How to send a bulk email?

[JeffOYB]

I publish a magazine. I'm now doing an email version of the magazine. I have a subscriber list so far of 700 names. I tried sending it out a couple days ago. I presume that not many went out. I'm new at this but I now see that there are limits to sending email. Is there an easy way for me to set it up to send out these emails? Also, how can I tell how many already went out in that first mailing? I looked at my "sent" mail and it looks like the email that went out has all emails indicated as being sent---but I suspect that's not the case. Which ones did go out? How to tell? Well, thanks much! --JP outyourbackdoor.com

[felgall]

BlueHost limit emails to 50 per hour. You can ask support to raise that limit and they will increase it but only to 500 per hour at maximum. The way to send out larger volumes of emails is to set up a cron job that sends them out in batches at intervals throughout the day.

If you were to send 110 emails every 15 minutes you can send over 10,000 in a day and still be within the 500 email limit and still have 60 per hour in reserve for other uses.

[JeffOYB]

Thanks! I saw you mention that size limit elsewhere.

Is there a way I can tell which of my addresses were processed out of my initial batch of 700 attempted in one BCC email?

I guess that 50 did go out. Which 50?

Hmmm, I wonder what a cron job is... Easy to set up? (I guess I should do a search on it.)

Thanks... JP

[redsox9]

Cron is the name of program that enables unix users to execute commands or scripts (groups of commands) automatically at a specified time/date. It is normally used for system administration commands or for running a backup script, but can be used for anything.

If you go to cPanel and look under Advanced, you'll find a link for Cron jobs. As it warns, you need to have a good knowledge of Linux commands before you can use cron jobs effectively. Best to check your script with BlueHost before adding a cron job.

[pengyou]

If you go to fantastico there is an application you can install - I think it is called PHPlist - that allows you do to bulk emailing. It is a bit cumbersome to work with at first because there are so many options, but after you get through the beginning the options begin to help you. The only drawback I have found with it is that I have to maintain two addressbooks, one for normal email and one for bulk emailing. I wish Horde and it would share the same addressbook.

[kaskudoo]

there is one other way:
i use maxbulk mailer on the pc to send out my newsletters. it can create html/plain message emails and processes a list of emails.
you can configure it to work with an email account (like yours on bluehost)
you can time it, so that it only sends a few at a time, so that you don't run into the problem of the limit per hour.
it keeps track of what was send and can send you the result as email to your address if you like.

has been very good to me - even through bad internet connections ...

the only bad thing is, that it costs money :(

but compared to a email service it is not that much