Post by alaskaberries » Fri Dec 20, 2013 1:43 am

I have searched the forum but didn't find an answer to my problem.

I send out a monthly newsletter using opencart 1.5.6. The problem I have is that I have 900 customers I send this out to and my email provider limits me to 200 emails per hour. I asked them to increase the amount of emails I can send and this is their response.

"identify a means to rate limit your outbound emails, which is sending your emails only a portion of your emails per hour. We feel there is no need to increase the rate at which you can send out your monthly newsletter as if you set a limit of sending to 200 accounts within 5 hours your entire list would receive the email."

So is there a way within opencart for me to do this? I use Thunderbird as my email software and have my email thru my hosting provider. Any ideas on how I can throttle the number of emails I send per hour? As it stands now, Once I hit the send to all customers in opencart, it does just that.

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Post by butte » Fri Dec 20, 2013 4:03 am

One would have expected support to "identify a means" -- although that would require having told support what you are using. There is support, sort of, for Thunderbird. Sometimes one finds there what one needs. Look into mailchimp, which can be used in concert with OC. Look into mailing services, which deal with hourly limitations routinely. You can set up a mailing list with your mail host (presumably same as your web host). Look at the rules for how to do that, then you can probably still use Thunderbird for that.

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Post by alaskaberries » Thu Jan 23, 2014 3:12 am

Thanks for your reply. My hosting provider will only allow 250 emails per hour. My internet provider will only allow 250 emails per hour.
I looked into mail chimp and am in the process of installing it and learning what it can do. You mentioned that it can be used in concert with opencart. Can you elaborate on that? Or point me in the direction where I can?

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Post by butte » Thu Jan 23, 2014 10:00 am

Generally, things to look at:
https://www.google.com/search?q=mailchi ... encart.com
http://kb.mailchimp.com/home
http://mailchimp.com/pricing/

If you opt for free there is an accommodating limit and you're not sitting there watching your wristwatch.

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Post by tarheit » Thu Jan 23, 2014 10:10 am

If you don't need something as fancy as mailchimp, you can use a service like mailgun (www.mailgun.com). Once you set the account you basically just use it as your SMTP server. Then your provider's email restrictions simply wouldn't apply. Best part is the first 10,000 emails per month are free so it can be pretty cost effective for smaller stores.

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Post by Cue4cheap » Thu Jan 23, 2014 10:42 am

tarheit wrote:If you don't need something as fancy as mailchimp, you can use a service like mailgun (http://www.mailgun.com). Once you set the account you basically just use it as your SMTP server. Then your provider's email restrictions simply wouldn't apply. Best part is the first 10,000 emails per month are free so it can be pretty cost effective for smaller stores.
Mailgun right off seems interesting... but is there anything more then creating an account? Any gotchyas we should look at?
Mike

cue4cheap not cheap quality


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Post by tarheit » Thu Jan 23, 2014 10:52 am

No gotchas that I've seen. Used it for testing at lower volumes (under the free threshold), but now are well into the paid level. You probably have to put a credit card on file to sign up in the event you go over the 10,000.

If you want emails to originate from your domain, it does require some DNS records but it tells you what to setup and checks it for you.

It also has a lot of more advanced features like keeping track of bounces, spam reports, etc. Tracking how many emails were opened, etc. though I haven't really used those features.

To get around the ISP's email limit, its a very simple solution.

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Post by alaskaberries » Fri Jan 24, 2014 12:21 am

Thanks for the input. I went ahead and installed mailchimp. Was pretty simple and straight forward. I then purchased the mailchimp integration module from the extension store. That was a painless install, fired everything up, the program synched my OC store with mailchimp, and all is good. Sent out test emails and it seems to work well. The real test will come when I send out the monthly mass mailing.
The only thing I did not like about mailchimp was it's integration with facebook. Perhaps I just didn't take the time to read the fine print enough, but I did not allow it to integrate with my facebook page due to it's demands of taking over way too much info.

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