[dave_walko]

UPDATE [2 hours after initial post] I heard from compliance who asked a ton of questions and said our email was flagged as spam by their system. Keep in mind, we send to the same 10-15 people and not a single spam or bounce. I wrote back immediately with the info they wanted. As I mentioned, I will update as this progresses.

UPDATE [3 hours after initial post] Thank you for that information. I have re-activated your account.

So it looks like a response time of about 5 hours. I find that response time more than effective. The issue I still have is the automated block on a paid account + static IP at 4am. It was inconvenient considering we had been sending for almost a full day. I am still looking at staying with mailgun as you all seem to really like them and from what I can see after my tests with them, are quite nice.

So 1 day of usage of a service you are paying for on Sparkpost could get your account suspended. My feeling is if they are going to be THAT overly sensitive, they should do some initial questions prior to signing someone up to a paid account. Not that a paid account should be exempt but it should certainly grant some warning with a few hours before they just block your account. They could easily throttle the paid account for 12 hours with an email that the client needs to email them with info. Atleast email would still be going out even if its slower...

Since YC has slowed my comment down, I wanted to check on speed. I am really really surprised at how slow sparknews is. We are using smtp but here are some stats: # in outgoing queue Time checked 2848 (starting point) @ 8:45 am 2849 @ 9:01 am 2830 @ 9:19 am 2823 @ 9:25 am 2816 @ 9:30 am