bulk email to mailing list

a client of mine needs to send out an email message with pdf attachment to about 3000 members of his contact list. No other features required.

I've not dealt with mailing lists before so I'm wondering how this might work.

I assume that typical mailing list sofware would allow my client to simply send an email to the mailing list app and it would then propogate the message to all members.

I suppose one could also do something like this done with php and MySQL, but I suspect the maling list approach is better.

#1 are my assumptions about maling list apps correct, the client just sends an email to the app and it propogates to all members of list?

#2 is this a more efficient approach then using a server side script language and convetional db to send out bulk emails?

I don't know about how an OTS mailing list app would handle this. I imagine that there might be different approaches.

I do know that doing something like this with server-side scripting and a database is pretty easy. Right now I'm using ASP and MS SQL Server 2000 to handle bulk e-mails to lists of up to about 50,000 recipients. PHP and MySQL should be able to handle your needs without too much trouble, but you might also wish to consider a Perl script you can run from the command line.

Some other reasons to consider using a method tied directly to a database is that it allows for more control over the individual e-mails and requires less administrative overhead to handle opt outs and invalid e-mail addresses.

Hi,

I agree with what Lucas has said however if you want to try a stand alone app the best one I have used is called WorldCast and you can get it free at www.fairlogic.com

HTH

It's fairly easy with PHP if you can get the bleedin' multi-type MIME to work. Simple loop through the database. One thing I wanted to add to this for anybody considering doing this is that it may be advisable to tell your ISP what you are doing as it is their mail server that is sending all the emails. Make sure you tell them that it is email sent to subscribers and not unsolicited. Verify that it is okay to do with them, that they can cope for starters, otherwise you may find your account deactivated. Do it by the book and don't get the book thrown at you.