Create SMTP server on Afrihost

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Amalingo

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Hi guys!

My name is Kevin and I work for an NPO. We recently purchased our first web host through Afrihost. Right now, there is no website, it's just being used for email. We would like to send out a bulk email to around 27,000 people. I contacted AfriMan and he suggested I contact Afrihost support about Afrihost Touchstream so I did. Support recommends we set up our own SMTP server but can't supply any sort of guide saying: "Unfortunately we are unable to support this due to the technical consequences. I am sorry about that :(."

I am completely lost here, please help. We just want to send one bulk email ASAP and never again. Thank you in advance!!
 
I take it you have VM? Yes, No--since i cant see them letting you send out that much mail on their smtp cluster.

Who is your NPO and what do they do? If you can sway my heart I will help you on a non-profit mechanism.

Other option, how technical are you? If very I will give you a guide...

This offer is valid till 5 today.
 
I hope I'm not on your list. :D

Use a service like GraphicMail or ConstantContact.

Whichever way, be sure to get a LOTS of complaints about people not wanting to be on your list. Unless you have verified OPT-IN subscribers you looking for trouble.
 
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T-Man said:
I hope I'm not on your list. :D

Use a service like GraphicMail or ConstantContact.

Whichever way, be sure to get a LOTS of complaints about people not wanting to be on your list. Unless you have verified OPT-IN subscribers you looking for trouble.
Click to expand...

T-Man, we need spam... we need it... How else will we train our filters... We do not discriminate... O.o

On a serious note there are so many ways to do this. So whats the 411 on this Amalingo
 
I apologize, my info supplied was wrong :(. I contacted OpenWeb as well as Afrihost. OpenWeb (our ISP) suggested I make an SMTP server. I am still waiting for Afrihost to reply to me about Touchstream. I am sorry about that.

I doubt we have a VM, the chairman simply signed up for Afrihost Pro Hosting Bronze.

Our NPO is called Amalingo Corporate Social Administrators (proof of registration: http://www.npo.gov.za/PublicNpo/Npo/DetailsPublicDocs/93389 old info though, government is taking ages to change it). Basically speaking, we deal with Enterprise Development and Socia-Economic Development, this means we help unemployed people create and run their own SME within the B-BBEE guidelines as well as help develop the community with a focus on early childhood development and women and children abuse. The bulk of our donations will start going towards a project we have called the Foresight project, it is a woman's and children's shelter based on a 3 year plan where we take in women and children from broken homes or off the streets and we rehabilitate them as well as teach them a basic skill of their choice while they live in Foresight Centre for 3 years, all free of charge. All the names used can be searched, we are not scamming anyone.

As for the technical part: I am handling all of the computers in the office right now. I have been playing with computers for a while now and this is my first job out of school. I can pretty much do anything with end-user software and I was the top programmer in my school in IT using Delphi. I have never played with a host or servers before in my life and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with this and my normal work load.

I am hoping we can get Touchstream to work, it would be fantastic due to the size of the database. If you are willing to help us, it would be extremely appreciated!! If you do wish to proceed further with us, we should talk in PM. If not, I completely understand, no hard feelings at all :)

Thank you for replying
 
T-Man said:
I hope I'm not on your list. :D

Use a service like GraphicMail or ConstantContact.

Whichever way, be sure to get a LOTS of complaints about people not wanting to be on your list. Unless you have verified OPT-IN subscribers you looking for trouble.
Click to expand...

Hahahaha, we do expect some complaints. The database is 5 years worth of emails collected from corporations. Some of them will be dead by now, but the database was made long before I was around
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
Cheapest and most reliable way to do this would be to use Amazons SES service.

Check out sendy.co if you plan on doing this more than once. Also as stated above make sure everything is above board when sending bulk mail, MailChimp has some great resources on their site, I would suggest you read up on this topic before doing anything.

Articles:

http://mailchimp.com/resources/guides/email-delivery-for-it-professionals/html/
http://mailchimp.com/resources/guides/spam-lawsuits/
Click to expand...

I was also looking into Amazon SES, the sandbox part is the issue. We want the email to go out ASAP and the sandbox seems like Amazon trying to get to trust you which takes time. I will look at sendy.co now! MailChimp looks a little pricy though... Thank you for your suggestions :)
 
Amalingo said:
Hahahaha, we do expect some complaints. The database is 5 years worth of emails collected from corporations. Some of them will be dead by now, but the database was made long before I was around
Click to expand...

Read up on those articles I posted. You will have to get that database cleaned before sending.
 
Amalingo said:
I was also looking into Amazon SES, the sandbox part is the issue. We want the email to go out ASAP and the sandbox seems like Amazon trying to get to trust you which takes time. I will look at sendy.co now! MailChimp looks a little pricy though... Thank you for your suggestions :)
Click to expand...

All you have to do is click on "Request production access" (or something like that). It takes about 24 hours and then your send limits will be increased to 10k/day and you'll be able to send out.
 
Ok I cant beat abused women or children with trolling so I will help you.

1: NO ISP WILL GIVE YOU THE LIGHT OF DAY WITH THAT MUCH MAIL.
the caps are there to inform you of how thin the line is here.

2: Touchstream? Your using a streaming software to send bulk mail or is this something else?

3: Are you wanting to send this with HTML object or just plain text?
3a: are you familiar with bash, php, perl?

4: SMTP.COM? http://www.smtp.com/

5: What resources do you have to work with?

PM me if you really want to do this privately.
 
Thank you everyone for all your help. You have all been extremely helpful and it hasn't been long at all!!

@DrJohnZoidberg, I honestly didn't realize how serious this could get... I only started looking around for this today. I saw on Afrihost's site that if a lot of messages bounce, I could get ban, but it didn't seem that serious at all!! Maybe this isn't such a great idea =/


@FFF4Skin: !) I am realising that now...

2) We are (were maybe) looking for any option to send bulk mail for pretty cheap.

3)Basically, what we ended with was 2 PDF files explaining everything we do and a pretty basic text only email so no one has to read too much. I have
3a) I've played with bash and PHP in high school, but I wouldn't say I'm near good with them


4) I'll look into them now :)

5) Not much, Non-Profit, it's in the name =P. I brought my PCs here (3 in total, all Windows) and there was 3 others here already. We have Afrihost hosting bronze pro and Openweb Platinum business 1Mbps dynamic IP
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
All you have to do is click on "Request production access" (or something like that). It takes about 24 hours and then your send limits will be increased to 10k/day and you'll be able to send out.
Click to expand...

I will go look into this properly. Thank you :)
 
I suspect any commercial bulk sender like SES is going to cancel you above a certain bounce rate, but I fortunately have limited knowledge in this area.

How about sending the e-mails at a rate of say 50 per hour over the next month?
 
gkm said:
I suspect any commercial bulk sender like SES is going to cancel you above a certain bounce rate, but I fortunately have limited knowledge in this area.

How about sending the e-mails at a rate of say 50 per hour over the next month?
Click to expand...

That is what I think we are going to do. Sit with the database and pull the best clients out of it and manually email them all. I think the bounce rate on a database this old will be way too high
 
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