Thread

I’m building a website for an organization that has an e-mail list of just shy of 9,000 subscribers (they opted in - they’re no spammers). The current ISP limits outgoing e-mail to 200 message per hour through each of the outgoing mail methods Communicate supports.

Is there a good web hosting provider out there (couple gigabytes of disc space, couple dozen gigabytes of bandwidth, good uptime, PHP, MySQL, etc) that for less than $20/mo? The less they spend on hosting, the more they can spend on pizza for volunteers…

Is there an email hosting service out there that’ll let 9,000 emails go out at a time for a couple bucks a month? (I’d be surprised if there is, but ya never know).

Does Engine Hosting allow 9,000 e-mails to go out in 15 minutes or so from their service?

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can give.

As far as hosting is concerned I can recommend Engine Hosting, I have several clients with them and technically and supportwise it’s top notch.
For large e-mail campaigns I use Campaign Monitor, it’s not free but it does take the hassle out of e-mail campaigns. Worth every penny in my book.

So I’ve got my credit card out and ready to go with Engine Hosting.

But I have a few question to get answered before I send my money their way.

Is there any hard limit on outgoing e-mail?  If so, what is it?

Can I do WebDAV?

Do I have the ability to change DNS settings?  Can I point a subdomain at another hosting service if I need to?

Adam, those questions really are best handled by the EH sales team. They only read the EE forums occasionally. Please contact them at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) at your convenience.

Hi.  I’m not sure if Adam’s made a decision yet; but, I wanted to offer my two cents worth…  I had a similar situation where I built a website for a homeowners association.  The HOA needed to be able to send out emails to all their residents (700+) and still maintain all the member accounts in the membership module…I didn’t want to use a third party system (like iContact or Campaign Monitor) because all the emails were stored in very specific member groups in Expression Engine.  I tried using a Virtual Dedicated Server (from GoDaddy)...and that was the worst mistake I could have made.  Eventually (about two weeks ago), I finally moved the website back to a shared hosting account with Hostgator.com (less than $10/month) and I set up an email only hosting account with FuseMail.com ($10/month). 

FuseMail provided me with SMTP integration to Expression Engine.  Using the default email address (you can actually set up your domain to work with FuseMail) and their outgoing server, my HOA can now send multiple emails a day (700 messages..I think she still breaks them into smaller groups; however) without any problems.  FuseMail does not have any mail limits so she doesn’t have to worry about going over the outgoing mail limit.

Hope that helps!

I tried using a Virtual Dedicated Server (from GoDaddy)...and that was the worst mistake I could have made.

I have heard bad things about GoDaddy’s virtual private servers. I don’t believe sending a couple hundred emails at a time should strain any self-respecting VPS.

Strange how so many people have problems with Godaddy. I have been using them for years on every platform and have never had a problem. (just lucky I guess- knocking on wooden head)

I run my own servers as well and for the price Godaddy is a bargain. Of course with their virtual dedicated and dedicated servers they don’t offer any support but hell it’s just a stock install of Fedora (which is what I choose) so you can make it what you want. If you are trying to run any website with substance on their shared servers, well you get what you pay for at $4.29 a month.

As far as email is concerned by default they limit you to 250 a day. One phone call and I was able to send out 2,000 a day. A month later 5,000. Now I don’t know what my limit is but I just sent out 30,000 and -wait - yep there goes another 30,000.

Price wise for me to lease a server from Godaddy it is much more cost effective. To set up a box on the backbone of Chicago cost me @3.5K for the box plus space rental, plus bandwidth. Thats a lot of upfront money that I don’t have, and if I did I wouldn’t want to part with it. The only thing I am having a problem with is Godaddy wont let me request a backbone. So if I really need a central server (like Chicago) I am forced to co-locate.

In comparison, I have had so many problems with companies like Dreamhost and the like. My clients come to me with hosting accounts set up already and it’s a nightmare. As far as EE hosting, I have never used it but I am sure you can’t go wrong with Ricks team.

My intention is not to start another Hosting debate - And anyone who tries to bash me will be added to my SPAM list 😊  JK

If you want a lot of customer service and support for your EE site then I recommend Engine Hosting.

Mike

As a general observation, even the worst hosts have satisfied customers and even the best hosts have dissatisfied ones.

Now that Amazon’s EC2 supports static IPs, it’s worth a thought to consider them rather than a traditional dedicated server. As always, YMMV.

I recently moved to a VPS from SliceHost. You do have to know a bit about Linux etc but the help, support and the documentation are fantastic. Again this is just my current experience.

For large mailshots I’d go with MailChimp or Campaign Monitor. EE does well for simple newsletter functionality but if you want to do it well (spam filters, reporting, user management) go for a third party app.