Writing readable code, sending emails fast, and EEAAO
This piece was first emailed to 48,852 Postmark subscribers on Jan 25, 2023.
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Hi friend,
Welcome to another issue of Happy Sending, Postmark's monthly newsletter, in which we bring you industry news, useful tools, and tips for sending great emails—plus the occasional update about our product and what it can do for you.
Our guests this month are a web engineer and a developer-turned-business owner, so there is a lot of good, technical stuff for you to explore. You’ll also get a great movie recommendation from our team, because email is not all we think about 😉
Industry news and useful tools #
Today, this section is curated by our Full-Stack Developer Jens Balvig, who describes himself as a “Web developer by day, music producer by night, always one step away from a horrible skateboard accident.” 🛹
Here is what Jens recommends that you check out, and why:
An Overview Of Ruby on Rails 7.1 Features Part 1 & Part 2
A fantastic overview of upcoming features in the framework that just keeps getting better and better.
Write Readable Code
Recently I've been really loving these kinds of “back to basics”-type posts. Great reminders in an industry that tends to gravitate towards complexity.
VHS - Your CLI home video recorder
Clever and creative bit of software that allows you to create animated demos of CLI tools. Used it to create a demo for…
gh-start - A quick workflow for starting new stories
Shameless self-promotion and something that feels too dumb to be useful, but somehow I continue to love using this little shortcut to create new branch names and opening PRs all in one command. 🤷
Words of wisdom from a Postmark customer #
In this month’s customer interview we talk to Ramy Khuffash from Rocket Gems. Ramy is a UK-based, full-time indie hacker working on multiple small software products.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the work you do? #
I’m a developer professionally, but since 2018 I have been building my business full-time. Rocket Gems is my holding company and I work on three small products: Page Flows, Hovercode, and Shoutout.
Page Flows is a library of user flow videos that product designers use for research and inspiration; Hovercode is a dynamic QR code generator, and Shoutout makes it easy to collect and share social proof.
How are you using Postmark on projects today? #
I mostly use Postmark for transactional emails across all my projects. Things like password resets, notifications, etc. I tried a few services for transactional email before I came across Postmark, but haven’t looked back since. It was easy to set up and the emails sent with it were super quick to arrive, which is super important for things like password resets.
Postmark’s ease of use and reliability means I haven’t really had to think much about transactional emails since initially setting them up. I also use it to collect and publish inbound emails as part of the product offering for Page Flows.
If you could give folks one piece of advice about how to implement and manage their email, what would it be? #
Don’t underestimate the importance of speed with transactional emails: if someone is resetting their password or making a change to their account that requires them to verify their email, they don’t want to be waiting around for an email to arrive! Also, it’s worth putting some time into setting up tedious things like SPF and DKIM.
🙌 We love to publish our customers’ stories. Would you like to be featured next month? Fill in this quick and extremely yellow form, just like Ramy did, and we’ll make it happen.
Postmark around the web #
Postmark 🤝 Netlify #
It started as a Netlify labs project — and now it’s available to everyone! With the new email integration, you can connect your Netlify site with Postmark and manage version-controlled email templates alongside the rest of your project code 🎉
New year, new projects? #
This month, we’ve been spotting a lot of indiehackers, bootstrappers, and build-in-public folks who are building startups and products using Postmark to power their email. You all make us so happy!
...and just in case you need it, here is a small reminder: our free developer plan serves as an unlimited trial with up to 100 emails/month to get your project started and tested 💪
Behind the scenes at Postmark #
We recently put together a list of all the movies, books, podcasts, etc. we loved last year. The most recommended movie was Everything Everywhere All At Once (EEAAO):
And here are our 5-star reviews:
- “Not only are the visuals and comedy top-tier, but I’m a sucker for a mother-daughter redemption story.”
- “Blew my mind for how absolutely bonkers it was.”
- “It’s a great piece of modern cinema that’s packed with fun and action while still carrying a lot of emotional depth and great narrative.”
…Sounds like something you might want to check out?
Until next time,
Happy sending 💛
