Suggestion for new feature?

[keram617]

In my opinion this app could use a great feature that other apps for "Mass Mail" seem to have, that would be using recipient SMTP servers when sending mail. IntelliMerge for example has that feature, I know alot of Windows apps have it.
Personally I really like MaxBulk Mailer, just think this feature would be a great feature & I am sure it would solve alot of peoples issues, then people that have ISPs that do not allow "mass mails".

Hope others would agree with me?

Thanx

[stanbusk]

This feature is evil.

MaxBulk Mailer was designed to be successful getting your messages delivered to as much recipients as possible. In order to to that the first rule is to follow SMTP protocol rules. Using an internal SMTP server is a hack mostly used by spammers to get large amounts of messages delivered without ISP restrictions. Why this?

The short answer
Most big servers like AOL will bounce your messages as soon as they detect they have been sent from a residential IP, an IP that belongs to a range of IPs for DSL/Dialup connections, including static IPs, or that IP has no reverse DNS (PTR) or no domain assigned to it. Following our tests, using your own SMTP server or an application with a built-in server will cause between 20 and 30% additional bounces. The question is, can you accept that up to 30% of your customers will never get your messages?

In addition some ISPs like Hotmail and MSN are also using Greylisting. In short, greylisting is a method where a piece of email being relayed by a mailservers is initially deferred. This means that it is not accepted upon the first attempt, rather, the sending mailserver is told to relay it again at a later time. With standard mailserver configurations, such as those generally maintained by your ISP and free email service provider, the email will be re-sent at a later time, usually anywhere from 5-20 minutes. Bulk mailing software with built-in server however generally don't operate like standard mailservers, and usually won't relay their email again at a later time.

MaxBulk Mailer key advantage is that it fully respects and follows the SMTP protocol. MaxBulk Mailer is a conventional email client using the standard email delivery system. As a result the delivery bounce rate is extremely low and a very hight percentage of your message are getting delivered successfully.

My recommendation
If you are more worried about your messages getting properly delivered than getting high delivery rates per day to nowhere, just follow SMTP rules, use your ISP or web hosting SMTP server and use the group and delay features to slow down your delivery.

[keram617]

The main reason for this feature "question" is because most ISPs out there (if you do not own a domain name) will shut down your smtp privileges fast when you send mass emails are once. I have seen it, I work for one of the largest ISPs in the country.
I know you can program the app so it will send 1 email every 5 sec or so, but if you have 100 emails that is 500 seconds (almost 10 min), just seems a little time consuming.
No big deal, thanx for the answer.

[stanbusk]

The best is to use your own SMTP server then. At least you will not suffer the greylisting issue. Mac OS X comes with Unix PostFix for free. On Windows you can use free Softstack solution. To use MaxBulk Mailer with such server running on the same computer just use 127.0.0.1 as the server address.