Side-project ideas with receipts.

Mailgun doubled its Flex rate overnight ($1→$2 per 1k emails, no warning). SendGrid's deliverability is collapsing per multiple IndieHackers reports ('Sendgrid started going to spam for some of our users, so we decided to move away' — adamfortuna). Solo senders have no visibility into where their email actually lands ('it's a black box for me where they end up' — TurboLogicTom) and Gmail/Outlook's 5000-msg/day rule is being applied to anyone, killing legitimate small senders ('Google states that the new requirements are mandatory only when you send at least 5000 messages per day. This is a lie.' — adrian_b, 89 upvotes).

Developers often struggle with the 'marketing math' and feel intimidated by the complexity of ad platforms like Reddit Ads. This fear leads to low user acquisition and a reliance on manual analytics refreshing.