Mailgun

Mailgun is one of those rare services that seems to get everything right. It is a simple process to get signed up, a simple process to ready a domain to send email, and a simple process to start sending out notifications to your users. It works great as a transactional email service without having the need to mess with a large number of settings. Simple and straight forward.

Why did I choose mailgun.com? I am a research theologian and watchdog for abusive claims of organized religions. I operate five sites. The most significant is ChurchonFire.net. In early December, I had 1200 registered users. I wanted to send out a Christmas card. I became aware that my website host (in Shanghai) had limits on the number of emails that could be sent out. After doing preliminary research, I choose mailgun.com for its ability to enable me to send out my emails responsibly and intelligently. What was my experience in using mailgun.com? ChurchonFire uses WordPress and the app Mailpoet to design and mail out emails. By 08 Dec 2020, I had designed a brief and attractive Christmas card. By 09 Dec 2020, I had mastered mailgun.com to the degree that I had the required SMTP and password that would permit my sending of 1200 greetings. Then everything went haywire. The first sign that something was amiss is that I was unable to send a test email to *******@churchonfire.net. As a result, I tried to get technical help from mailgun.com by opening a service ticket. After spending over two hours, I finally discovered that service tickets are not available to free members. Nothing on the mailgun.com website indicates this. I had to find it out by looking through critical reviews of the site on an independent site. 10 Dec 2020, I discovered that all of my email accounts were frozen. I could not send or receive emails. My suspicion was that mailgun.com had something to do with this. After spending three fruitless hours trying to determine why my accounts were frozen, I sent a service ticket to my website provider, A2hosting.com. A few days later, I received the reply that mailgun.com had rerouted all of my email services attached to ChurchonFire.net. I immediately tried to logon to my mailgun.com account. Now a two-step process had been put in place. Step One requires that I put in my name and password. I did this. Then Step Two was opened up telling me that a six-digit code was sent to *******@churchonfire.net. This was the Catch-22. I could not receive any of my emails sent to *******@churchonfire.net. I desperately tried to make contact with someone at Mailgun. I already knew that I could not open up a service ticket, so I tried their online help service. When I tried to use this service, however, I was informed that I had to open up my account by way of establishing my identity before sending them a help email. Since I could not complete Step Two, I was blocked from using this service. After two weeks of growing frustration with my blocked emails, I remembered an early email received from Mailgun, Nick Lafferty | Growth Marketing Lead *******@mailgun.com that began like this: Hey Aaron, I'm pumped you signed up for Mailgun! I used Mailgun for years before I started working here, so I wanted to personally walk you through your first few days... This email was like a lifeline of hope being thrown to a drowning man. Better yet, Nick had included his email! So I could finally communicate with someone inside the system that was capable and interested in helping me. I detailed all my frustrations and sent the email on 06 Jan 2021 using my Yahoo account. Here is the reply I received 07 Jan 2021: Hi Aaron, Please submit a support ticket by emailing *******@mailgun.com. They are best equipped to assist you. Nick I replied as follows: Nick, You ask me to use *******@mailgun.com, but I already informed you: I can't login to my account because I cannot receive my *******@churchonfire.net emails using your two-step process. I can't get online help for the same reason. Bitterly disappointed, Aaron Nick ignored me. This left me super-frustrated. Here is what I sent: Dear Nick Lafferty, You are not reading me. I repeat: I can't login to my account because I cannot receive my *******@churchonfire.net emails using your two-step process. I can't get online help for the same reason. Cancel my account. Give me back full control over all my emails. Forward the emails that have been redirected since December 10th. Aaron Milavec The sad truth is that Nick continued to ignore me. He threw me a lifeline for one brief moment. Then he completely left me to drown in a system content to lock up my emails and to lock me out of my account with them. It will not surprise you that I will never work with Mailgun again. Bitterly disappointed, Aaron