SMTP Relay - Anyone have experience?

[photon]

Anyone have any experience with a provider to send out 100-300,000 emails per month, half of that in one day?

I've been trying www.smtp.com but I get random authentication errors (to throttle me probably), it's going to take days to send what I need to.

Just wondering if anyone has used a similar service they like.

[Azure]

To send 500,000 emails per month costs $500/month according to that site.

Don't know if you missed that.

[Frank MetaMusil]

You might want to have a look here: http://www.dyndns.com/services/mailhop/relay.html

It's not free, but the price seems right. I couldn't find any restrictions with regards to volume either....

[Pastiche]

Whodda thunk that Photon was a spammer?

[photon]

Originally Posted by Azure

To send 500,000 emails per month costs $500/month according to that site.

Don't know if you missed that.

Yeah and that's the cheap end of that kind of thing it seems, most in that range seem to be more.

Still you have to compare that to the cost of paying someone to maintain an email server, manage the logs, mange staying off blacklists, etc etc.

But for that much money I shouldn't have to babysit a service, it should knock my socks off.

Originally Posted by Frank MetaMusil

You might want to have a look here: http://www.dyndns.com/services/mailhop/relay.html

It's not free, but the price seems right. I couldn't find any restrictions with regards to volume either....

That's kind of the opposite if what I'm looking for.. that would sit infront of my own server for incoming emails, I'm looking for somewhere I can send emails out through. I already have my own sendmail server to send emails through, but having to deal with the bounces and tune the configuration to maximize the emails sent isn't something I want to bother with.

Originally Posted by Pastiche

Whodda thunk that Photon was a spammer?

Heh.. it's funny, people have to click through an agreement TWICE, and download and install an application which is clearly described as having email as its only interface, and have an unsubscribe link in every email that's sent out and have the emails sent out from "noreply@whatever" and people STILL reply and complain to be removed.

"Please remove me" they email back while a few lines below it clearly says "to be removed please go to this URL", all the while the app they downloaded is still happily running on their phone sending information.

People truly are dumb.

[Jimmy Stang]

Although maybe not exactly what you're looking for, we use Mail Chimp at work to manage our lists. We have 20,000+ subscribers and we send to them a couple times a month. We use a little bit of the template features, but mainly it is a list management thing for me. It handles the subscriptions, removals, bounces, etc.

I used to have my own SMTP server set up (Mercury - damn that's a while ago), but our IP was getting blacklisted (even though everyone was an opt-in subscriber). Couldn't be bothered so now we just pay Mail Chimp to take care of it.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by photon

"Please remove me" they email back while a few lines below it clearly says "to be removed please go to this URL", all the while the app they downloaded is still happily running on their phone sending information.

While I generally agree with your observation, in their defence, I've often thought to myself... "What better way for them to verify that they have my valid email address, than by me clicking on their link to "unsubscribe."

I have quite a few different email addresses, and they all vary in use by degrees of spam. Sites I never have any intention of ever dealing with again get my yahoo email, other sites that I may or may not visit again get my hotmail, still others that I have the feeling might be useful at some point get my gmail... etc etc. Businesses that I deal with on regular occasions get my telus email, while only friends and people I trust get my main email that I use on my phone and my day-to-day life. That email isn't even on facebook.

That's how I deal with spam.


Edit: Whoops. Sorry, I just popped into this thread to see what it was about, and then seeing your thing about the "unsubscribe" link spurred me to post. I have no experience with SMTP Relay. I looked into it briefly for one client, but they decided to go a completely different way instead. Permission marketing is what they ended up getting into. You should check out this guy's blog: http://sethgodin.typepad.com. He's the king of (effective) internet marketing.

[Barnes]

I have used these guys in the past because they were the only ones I could find a place to buy credits rather than pay a monthly fee.

http://www.tellemonline.com

Seems their monthly fees are about the same as other places but in CAD.

Pretty good service. All of our Comcast subscribers bounced back and I emailed them, and they gave me a bunch of credits and contacted Comcast to have it fixed.