This morning I sent a bulk mail message that I had hoped would go to all 2500+ members. But the system says it went to only 210, and save for myself I've not found any of the other members that got it.

I've looked at the filters but nothing stands out as a problem, with everything showing "all" or "any". So, is there any way to figure out what I did wrong?

Thanks in advance.

How many members was it supposed to go to when you sent it out? The preview step should show you the number.

Also, bulk emails are not sent to banned members or members who have disabled their Newsletter option.

8 hours ago, Gary Lewis said:

This morning I sent a bulk mail message that I had hoped would go to all 2500+ members. But the system says it went to only 210, and save for myself I've not found any of the other members that got it.

I've looked at the filters but nothing stands out as a problem, with everything showing "all" or "any". So, is there any way to figure out what I did wrong?

Thanks in advance.

Its not possible your system would send to that many members. If you go to your member list, click on the cog icon, and select to see only those who allow bulk mail, you will see there are not that many it will send to

Thanks, folks.

@Marc I did that and got 8 pages at 25/page plus 1 page with 11, so a total of 211. That's only one more than the 210 it said were sent, so there must be a banned member in there. But most of my members have obviously turned bulk mailings off. Is there another way to reach them easily?

@teraßyte Preview step? Sorry, but I don't know how to do that? Could you please explain?

1 hour ago, Gary Lewis said:

@Marc I did that and got 8 pages at 25/page plus 1 page with 11, so a total of 211. That's only one more than the 210 it said were sent, so there must be a banned member in there. But most of my members have obviously turned bulk mailings off. Is there another way to reach them easily?

Only really on the site itself, as those other members have expressly decided they don't want bulk mail from you. You can of course ignore that, but I would very much advise against that.

1 hour ago, Gary Lewis said:

@teraßyte Preview step? Sorry, but I don't know how to do that? Could you please explain?

When you send a bulk mail, the last step before you click send tells you how many people it will send to

Thanks, Marc. I won't ignore their wishes.

2 hours ago, Gary Lewis said:

Thanks, Marc. I won't ignore their wishes.

That is probably for the best. People tend to report someone for spam rather quickly. Including me, that’s why I’m saying it. 😂 And it’s not easy to get unflagged as spam once you are.

4 hours ago, Gary Lewis said:

Thanks, folks.

@Marc I did that and got 8 pages at 25/page plus 1 page with 11, so a total of 211. That's only one more than the 210 it said were sent, so there must be a banned member in there. But most of my members have obviously turned bulk mailings off. Is there another way to reach them easily?

In V5 there is a Newsletter Signup block in the page editor. You could add that to the page somewhere (I have it at the top of my right column). It only shows to those who aren't opted in to bulk mail, so acts as a prompt only for those who aren't opted in.

(There is similar in V4 I seem to remember, but I can't recall exactly now my head is totally into V5!).

@James Hargreaves - Could you show me a screenshot of one of your pages with the signup block on it? Thanks in advance.

I don't have any extra columns and I'm not sure I want to add one, but need to understand what can be done with them.

5 hours ago, Gary Lewis said:

Thanks, Marc. I won't ignore their wishes.

Having said that, I doubt many of my users understand "bulk mail". We've been on Invision for roughly a year and this is the first time we've tried to use it. So that's hardly spam.

I wonder if there's a default setting where bulk mail would be turned on as a new member joins unless they specifically turn it off?

1 hour ago, Gary Lewis said:

@James Hargreaves - Could you show me a screenshot of one of your pages with the signup block on it? Thanks in advance.

I don't have any extra columns and I'm not sure I want to add one, but need to understand what can be done with them.

Having said that, I doubt many of my users understand "bulk mail". We've been on Invision for roughly a year and this is the first time we've tried to use it. So that's hardly spam.

I wonder if there's a default setting where bulk mail would be turned on as a new member joins unless they specifically turn it off?

Here's a screenshot - it isn't right at the top of the right column, but close:

Re: your default setting comment - I'd be careful of setting it to automatically opt in to bulk mail as it may be unlawful to do so in some territories. You may wish to check the relevant laws in the areas you serve.

I read through this thread and didn't see any mention of this... sorry if I duplicate a suggested solution.

I tried sending bulk mail to my 1000+ users and only 100 went out.

Using the search bar on the Dashboard searched for "logs" and found the mail error log. There were my other 1000 or so emails that failed.

Turned out, my host provider's email servers only allow 100 emails per hour to go out... after that you are shut off and additional emails are "errored out".

I looked for a way to configure the Invision bulk mail to adhere to these rules but couldn't find anything.

Went back to the error log and clicked the resend button 100 emails at a time... waited an hour and clicked 100 more (about a minute to click 100 times).

Over the course of 3 or 4 days I clicked them all and looking at the returned mail in my SMTP account scored about 99.4% success rate and most of the fails were bad email addresses.

@James Hargreaves - That helps, thanks. We really need to think about columns like that, but part of the problem is that we have the Invision forum embedded on a Weebly website. So it isn't straightforward. (Yes, we'd be better off with our hundreds of pages of web content on Invision, but that's a LOT of work.)

And I do understand about having bulk mailing on by default. Truthfully we are way too far down the pike to do that 'cause there are almost 2500 members who wouldn't be affected.

And, by the way, I saw something on your page that brought up a memory - Hatfield House. Was there in about '85 for a banquet with people serving in period-correct costumes. It was lovely. I was on assignment in London from the US and got tickets to it for my wife and I. Then we moved to Moor Park in '87 and were there for a couple of years. So I've been in what appears to be your area.

@STLAR - Thanks, but my problem isn't that the system wouldn't send more than 100. In fact, it appears to have successfully sent 210. But the vast majority of my members have bulk mail turned off, and only the 210 allow it.

9 hours ago, STLAR said:

I read through this thread and didn't see any mention of this... sorry if I duplicate a suggested solution.

I tried sending bulk mail to my 1000+ users and only 100 went out.

Using the search bar on the Dashboard searched for "logs" and found the mail error log. There were my other 1000 or so emails that failed.

Turned out, my host provider's email servers only allow 100 emails per hour to go out... after that you are shut off and additional emails are "errored out".

I looked for a way to configure the Invision bulk mail to adhere to these rules but couldn't find anything.

Went back to the error log and clicked the resend button 100 emails at a time... waited an hour and clicked 100 more (about a minute to click 100 times).

Over the course of 3 or 4 days I clicked them all and looking at the returned mail in my SMTP account scored about 99.4% success rate and most of the fails were bad email addresses.

100 is the default setting. Shared hosting providers will not change that because of spam and abuse prevention. Unless you have a VPS or VDS, you aren’t able to change that. If you are on cloud, that’s another thing you wouldn’t need to worry about. It just sends 1000 emails in 2 minutes.

With Classic, there is a useful setting for the constants.php

\define( 'BULK_MAILS_PER_CYCLE', 25 );

It slows down the sending of bulk mails in contrast to the default 500 per cycle. Unfortunately, it’s not directly a time-based setting, which would allow us to match the host’s limit precisely, but it certainly helps. I even use it when there is no limit or a large sending limit, because sending bulk mail slowly reduces the chance of mail providers blocking it as spam. They look for the same message being received many times in a 24 hour time period (for example) and if the newsletters is spread out over a couple of days, the message is less likely seen as spam—or if there are problems, I can react to them and potentially fix them. That would be impossible if everything went out in just minutes.

Edited August 1, 2025Aug 1 by opentype

Folks, some of my members have asked how they can turn bulk mailing on. So I have two questios:

1. Is it Account Settings/Notifications/Newsletter, as shown below?
   

2. If so, it seems like there's a terminology issue. To send a message you go to Bulk Mail Management, but in Account Settings it is Newsletter. Are those the same things? If so, can we get the terminology to say that? Or at least under Newsletter have Bulk Mailing mentioned?

23 minutes ago, Gary Lewis said:

Folks, some of my members have asked how they can turn bulk mailing on. So I have two questios:

1. Is it Account Settings/Notifications/Newsletter, as shown below?
   

2. If so, it seems like there's a terminology issue. To send a message you go to Bulk Mail Management, but in Account Settings it is Newsletter. Are those the same things? If so, can we get the terminology to say that? Or at least under Newsletter have Bulk Mailing mentioned?

"Bulk email" isn't a familiar term to members - it's mostly known to admins. So it makes sense to call it "Newsletter" for members.

Edited August 2, 2025Aug 2 by Cedric V

@Cedric V - So "bulk mail" and "newsletter" are the same thing? To a newbie admin that isn't intuitively obvious to the casual observer.

6 minutes ago, Gary Lewis said:

@Cedric V - So "bulk mail" and "newsletter" are the same thing? To a newbie admin that isn't intuitively obvious to the casual observer.

Yes.

The term "bulk email" dates back decades. "Newsletter" has always been the more natural choice for people opting in to receive updates. However, "bulk email" has never really been considered a term people willingly choose to opt into.

16 minutes ago, Cedric V said:

Yes.

The term "bulk email" dates back decades. "Newsletter" has always been the more natural choice for people opting in to receive updates. However, "bulk email" has never really been considered a term people willingly choose to opt into.

Makes sense. Thanks.

@Marc - It may be trivial, but is this something that we could get changed? Make the AdminCP match what the user sees? It sure wasn't obvious to me, and I doubt it will be for your new client admins.

Please add that in the feedback forum as a suggestion for change. I have to admit its the first Ive seen it come up though, if Im honest