Lessons learned from our first users: not all of them were here to build
When we launched Tappd.io, we were so focused on growth that we didn't think much about who was signing up. Tappd lets you send email and push notifications and in-app messages from a single place, and segment your customers on all possible filters. That kind of power is great for real businesses, but it's also attractive to people who want to blast junk email. Some of our early users did exactly that.
Attempt 1: Alerts only
We did have some protection in place. If a user's content looked spammy, our system would fire an alert. The problem? It was just that, an alert. Nothing was actually stopped. By the time someone looked at it, the junk had already gone out. We were watching abuse happen with no way to stop it.
Attempt 2: Auto-block on detection
So we flipped it. If the system detected abusive content, it automatically blocked the send and flagged it for our support team to investigate.
That stopped the abuse, but it created a new problem: it was also blocking real users. Legit customers had their sends stopped and were left waiting on support to clear them. That's a terrible experience, especially for someone who just signed up and is trying to see if your product works.
Attempt 3: Talk to people first
What finally worked was a lot less technical than we expected. We started interviewing early customers and put a gate on their first journey. Before a new user can start sending, we get to know who they are and what they're trying to do.
This did two things:
- Abusers dropped off. Most of them don't want to get on a call or explain their use case.
- Genuine customers got a better experience. We learned what they needed, and they weren't caught by filters built to catch bad actors.
What we took away from this
- Detection alone isn't protection. An alert that doesn't stop anything is just a log.
- Blocking aggressively hurts good users. Every false positive costs you trust.
- Sometimes the best fix isn't more automation, it's adding a human step at the right moment in the journey.
- Early users shape your product, but they also shape your platform's reputation. Be intentional about who you let in.
If you're building a platform where users can send messages at scale, think about abuse prevention from day one, not after the first incident.
Curious how others have handled this. Have you used onboarding gates or manual review for early users? What worked and what backfired?
(We're building Tappd.io, happy to answer questions in the comments.)