Whats the best way to handle mass email in php?

[TreacherousDog]

Hey all,

Now this isn't a spam question.. I just have a list of 770 of my companies actual customers stored in our mySQL database. The company was using a service before but I felt this could be done better in house. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on the best way to go about sending mass emails with PHP. Is it best just to use the mail function and a while loop? I had a book that advised the use of PEAR MAIL but it appears our server doesn't support this PEAR module.

Also, does anyone have any links or example snippets on how to do a multi-part html & plain text email in php?

Thanks a lot!

[Weedpacket]

PEAR's SMTP class is based on this one.
Also see this and this