I have a web client that has a legitiment need to send out an excessive amount of emails but only during the first one hour they are at work in the morning. The customer is an insurance company that accepts quotes then processes those quotes at night and sends out emails the following morning. This is an automated process from a third party software program. I have confirmed that this is company is not sending out spam.

I am currently with a hosting company that I am very happy with but their reseller plan only allows 45 messages every 5 minutes. I need this customer to be able to send at most 100 emails in 5 minutes. As it is now, their Outlook program is getting clogged up and the system holds those emails and kicks back errors for the next half hour or so.

What would be the most economical solution to this problem? Dedicated server, switch only this customer to another host that will allow higher email limits, etc?

William

Have you asked your host to up the limit? That's a relatively small amount of email your client needs to send out. Most hosts should be able to work with you on that.

--Tina

As Tina said thats a small amount.

However, considering they are an insurance company, I'm sure they can spare some cash to get a well-secured server and be able to send out as many as they want. I'm surprised they went shared hosting, considering these are Private details -- no?

Why not have the company use their true ISP's mail server for SMTP? I.E. mail.bellsouth.net or whatever?

Also, if they are on a business-level connection, port 25 should be open so they can deliver the emails directly via SMTP from their PC if need be.

Not sure the volume of your business, but moving to a dedicated server or VPS of your own depending on your volume will allow you more control.

This is a strict policy of my web host that is not negotiable. Here are a couple of posts from the webhost concerning this matter.

If you send more than these limits that are set at the server level, they get removed and do not get queued. These are limits for any sort of mailing.

The email/hr limits are not low by any standards and not throttling email can have an adverse effect on the server. As mentioned before if you need to mass email, use an emailing service. They exist simply because hosting providers can not allow anyone to mass mail on a server shared among many clients. The other option is to get your own dedicated mailing server.

As stated earlier, I am very satisfied with my host and will continue using them for my hosting needs. My only concern right how is for this single client and their email issues. This client will be expanding their business over the next 9-12 months to a larger facility with many more employees. This post is in an effort to plan for their future expansion while still keeping them happy with their hosting & web development services supplied by my company.

To address drewnick, their ISP limits their email even further than my host and they are not willing to change that either.

Well then frog, send them to rackspace and they'll be just fine ;) It'll be like a huge shared hosting account.

Well then frog, send them to rackspace and they'll be just fine ;) It'll be like a huge shared hosting account.

I just talked with a very nice sales representative with rackspace. Great service, good response to my questions but their pricing was WAY OUT of my price range. I wanted to purchase a shared hosting account, not an entire company. She quoted me $425/month starting. I pay only $25 a month right now. I don't even pay $425 in rent and utilities per month.

Thank you for the assistance - if you come up with other ideas, please send them my way. Keep in mind, I am a sole propietarship with one employee, 58 penny-pinching clients, located in Alabama and low overhead.

I just talked with a very nice sales representative with rackspace. Great service, good response to my questions but their pricing was WAY OUT of my price range.
They are always nice, considering how much they get paid ;) What you have to do is haggle with them, negotiate, etc to get a Much better price. For example, I've played with them to find out pricing. For a server they quoted me at $500 a month, after a few days of messing around, I could've gotten it for around $350'ish. Not bad considering the original price.

I wanted to purchase a shared hosting account, not an entire company. She quoted me $425/month starting. I pay only $25 a month right now. I don't even pay $425 in rent and utilities per month.

Well, they don't do shared hosting now do they? :) This is for a fully, 100% managed dedicated server. I'm not saying You should go with them, but merely refer your client to rackspace. Or simply pretend you are RS and charge them for it ;) Honestly though, if they are a growing insurance company, $500 a month should be negligible to them.

Rackspace? Are you kidding? Do you really want to pay $500/month just to send a few more emails once a day?

Just find a good quality shared hosting provider that will allow you to do this - It would not be a problem (given the low volume) to do that.

If the provider focuses their business on setting up working relationships with designers and partnering with other hosting companies (that's YOU), they should have no problem setting up "split hosting", if you prefer, where the mail service (MX, SMTP, etc.) go to their servers but the web hosting ("A records") can still point to your existing host.

Funny thing, you say you are happy with your current provider except they won't help you out at all in this situation. Maybe you need to consider redefining "happy"? You might find a new hosting partner can do everything for you and actually work out better.

If you find a provider that also offers commercial, non-spam, full newsletter/email mailing list hosting, then you have a growth plan if your clients mail volume should grow further and exceed even a flexible host's shared hosting mail limits.


Well then frog, send them to rackspace and they'll be just fine ;) It'll be like a huge shared hosting account.