Hi everyone,

I have a potential web site client who wants to restart his newsletter, that used to be free, as a fee based newsletter. I am wary of putting his site on my dedicated
server where I am afraid it could suck up all the bandwidth
and resources and really cripple my other clients' sites.

He says that he has approx. 50,000 e-mails in his list from
a year or so ago. (His site has not been active for a year or so.)

His service involves sending at least one and sometimes more e-mails a day to his list.

What kind of bandwidth situation is this likely to be? Is there a way to figure out how much of my server resources this would use?

I will surely appreciate any help on getting a handle on this so I know what to propose to him re: hosting the site.

Also, if anyone here offers a hosting account that would be ideal for this sort of use, I'd welcome your proposals.

Thanks so much,
Karen

Hi Karen,

Regarding how much bandwidth... you can estimate by the following:

Assume the email size is 1K and it is going to send to 50K of email addresses... 1K x 50K ~= 50M (this is for one email send to the list of 50K email addresses). If you are going to send one email to the list per day... for 30 days it will be 50M x 30 = 1500M

It is just estimation... I may be totally wrong on the above :D

50K of email addresses for a year back... it isn't safe for you as there will be many bounces due to invalid email addresses and chances to get spam complaint will be much higher.

Just my thoughts.

Thanks.

Kindest regards,
Choon

Hi choon,

Thank you for your advice. I had thought maybe I could estimate the bandwidth as you said, but wasn't sure.

As for the year old e-mail list. I believe the owner wants to offer the members of the old list a free trial of the subscription newsletter.

I had thought, too, about how many e-mails would probably be no longer valid. My guesstimate is that maybe 40-50% will be non-valid e-mail addresses. Then, the ones that are valid but the people have forgotten that they signed up for the free newsletter last year or so, they could be a problem. I feel like I don't want my web server name implicated in that. I sure don't want my server to be put on some anti-spam blacklist. Any idea how to avoid that sort of problem?

Thanks again,
Karen

Hi Karen,

Which mailing list software you will be using? The server's load and resources might be an issue. Also, there are many other things such as a member in that list forward his/her subscribed email address to other email address which does the auto-responding, bounced emails etc...

Chances of getting spam complaint is high and if I am in your position... I will host the site but will not allow the customer to run such mailing list (using old email addresses). However, the customer can always send out an invitation email using his/her own email client through her/his own dailup/connection ISP SMTP mail server about his/her site coming back "live" and for those interested "old members" can subscribe to his/her "new mailing list". That what I will do as if those old email addresses are invalid... it won't be bounced back to your mail server and you reduce those potential spam complaints as the email isn't relay through your network/server.

You also must make it clear that once you receive any spam complaint... the customer's site will be taken down or whatever depends on your AUP.

Thanks and hope this helps ;)

Kindest regards,
Choon

Your client should really look into some type of list software such as lyris (www.lyris.com) There are plently of places that resell for lyris such as (www.netatlantic.com) widely used in the humor community.

Lyris can provide the speed and the managment of members that he needs.

Shawn

One way of balancing the load would probably be to stagger postings over the course of the day instead of doing it at one go. This way you do not spike your server load unnecessary.

For the initial 50,000 , you might want to stagger it across one or more weeks to 'clean' the list. People do change email addresses and even if you get a 1% which is bad, that is still 500 bounced emails.

Alternatively, you might want to use http://www.Bcentral.com which specializes in email marketing and so on. If you feel that it is economically not possible to support this client then that is a good place to go. They do the necessary removal of bounced emails, allows for unsubscription and so on.

Hi choon, gagsplus and Edwin,

Thank you so much for your help.

I know now why I had this funny feeling about this list thing.

I looked at netatlantic.com's list services. They look like a good service. And, looking there and at lyris.com's own site and information about outsourcing the newsletter list management to them, the prices for handling this size list with daily sending are substantial.

I am going to have to rethink and refigure the initial price estimate I gave him, and definitely tie the monthly cost to the number of messages and bandwidth used.

The suggestion to have him use his own ISP mail account to send to his list in batches over a couple/few weeks initially, to offer them a free trial of his newsletter, to get actual current signups, seems a reasonable idea.

I've only had experience with relatively small mailing lists that a couple of my clients' have developed over the years from people opting-in to receive announcement of product specials and be entered to win a gift certificate. These lists are from 4,000 to 8,000 in size, and my server has no problems with them. Plus they only send announcements a few times a year, not even once a month.

I truly appreciate all your help. You've kept me from signing my name on a dotted line to offer an unrealistically low price to this customer.

Thanks again,
Karen

Karen,

No problem.

Email has always been very problematic and troublesome. We do have several mailing lists for our paid clients over the years and each time we mail them, there would be several which would be non-existent because they moved, changed email address or the ISP closed.

Actually if your client stagger the list and send out about 75 mails a hour for a month, you should cover the 50,000. Probably, he could send this out as a one-time mailing and ask for new sign-ups. This would then add on to a paid listing. I believe that the list would shrink for whatever reasons.

In any case, do keep us updated on what happens.

All the best.