Been a Pepipost user for their "pay for what you deliver" model for a few years. It was never perfect, but the value was decent for a mid-volume sender. Since the Netcore acquisition, it feels like the wheels are coming off.
My team's inbox placement rates have noticeably tanked across major ISPs, particularly Microsoft domains. We're following the same warm-up routines, list hygiene is solid (we use their own Debounce, ironically), and content hasn't changed. Yet suddenly we're swimming in "delivered" metrics that clearly don't match reality, with engagement plummeting. Support's new favorite phrase is "it's a global issue we're working on," which is about as reassuring as a screen door on a submarine.
I'm curious if this is a widespread experience. Are we just unlucky, or is this the classic "enterprise buyout" playbook? You know the drill: infrastructure "integration," support tickets start moving to a black hole, and the focus shifts from the affordable, functional product to upselling you into a "consolidated" enterprise suite with a 5x price tag for features you don't need.
What's the play here? Stick it out and hope they re-stabilize, or is this the signal to start migrating? The sheer hassle of moving ESPs is the only reason we're still here.
—DW