My company has a website built with PHP. We use the built-in PHP email functionality to send thousands of emails to subscribers on a daily basis.
This is a terrible idea. It chokes out our server, and takes hours to complete the whole batch.
Now I've looked at mass mailing services like MailChimp (which would replace our current system of sending the same email to many people), but what I think I'd really like to do is to set up a somewhat-sophisticated notification system.
Rather than send a mass email to each person each time something important happens, I'd like clients to be able to customize the rate and content of the emails that they receive.
Even using this new idea, we're talking about A LOT of emails being sent.
So my question is very specific: I have a rough idea of how to build the system internally, but what is the best way to send out all of these emails?
Bullet points to consider:
Thoughts? Tips? Point me in the right direction?
EDIT
To clarify:
I can do these on my own:
And need something else (app, third-party service, w/e) to:
I'm leaning towards a third-party service, since I'm not sure any app can avoid choking the server when sending thousands of emails (though I wouldn't consider myself an email expert so I could be wrong).
To configure email notification for your system. Click the Administration tab. In the System Management section, click Email Settings > Notifications (System). The Notifications (System) page appears.
Login into your ServiceNow tenant & in the search bar type “notifications”. Now click on the “Notifications” option under the System Notification. Then click on the “New” button, to create the new notification. 2.
We use the built-in PHP email functionality to send thousands of emails to subscribers on a daily basis.
This is a terrible idea. It chokes out our server, and takes hours to complete the whole batch.
Why do you think that your problems are anything to do with the built-in PHP email function? It's a very thin wrapper around 'mail' or a simple SMTP client depending on what platform you are running on.
When you say it chokes your server - do you mean your email server? Your web server? something else?
There's nowhere near enough information here to make a proper diagnosis but it looks like the problems are of your own making - sure, there are lots of people out there who promise to sort all your problems for you if only you buy their latest product/service. But there's a very good chance that this isn't going to solve your current problems.
Can you tell us:
what OS the PHP is running on
how you invoke the code to create the emails
what the mail config in the php.ini file is
what type of MTA are you using? On what OS?
how is youe MTA copnfigured - does it deliver directly or via a smart relay?
which server is getting "choked"?
What anti-spam measures do you have in place for outgoing mail?
Then tell us what you've done to diagnose the fault and why you think its specifically on sending mails.
C.
I'd recommend using the third party mailing service Silverpop, or something like it. We've used them for a few years and have been fairly satisfied. They already have relationships with the major email clients (AOL, Yahoo!, Gmail, etc.) and they do a good job of telling you if the stuff you're sending is likely to be classified as SPAM.
They have a fairly extensive API that uses XML HTTP/HTTPS requests that can tie in to existing systems. You can use it to remotely trigger emails, schedule mailings, customize email contents, set up, manage and query huge lists of recipients, run batch processes, etc.
It isn't a perfect service, but compared to a lot of others out there, they do pretty well. I have had very few complaints about them thus far.
I usually got around this by having a mail "sending" function that dumped the emails into a queue (database table) with a job that ran every couple of minutes, grabbed the next x emails in the queue, sent those out and marked them as succeeded. That's the simple bones of it. You can then add on handling for email failures, returned mail, etc in version 2.
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