What tool to use to send millions of e-mails per month

General Discussion
4

Sorry for the long letter, but I think you need a quick email university here:

  1. You can send email from your server, using Postfix or other MTA (mail transport protocol) but a simple server starts with a crappy reputation, so you need to improve by warming up your IP.
    Just imagine, that your message is delivered by a really bad smelling door to door salesman. People won’t let you in. -> you land in spam.
    Again: unless you get good reputation, and grow your sending limits gradually.
    You can do it if you have good list, good contacts and you know how to do it.

  2. Some services have wonderful smelling door to door salesman, who are pre-approved (whitelisted). These services maintain a staff, who rigorously kick out bad senders and maintain the infrastructure. Since their livinghood is to keep good senders, Gmail and Outlook, etc welcome their IPs, so they preapprove and whitelist them. Or at least not blacklist them. Such are Sendgrid, Amazon SES, etc. They are called third party SMTP. You don’t install on your server, but you connect them and allow them to send out email in your name using their great IP reputation.

  3. You can send via 2 methods: SMTP and API. The difference is mostly in speed, just like Morse code and Fax. Api is faster, and you want to use it if you send out millions of emails. Bounce feedback is also important: you can have feedback in email, which is the ancient way to do it, or via webhooks. Its more civilized. The third party SMTPs all send webhooks to Mautic, making managing bounces and complaints easy.

  4. Postal is an open source mail server, which makes you a Sendgrid or Amazon SES clone. Meaning: you can tie in email addresses and send emails via your email servers IP from a marketing application (more later). You can make mail server with postfix or PowerMTA as well, but Postal is open source and can provide an email API (Fax not Morse) and supports webhooks (not the ancient bounce emails). So it is superior to those solutions. (According to huge fans like myself).

Okay, but how do I get my millions of email out?

Glad you asked. :slight_smile:
You need to use a Marketing software to manage lists, bounces, interactions, create emails, etc. Like Sendy, Or Mailwizz Or Mautic etc… You install the marketing tool on your server and connect it with a third party SMTP.

So I install Mautic and Postal and I can send millions of emails for free?

No. You need to maintain infrastructure for both. You need the following skills to run a mail server:

  • Feedback loop management
  • DNS management
  • Blacklist management
  • IP reputation monitoring

Moreover you need to

  • clean your lists
  • manage your lists for campaigns
  • implement sunset policy, list splitting, opener management, etc.

Good Luck to you!

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