Hey LQ,

I'm going to be launching a website sometime this year that will rely heavily on delivering emails populated with links to my user base. It is imperative that these emails get delivered in a timely fashion (ideally instantly) and there may be a few thousand of these emails sent per day (perhaps even 10+ per day, per user, depending on their preferences).

I'll be starting my webservice with a KVM-VPS and I'm not against the idea of setting up my own email server on it but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort to do so if I just want to send emails out. I see that there is services like mailchimp available, but that seems to be geared more towards email marketing and newsletters which I am not interested in. I just need to be able to reliably send a lot of emails.

I don't even know what my options are at this point. Any tips?

What you are doing looks a LOT like email marketing distribution! You do not need your web server to be a mail server (although that is not a bad option). You DO need to adjust your expectations. Email is not dependable, the delivery is not under your control, the performance is NOT under your control, and sending a few thousand per day WILL get you tagged as a SPAM source by some metrics: which may mean you will be blocked at the relay mail servers or receiving mail servers at times.

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In addition to what wpeckham has very correctly said, if you are a **LEGITIMATE** company/website, you can go two routes:

1. Use a service like CriticalImpact, mailchimp, etc., and let them deliver your messages
2. Work through some process with your ISP to make sure you're not flagged as a spammer.

Even if you go route #2, Gmail/Yahoo/whatever-else may STILL flag you as a spammer, and your mail will STILL get blocked. There is no good solution for 10k daily emails.

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In addition to the advice from TB0ne:

1) Do not even ATTEMPT to run this on a home ISP link. Many mail servers make use of Spamhaus's list of residential IP addresses to block mail. You may also find that it's against your ISPs terms of service.
2) https://www.fusemail.com/ used to have an outbound relay service that was geared around bulk sending, not sure if they still do, but you will have to pay for the service.

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Thank you all for the replies.

The website/service basically informs people when prices of things change, similar to pcpartpicker. At the very least, I would presume 1 email per day per user, but I'd like to give people the option to be notified of changes in real time if they so desire. None of the emails will be unsolicited, users will have to opt-in and perform email validation in order to be sent emails and I will be obeying the rules such as having one click "Unsub me" in the email footer.

I wasn't intending to send this from my home internet service.

I'll check into those links that have been posted.

While I'm here though, maybe it's worth asking if there any other forms of notification other than email, that are more reliable. I know there is browser push notifications, and if I were to build an android/iphone app I could inform the user through system notifications but I'd like to stay in the realm of web development as that's what I know and it opens up the service to the greatest number of people.

Cheers.

How is it that CriticalImpact, mailchimp and the like can get away with sending millions of emails per day. How can they be setup to do so?

Simple: they went through a HUGE process of verification, put lots of time and money into security, and typically require a good amount of info from their customers. And at the first HINT of spammy behavior from a client, they drop them, and throw them under the bus for any potential lawsuits/criminal warrants.

They are trusted email mass-mailing vendors. If you want to go through that whole process, you're welcome to.

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Sounds involved and complicated haha. I'll pass.

Cheers everyone.