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A little e-mail help needed
I want to send all of my former forum members an email that we're restarting another version of the forum. I have a MySQL table with about 1k email addresses. Is there an easy way to mass email them using software or an external service? It's only a one time email.
Comments
Why not set it up, then put db back on it then hit mass mail
This is an option, but I'd like to hear other possibilities.
Easiest way will be to write a PHP script I think
Coming from experience, don't send the mass email all at once. Send it in chunks, so servers such as Gmail or Yahoo don't flag you as sending spam.
https://aws.amazon.com/ses/
First 2000 emails per day are free.
Easiest way would be a PHP script as @jhadley mentioned.
If they had 'userid' or an integer beside each e-mail, you could easially send them in chunks, just make the loop run until 'id' = 100, then start from 101 - 200, 201-300 etc, but obviously with 1 hour gaps.
Or, as @gubbyte just mentioned, you could make it send through Amazon's SES through an API function.
hey havent used amazon aws yet, coz i read that there are hidden costs for traffic and stuff.
could someone pls enlighten me if its possible to use amazon ses for free? i mean no cost at all?
I make use of several AWS services myself.
There are no hidden costs; SES pricing can be found here. The fees are all there; right on the pricing page.
Additionally, if you've not used AWS before, you can see their Free Tier details here.
They're not hidden, just extremely confusing.
For some things, perhaps. However, they are rather open with their pricing though. I've never had any surprise charges. But, I took time to read the pricing pages specific to the services which I use too though.
With respect to SES specifically though, the pricing of the service is fairly straightforward. Other services do have somewhat more complex pricing structures due to their nature.
@JS_James:
ok then i take it there is no way to use it for free as ive expected. thanks
That depends how you use the service. Namely, if your e-mail to SES is coming from EC2 or elsewhere.
If from EC2, you can send 2,000 e-mails per day (24 hours) for free. If you're new to AWS, you get a micro EC2 24/7 free for a year.
You could setup a mail server on the EC2 and use the SMTP of that mail server for your outgoing e-mail; you'd then have the EC2 mail server configured to route all outgoing mail through SES. Essentially, your EC2 mail server would relay your outgoing mail via SES.
If in regular sending it might be possible with SQL queries to get a list of emails, listed in one-line with a space between each other, and querying 50 values or so at a time, then emailing it with a regular email account. That's just a thought as it's a one time thing. But I still know that at least Hotmail isn't too friendly of sending for many users, and repeating the process might make it even harder to finish.
Isn't there in the forum an option to email/pm all users at once? As that's possible in many forum software, and if not there might be an add-on for it! You can restore the old database somewhere and send them at once.
@JS_James:
right, but you have to pay for the aws then dont you? like incoming-outgoing traffic and stuff
right, but you have to pay for the aws then dont you? like incoming-outgoing traffic and stuff
Incoming traffic is free. The first 1GB per month outgoing is free per EC2 instance, and with the free tier you get 15GB for free across all services.
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
@gubbyte is correct regarding the 1GB/mth outgoing being free. However, if you're new to AWS though, it's worth noting that you get 15GB (aggregated) of bandwidth with the free tier.
well i might just give it a chance then
..sounds like one stable ssh box
You could run an SQL query to select only the email addresses, save that to a txt file, and then import all the addresses into an install of PHPlist?
If you're good with php/mysql you could write your own script to send the emails, you could even make it send 10 at a time and make the page reload every X seconds with html