hosting recommendation - email issue

[Keith G Hicks]

I'm putting a site together for my high school reunion (in asp.net 2.0 with
Ajax and using MS SQL 2005). Lots of hosting companies offer packages to
accomodate that. But I need to be able to send out close to four or five
hundred emails at once to our classmates (there were about 600 but we don't
have emails for everyone). A lot of hosting companies have strict
limitations on # of recipients per message, # of messages per hour, day and
month. Nothing I've found so far will let me put a message together with 400
recipients 2 or 3 times per month. It's not an extreme number so I figure
someone out there can acocomodate us. I want my committee head person to be
able to go on the emial page I'm creating, compose a message and just hit
send. My code puts a message together with all the recipients coming from
the student table whereever students are flagged to get that message. Just
wondering if anyone has any suggetsions.

Thanks,

Keith

 

[BobF]

I'm putting a site together for my high school reunion (in asp.net 2.0
with
Ajax and using MS SQL 2005). Lots of hosting companies offer packages to
accomodate that. But I need to be able to send out close to four or five
hundred emails at once to our classmates (there were about 600 but we
don't
have emails for everyone). A lot of hosting companies have strict
limitations on # of recipients per message, # of messages per hour, day
and
month. Nothing I've found so far will let me put a message together with
400
recipients 2 or 3 times per month. It's not an extreme number so I figure
someone out there can acocomodate us. I want my committee head person to
be
able to go on the emial page I'm creating, compose a message and just hit
send. My code puts a message together with all the recipients coming from
the student table whereever students are flagged to get that message. Just
wondering if anyone has any suggetsions.

Thanks,

Keith

Keith - I don't have an answer, but a request instead. When you find a
solution please post back here with a summary.

 

[David Wier]

Instead of BCC or CC, do a loop, sending one email, using each individual
email address at a time.

David Wier
http://aspnet101.com
http://iWritePro.com - One click PDF, convert .doc/.rtf/.txt to HTML with no
bloated markup

 

[David Lozzi]

We provide hosting and don't necessarily care on the amount of outgoing
emails. I've found the key in your script is to send them out individually.
The problem with sending one email to 600 users is that some spam filters
may decide that's spam and deny the email. We do limit to 200 recipients per
message. Sent individually there's less of a chance. We;ve done similar for
other customers and i simply loop through the list of emails and send each
one individually. This also allows for better error handling in the event an
email address is invalid or can't be sent, you can handle it individually.

If you're interested, we can talk details offline.

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

Just wondering if anyone has any suggetsions.

As has already been suggested, the key here is to send the emails one at a
time...

My ISP http://www.hostinguk.net has an email relay server for precisely this
purpose - I believe they have a daily limit of 1,000 outgoing emails though,
as is always the case with these things, they will happily increase this for
a price...

 

[Keith G Hicks]

Thanks everyone for the 1 at a time idea. Not sure why that concept didn't
occur to me! Seems kind of obvious after years of writing code that loops
through database records/rows!

I'll check out http://www.hostinguk.net/. Sounds like a good option.

Keith

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

Thanks everyone for the 1 at a time idea. Not sure why that concept didn't
occur to me! Seems kind of obvious after years of writing code that loops
through database records/rows!

I'll check out http://www.hostinguk.net/. Sounds like a good option.

As I maintain mailing lists for several clients, I found that the most
efficient way for me to process their mailshots was to write a webservice
which runs on one of my own sites and does the actual email sending via
System.Net.Mail, and to write a WinForms desktop app which processes the
mailshots one email address at a time by connecting to the remote
webservice...

 

[sloan]

I'm using

dotnetpark.com

and using the "send alot but one at a time" method has never failed me.

.......

You might want to look at this.
http://sholliday.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!A68482B9628A842A!138.entry

using the mini-framework piece allows me to have dev and deployment
code...and swap out the config information very quicky.

...

You can also use my mini framework....to use a "backup" smtp server.
The way I use it...is I have a gmail setup ...and if the primary smtp server
fails...I send MYSELF an email via the backup smtp server.

The code is downloadable and fully functional with a few config changes.

...

 

[David Wier]

You might also want to check out WebHost4life.com:
http://webhost4life.com/default.asp?refid=dwier

I have have been using them for several years and I can recommend them due
to my own experience.

David Wier
http://aspnet101.com
http://iWritePro.com - One click PDF, convert .doc/.rtf/.txt to HTML with no
bloated markup

 

[Keith G Hicks]

Looks like they have some good plans at good prices. But I just did a chat
with their support people and they won't allow as many messages as I need to
send out. They consider that too much. The spammers have really ruined
things for those of us trying to do something legitimate.