New Burst Protection Algorithm

To protect users against surprise charges, FeedMail covers the cost of sudden bursts of updates. The initial algorithm, only charging once a day, was too simple. Many feeds regularly see multiple updates a day and the burst-protection algorithm was artificially subsidizing these feeds.

FeedMail is now using an updated algorithm to protect from bursts. The exact implementation is subject to change but is based on the following principles:

Updates more than 24h apart are almost always charged.
An average update rate is tracked per-feed. If a feed suddenly starts updating faster than the traditional rate the additional updates will not be charged.
The average is updated over time, so if a feed continues updating at the elevated rate credit consumption will slowly increase to match the new update rate.

FeedMail aims to be very low cost. To achieve this we need to keep our expenses predictable and fair. Otherwise we would need to overcharge some users to cover uncertainty and higher cost users.

To be fair to users who have purchased credits with the previous expectation in mind existing paid users will have their credit balance doubled to account for this difference. Based on our analysis this means that the remaining balance will last longer for all existing users. If any paid users feel like this will reduce the value of their credits please reach out to our support team and we will find the fair adjustment.

Comments

Digests are Coming

Up to this point FeedMail has only supported real-time notifications. Meaning that every feed update immediately produces a single email. However this is about to change! When we asked for feedback on the features you would like to see in FeedMail we had a number of users reach out saying that they wanted a way to batch notifications together. We saw two main reasons for this: To reduce noise in their inbox. For some high-volume feeds users wanted to be able to quickly skim, then delete the entire batch in one go. While deleting one-by-one offers more flexibility, the bulk option is easier for high-volume feeds. To reduce costs. While we believe that our prices are incredibly reasonable, they can add up if you are getting lots of updates. For example if you follow a feed that updates every 15min that will be about $35 a year (or half price if you buy your credits in bulk). Not super expensive but maybe more than you want to spend for a single feed! Digests provide and option for cost

Update to Date-based Entry Ignoring

TL;DR FeedMail will now ignore new items 7 days older than a previously seen item. This is expected to affect almost no "true" new posts. In theory checking to find new entries for a feed is a simple process. Download the feed. Check the ID of each entry to see if you have seen it before. However the real world is much messier. It is recommended for feed IDs to be URLs (to ensure global uniqueness) however this results in many feeds just using the URL that the article is available at. However these URLs sometimes change, and poorly designed feed generators update the ID of existing entries to the new URL. From a protocol point of view these are completely new entries, however to a user these are duplicates. In order to reduce the effect of this common issue on our our users FeedMail has some simple mitigations for posts that have recorded published dates. If the entry is older than a year always ignore it. If the entry is older than the 10th newest post in the feed ignore it.

Digests Leave Beta

Thanks everyone who has helped evaluate digests over the past weeks. All of the blocking issues are now resolved and we will be releasing them soon. Once digests are officially released there will be links to them from the FeedMail site and pricing information added to our homepage. Price Increase Part of the purpose of the beta was to evaluate the cost of providing digests and see how they would be used. We have decided upon final pricing which we hope will be sustainable for years to come. Digests issues will cost 1 credit per 5 feeds. Note that this is feeds included in an issue , not total feeds that target a particular digest. It also does not matter how many new items a feed has. So if you have a digest with 200 feeds configured but this morning's issue only has new items from 2 of them it will cost 1 credit. If 14 feeds update the next day that issue will cost 3 credits. If the day after has no updates it will cost nothing. This new pricing takes effect no earlier than 202

FeedMail Blog

Search This Blog