February 2021 Summaries

Send emails from a Node.js app using SMTP, transactional email APIs, or multichannel notification services. Each method has its pros and cons: SMTP offers fine-grained control but is insecure and slower; transactional email APIs are easy to set up and scalable but rely on third-party providers; and multichannel notification services allow for easy integration with multiple channels using one uniform API. Nodemailer is a popular Node.js module for sending emails using SMTP, while SendGrid and Mailgun offer transactional email APIs. Courier provides a multichannel notification service that integrates well with various email providers and offers customizable templates and analytics.

On February 2nd and 3rd, Shy Ruparel joined me for another Courier and Contentful crossover stream where we played around with an IoT E-ink display to show the latest posts from Contentful and send notifications using Courier. During Tuesday's Contentful Live, we worked with the newly released Adafruit MagTag, a 2.9“ grayscale E-Ink display that can show data on its screen even when power is removed. We used CircuitPython to query the Contentful GraphQL API and retrieve latest blog posts to display on the e-ink screen, and then added the ability to send the displayed blog post to the Show and Tell channel in Courier's Discord Community using the Courier Send API. The full project code is available on GitHub and viewers can check out the videos to see the demo in action.

If you're building an application that sends emails to confirm new accounts, reset user passwords, or handle billing and invoicing, then it's sending transactional emails, a common functionality that many vendors provide. To choose the right transactional email API for your application, look for a service with features such as standard email authentication methods, email testing, shared, bring-your-own, and dedicated IPs, integration with other AWS components, and analytics capabilities. Pricing should be considered based on the cheapest plan and its limits, as well as how the pricing scales. Among the top 6 transactional email APIs recommended are Amazon SES, Mailchimp Transactional, Mailgun, Postmark, SendGrid, and SparkPost, each offering unique features, deliverability strategies, and pricing structures that cater to different needs and volumes. Choosing the right service can be a complex task, but considering factors such as speed, security, ease of use, analytics capabilities, and pricing is essential for making an informed decision.

This tutorial explains how to extend a Node.js and Express app that sends notifications when a Twitch stream goes live to send notifications to multiple destinations using Courier's Lists API. The process involves creating a list of recipients, subscribing them to the list, and updating the code to use a List send instead of a regular send. Additionally, the tutorial shows how to add Discord as a notification destination by configuring the Discord integration in Courier and designing a Discord notification. Finally, the tutorial provides a full application code example that processes stream.online events and passes them to Courier along with additional stream data, creating SMS or Discord notifications based on the profiles in the list of subscribers.

A messaging giant like Slack manages attention with push notifications, bolded channels, and red badges to avoid distractions. Liza Gurtin, former product lead for Slack's notifications team, emphasizes the importance of empowering users to sort signal from noise by setting smart defaults that balance business needs with user expectations. This involves investing in smart defaults, putting control back into users' hands through notification preferences, and managing the complex logic of delivering notifications. Liza warns against prioritizing short-term growth over long-term value, advising product builders to prioritize user experience and retention. By focusing on these principles, products can harness the power of notifications to drive sustained engagement and deliver more value to their users.