Configuration for PHPList -or- Outside Options for Bulk Email

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  • Courtly
    Member
    • Sep 2004
    • 35

    Configuration for PHPList -or- Outside Options for Bulk Email

    One of my sites (a musician) has a large and growing fan-base, and sends out (pseudo-)monthly emails with phplist.

    The most recent mailing triggered a warning from Andrew - evidently they sent out several thousand emails in far too short a span of time. There are obviously two problems here... Thousands of emails in one mailing is causing concern for Andrew, and the short span of time is obviously much worse.

    Can I send the admin some recommended settings for PHPList so that the second problem (the email surge) is prevented? What settings have worked for others? I saw one comment on the forums here had Andrew's thumbs-up for "send 5 emails, wait 10 seconds". Sounds good?

    I realize the other problem might be insurmountable, if the fan list grows. If it does, does anyone have good recommendations on other options for legitimate large-volume mailing so I can direct the admin there? I very much do not want to send business to a spam-friendly shop, on principle as well as because it would obviously result in a lot of their emails being undelivered.
    Ok, you guys start coding.
    I'll go find out what the customer wants.
  • ZYV
    Senior Member
    • Sep 2005
    • 315

    #2
    1) You can use another SMTP server for the mailings to offload the shared server, probably your software has an option for that (still, it should be intelligent enough to include all of the addresses in BCC:, so that the e-mail is transmitted from Dathorn's shared server to 3rd-party SMTP only once).

    2) Probably migrating to the built-in mailman would help, but I am not sure how it deals with a large amount of subscribers. Please bear with Andrew.

    3) I would go for an ultra-cheap VPS just for that. This is the safest and easiest way to go because you have hard-limited resources and when you exceed the limits, your server will slow down, but not disturb the other customers. Make sure you don't violate the TOS of the host...
    Last edited by ZYV; 05-14-2009, 03:45 PM.

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    • AndrewT
      Administrator
      • Mar 2004
      • 3653

      #3
      phpList is fine. Something like "send 5 emails, wait 10 seconds" would work as well.

      We don't recommend using Mailman for a one-way mailing list.

      Comment

      • ZYV
        Senior Member
        • Sep 2005
        • 315

        #4
        Hmmm, I didn't know that phpList is smart enough to implement this.

        What's the problem with mailman (I mean is there any particular reasons for discouraging one-way mailing lists)?

        Comment

        • AndrewT
          Administrator
          • Mar 2004
          • 3653

          #5
          Mailman is more for many-to-many discussion groups. It also tends to be one of the more problematic aspects of cPanel.

          phpList is very configurable and that is what we recommend for bulk email.

          Comment

          • Courtly
            Member
            • Sep 2004
            • 35

            #6
            They were already using PHPList as far as I know.

            But obviously they have it tuned to dump mail way too fast.

            If they were sending at a tolerable rate, hopefully they'll still have headroom before the monthly volume of outgoing email causes a problem.
            Ok, you guys start coding.
            I'll go find out what the customer wants.

            Comment

            • Frank Hagan
              Senior Member
              • Mar 2004
              • 724

              #7
              Originally posted by Courtly
              They were already using PHPList as far as I know.

              But obviously they have it tuned to dump mail way too fast.

              If they were sending at a tolerable rate, hopefully they'll still have headroom before the monthly volume of outgoing email causes a problem.
              Andrew will clarify, but usually it isn't a function of the bandwidth but the load on the server trying to do it all at once. If its only bandwidth, they can pay for more. If they are over-taxing the processor on the server with the mailing program then the delays are all you need.

              Comment

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