Contrary to popular belief, switching to an ESP (email service provider) like MailChimp, ConstantContact, etc., is not a silver bullet for deliverability.

Spam filters and email gateways look at two kinds of things: 1) your email message, and 2) your email infrastructure. In terms of your email message, ESPs can’t help it if you send spammy content, manage your lists like an idiot, or if a link in your email has a bad domain reputation. But as ReturnPath points out here, ESPs do have one important advantage: our infrastructure.

So if you’re managing your own email servers and delivery issues with ISPs, firewalls, throttling, feedback loops, and bouncebacks are becoming a supreme headache, you might be thinking about moving to an ESP.

This article is about how one email sender, Photojojo, decided to switch from their in-house solution to MailChimp. We’ll show you how we helped them make the transition, what we experienced, and how it impacted their deliverability.

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