Real-time bulk e-mails

[therafiman]

I am working on a website (hosted by GoDaddy) where the core of its functionality relies on time-critical e-mails being sent out to large numbers of subscribers (starting at thousands, planning for expansion beyond that). By time-critical, I mean within 20 seconds (max) of submission, or more preferably within 5 seconds or so. I have worked through a number of solutions to try and make this work, but had problems:

- Sending mails individually is far, far too slow, even in a seperate thread (I am using ASP .NET), and using GMail SMTP it eventually failed after sending about 90-something e-mails.
- Sending mails in bulk, ie. as one long BCC list, always has problems due to recipient list length limits. I have tried this with both GoDaddy and GMail. Both place a limit of 100 recipients per message, and GoDaddy mail accounts have max. 250 relays per day

I then moved to asynchronous mail sends, but almost immediately this got me blocked from using GMail SMTP for a day. I have worked out a system to cycle through the GoDaddy's available email addresses, as i have 500 addresses with 250 relays per day each, which would mean 125,000 mails a day. If i were to send 25 bulk e-mails a day that would mean a maximum of 5000 registered users on the site. This solution works with async sends but the user limit is quite low, not to mention its an unprofessional and unreliable method of solving the problem, and I have to setup all addresses manually (all 500 of them!), and i'm therefore not happy using it.

I've also looked at all sorts of SMTP services from other providers, but none seem to offer the lack of limitations in rate of sending/async sends/relays per day that i need, as they all have to protect themselves from spammers. They also all seems to be ridiculously expensive. So i'm considering setting up an SMTP server of my own.

My question is this - does anyone know of any other way to solve my problem without a custom server? Or of any way of coding batches of e-mails in ASP .NET so that they are sent very quickly without overloading the server?

Also, I don't know much about dedicated hosting...but from what I understand I have pretty much full control over the server if I buy that. Does that mean I can, for example, pay for dedicated hosting on GoDaddy, then install my own SMTP server software on it without limitations? Or if not GoDaddy, would anyone else let me do this? Or is setting up my own server the only option?

[Esherido]

You know what another solution is, to stop sending spam emails and do something worthwhile that actually helps humanity, instead of clogging up junk email boxes.

I also doubt you're from the UK. * Cough * Nigeria * Cough *

[therafiman]

If you can't help, there's no need to make pathetic comments like that. If you had bothered to read as far as the first few lines of my post, you would have noticed i mentioned that the recipients would be subscribers. And yes, I do mean paid subscribers who have fully opted in to the service, that's why i mentioned the number of registered users on the site. I also said that the alerts are time-critical. When was the last time you heard of a spammer who needed to send a few thousand e-mails within seconds? I'm sure even the worst Nigerian spammers aren't that desperate for your bank account details.

And for your information I am from the UK.

Luckily for me the hosting services I e-mailed weren't as quick to jump to conclusions. After shopping around I did find that the majority of dedicated hosting services allow installing of smtp servers if the purpose is legitimate.

I am still having problem sending out the e-mails as fast as possible on a test server though, so if anyone with experience in SMTP and ASP. NET has any suggested server tweaks or programming methods to speed things up, I'd still appreciate the help.

[Esherido]

:lol: Spammers with an attitude. Probably paid a company that then sold the emails to spammers.

BTW: I also feel like randomly bolding the words in my post as I write my vitriolic reply. Thread now unsubscribed.

PS: You're using ASP .NET, which is likely half the problem.

[therafiman]

Your level of ignorance is unbelievable, and I won't bother with bold type this time because clearly the concept of emphasising chosen words to make a point is too difficult for you to comprehend. Throwing in words like vitriolic won't make you look clever when you don't know the meaning of random, just as getting your final word in before unsubscribing won't make you the bigger person.

Congratulations on raising your post count by two though, I can see you clearly spend all your time dedicated to helping humanity.

P.S. I found a solution, and ASP .NET wasn't even close to being the problem.