I am on a shared web hosting plan of hostgator and I have 9000+ members on my myBB 1.6 forum.
Now on inquiry I found that hostgator does not allow lists larger than 5000 members and asking me to upgrade to VPS/dedicated servers. Now since I just need to do this one time, to me it is not making much sense to upgrade to VPS/dedicated server.
Can someone suggest a good alternative for this case? (even if it involves one time payment)
Thanks!
Is that a limit of 5000 emails a day, or...?? The task system wouldn't send all the mails in one go, it sends them in batches, so you could send them in batches if it goes under 5000 a day, assuming that is what the 5000 limit means.
Yeah Matt, I was also thinking the same and was planning to split it up across 2-3 days but their logic - which is beyond me - is that even you if split a bigger list into multiple chunks or send scheduled email in 'n' number of days, you are not allowed to send emails if you have to send it to more than 5000 members.
5000 limit basically is the max number of members you can have in a particular mailing list. In case you go beyond this you need to upgrade.
Here is an article from HG which explains further -
http://support.hostgator.com/articles/se...and-limits (Check the comment from "Venkat Manda" and hostgator's response to him)
Any alternative you would want to suggest?
That's a bit silly, I mean with the task system you could send 50 every 15 minutes, I'm sure that wouldn't be too hard for their servers, and would take about 2 days... just seems like another way to force people to upgrade. I mean there's various holes in their logic. What if you have two lists each with 5000 members in it?? You're technically within the limit of users per list but you'd be sending to 10000 people, what would they do about that??
Assuming you mean alternative hosts, I'd have a look at Dreamhost and see what their policy is on mass emails. I've heard many good reviews about their hosting, and a lot of people have various problems on Hostgator, so I'd see what Dreamhost would do about this.
With alternative I meant something like exporting the email address of my forum members to some 3rd party system which allow bulk emails. I was asking recommendation on that front. Which good 3rd part email system you would recommend? I do not want to change web host btw.
I got this on searching for "send bulk emails"
http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/ Are such systems good enough for sending one time emails?
[On another note I have been with Dreamhost and still some of my sites are with them, if you compare just on the basis of support, HG is far better than DH. Though this issue doesn't make much sense but at least HG folks are upfront. Moreover you will always find a courteous response from them which in my experience of 3+ yrs is never the case with Dreamhost. You get into a technical issue and they will first blame your website/plugins before looking into their own servers. I can go on and on about DH vs HG but won't divert this thread ...]
Just curious what kind of forum you talk about :lol:
I believe, only supporting forum like MyBB or VB usually send those mass mail.
But, just like Matt said. I'ts easy to adjuts MyBB core system to sending 50 mails each 15 minutes.
Afaik, mostly server there is a built in Exim, Sendmail, Qmail or Postfix to delivered the mail. And each of them have own different setting.
Anyway, It's nice to share about "bad" Hostgator instead of Dreamhosting.
Also this one
http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/ 
And my advice, if your forum have 10.000+ (real active) posting. You should prepare the VPS, before too late.
SharedHosting have many risk..
Just curious what kind of forum you talk about :lol:
I believe, only supporting forum like MyBB or VB usually send those mass mail.
>>Well, there are many scripts available which can send mass emails for you. I was just asking for recommendation here since other members too may have come across such a situation.
And my advice, if your forum have 10.000+ (real active) posting. You should prepare the VPS, before too late.
>>Thanks for your suggestion but I find very few are active members and as also noted above this is a one time email that I need to send.
I don't really know of any good mass mail software, never had to use it... if not all users are active, would it not be worth only sending it to people who have been active since X days ago?? That'd probably shorten the list considerably. You could temporarily put people in a new group based on their last active time, send the mail to that usergroup only, and then put them back in their normal group.