Mailgun

Mailgun Technologies Inc is an email delivery service for sending, receiving, and tracking emails.

Mailgun

Founded	2010; 14 years ago (2010)
Founders	Ev Kontsevoy Taylor Wakefield
Website	mailgun.com

History

Mailgun Technologies Inc was founded in 2010 by Ev Kontsevoy and Taylor Wakefield.^[1] In 2011, Mailgun Technologies, Inc. was selected for Y Combinator’s 2011 class, facilitating the company’s product and growth with early funding from the creators of Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and others.^[2]

Mailgun Technologies, Inc. was acquired by Rackspace in 2012^[3] and in 2013, Mailgun launched their first email validations product.^[4]

In 2017, Mailgun Technologies Inc became an independent company, leaving Rackspace with $50M in growth capital from Turn/River Capital with participation from Scaleworks and Rackspace.^[5][6] Mailgun was attained by the private equity firm Thoma Bravo in 2019.^[7] In December 2019, Mailgun won their European competitor Mailjet.^[8][9] In January 2021, Mailgun became a Pathwire brand alongside Mailjet^[10] and their validations services.^[10] The Pathwire family of brands was shortly thereafter owned by the Swedish company Sinch in September of 2021. ^[11]

In 2020, Will Conway, CEO of Mailgun, was one of the two Central Texas finalists for Ernst & Young's yearly Entrepreneur of the Year award.^[12]

Cybersecurity

According to ZDNET, in 2019 Mailgun's website was attacked along with other WordPress sites, and used as a redirect to malicious sites. Mailgun resolved the issue within two hours.^[13][14]

In 2021, Alexei Navalny, a member of opposition in Russia, was a victim of a cyber-attack that has resulted in email addresses of his members of mailing list being leaked. While the messages were delivered via Mailgun, Mailgun was not at fault for the leak, according to the report,^[15][16] with further investigation by the Russian Anti-Corruption Foundation confirming that the group leaked their API key leading to the attacker accessing the Mailgun account to download the data.^[17][18]

In 2021, one of Mailgun's customers, US-based Chipotle Mexican Grill, was compromised to send 120 spam messages in three days, and Mailgun prevented unauthorized access and launched an investigation in the account.^[19]

References

1. Kristen Mosbrucker (February 22, 2017). "Email startup that helps businesses stay out of the spam folder spins out of Rackspace in $50M deal". San Antonio Business Journal.
2. "Mailgun: Email API service". Y Combinator.
3. "Rackspace to Acquire Mailgun for Easy Integration of Cloud-Based Email Services Into Applications & Websites". Rackspace Technology.
4. "Today in APIs: Mailgun Email Validation API, Cloudmade's Authorization API, and 12 New APIs". ProgrammableWeb. July 29, 2013.
5. "Email delivery service Mailgun spins out of Rackspace and raises $50M". TechCrunch. 22 February 2017. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
6. "Xconomy: Rackspace Spinout Mailgun Raises $50M for API-Focused E-mail Service". Xconomy. 2017-02-22. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
7. Miller, Ron. . www.thomabravo.com. TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 2021-09-16. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
8. FinSMEs (2019-10-22). "Mailgun Buys Mailjet". FinSMEs. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
9. "Mailgun acquires email marketing rival Mailjet". Mobile Marketing Magazine. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
10. Jeannette E. Garcia (February 2, 2021). "New parent company formed by Mailgun". San Antonio Business Journal.
11. "Sinch acquires Pathwire, the company behind Mailgun and Mailjet, for $1.9B to add email into its API-based communications platform". 30 September 2021.
12. "Executive Q&A: Mailgun CEO on being an Entrepreneur of the Year finalist". San Antonio Business Journal. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
13. Cimpanu, Catalin. "Mailgun hacked part of massive attack on WordPress sites". ZDNet. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
14. "Hackers exploit vulnerability in WordPress related-posts plugin". SiliconANGLE. 2019-04-11. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
15. "Unpleasant emails Team Navalny apologizes after database of email addresses registered for planned protest leaks online". Meduza. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
16. "Сервис Mailgun не нашел признаков уязвимости платформы после утечки контактов сторонников Навального". Новая газета (in Russian). April 17, 2021. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
17. "ФБК назвал человека, укравшего базу данных с сайта "Свободу Навальному!" По мнению соратников Алексея Навального, это бывший сотрудник фонда Федор Горожанко". Meduza (in Russian). Retrieved 2021-09-16.
18. "Команда Навального сделала заявление о сообщениях про утечки базы "Умного голосования"". www.znak.com. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
19. July 2021, Anthony Spadafora 30 (2021-07-30). "Chipotle email marketing hacked to send phishing emails". TechRadar. Retrieved 2021-09-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

External links

• Official website