Every now and then I need to send out about 500-1000 emails to our customers. We do this from a mail merge from our database so that all emails are customized.
The problem is that our ISP limits the number of emails sent per hour (only 100 emails per hour).
We have a postfix relay setup so that all emails are sent to this relay server and then relayed to the ISP. So I have 2 options to fix this problem:
1. get another ISP that doesnt limit the number of emails sent per hour (Can I get a recommendation?)
2. Setup our postfix relay server so that it will "hold" all the emails that we ask it to relay, but release it at a set rate (i.e, 100 emails per hour per account) to adhere to the ISPs policy.
Can someone please help me on how to go about doing this?
For the postfix relay server, we're using ubuntu.
Thank You
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
Well yes, it is a possibility (you mean to simply send the email to the ISP mail server right?)
The problem is that the 100 emails/hour is set by the ISP.
I'll gladly switch to any email hosting that will allow me to send more than 100/hour, but I haven't found any. (I found one that has a limit of 200/hour, but that's doesnt really solve my problem)
I was hoping that the smarthost that we have can be used as a "bottleneck" so that it will stop sending once I reach 100 emails/hour, queue the remaining emails to be sent the next hour.
Eh, not quite. You normally do not need a smarthost if you can post the mails yourself. For that you need to have access to a DNS server, so your own server can find out how to connect to the destination server. A smarthost is easier, it helps you by queueing mails to parties that are hard to reach etc.
Do you really HAVE to send everything to the ISP's smarthost?? If not, bypass them.
Sjef Bosman, Demazter,
Sorry. I think I might be misunderstanding a term here.... DNS = domain name server? How is it that I send an email to a domain name server? I do not understand how a name server is involved.
By smarthost, I was assuming that we're talking about a machine that relays email to the ISP's mailserver. This is what my postfix machine is doing. I had thought that this is called a gateway. Not so sure what the difference is with smarthost.
It does have to pass ISP mailserver because (I'm not sure, but I think...) my IP address is not yet registered as an email server (i.e MX server, yes?)
I prefer to use ISP email server anyways so that if my smarthost is down then we can still use the ISP mailserver as a last resort. We're not a big organization and so not so good at maintenance.
Right about DNS. You need the Internet DNS to be able to send mails out yourself. If you send your mails always via a smarthost, you let the smarthost worry about where to send mails to. The smarthost you use now IS the ISP's mail server. A smarthost is a mail router that takes the initiative to send mails to other parties as well. Normally, when a router receives mails, it accepts only mail for the known internal users. A smarthost accepts everything.
A, there's a point, you don't have your own domain yet and no fixed IP-address... That means trouble, in that case you would have to pass through the ISP's servers, for that is where your domain now is. Receiving servers often do a reverse check, to find out if the IP-address they receive mail from is indeed from the domain that sends the mail. If not, mail is refused.
A cheap solution might be to ask a direct mail company (or some other company) to send the mails for you? Or to route them through? You could ask a friendly company if you can send a mail to their server, so that it routes the mails to the Internet. The same goes for that company: a domain and a fixed IP-address are required.
I'm no postfix expert, but here's what I found:
http://www.irbs.net/intern
I assume (being careful here!) that if you are allowed to send 100 mails per hour, you could set the parameter "default_destination_rate_
And for what it's worth:
http://policyd.sourceforge
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: NeilsrPosted on 2009-10-09 at 06:19:55ID: 25534632
WOW! 100 per hour is a limit set by your ISP? Is this a comercial business account or just a home user account with the ISP?
IF its a business account I would be on the phone, complain big style and advise them you will be moving to a new ISP. This will normally cure ALL problems that you get from an IS vendor and i'm sure your limit can be lifted.
Try it, you might like it ;P