What is the best way to send large batches of emails in ASP.NET?

Question

I'm currently looping through a datareader and calling the System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient's Send() method. The problem with this is that it's slow. Each email takes about 5-10 seconds to send (it's possible this is just an issue with my host). I had to override the executionTimeout default in my web.config file (it defaults to 90 seconds) like this:

 <httpRuntime executionTimeout="3000" />

One caveat: I'm on a shared host, so I don't think it is possible for me to send using the PickupDirectoryFromIis option (at least, it gave me errors when I turned it on).

Answer 1

You could send the mail asynchronous. That way the timeout should not interrupt your sending.

This article should help you get started with that: Sending Emails Asynchronously in C#.

There is another approach here: http://www.vikramlakhotia.com/Sending_Email_asynchronously_in_AspNet_20.aspx

And off course there are several commercial clients available, but the only one that i have tried and can recommend is http://www.aspnetemail.com/