Ahasend API support

[moritz89]

The ESP I'm using uses ahasend.com as their backend. They also have an API endpoint and wanted to ask how much interest there is to add support for their API? Otherwise, is their API similar to another ESP where it would make sense to use them instead?

[medmunds]

AhaSend seems like a reasonable candidate for adding to Anymail. People can express interest by using GitHub's thumbs-up reaction on the top post in this issue.

Note that AhaSend also provides an SMTP API, which should work just fine with Django's built-in SMTP EmailBackend.

Evaluating AhaSend fit for django-anymail (only the first two are required; the others get at whether an Anymail integration would add value compared to just using SMTP):
[EDIT: this was based on AhaSend's v1 API. There's a new v2 API which provides pretty much all of these features—see this comment below.]

• ✅ Provides a transactional sending API: yes (API docs; there doesn't seem to be any way to distinguish to/cc/bcc recipients, though maybe this is supported by supplying custom headers similar to Unisender Go's API.)
• ✅ Offers a free or minimal-cost tier that would allow Anymail's regular integration testing: yes (1000 free sends/month)
• ❓ Offers extended sending features (tags, metadata, delayed sending, etc.) that would be helpful for Anymail to normalize: generally no, but they do allow controlling tracking using a custom header
• ❌ Implements templates or mail merge features that would be helpful for Anymail to normalize: no
• ✅ Provides status tracking webhooks that Anymail could normalize: yes (docs)
• ❌ Provides inbound email handling: no

[moritz89]

The main reason I proposed this is due to the lower latency of using the API vs SMTP, but if there are other benefits, would enjoy those too. And thanks for looking into it!

[farhadhf]

Founder of AhaSend here. Thanks for your interest and creating this issue @moritz89 and thank you for the review @medmunds 🙌

• Transactional email API: I recommend using our new v2 API. We're still in the process of testing the v2 APIs and updating the links in the website to the new documenation.
• Distinguish to/cc/bcc recipients: Although possible in our v1 API through AhaSend-To and CC headers along with setting multiple recipients in the json body payload, we don't officially support adding CC / BCC to emails and the AhaSend-To header is untested in API v2. The API is designed to be used for high volume email sending, where a separate email message is sent to each email address in recipients array. We recommend using SMTP if you need CC / BCC.
• Offers extended sending features? Yes, see Idempotency, Sandbox mode (also in API docs), Tags, Tracking, Data and Metadata Retention settings, and scheduled sending,
• Templating support: text_content, html_content, and amp_content support jinja2 templates with global and per-recipient variables / merge tags.
• Webhooks: Yes, also see ahasend-cli for local webhooks development and testing.
• Inbound email routing: Yes, also see ahasend-cli for tool local message route development and testing.

[medmunds]

@farhadhf I hadn't seen the AhaSend v2 API, thanks for pointing it out. v2 seems like a much better fit for a django-anymail integration. (And the direct links to specific features are really helpful.)