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Slow Relaying on an Exchange 2003 Server

Our church membership software (Shelby Systems) has a group email function where you can send out mass emails via the SMTP server in Exchange. I had to allow relaying from my private IP address range in order for it to work, but there's a problem; it takes too long to send. I have a group of just over 300 people that I've been using as a test group, but it takes over an hour to send a simple plain text email to all of them. Shelby tech support says it shouldn't take but a few minutes to run. The membership records are maintained in a SQL Server database.

Can you think of any settings in Exchange 2003 that I might need to tweak to make the relaying go faster?

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Sembee

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dgbritt

ASKER

Thanks for the comments. However, we don't use our ISP for email, as we have our own Exchange 2003 server. Your statement about Exchange sending each email separately may be the key to the problem.

Sembee

Doesn't matter if you use the ISP for email or not. The ISP will still provide an SMTP server that you can route your email through.

Simon.

nitadmin

Exchange is not built for Mass e-mails which you want to send. Security features that are set by deault are designed to prevent the Exchange 2003 server from being used as a vehicle for Spam e-mails

There are limits which you can increase.
1. Increase the SMTP connections limit.
2. Increase the the number of receipients limit.

I also suggest that you should create a distribution lists for 300 e-mail addresses that you need send e-mails to.

Also, understand this. For each e-mail address that Exchange needs to send e-mail it needs to be catagorized and MX records have to be checked. Also, the e-mail servers of the recpients can also slow down the rate at which e-mails are transfered from your exchange server to other smtp servers.

Cheers,
NITADMIN