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I'm new to James Mail Server and I would appreciate it if some of you could help me on my task.. I'm required to build a newsletter system that could send mass mail (>=100,000 subscribers) to members of a site without being marked as spam. The problem is the actual sending. The site is developed under php & postgresql but still I think that selecting >100,000 emails from the database and sending them at once is a bit extreme... :)

How can I send them in small parts so all of the emails get sent within a day or two? What's the right approach to this problem? Will a server with 8 cores and 4gb ram + about 30,000 unique users every day be able to handle the traffic of the live site and sending mails at the same time ? What should I monitor mostly to prevent eventual problems ?

I would really appreciate any help or directions! I have never written a newsletter for such a big number of subscribers....

P.S. The good old free software solutions available out there will not work for me as I'm required to create a customized newsletter which has to be integrated in the site's admin control panel...

Thanks in advance!

Tom O'Connor
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tftd
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After painful experience with in-house sending of email mailshots and similar mailinglist sendings, I can honestly say that an in-house solution is almost never the right way to do it.

I understand that you have some integration issues, but I suspect that the right way to do this would be to use a service like Mailchimp (who are very good, and provide a good API (no, I don't work for them)), and write some glue-logic between your Admin CP and the Mailchimp API.

For example, they support really large mailing lists, and regular mailings, but also have an api to update the recipients list, so that could be a key feature of your integration effort.

One of the biggest reasons why you shouldn't do it yourself, is because the handling of bounces, unsubscribes and spam is notoriously difficult. $mass_mailing_provider of your choice can provide an automated service that will manage all of that kind of administrtation for you, saving you time and effort, which would otherwise be spent reinventing their wheel.

Tom O'Connor
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  • Yes I know about Mailchimp. The problem is that I'm working for a customer who wants what he wants... And he's just stubborn about this newsletter... :/ – tftd Feb 10 '11 at 03:20