[pyepye]

I created a similar service earlier this year which runs on exactly the same idea (forwarding emails to unsubscribe to them). It's nice to see some validation for the idea on HN.

I've attacked the problem from a different angle though - I've tried to automate the service a lot more. Automatically looking for the unsubscribe button and filling out any HTML forms that appear etc. It doesn't always work but it's been fun trying to work out ways to automate the different steps etc.

If anyone is interested in a similar product with a slightly different way of doing things, different pricing and a web UI, please check out: https://www.stopthat.email/

Hopefully you don't mind the health competition ryanmjacobs.

[niea_11]

Hi @pyepye,

I tried signing up on your website but I have the following error :

An uncaught exception happened while servicing this request

link to a screenshot : https://imgur.com/a/ph8RrO1

[pyepye]

Thanks for the heads up @niea_11

For some reason a deployment failed due to a dependency which caused some issues. Could you please try again and let me know if it now works?

[niea_11]

I tried again earlier and it worked. Thanks

[Method5440]

Thank you for sharing! I plan to try both services.

Wondering if the HN Hug Of Death strikes again... can’t sign up due to an uncaught exception. Will try again later.

[advaita]

Looks like service has gotten the HN kiss of death!

[tobyhinloopen]

Yours is much better/cheaper

[Zetaphor]

Cheaper sure, but definitely not better.

An automated system can't compare to an actual human, a human won't fail because the markup changed.

[bonestamp2]

It's not necessarily worse either -- if they're actively monitoring failures, updating their process and re-running the failed unsubscribes. It should be much easier to scale... especially if they move beyond using html forms and just hit the endpoints that the forms are hitting.