Rackspace snaps up Mailgun for an undisclosed sum to expand its portfolio of cloud-based email services and applications.
Cloud computing specialist Rackspace
announced it has acquired Mailgun, a provider of Web services for integrating
email inboxes into applications. The move is aimed at enhancing Rackspace's
product portfolio-making it possible to integrate cloud-based email services
into applications and Websites without managing an email server.
The acquisition is expected to close this
week, according to a company release, which did not disclose the financial
terms of the deal.
Mailgun's service optimizes the email
capability of an organization's applications and Websites with all the
analytics and data needed to measure the impact through a set of application
programming interfaces (APIs) that allows users to send, receive and track
email from within their applications. Mailgun is integrated into platforms such
as Heroku, AppFog and Engine Yard, and counts among its current customers
collaboration software developer 37Signals, native mobile software developer
kit (SDK) specialist Parse, and the Financial Times news service.
"Rackspace is dedicated to providing the
tools that our customers need to build their technology stack on the Rackspace
Open Cloud," Pat Matthews, senior vice president of corporate development at
Rackspace, said in a prepared statement. "Mail is a core component of nearly
every Website and application today. Our customers are asking for this, and
Mailgun is the right company to help us deliver it in a tightly integrated
way."
Headquartered in San Francisco, Mailgun is funded
by Y Combinator, an organization that provides seed funding for startups. The
company makes small investments (rarely more than $20,000) in return for small
stakes in the companies they fund (usually 2-10 percent). According to
information provided in a Rackspace release, the Mailgun team will remain in
San Francisco, which will add engineers to the presence Rackspace has in the
city. Rackspace is based in San Antonio, Texas.
"Mailgun is excited to join the Rackspace
family. We believe in their open cloud strategy, and we love the customer
support mentality that permeates the company," Ev Kontsevoy, CEO and founder of
Mailgun, said in a joint press statement. "Like Rackspace, we want to provide
developers with the right products to make the lives of developers easier and
more productive. We look forward to continuing this mission with Rackspace and
building a strong future together."
On Mailgun's official blog, the company
stressed that for Mailgun customers, it would be business as usual, and
businesses would not need to make any changes to their code or account. The
post also noted Mailgun customers will not have to use Rackspace's hosting
products in order to use Mailgun, though it suggested integration with
Rackspace software would be an alluring opportunity to deploy Rackspace
services.
"We did not make this decision lightly, and
we are confident that Mailgun will improve and thrive with the backing of
Rackspace. By joining Rackspace, we have many more resources at our disposal to
grow Mailgun and execute on our vision of offering the best email service for
developers," the blog post said. "Everything will continue to work as usual,
except the quality of service is going to be even higher. In addition, you have
the comfort of knowing that a strong public company has got our back."
Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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