> That is nonsense. Nobody reaches out to the ESPs to have their IPs "whitelisted" in advance. You reach out when, if and after you've been blacklisted, in order to get unlisted.
That's nonsense, lots of people do that. Only you don't usually go direct to the service provider, see following links:
Lots of people also believe in astrology.
Anyone is free to do what they deem good for their karma, you just shouldn't expect a measurable impact towards your deliverability. The big ESPs don't look at these lists.
Oh my, do I have to put it even more bluntly to get the point across: These commercial whitelists are effectively extortion scams and affiliate rings.
Their sole purpose is to extract money from you. They're businesses, that is their business model.
The value they provide in return is rather minimal - unless getting e-mail out is at the very core of your business and you need to pull every last string to absolutely maximize it.
Otherwise there are cheaper ways to get reasonable deliverability even at AOL and Hotmail. The default deliverability is already quite good, which is what services like SendGrid largely bargain on. I firmly doubt SendGrid signs each of their customers up for the aforementioned whitelists. They probably offer "assistance" with the process, which probably amounts to sending you a link to a nice HowTo document, and which probably yields them a small affiliate kickback when you actually follow through.
> Oh my, do I have to put it even more bluntly to get the point across: These commercial whitelists are effectively extortion scams and affiliate rings.
You made a few points.
First is that nobody reaches out to get themselves whitelisted in advance. Lots of people do that and some ESPs even offer their own whitelist request forms.
Second is that none of the big ESPs look at third-party whitelists. AOL and Hotmail say they do.
Third is that even if the above is true, the impact on deliverability is minimal. I would guess you are right about that but I'd love to look at some data.
Intermediaries like SendGrid would be well within reason to be paying for such services. I don't think they have to signup their individual customers on the whitelists. They just say they are intermediaries and promise to vet their customers.
I think anyone sending low volumes of email is much better off using an intermediary. They get to use well-configured mail servers, IPs with good reputation, etc. Doing it yourself, IMHO, is not worth all the trouble compared to paying $20/month.
That's nonsense, lots of people do that. Only you don't usually go direct to the service provider, see following links:
http://www.returnpath.net/commercialsender/certification/
http://www.spamhauswhitelist.com/en/
http://www.certified-senders.eu/csa_html/en/266.htm