sending bulk emails

[rakennedy75]

I have to send a huge amount of emails out for a client. I uploaded the emails into my database (MySQL) and am now ready to start building a bulk mailer script. I just wanted to see If I could get some input on the best way to approach this. Is there a preferred optimal way to do this.

I was just thinking of using the built in mail function in a loop kind of like this..

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
    mail($row[email'], $sub, $mes.$em);
}

is there a better solution for this. I have over 10000 emails to send so I don't know if this will lock up or crash the server.

I realize there are all kinds securities with spam so I would like to try and create a script that is going to be able to send these out in the most efficient manner.
This isn't spam emails, these are emails from users who signed up for the info.

Any input or help on this would be appreciated.
Thanks for your time.

[drew010]

yes doing a while loop usually works fine. to give the server some extra rest time, it may not be a bad idea to do a usleep(x) call after all the messages, even though some milliseconds arent anything to us, its years to the computer.

be sure to include
ini_alter("max_execution_time", 0);
at the top so the script doesnt time out.
also you might want to call it from the command line "php -f mail.php" because sometimes browsers will time out after a period of time and then you wont know where it died.