[MAILING LISTS] Process timeout, hour limit, dedicated IP

[Shin_TB]

Hello to everybody.

I wish to set up a mailing list of about 1000 emails, and I think it will increase until 3000.

I would like to use PHPlist, but to set it correctly I need some more infos.
On the control panel of my website, mailing list section, i can read:

If you are planning on using this or any other script for sending out emails, and it requires to run a process for longer than five minutes, you will need to purchase a dedicated IP from us.

So I know there is a 5 minutes process timeout.
The hour limit of emails i can send is 750.

I just contacted the live chat support and they told me that the script timeout process is referred to the whole list process, so tweaking the throttling will be useless.

They also told me that with the dedicated IP the timeout limit will increase to 10 minutes.
Still too short to send only 1k emails. (16 minutes for 1000emails at 1email/s rate)

Unhopeful, i thought to divide my big mailing list is many 5minutes long batches but then I've read this post:


Dadamail is designed to work well in shared hosting environments. In fact, HM recommends this program over Mailman because of the grainular control the admin has over the sending options.

Specifically, Dadamail is capable of sending in batches (so many emails per batch with a pause of x number of seconds.) This feature can be designed to bypass both sending limits (50 emails/hr at HM) and script timeouts (5 minutes or less). Another peice of good news is that Dadamail can, as of version 2.10.13, continue the sending where it left off if the script gets shut down.

So I am kindly asking somebody who already has a big mailing list some advices to set up mine. I will really be grateful.

[shadmego]

I'm not really familiar with PHPList, so I don't know how the program handles large lists. I do know that DadaMail can be configured to restart a mailing list process, which is not really the same thing as sleeping. In sleep mode, the process is still *runnning* but not doing anything.

I have a couple lists using DadaMail, but they aren't anywhere near 1000 users. I have been under the impression that Hostmonster only allows a max limit of 500 emails per hour for the outgoing sending limits. Do you know something I don't?

Is there any particular reason you don't want to use DadaMail and prefer the other program?

~regards

[Shin_TB]

Hi Shad and thank you for your prompt reply.

When you say that Dadamail can "restart the process" do you refer to the "batch sending options"?
Also in phplist you can set the number of messages per batch and the time interval between batches.

About the number of emails allowed per hour, yesterday the support live chat man told me that that quota is actually set to 750. I'm quite new to hostmonster (6 months). Do you think is better to set the mailing list to send not more than 500/hr?

At last, I decided to use PHPlist (for now) after installing all the 3 mailing programs found in the Simple Script part of the CP.
I consider Pommo a nice program, but excessively simplified.
Dadamail may be very nice, but i didnt found myself so familiar with the interface, and got crazy trying to create the second list.

PHPlist looks very straight to me, and I heard lot of people talking good about that.

Thanks in advance for you reply. :)

[shadmego]

Yes. When I signed up almost 3 years ago the max limit was 500. I am glad to hear they increased that to a more reasonable number.

As far as what you think you should set your limit to, I would say you have to look at a few things:

1. How long do you want to take to send an email to the entire list? At 500/hr, it would take two hours for 1000 member list. If the list grows to 3000, then it would take 6 hours.
2. Is this going to be a discussion list where all members can send to the list? If so, then:
3. How many emails per hour are going to be going through the system? If two people send 1 email each in the same hour, how is that going to be handled by the system?

Currently I have DadaMail set to only allow 1 email to go through the system at any time, this means that the process that checks for new emails dies if there is a current sending process underway. I don't know if there is a similar option in the program you chose.

Let us know how it does with PHPList. You may become the "subject matter expert" for others behind you! ;)

~regards

[Shin_TB]

Hello and thanks again for the reply.

In PHPlist there are few settings similar to Dadamail:



# define the amount of emails you want to send per period. If 0, batch processing
# is disabled and messages are sent out as fast as possible
define("MAILQUEUE_BATCH_SIZE",0);

# define the length of one batch processing period, in seconds (3600 is an hour)
define("MAILQUEUE_BATCH_PERIOD",3600);

# to avoid overloading the server that sends your email, you can add a little delay
# between messages that will spread the load of sending
# you will need to find a good value for your own server
# value is in seconds (or you can play with the autothrottle below)
define('MAILQUEUE_THROTTLE',0);

Considering the 5 minutes timeout and the 750 email/hour limit, I thought to set it like this:

- 46 emails per batch
- 240 seconds (4 minutes) batch period
- 1 second delay between emails (considering my emails are very "light-weight")

Like this i will send 690 emails/hr, reserving 60 emails for other purposes.
Your advice suggested me to disable auto-notifications emails, that, if sent during the mailing time, may exceed the 750em/hr limit.

Yes, looks like it will take a long time, but I hope it will be safe.

The question is:
are those settings similare to the ones you usually use on DadaMail?
Do you think a set up like this will work or not?
How do you usually set up DadaMail?

Thanks in advance for your future reply.