[Mailman-Users] Sending bulk mail (400,000 users)

[Mark Sapiro]

Phoenix Kiula wrote:

>Sorry,also one more question:
>
>(4)  What is a good way to add about 400,000 users? Can I save these
>in a huge text file and then use the upload function in the mailman
>web interface? I wonder if this will crash my server. (I could do it
>in batches of 100,000 or so).


bin/add_members would be better. The web interface would probably time
out.

More answers below.


>
>On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Phoenix Kiula <phoenix.kiula at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi. I need to send annoucements to a large opt-in list.


I hope it's really opt-in.


>> Having never done this before and not being now confident if PHP's
>> mail() can manage it, I was pointed to mailman.
>>
>> My questions:
>>
>> (1) Is it possible for mailman to send emails where the "to:" header
>> has the email of a specific recipient? It's more personal than sending
>> to a common email address.


Yes. It's called "Full Personalization"


>> (2) Secondly, on a 2GB memory server with fast SATA hard disks, is
>> sending email to 400,000 users possible with mailman? Will it
>> automatically take care of delays etc between batches of sending?


I don't know what you mean by delays between batches. If you enable
Full Personalization, each recipient is sent a separate message so you
will have 400,000 MTA transactions with 1 recipient each.

If you need some kind of throttling between Mailman and the MTA,
Mailman doesn't do that.


>> (3) How can I make sure that the emails sent honor my DNZ zone records
>> and pick up my SPF settings, and my Domain Keys? Or is that something
>> the receiver's email client does as long as these are validly
>> published on my domain?


This has nothing to do with Mailman. The MTA mailman delivers to
determines the IP address that the mail comes from. Your SPF records
need to list that IP as one that's allowable for your domain. Also
it's the MTA that adds any DKIM/Domain-Keys headers.

If your MTA and DNS is currently properly configured in this respect,
then it isn't any different when Mailman is originating the mail.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan