About
A look behind the scene...
My personal journey
Hey there 👋! I'm Dustin, the heart and mind behind Msgdrop. With over two decades of experience in software development, I've noticed an annoying trend: many pesky bugs come from the software parts responsible for sending emails to users. These are not just any bugs; they are often the elusive kind which manage to escape the scrutiny of conventional testing. Despite the critical role of emails, testing them often gets overlooked, leading to preventable issues that can disrupt user journeys or even erode customer trust.
Seeing the impact of these mistakes in my own applications I thought "Why isn't testing emails as straightforward as testing other software components?". So, I rolled up my sleeves and built Msgdrop, a web-based API which makes testing email as simple and seamless as the rest of the software development lifecycle.
With Msgdrop you can detect the following issues:
- emails not showing up where they should
- email delivery snafus
- broken or dead links in emails
- misplaced or outdated attachments
- improperly implemented templates
- content encoding issues
- or the dreaded spam flagging
(which could happen through any combination of the above) - and many more mistakes
Msgdrop's easy-to-use API enables you to catch these mistakes as part of your regular QA process and therefore find and fix such problems before they ever reach your customers.
If you're ready to give your emails the thorough testing which they deserve then I invite you to join me on this incredible journey. Together let's make sure email testing is never sidelined again.
My commitment as a solopreneur
Operating my own SaaS means I get to wear many different hats, each day bringing fresh challenges and exciting opportunities ahead. One minute I'm coding away, next I'm whipping up designs, promoting my work, or helping a customer out. I love the dynamic nature of my work, the diversity of tasks and not just being confined to coding alone. Being an indie hacker means I'm constantly learning new tricks, each task presenting an opportunity to refine my skills and find new ways to grow.
As a "solopreneur", I'm deeply committed to my users. I hold a firm belief that your success is mine as well. I'm incredibly grateful for any feedback and wholeheartedly dedicated to continually enhance the service and expand the product to better serve your needs.
Where is Msgdrop at home?
Msgdrop is developed by Dusted Codes Limited, my personal brand and company registered in the UK:
Dusted Codes Limited
Company House No.: 11480000
VAT Reg.: 306330346
And for myself? Well, Austrian by birth and Polish by descent, I'm quintessentially European. Although I travelled the world quite extensively in my twenties, my wife and I have settled in the UK, where I now work full-time. As such, I run all my operations, cloud services and applications on European soil and am happily obliged to adhere to strict European data privacy and protection laws.
If you have any questions or would like to get in touch, please don't hesitate to send me an email at dustin@msgdrop.io, and I'll be glad to respond. Additionally, you can reach me on X (formerly Twitter) to see what I'm currently working on or simply to connect.
Something for the geeks
Enough about myself, you're probably wondering what technology I am using to run Msgdrop by myself?
Here's a high level overview of what makes Msgdrop tick:
- Mailserver written in C (Postfix)
- Cron jobs processing and analysing incoming email built in Go
- Several scripts and helper utilities written in Go
- User app created using Svelte
- Tailwind CSS for styling
- Stripe for payments and subscription management
- All images hand drawn by myself using an iPad Pro with Adobe Fresco
- All infrastructure, including the mailserver itself, are containerised and hosted in GKE (europe-west-2)
- Source code hosted on GitHub, CI/CD using Git actions and deployments managed through GitOps
- I'm a huge fan of the Apple Silicon and all my work is done on a MBP
I enjoy working with different technologies and picking the right tool for the job. I've chosen this tech stack because it was genuinely the easiest, cheapest and fastest way for me to ship something which I knew I'd be proud of. Besides, I believe in quality over quantity and I'm here to stay for the long run 😄.
Special thanks
I am a strong advocate of open source and in this section I wanted to give a special thanks to all the amazing open source projects - many of which I've listed above - that I couldn't run a SaaS without. Also a special thanks to my close developer friends and all the amazing beta testers who help me make Msgdrop better every day!
Working on Msgdrop is a privilege that I don't take for granted. I'm immensely appreciative of every user who makes this journey possible. Thank you.