newsletter email

[billt]

I'm planning on sending a newsletter out using the newsletter email. I'm on version 1.3.0.1 (I know I need to upgrade but the site has been so busy I don't have time yet) I have 18,000 customers and 13,000 registered for newsletters. Can the program handle this? Will it slow it down and make ordering slow? Is there a better way? I look forward to any suggestions.

Billt

[DrByte]

I posted some comments and recommended tools for managing large lists via external resources in this thread:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37843

Zen Cart is good for sending newsletters ... but with large numbers of recipients, sometimes you run into timeouts imposed by your hosting server's configuration ... and then it's hard to figure out who got the emails vs who didn't, and where to start next.
The tools mentioned in the thread I linked above will help you manage things all on your own, with much more control.

There will be improvements in a future release of Zen Cart, but for now, with such a large list, you might be better off with other tools. You can still try it with Zen Cart ... just in case your host's server actually doesn't have any problems with timeouts !!

[yellow1912]

It would be the best if the next version of zencart put all the recipients in a queue for each newsletter, then remove them from the queue as it sends the mails. So even if it times out, you can still send again without worrying about sending the same mail to the customers more than once.

[nrg77]

To my experience, the limitation isn't Zen Cart but it is the hosting server as Dr. Byte mentioned. I too have many subscribers and one time I tried to send to all my customers but majority of them didn't receive them simply because my hosting server has a limit of how much emails I can send in one day and how much bandwidth for sending them.

So I opted to use Dr. Byte's email exporter and Groupmail to send out directly and it works really well as you can schedule the time it goes out and see how many was sent successfully and how many failed...I love it....

If you have a dedicated server, it might be more feasible.

[wondergirl]

Yes! I agree...GroupMail ROCKS! :)

[billt]

Thanks for the help! As always DrByte has GREAT advice.