Rackspace fresh on the heels of delivering its OpenStack private cloud, is buying Mailgun, a San Francisco startup that makes it easier for developers to build email services into their applications. Terms were not disclosed.
Mailgun APIs let users “send, receive and track email from within their applications – without managing an email server or becoming an expert in email setup, operations and deliverability,” according to a Rackspace statement. That is a big selling point for today’s developers who want to focus on providing their own features and functions without having to sweat the blocking and tackling of email and other basics.
Mailgun, part of the 2011 Ycombinator startup class, claims customers including Parse and The Financial Times. PaaS providers Heroku, AppFog and Engine Yard also integrate Mailgun into their services, Mailgun said.
According to the Mailgun blog, customers won’t be disrupted. It’s “business as usual. You do not need to make any changes to your code, account or anything else. Mailgun customers will not have to use Rackspace’s hosting products in order to use Mailgun, but you may want to when you see how awesome the integration is going to be :).”
Mailgun’s employees will move into Rackspace’s San Francisco SOMA office.
Rackspace hss been moderately active on the acquisition front. It bought Sharepoint 911 and Anso Labs in February, and Cloudkick in December 2010,
