Best way to send lots of email

[Robert Brenstein]

On 9/7/05, J. Landman Gay <jacque at hyperactivesw.com> wrote:

>I told a friend I would try to help him set up a little database that
>sends email to a list of opt-in customers. To begin with there will only
>be a few names, but he is hoping that business will grow and there will
>be a few thousand eventually. I thought I'd just set up a simple stack
>that uses the excellent libSMTP to send the emails.
>
>To protect each customer's privacy, we'd prefer that emails are sent out
>individually, or else in some way that doesn't display the other email
>addresses. That means we can't use CC lists. We could use BCC instead
>but then the recipient's name wouldn't be in the "To" field and some
>spam filters might block it.
>
>If we send each email individually it could conceivably take a long time
>when the list gets larger, and spewing a lot of email at once could
>trigger an ISP's spammer alert. Does anyone know how many emails it
>takes before you look like a spammer?
>
>What's the best way to handle a private mailing like this?


I made such a setup for a client to distribute information for a 
conference a couple years ago. There were a few hundred people on the 
list. It worked fine but the sending process was kinda slow (sending 
mail individually). If doing it now, I would just use a mailing list 
program to do it. They are ready to use and some even free 
(macjordomo works just for for me :) and they know how to handle such 
things, including bounces, automatic removal, etc etc. It is 
conceivable to use rev-based cgi as a web-based front end, but it's 
probably not needed.

Robert