How many mails can CFMAIL handle?

[Kendo]

I've heard from numerous sources that CFMAIL is not good for batch emailing. Don't get me wrong, I trust those sources...

However, I would like to know what the basic limitation is on CFMAIL.

Say I have a mailing list of 1000 users, would it be a bad thing to try to send them all at once? Or should I split up the process, perhaps dividing the list into 3 and waiting 5 minutes before sending each 333 mails?

I'd like to know how big my mailing list can get before I really have to start thinking about using Coolfusion's IMS, or something similar. I have neither the budget, nor the free server access to be able to use IMS for this purpose.

Thanks for answers!

 

[CFDude]

It really all depends on your servers memory, hardware etc. I am sure there are many who use cfmail for 1000 or more with no problems and conversely, those who have had a lot of problems.

I did a one - time cfmail to about 900 people via a query and the only problem I had was my .cfm template timing out as it looped through the query. The mail part was no problem. This was back in cf 4.0 though.

What I usually suggest is creating the mail as a file and copy it into your mail server's spool directory.

 

[webron]

For a client, an ezine is sent once a week (about 9000 subscribers).
We experienced serious troubles on the server (win 2000 sever, CF5, 512 mb).
So we decided to send the mail in batches of 150 every 5 minutes (just to be sure).

I think its a good idea to send the mail in 3 batches.

webron

 

[papaobba]

webron,
how could you send batches every 5 minutes? did you us CFSCHEDULE or what exactly? i appreciate it
============================
= I'M GONNA RAISE THE BEAST
= TILL I BE HIS FEAST
============================

 

[webron]

Yes we do use cfschedule for the batches.

The scheduled mailer looks something like this:

1. Select all subscribers from the database
2. Select the next 150 from the query (based on a url.start)
3. mail the ezine
4. check for an existing schedule (if so -> delete)
5. Make a new schedule (if neccesary) starttime = now() + 5 minutes.

webron