Choose a letter sending integration

[fitzhavey]

We need to decide on an API we will use to send letters. There are a few other questions we should answer too.

Which API will we use and how is it configured?

Looking at the available options, I think we should use Stannp as it does not have a cap on the number of letters you can send without committing to spending > £150 a month. We can always switch out integrations later on.

Tasks

• setup a Stamp Account
• document in the readme

[fitzhavey]

I had a look at some options, here's what I found.

Lob

https://www.lob.com/pricing/print-mail
Lob has a free tier, but it's capped at 500 letters per month. Pricing is also good, at $0.855 per letter. The next tier up costs $225 / month, but brings the price of letters down. This seems expensive but if we were sending 500 letters a month at $3 a letter we could easily cover this. It seems to be the industry standard.

PostGrid

https://www.postgrid.com/print-mail-api
This looks really nice, but they won't give me pricing information without contacting them, so I don't think it's worth using this one at the moment. It seems to be the industry alternative.

Stannp

https://www.stannp.com/direct-mail/pricing/
The underdog of the list, relatively unknown, with a price of 55p per letter. A key benefit of this integration is there is no monthly cap or monthly subscription required.

[fitzhavey]

Since we're going with Stannp for now, I've created us an account. It gives us £2 free credit which will be nice to test with. @andrewlew1s I've created an account for you there too under your email, and will whatsapp you the password.

[fitzhavey]

I've documented how we are currently using and plan to use Stannp going forward, and added a note about it to the README:
https://github.com/holistic-web/e-mailr/blob/development/docs/Stannp.md