Bulk Mailing Script Suggestions?

rivka

I have a site with a few thousand customers, and we'd like to be able to mail them all at once with information about site updates, etc. I've been trying to do it with PHPmailer, but it's really not well suited for this -- I'm getting time out problems, and adding all the emails to the BCC field makes it so that the email won't send (there's a limit on BCCs on our server). Upping our time limit for scripts would only be a temporary solution, since as our site grows, and our customer base increases, we'd have to keep upping that limit to ridiculous amounts.

What I'd like to find is a bulk mailing script that will tie into OUR database -- I've looked at stuff like PHPlist, which is great, but appears to use it's own database. I need something I can plug in easily into our own site structure and database. Any suggestions?

musicbase

Could you use scheduled tasks to send 30 every minute or something?

rivka

No, I need something with an easy to user interface, as a technophobe (the boss) will be the one sending out the emails.

musicbase

What about once your boss has sent them, they could go to a "queue" in a DB and gradually get sent automatically using a scheduled script?

jara06

the bcc method would be bad i think. revealing email addys for everyone ???
Think PEAR got some alternatives .. http://pear.php.net

rivka

I've given up on the idea of using an outside script, and am just meta refresh to send 20 at a time. It's not very elegant, but it works.

jara06

maybe you could use this:
http://pear.activeventure.com/package/package.mail.mail-queue.mail-queue.tutorial.html
http://pear.php.net/package/Mail_Queue

jcantrell

I wrote a system that does this. What I do is when the technophobe sends the message, it stores the message details in a database table with a flag that says the message hasn't been sent.

Every 30 minutes I have a cron job that runs a php script that checks that database table for messages that haven't been sent.

If it finds a message that hasn't been sent, it connects to another script in the background that loops through each address and sends an individual email to each person. Timing out isn't an issue when it is running in the background.

I have about 5 customers using this solution, the largest email base is about 6,000 emails.

dragonsteve

Just a suggestion.

$mail->AddAddress($to, "Horizon Educatief");
$iC = 0;
do{

$to=$row_Rs_Bende['email'];
$mail->AddBCC($to);

if ($iC % 200 == 0)
{
	if(!$mail->Send()){
		$failmail+=1;
		$mail->ClearAddresses();
                                            $mail->ClearBCCs();
                                            exit();
	} else {
		$okmail+=1;
		$mail->ClearBCCs();
	}
}

$iC++;	
} while ($row_Rs_Bende = mysql_fetch_assoc($Rs_Bende));

NogDog

dragonsteve wrote:
Just a suggestion.
...

You do realize that you are responding to a 2-year-old thread?

dragonsteve

NogDog wrote:
You do realize that you are responding to a 2-year-old thread?

Maybe so, but I just encountered this problem and I have solved it this way.
So my contribution is to share.
There are always people who are just using phpmailer.

regards