We had a similar request in the past, uneasy adding hacks to circumvent mandrill limits
We had a similar request in the past, uneasy adding hacks to circumvent mandrill limits
I would view this request as a resilience feature, or a failover SMTP server if you will.
Emails fail into two categories: critical (signup email confirmation, password reset) and non-critical (notifications and everything else). Critical emails serve a very different role from notification emails, and IMO can justifiably use a higher priority sending mechanism.
Whether the limitation belongs to Mandrill, some other SMTP server, or to the Sidekiq backlog is irrelevant. Having a dedicated server for critical emails solves the problem.
This is how many other systems work: you have emergency and AMBER alerts sent on a different channel vs. regular SMSes precisely because of the higher priority of the former; QoS in packet-switched networks etc.
Plus, adding a secondary SMTP server would enable failing over from the primary one in case of outage.
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