer service was absolutely terrible.

Because of that I can’t self host

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The minimum paid plan is for the convenience of a 1-click HTTPS tracking setup. It’s entirely possible to have HTTPS tracking links on all plans, even the free one, by using a CDN in front of your site. There are instructions for that setup in the support document you originally linked to: https://help.mailgun.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011566033-How-to-Enable-HTTPS-Tracking-Links

Having a CDN in front of your Ghost site is best practice and it’s worth setting it up to provide faster site access for your visitors.

Thanks Kevin. That’s the same link I provided at the beginning. Requesting the HTTPS tracking link is currently unavailable as you may notice in the attachment provided. Apparently, the only remaining option is using Mailgun API.

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@valentierra if you read the whole of the linked article it’s separated into two parts. The first part details the premium one-click https setup, the second part details how to get https links with a manual CDN setup that will work for any plan.

I have certainly read the article several times. I was following the instructions with a member of the Mailgun Support team named Ashwin for the CDN Alternative when I got this support message:

(The guide mentioned is the same one we are referring to in this thread)

I had the Ghost site working like a charm when browsers started to complain because of the mix of secure and insecure items. As my customer didn’t want their domain being eventually compromised by bad bulk mail reputation, they opted to implement a 2nd level subdomain (subdomain.subdomain.domain - e.g. email.newletter.example.com) for their tracking links. Second level subdomains are not supported by CloudFlare’s default universal SSL certificate and so we successfully followed the approach of this article > https://connortumbleson.com/2021/03/29/ssl-tracking-links-on-mailgun-with-ghost-blog/

I haven’t tested the CDN alternative for 1rst level subdomains, so the original instructions may eventually still work on that case. But as long as you have to rely on Mailgun support to get HTTPS tracking links enabled for cases similar to the one I exposed, you better not take it for granted.