Bulk Mail alternative

[Wolfie]

email limitation : solution needed

Either an option in Bulk Mail or a separate Bulk Mail option (alternative) to cram groups of people into the BCC field of an email to be sent out instead of individual custom emails per member?

I know that the downside would be not being able to address each member individually (ie, can't use certain tags to address a member), but the benefit would be that those with limited emails per hour or with slower boards could get more emails out and delivered using only one email per cycle to cover the same number of members.

Could also be used when the admin isn't worried/concerned/interested in having each email to be personalized but primarily wants to just get the emails out a.s.a.p. or cutting down on the processing needed to complete the task. Could be extremely useful for boards with a massive number of members, if the admin is able to send a single email to 1000 members at a time (via BCC) instead of up to 50 personalized emails at a time.

[bfarber]

To be honest, I don't know the technicalities of how email daemons work, but even if you use BCC, I would tend to believe the email system still has to send out all 1000 emails if you want those emails in all 1000 inboxes. I don't think your suggestion would really resolve the issue you are attempting to resolve. You might be able to cut down on the PHP processing a bit, but it doesn't sound like that's your main concern here. I'd tend to think any limitations on how many emails can be sent from the server would cover BCC's.

[Wolfie]

Would be interesting to check what that members hosting company considers to be an email (ie each recipient counts as an email or if they only count the body).

Either way, it would still be useful on large boards that want to get out bulk mail to all of its members when they have far too many to send out individual (personalized) emails. Even on small boards that just want to get the email out and done with and aren't worried about it being personalized to each member. Still have the same rules (pick and choose which groups to send to, etc).

[Strike X]

I was very disappointment with Bulk Mail, it is actually same as 2.3

I was expecting more features like RTE, ablity to bold, colour, etc for email.

[RobertMidd]

I recently had my SMTP service suspended because of sending too many emails to my 9700+ members.

I would like to see an option to send so many emails per hour and then stop and reschedule itself an hour later

[Wolfie]

The mail-per-hour should be a board wide setting. If set to 0, unlimited. Otherwise the number if the maximum number of mails allowed per hour. This way if bulk mail is being sent out and at the same time notifications or validation emails are being sent out, it will count everything so that limits aren't bypassed by mistake. I would imagine that it'd be possible to just put a timestamp with the number of mails sent out at that moment, then when the board needs to send out another piece of mail, it simply sees how many were sent in the last 3600 seconds and see how many it may send out.

Would be nice if we could also change the default number of mails sent out per cycle for bulk mails. But since bulk mail shouldn't be used but so often, it's understandable if it's left up to being a code edit if the person wants to change it bad enough.

[RobertMidd]

Wolfie, that sounds like an excellent idea.

Currently I cannot bulk mail, so I hope this can be included in a release soon.

[RobertMidd]

I have now hooked it and my mailer is back up.
http://forums.invisionpower.com/topic/291992-enhanced-bulk-mailer-new-hook/