RFE: Sending grouped by domain & multiple outbound servers

  • Resolved aetherscythe

    (@aetherscythe)


    3 years, 4 months ago

    Hi, Holger,

    I ran into a show-stopper with my hosting provider, while attempting to move a 420+ member group from Yahoo to my own site with WP Mailster at the “Society” level. My hosting provider only allows 400 e-mail recipients an hour. 🙁

    This effectively cripples all of my e-mails for this and any other purpose through the site, anytime any one person tries to e-mail the mailing list, it not only fails to reach the entire group, there are no other e-mails being processed for the domain for the next hour. :-(((((

    Two things would help here:

    1. Group the Bcc: recipients by domain, which is more efficient for the upstream mail relays anyway, since they can optimize local delivery for addresses within their domains.
    2. Allow multiple outbound SMTP servers to be utilized by a single mailing list, based on the domains of the recipients.

    You already have a provision for multiple outbound servers at a global level. The limitation is at the mailing group level.

    This RFE would be to allow the user to setup credentials in a number of servers to handle the major domains, such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, aol.com, me.com, icloud.com, Mac.com, etc. and send the e-mails for those domains directly to their respective relays.

    Some sites may allow this even without credentials, since they are not being asked to relay.

    There would be a “default” server for each mailing list, which would be the local hosting provider’s relay, but with the above scheme, the vast majority of e-mails would be handled directly by the major e-mail domains.

    This really is a show stopper and next to zero time for resolution.
    I’m going to have to go with groups.google.com at least temporarily even after spending all this money on the three year deal for WP Mailster Society. :-(((((

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Author brandtoss

    (@brandtoss)

    3 years, 4 months ago

    Hi.

    Your hoster, like most hosters, has an email quota in place.
    If your hoster is like most hosters, then it does not matter at all if your are using 100 one-to-one emails or emails with 100 BCC recipients – both would be counted as 100 emails being sent.
    The main motivation for hosters is to prevent their service to be used by spammers (that e.g. hack a page and sent out thousands of SPAM emails in a matter of minutes). This has nothing to do with performance and grouping by recipients by domain will not work around the send quotas.
    Using an SMTP server outside of your hoster may avoid the problem altogether. On the other hand, the fact is most have some kind of send quota.
    Using different servers is going into the categories of spammer strategies and not something we intend on introducing.

    What to do?
    WP Mailster has settings to throttle the sending.
    In the settings, you can e.g. provide a send limit per hour. Please see https://wpmailster.com/doc-chapter/general-settings/ for the available options.

    Thread Starter aetherscythe

    (@aetherscythe)

    3 years, 4 months ago

    Holger,

    Thanks for this. I will throttle it.

    On the other hand, even as I explore external SMTP relays, it would still help me with costs if you would use the well-known domains to send to their recipients.
    Really would like to see this RFE implemented.

    Now that you mention the throttling, I think it will require a third change which is to attach the throttle at the SMTP server level, so each server can be tuned.

    This solution would also improve the throttling overall, in that I will be able to get more mails out this way per hour than using just one SMTP server per list.
    Again at the list level I want the SMTP server to be the last-ditch fall-through only after using the main/global ones for the well-known domains.

    Also, I have multiple lists so the way the throttling works now I will have to be very careful how I set the throttle to keep mail flowing as efficiently as possible without ever hitting the limit and affecting the much more important smaller lists for the board of directors, leadership, paid members, and and info groups. :S

    Hey, I’m not a spammer, I just have a lot of folks who OPTED-IN to be on this large club mailing list. They all want to keep receiving these e-mails, they’re just looking to me to come up with a solution that is both functional and does the job of getting the messages out in a timely fashion. Taking too long to deliver a message to a cycling club could mean missing an invite to a fun group ride. 🙁

    The external Relay is only a partial solution to the overall problem of a club this size. This RFE is still needed.

    Plugin Author brandtoss

    (@brandtoss)

    3 years, 4 months ago

    At the end of the day we are taling here about a limitation of your hoster.
    It may surprise you, but many hosters even block outgoing SMTP connections (i.e. to email servers that are not the hosters) per default and require a ticket for that to be allowed as an exception.

    Their motivation is very likely to protect their IP reputation to not get flagged as being the source of spam emails.
    While your emails are not spam, the rules and limitation still apply.
    Based on my experience, there is a good chance that what you are suggesting here is outside of the terms and conditions of your hoster. So that solution may work, but still be something that they don’t want to see.

    We have customers running multi thousand user communities with active, daily conversations. It comes down to the hosting environment and therefore we will not introduce a complex to configure/run setup that is not beneficial to most of users.

    Thread Starter aetherscythe

    (@aetherscythe)

    3 years, 4 months ago

    Holger,

    At the very least it would offer a great deal of relief if you would add the throttling at the mail server level, which is really where it belongs.
    That way I can put the largest list on its own SMTP relay with it’s own throttle tuned to that relay, and I can put the other smaller (and much more important lists), on a different SMTP relay with its own throttle.

    Really, you should be seeing the benefit of my RFE in that for every customer it would allow them to achieve a more optimal rate of flow, no matter how rate-limited their hosting providers are.

    Each mailing list can have its own mail server, but you only offer a global throttle. It means I could have a high-capacity mail server for one list and a lower capacity mail server for another list and I am going to have to be limited by whichever mail server has the lower limit.

    In the interest of being able to tune the flow optimally, I really need some relief here.

    I would prefer per list throttling, but per server throttling could also offer partial relief.

    Think also of the customer using just one mail server and they want to give higher priority to some lists vs. others. There they may wish to throttle at the list level to keep a larger, chattier list throttled, while leaving some room for smaller more important lists.

    These are all sides of the same use case that would be unlocked by my RFE, and really any large customer would benefit regardless of hosting service.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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