Hello,

One of my friend has a small forum having around 14000 total users. Site is hosted on a dedicated server. Today he wanted to send an announcement message to everyone on their registered email address.

He started sending in batches. However soon he encountered SMTP error 421.x from both Yahoo and Hotmail (which is to prevent spamming). He told that the software which he used on server had 200 messages per minute throttle rate and 100 messages per 30 second was defined in anti flood. He started getting this error after 6000 messages and then he stopped.

So he asked me to help and I am also not having answer for his question that how other sites & forums do that.

So I decided to post here.Question is, when you have a dedicated server, your mail content is legitimate with spam score 0, and you are sending to intended peoples only, what should be best setup on server side to ensure that it won't list server / sender as a spammer.

One option could be subscribing to any professional email marketing service, but he won't be willing to spend $ for a non-commercial activity.

Thanks

Sorry, you're on your own, as far as I'm concerned. You SAY that you and your 'friend' aren't spammers, but we've got nothing but your word for it, and that's not enough. I'm not helping someone send me more junk, thanks.

Thread reported.

TB0ne, thanks for your reply. Do you really think that this thread wasn't a genuine post for this forum and you reported it ?

Now when you have reported, I request moderators to spend some time to read my question, understand my concern and take decision accordingly.

No one likes spams and you are not alone. Me too hate spams.. My question was setting server to send emails to a small community who opted to get that email. Normally all smtp stops accepting emails after x number of emails in particular time. Some blocks for 1 hour and some for 1 day. However, at the same time there are paid services which sends millions of emails without facing that problem. So question was to understand their setup or process. Of course, me or my friend won't be able to setup that infrastructure nor we wants to do that.

But it was a generic question, which was raised by him, and I posted here.

Thanks

So, just to theorize that some legitimate organization somewhere has a legitimate purpose to send some large number of e-mails, how might that be possible? Security by obscurity went out the window years ago. If he doesn't get the answer here, he will get it somewhere else. Since it is apparently okay to presume sinister intent, perhaps that somewhere else has its own motives for the offered suggestion, and it would be better if he got his reply here, where everyone has nothing but altruism and brotherly love to motivate them.

--- rod.

IF you are truly sending legitimate email, AND your email system is already setup properly so that mail is NOT getting marked as SPAM but just being blocked due to volume, then the answer is pretty straight forward. You will need to look into the recipient mail system (Yahoo, GMail, etc.) and get the requirements to be listed as a legitimate bulk mail sender. It is possible, but there will be hoops to jump through, possibly fees to pay, and you will need to be 100% certain you comply with all policies or you will find yourself banned very quickly again.

Bottom line is that if you want to send large amounts of legitimate email the easiest route will be to use one of the established services for this.

2 members found this post helpful.

ComputerErik is spot on. Either you spend time meeting the requirements of Yahoo and Hotmail, or pay someone like Constant Contact who have done all the hard work for you (assuming your list is 100% opt in, and you can prove it).

The other option is stunningly simple. Write code to throttle the output.

Whether he's legit or not I can't determine. What I *CAN* do is to not help someone who may be a spammer. ComputerErik said it best.