Hi,

  I used to do a news letter with my website.  In fact I have an opt-in list of nearly 2,500 names of people who are interested in my content and I would like to begin sending out my newsletter again.  The problem is that my ISP limits the numbers of e-mails I can send with my home e-mail account, and my webhost doesn't allow me to send that many e-mails either.  In fact the last time I tried to send out my newsletter, the banned my e-mail address.

  Any ideas on how I can send out a bulk-emailing, without my ISP or host banning my e-mail address again ?

Thanks!

I am investigating this also.

My ISP has no limit, so sending direct that way may help

Currently i go through my host, but am limited to 150 emails per hour - this is not satisfactory as a long-term solution.
Matte

My host will allow 800 e-mails per hour as long as I will sign a bond and agree to pay them $1000 damages if they decide I am spamming.  Well there is no way in hell I'm going to do that.

I tried a bulk-email program and it worked pretty good, but being the trial version it stamped all the e-mails with an advertising line at the end of the e-mail.  I might use  that again anyway.

Maybe I will just write my own e-mail sender, it shouldn't be hard because I already have the C++ wrapper classes written to do multithreaded SMTP mail, from another project I was involved in a few years ago.  ( good programmers save everything ) 

I would really like to get back into being able to send out a newsletter, because my traffic always takes a big jump for the next couple of days after I send one out, and usually my registrations spike too.  If I could convert that into CDs sales or something, it would be most excellent.

I know ISP's have limits etc but as far as hosts are concerned, I don't know what sort of hosting deals you blokes have, but my host places no limit on outgoing emails!

Who are these idiotic hosts that don't understand that Newsletters have to be mailed???

Anyway, funny this subject should come up. I have almost finished a Newsletter (my first, don't know why I didn't do something similar earlier, but....).

My problem is figuring out how to collect the email addresses in the form of an Opt-in list (I've never had anything to do with this before). Here's what I want to do:

Have a simple 'subscribe' form on the Newsletter page with only one field (email address) - I've done that, it's there ready to go.
I want an auto-responder to send an immediate 'confirmation' email asking them to confirm their willingness to 'Opt-in' by clicking on a link.
When they click on the link their email address is added to a list and they are taken to a "Thank you, Your subscription has been confirmed" page.
Then I want to use the list for bulk emailing.

Do you think I can get anyone at my hosting company to understand what I just said??? (they are in fact, usually very good). The cpanel of the server I'm on has a Mailing list called 'Mailman' but I can't make head nor tails of it. It looks to me to be more like a 'Public Message Board' than a Mailing list!!!

Anyway, does anyone know if I can do the above using Frontpage forms and components and reporting stuff etc.

(Please remember, I don't speak 'geek'....... - that's the biggest problem with the hosts instructions, they speak another language and I only understand every other word.

Thanks

Steve, there are hundreds of scripts that do just exactly what you want to do as far as collecting the e-mail addresses.

Funny you should mention a "public message board" because if you want to set it up in a hurry, a public message board like phpBB or Invision Power Board is exacltly what you should use.  Even if you don't use the message board and forum part of the software, it has everything you need to comply with the CANN SPAM and COPPA acts, manage subsripctions, etc...  Well that is what I would do anyway, you do whats best for you.  I would think anyone at your hosting company should be able to help you out, because you just need a couple of scripts installed and you're set.

steve
look at http://dadamail.org/
does not do personalised emails though
Its free

Thank you both. Actually Mutilated, that's not a bad idea, using the Forum 'subscription' system and just forgetting about the forum itself. It'll do until I get something organised. The only thing I need to bother about is 'Bulk emailing' all members (or is there already an 'Admin' option for that in PHPBB??) Dunno, I have to check.

(My biggest problem in all this stuff is I have had no 'script' or Database experience at all. It may as well be Hindi:). I know html well, as it relates to and in a Webpage situation, but nothing else - That's why I had so much trouble following the RSS business.). Anyway.......

Thanks again.

We just had the same problem with ntl.  We send out newsletters every 2 or 3 months or when something new comes onto our site.  We use eCampaign which is a fantastic programme, but we did have to pay for it.  They do a trial version, but you can only send 50 e-mails out at a time.

When we did the last mailout we got an e-mail from ntl then a letter in the post telling us that we were sending out too many e-mails.

So we looked into using a different smtp and decided to do it though uk2.net.  We have a couple of domain names with them and they also provide you with a free mail service, but you can upgrade it from £7.99 a year to be able to use authenticated smtp.  This is what we needed to be able to send out our newsletters.

We still use ntl for our normal e-mails incoming and outgoing, but use uk2 for the outgoing newsletter mailings.  It works great and it is much quicker that using ntl.

And an added bonus.  With ntl we used to get so many failures, at least one third of our list failed, even though we knew they were genuine addresses because they were opt ins and/or customers.  With uk2, every e-mail goes. 

eCampaign is great as well because it keeps track of all the bounced, unsubscribed, opt-ins etc and adjusts your mailing list.  It does personalised e-mails.  Sends e-mails in html and/or plain text.  It is simple to duplicate campaigns if you want to use them again with a different mailing list or with a few adjustments.  You can find it at http://www.lmhsoft.com if you are interested.  We don't get any benefit from them, by the way, just think they are worth recommending.

Have you checked GetResponse.com
or AWeber.com? It seems they can solve
your problems.

webgaya.

Hi Mutilated1
i realize your post dates back awhile and you probably have long found an answer for it but I'm replying just in case there is a new person out there.  I have a subscription form on my newsletter and then I'm using getresponse.com to followup on my contacts and get them in the system.

Linda