Thread

Thanks ben - sounds promising! I think I’ll give it a trial, and if theres any issues, will just switch back to campaignmonitor (assuming theres an integration plugin for that ready soon). One other thing - does it support the built-in mailing list module? Or is the list managed from within firemail?

yes it uses EE’s built-in mailing list module

Hi Dave,

Just wondering if you ended up using FireMail for this list, and if so how it worked with your 3000+ person list?

I’m quoting a project that involves redesigning a static site that incudes custom email software with a 4-5000 person list. One possibility is to move to EE and gain all the additional benefits that it offers in content management.

The custom software is working just fine as is, so if I ended up trying to port it over and it doesn’t work it would be a waste of money and effort, which is always good to avoid. I suppose the custom scripts (PHP based) could run along side EE in the event that Firemail couldn’t handle the list?

Any experience that you or others could share with large mailing lists would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Anson

I’d be keen to know the answer to this too before I get firemail - I need to be able to send to a list of 3000+. Problem is theres no way to test without actually sending to the list!

Hi Anson,

Didn’t end up using Firemail for this particular project as the client didn’t want to be a ‘guinea-pig’, so they went with Mailchimp. Still waiting on the Mailchimp EE module but I’ve heard its coming soon.

Have been talking to a server technician about it though, and as long as you have a decent server (an EE site deserves a VPS) there shouldn’t be any problem with sending mail to 10000+. Should be fine as long as you’re not deliberately sending spam (which could result in your entire IP being blacklisted). And even then, you can get back off the black-lists relatively easily (assuming you’re legit). So I’m planning on using Firemail for the next big project, with a list of 7500 - you just can’t beat the benefit of being able to do everything from within the EE control panel.

So I reckon Firemail is worth a shot, and if theres any issues you can always go back to Mailchimp or campaignmonitor modules, which will both be released soon. Depends if the client is someone you have a good relationship, who understands the minor risk vs possible benefit. If its an extremely formal, critical project, probably best to use one of the big mail companies

hi anson,

whats important to note is that the question isn’t whether FireMail can handle a 10000+ mailing list. it can. the question is whether your server can handle it. the main points are:

- use batch sending so that the server doesn’t run out of PHP memory (i recommend a batch size of 200)
- check if there is a limit on how many emails your server allows you to send
- don’t send spam email

obviously the second point is the key one. if you can get a direct answer from your webhost saying that sending 10,000 emails at once from your server is possible then i don’t see any problem in using FireMail.

Thanks for your replies Dave and Ben,

We do have a VPS, so I think we’re good there.  I’d like to give it a shot.  I’m pretty new to EE.  How difficult is it to run other PHP scripts/apps along side EE? As a fallback I would use the existing software we have in place, which is working fine. The client currently isn’t paying to send email, so adding the cost to send to 5000 people every week using Campaign Monitor or Mailchimp probably wouldn’t go over well.

Ben:

Is memory the real driver here? I assume that if we do run out of memory simply adding a bit more on the server would help?

What exactly is a batch?  Is it sending 200 individual emails then pausing for a while? Or doing a bcc of 200? I’m guessing it’s not doing the BCC. Based on this does lowering the batch help?

Thanks.

Anson

memory can be an issue, but by limiting batches only a predefined number of emails will be sent in one process so it should be fine (especially if you add PHP memory on the server). yes, there will be a pause for a few seconds in between each batch send (not BCC’ing!) so it may take a while.

actually there isn’t much else to worry about if you are sure that there are no limits set by your host on sending large amounts of emails at once.

Hi Ben,

An awesome feature would be to have a setting where you can choose to NOT display the editor, but just show a normal rendered EE template. (one you can select from a list, or set a default one in the settings)

You would then be able to make an email template, using normal EE tags, reading the latest news, adding a read more button to them and stuff, and just mail the template.

what do you think? would this be possible? for EE1 there is an extension which does sort of that, but without the awesome tracking you implemented. (http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/38845/)