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I work for a small marketing company that has asked me to develop a PHP application to send emails for their company without getting blacklisted or emails showing up as spam. I have a fairly good understanding of PHP (OOP) but I do not understand how to build this program. They need approximately 500,000 to 1,000,000 emails sent per month. They are ready to buy ip addresses, SMTP servers etc but I need to code the program to work. So basically what I'm asking is what is the breakdown of the different parts of an application like this needs and how it can function without being blacklisted or considered spam. I apologize if i confused anyone on this topic, its just that i used the mail() function numerous times and many of the mail keeps going to spam. This is a legitimate pharmaceutical company as far as i know, they just contacted me and asked me if i could do this so thats why im here to see if it is possible or not.

I know there are companies out there that can do this but they charge from $500 upwards and we cannot afford this. If there are specific equipment that needs to be bought we are ready to buy it to offset long term costs.

Any help is appreciated, thank you!

1337holiday
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    Honestly, is this company attempting to send unsolicited mail (aka spam)? If it's not, I would suggest explaining a little more about who will be targeted by the mailings in order to avoid the wrath of people in the community who hate spam. – Chris Thompson Sep 03 '10 at 23:06
  • @Chris -- I was suspect too, that's why I didn't address a lot of what he was asking in my answer... I figured if this is a serious question, a link to some existing open source software might be a good start... – Josh Sep 03 '10 at 23:10
  • @Josh, indeed. I'm torn because this could be legitimate (also could be not...) and if it is legitimate, it is most certainly not deserving of the downvotes... – Chris Thompson Sep 03 '10 at 23:12
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    Given that the OP has a couple of other questions that are not mass-mail related, I've given this a +1 (call it "benefit of the doubt" if you want), to try and counteract those that have down-voted without having the manners to provide a reason why. The OP has mentioned the fact that there are companies they can pay, but they can't afford, if I was a spammer, I wouldn't even consider paying, irrespective of cost. – Rob Sep 03 '10 at 23:17
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    I will put my hand up and say I downvoted. Why? I think the wording. "tricks involved sending email" to avoid "being blacklisted or considered spam" + "mass"... I think a legitimate question in this domain needs very careful wording as a legitimate sender would be aware of the sensitivities surrounding spam. Example questions would be "what's the best way to implement a newsletter-based service in php" rather than "how do I pipe 500,000 emails through smtp and avoid being called a spammer". Perhaps I'm jumping to conclusions - if so, if the OP edits, I'll happily vote the other way. –  Sep 03 '10 at 23:32
  • See also the answers to: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/162149/avoid-being-blocked-by-web-mail-companies-for-mass-bulk-emailing –  Sep 03 '10 at 23:48

5 Answers5

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You're company is willing to buy hardware, but not pay $500 to have a company do it? For doing large mailings, you can use SwiftMailer. It has certain features to support bulk mailings and is written in PHP.

However, not getting blacklisted or put in the spam folder has nothing to do with hardware or software. You need a valid domain and valid emails. Put "V1agra" in an email an it probably won't get received by anyone, not matter what you are using.

Brent Baisley
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    [Puts on accountants hat] $5,000 for hardware is CapEx so can be depreciated over several years rather than being considered an expense in the first year/n months, whereas $500 a month *hits the bottom line every month, month in, month out* ... I think the "If there are specific equipment that needs to be bought we are ready to buy it to offset long term costs." bit of the OPs question confirms that. [takes off accountants hat] Oh, and +1 for your answer =) – Rob Sep 04 '10 at 11:54
  • Plus, in 10 months your hardware 'is paid off', whereas in the alternative you keep paying the service. – Adriano Varoli Piazza Sep 04 '10 at 23:36
  • Yes, one very good solution is to let a specialized company to do that for you. For large sending like you want, contact them directly for special prices. – Savageman Sep 04 '10 at 23:39
  • In the long run, I'm all for owning your own systems. But when you're not sure how much money you will make, it may be best to use a service the first month or two. Then invest in the hardware (and sysadmin). – Brent Baisley Sep 07 '10 at 16:11
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The best way to be not be considered as spam and not being blacklisted is to send legitimate emails.

There is no problem sending a lot of mails from the same IP if no recipient mark it as "spam" at the end. To achieve this, a lot of things have to be taken into consideration:

  1. Having good lists with opt-in is not an option.
  2. Track bounces (both soft and hard), so you don't send unnecessary emails (don't send again emails to hard bounces, try again sometimes for the soft bounces and remove them if successful).
  3. Run spam tests before sending bulk (SpamAssasin, etc.) (no advertising, but Litmus does that)

In fact, if you do everything good, your IP can end up with a good sending reputation and more mails will get to the inbox. Also be aware that when sending bulk, not everybody gets the email at the end. Some of them are "lost" by different filters in the middle of the process.

If you never sent mail from an IP, try to be progressive and do not send 1 millions the same month. I advice you to be progressive on how many mail send 1 IP.

Look at what specialized companies do. For example, you can learn a lot from Campaign Monitor and MailChimp. They have really great blog and resources to look at. Follow their blog, keep informed.

Baba
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Savageman
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A company I work with has had success using an Open Source (LGLP license) project called PHPMailer for a similar function -- maybe this would be a good start for you?

EDIT: PHPMailer is great software but I spoke too quickly. I meant to say phplist.

Josh
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If you are sending legit emails you should look into SPF.

Only validates an IP as valid sender of emails from a certain domain. Does not validate content or ensure safe passage through spamfilters. But since spam is illegal in many countries, this validation means they know who to sue/fine.

OIS
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well, you may simply use mail() but no amount of PHP is going to help you get past spam filters. They use blacklists, statistical filters, human-filters, neural networks and all kinds of technologies to determine if someone is sending spam. 1.000.000 emails per month sounds like spam to me, so most likely you'll be tagged as "spammer" :)

Quamis
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