Email Throttling

Does anyone know if zencart's built-in emailer throttles message sending, especially of newsletters, or does it try to send to everyone on the mailing list at once? Can I modify/add email throttling? I'm not afraid of PHP, but only understand it minimally and am learning. . .

Whenever I've done it, it seems to send one message at a time but I'm not sure if there's any throttling going on at all.

I would like to see a solution for throttling e-mails (ie, X per minute).

Zen Cart currently does no throttling.

To enable throttling, one would have to build some sort of scheduler and batch-processor, somewhat like simulating a cron job of sorts. Thus, "a few more" emails would get sent from the batch every time someone clicks on a link on your site, until all are sent.

Is this something that is in the works? If not, I would really like to take a shot at adding it in. I use PHPlist for most newsletters as it handles batch processing, scheduling, and throttling very well. The bridge application from modyourzencart.com appears to be very well constructed, but is lacking a lot of features that would be infinitely useful (and I can't get it to work with the latest versions of ZC and PHPlist). Rather than work on that further, I think it might be best to just work on improvements to the built in newsletter functions for Zen Cart. That way, everything is all in one place in the Zen Cart admin. If this isn't something that is currently being developed, please let me know if anyone would be interested in beta testing or contributing to something like that. I'm definitely in.

Some preliminary work has been done to throw together a plausible structure to make such a concept work ... with a goal of offering it as an optional plugin for cases where it is desired/needed and the webhost supports it.

It's not on the top of my list at the moment though.

If you want to take a stab at it, go ahead. Please keep in mind the goal of having it touch no core files if possible (as of v1.3.6, functions_email.php will require at least one, maybe two edits to activate the plugin ... this may change in a future release)

Thanks so much for the reply. I'm going to take a crack at it. I have a concept that should work that won't require modification to any core files. In fact, it should only take three or four files, a database table, and a couple of new config keys. What I have in mind will be focused on using a cron job to send out messages, but the option to manually send out batches will be available too. Of course, I'll go ahead and build scheduling into it as well. I'll keep you updated, and should have some code for testing in a couple of days.

Would definitely be a 'touch of class' to have such an option/module for eMail Batching.

If someone has 3,000 or more Customers and tries to send all eMails at one time, it could bring most Servers to their knees and possibly crash quite a few.

That's the problem that I've run into. Many hosts have emails per hour limits, and aside from that, I've had the newsletter time out on several occasions, and starting over from the beginning to send the list isn't good. I usually end up using PHPlist for the newsletters, but I hate to have to use a separate application when everything is right there in Zen Cart.

I guess now would be a good time to see if anyone would be interested in beta testing? It's going to be GPL with no further restrictions, so no concerns over licensing.

I would be very interested in trying out whatever you come up with sparrish. I'm also sure my clients would make a (small financial) donation if the product turns out to work for them.

just a nudge that I am also interested in this additional bit of functionality.

As mentioned, my host allows only 200 emails/hour - and I get locked out of Admin if that gets exceeded. :cry:

Throttling would be perfect - say, send 150 nwsletters/hour until they're gone -

i certainly would be willing to help test any betas -

Good to hear that there is some interest! I had backburner-ed the project for a couple months as I had some sites that needed to launch right away, but perhaps this weekend I could get that set up. Some of my clients would be very interested in it as well, so I guess now is as good of a time as any to get it going. Would any of you be interested in giving it a test run with a mailing list if I get it ready by, say, sometime next week? If so, please feel free to PM me so that I can get you some code.

Okay, a quick status update. This is about 65% finished. The admin module is built, and newsletters are being sent to queue. Just have to work out a few bugs in the actual sending process and set up a few configs and it will be ready to go. More info as it is available...

This will be nice to have. Thanks :smile:

this is a much needed update to Zen cart, I hope that it becaosme part of the standard code base.

JOsh

Thanks Josh, we'll be looking forward to seeing it. :)

Kim:

Thanks Josh, we'll be looking forward to seeing it. :)

the pressure builds, sparrish. :)

I'm hoping that I can have this ready to go this weekend. I've been working pretty feverishly on the multiple-vendor shipping contribution that I desperately need (and it seems like many others as well), in between getting the newsletter batch processing set up and debugging the 1.3.7 version of the Newsletters-Only Subscriptions contribution. In between the projects that pay the bills, of course. :D But I think it is safe to say that this WILL be a reality in the next few days. I'll be sure to keep you all posted. I should also mention that I haven't needed to touch a single core file to make this work so far, and shouldn't have to to finish it up either.

Anything new on this subject. This seems to have been a promising solution to ongoing problems with sending large numbers of emails.

Why not just get a real email manager for large mailing?

This would allow more flexibilty in what is being emailed as well as how it is being emailed ...

Ajeh:

Why not just get a real email manager for large mailing?

This would allow more flexibilty in what is being emailed as well as how it is being emailed ...

yeah it is a great thought, if having and external program for email throttling, but at the same time it just means one more back end for me to train my customers in. I I new on ant programs that we simple to integrate and that I could just add the back end to the zen cart admin I would do it, in a flash

oh and sparish, nudge!