My client is a medical facility that wants to be able send emails from their EE website that then get forwarded as text messages to their staff members so that they can all be contacted quickly in an emergency. They have already taken care of the email to text message part of the equation, and wants us to create a page to select one or more mailing groups (doctors, nurses, etc.) to send to, and then send a 140-character email message from there.
I was able to get some help from the author of the ProForms module that brings me close to what I want. The following is my problem:
I wrote to the webhost, EngineHosting, to make sure that sending bulk emails of approximately 150, wouldn’t be a problem. They responded by discouraging me by saying that they recommend using dedicated mailing provider like MailChimp for this as it’s likely that we’d may be marked as spam.
I did a test with MailChimp, and it looks like it’s not ideal for sending a quick, short text only message. The endpoint text message has too much extra info in it, and it’s not easy enough or my client to create and send a quick, but important message in just a few quick clicks. It would be quicker for them to just login to the page on their website, choose a group, type the message, and send.
So my question is - Is my problem the webhost? Shouldn’t my client be able to send some bulk messaging through the website to their own staff without concern of being marked as spam?
Or is there a better way to do this?
I appreciate any input.
Susan