Emails limited - sendgrid

[EmpireKicking]

Trying to send mass emails to all members and keep getting backlash that I have exceeded the amount. I only ended up sending to two members rather then 300 members ;( I cut it down to 115 members and still said exceeded the limit. 

How can I resloved this free way? options? 

[Mark H]

Where do you see that it has exceeded a limit and/or is being limited? Is that coming from Sendgrid?

If it is, you'd have to contact Sendgrid for assistance.

Can you please clarify?

[Randy Calvert]

Sendgrid's free email plan is 100 TOTAL emails per day.  

That includes emails used for registration, lost password, etc.  So my guess if it's only letting you send a few messages you've already basically exhausted your allocation outside of the email blast.  

This is not a limitation of the IPB software, but instead with Sendgrid itself.  You would need to either upgrade to a paid Sendgrid plan or use a different outbound mail service.  

[EmpireKicking]

100 a day is allowed to be sent via free account, that's right sending over 300 at a time fails and only works if I send emails under 100 🙂 Then I get a message stating that I have reached my limt that's allowed. Upgrade that account or I have to send 10 emails to differnt members a day XD to keep the price low.

IS there any other free outbound mail service that offers higher then 100? 

[Randy Calvert]

That's not really a question for IPS support.  You're not going to find many "free" services out there.  Spammers abuse services way too much.  

You could try to use a Gmail account or something similar.  Or reach out to a few cheap hosting services and see what they allow for email limits.  Maybe just point your email at one of those accounts.  

[Emediate]

If your site is commercial, then I strongly recommend upgrading with Sendgrid. It's one of the best things we've ever done for handling both IPS emails, but also our own newsletters. Then get yourself an MX Toolbox and follow the guides to setup your domain correctly, and you'll have trouble free and reliable email deliverability.

It has seriously allowed us to grow and never get anymore "I didn't receive my email validation" email when users sign up to the forums.

[Marc]

^ this is really the only correct answer. If you are exceeding what your mail service allows, then you would need a service that supports what you are trying to use. There is no way around that. You would be best to use something like sendgrid, as mentioned

[opentype]

On 4/9/2022 at 12:10 AM, EmpireKicking said:

IS there any other free outbound mail service that offers higher then 100? 

What about the default option of using just PHP mails? Sometimes it can be better than the entry-level free or paid options of external mail services. 

[Emediate]

You'll just likely end up getting bad sender reputation and bad deliveries. 

[opentype]

1 minute ago, Emediate said:

You'll just likely end up getting bad sender reputation and bad deliveries. 

Thats a common assumption, but I am dealing with this for 20 years and it is not what I have found. In fact, I usually see the opposite! The entry level packages of external mail providers are usually performing badly, because they too combine a huge amount of clients over one IP/mail server and their services are specifically used for low quality mass mailings, so many of the large mail providers actively try to suppress such low quality mailings. A regular webhost on the other hand, which actively manages its mails server reputation (by fighting blacklisting, stopping bad actors et cetera) can – at least in theory – have a better reputation. 

The idea “PHP mail bad, external service good” is not true and it doesn’t even have a reasonable foundation. Just look at it from the point of view of the receiving mail server. There is no reason whatsoever why the receiving mail server should give credit to a mail coming from Sendgrid over a mail coming directly from Webhost So-and-so. The legitimacy of the mail isn’t defined by “send over API“ vs. “send via PHP”.  

[Emediate]

It wasn't an assumption.  It was based on my 20+ years experience too. We can just agree to disagree. 

[opentype]

No, we can’t agree to disagree as the statements weren’t about opinions. 

And to be even more precise: I didn’t even disagree with the assertion about what might happen. I am just weighing in, warning people about making premature decisions based on such typical claims. We don’t know what webhost EmpireKicking uses. Maybe switching to PHP would make things worse, maybe it would improve things, maybe it wouldn’t make a difference. My point was to explain that PHP mails can (depending on the host and the settings) also work well or even better than free or cheap plans for typical mail services. That’s just a fact and I have the data to demonstrate it. Admins should at least be aware of that. If they believe they must use external services as a general rule, they might waste time and money and end up with a worse performance while paying for the service they never needed.