sendmail bulk mailer
 

Hi,
I just started a project to upgrade the current bulk emailer. We have sendmail and some perl script, that I'm still learning, that sends out the 800k+ emails. Currently there is no way of tracking if the email is read, blocked, spammed... etc. We have the option to install whatever is needed to get the upgrade needed (qmail? but I have heard it can have a hard time with bulk jobs). Ideally it would be done in C, or be a minimal resource hog. Any ideas/direction would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Are you a spammer? 800k+ emails sounds like spamming to me? Especially if you're concerned if emails are being blocked or spammed. If this was just some mailing list that people sign up for, you should already have that warm and fuzzy feeling that every email is legit cause the recipient opted into the list and if they weren't getting their bulk email being sent by you, they would have already let you know they weren't getting it since they signed up for such email.

So tell and give us some good solid proof you're not some spammer needing help spamming people?

touche... I see your point, but i assure you it is from a generated list from which people have signed up. It's for a newsletter, and email promos. The reason we are looking for tracking is to make sure it IS getting to peoples email instead of pushed to the spam box. We also want the automated functionality for people to be able to reply with 'unsubscribe'. Right now that's a manual process i.e. ME. There can be large corporations out there that need to send out bulk emails, and when people like me, still new to the IT/linux world need advice this isn't helping... I don't know what "solid proof" I can give you. Like I said before this system was already in place, I just got hired to make it better.

There's not a tracking system in the world that I know of that could detect if it landed in a Inbox over a Spam box. Tracking that I know of would or could only indicate if it was delivered and not returned with error, etc.

Look into www.unsubcentral.com and see what services they can offer for unsubscribing services.

And as for sendmail and or any other MTA, these aren't going to provide you anything for real tracking capabilities, they're really just the engine that delivers the messages. You'd want to look into 3rd party applications or services for better tracking capabilities. If you're wanting a really fast MTA to inject messages at higher rates than sendmail, postfix, qmail or any other which really weren't designed for bulk mailing, look into www.port25.com

Thank you! So why do people use things like mailman if they have sendmail/qmail already up and running?

mailman is just a list manager, it's not an MTA so it still requires an MTA like sendmail, postfix, qmail, etc.