Case Study: Geogram achieves a scalable, reliable free group email service with Mailgun

How Geogram Built A Free Group Email Service Using Yii For PHP With MySQL

Geogram is a free, location-based group email service that helps neighbors discover and join place-specific mailing lists and interact primarily via email. The core challenge was building a scalable, reliable email platform—handling deliverability, spam filtering, inbound parsing and sender reputation is complex, time-consuming and typically requires significant infrastructure and expertise.

Geogram was built on the Yii PHP framework with MySQL and integrated Mailgun to handle inbound and outbound email. Messages are first stored in the database, background workers determine recipients and post messages to Mailgun via cURL, inbound mail is routed to webhook endpoints and verified, and anonymized addresses protect user privacy. This architecture let a single developer launch the service in about three months, offload spam/reputation management to Mailgun, and achieve reliable, scalable delivery for hundreds or thousands of users.

Geogram

Jeff Reifman

Technology Consultant CEO and Lead Developer