E-mail and mailing list screwed up

[nate_s_]

I already have a support ticket ( #GMO-21135-419) for this problem, and it's supposedly being addressed, but since I have no idea what's going on, I just felt like this should be out in the open.

1) We have a mailing list with about 3,000 people on it. We tried to send out a mailing a couple of days ago with a PDF attachment, and none of the "test" addresses we'd included with the mailing actually got the message.

2) We tried again, same result, so we ended up calling hostgator. I spoke to someone there who told me "Oh, the problem is that we block PDF files." I've never heard of this, and am fairly sure we've transmitted PDF files through Hostgator's email service before, so I tested it on a small (10 people) list and it worked fine. The tech then suggests that the mailing is too big (okay, admittedly it's 270k X 3000people, which isn't trivial, but I haven't seen anything indicating that HostGator doesn't support doing this) and that we have to send it plain-text.

3) We alter our mailing (it's an upcoming conference brochure for an association, the mailing list being the association's contacts) to be plain text, with a link to the PDF on our website. We send it to the mailing list, only to have absolutely nothing happen (this is yesterday afternoon). I try to log in to the administrative panel (Mailman) for this list, and it times out on me. Stays timed out for quite a few hours.

4) We decide that since Mailman seems to be broken (and we've opened a ticket at this point), the mailing has to go out, so we break the list into chunks of about 200 addresses each, and mail it. About 33% come back with every address marked "unroutable."

5) In the meantime, a small mailing has gone out (about 16 members) to alert some people of an upcoming teleconference call. This message just vanishes into the ether. And so I end up calling HostGator again.

6) This is about 30 minutes ago (12:20pm, Sep. 16) - I speak to Ben, who tells me that HostGator only allows 200 outgoing emails per hour, and some unspecified number per minute. I suggest that HostGator should post this somewhere, since I've never heard of it. He says it's already there, either the Terms of Service or Frequently Asked Questions. I hang up and go look, and it isn't to be found in either place.

I'm just a bit frustrated (again) with the lack of transparency. As it stands, we are losing thousands of dollars in missed registrations, because I suspect that the notice we sent out last month and the one in July simply vanished as well - people have been calling to say that they never got a notification. Basically, all I'm told by HostGator is that people are working on it, and now we're having other business disrupted because we ran into a message limit that we didn't know existed. I understand that HostGator has to take precautions against spammers, but a mailing that goes out once per month, three times a year (literally, once in July, August, September) is hardly spam. This important mailing limit information should be much more widely available.

[gregw]

nate,

Two things:

1. Always link a large file, instead of attaching it. Just post it to your website and provide a link to it for people to download it at their convinience. This solves several potential issues:
a. Problems with Mailman blocking attachments or large files
b. Issues with your users blocking attachments
c. Issues with slow modem users getting frustrated with your large attachments
d. Undo loads on the server which affect all of us.


2. If you are having that many problems with Mailman, I suggest using Mail Bomber (http://www.getfreefile.com) which allows you to not only send mass mailings, but you can also purchase (from the same company) a local SMTP server which turns your computer into it's own SMTP server. My company sends out about 2000 emails to a list about once a quarter, and this is what we use to do it, and it works great. I don't trust mailman either.

Greg

[nate_s_]

Hi,

The suggestion about linking the file is what we ended up doing; the only problem is that none of our mailing lists are working properly anymore so this solution is temporarily as useless as anything else. Any mails sent to any of our lists by internal people here or by members in the world at large are simply vanishing into a black hole bigger than the sock-eating-dryer one. Personally, I would've linked it to begin with, but most of the users on these lists are Canadian government agencies, insurance companies, or law enforcement - not very good with computers and scared of anything that involves a browser, and the mailings are subject to committee unless I can show a good technical reason not to do it (which I now can :-D).

I will check into your second suggestion, and I do indeed appreciate it. Thanks much.

If any HG techs see this, it's 7pm of the 16th and this problem is still ongoing, particularly in regards to emails vanishing and never showing up in moderator requests or archives, irrespective of the sender being us or an outside domain. In addition, I haven't heard from your techs who were supposed to email me aboout reducing the send-per-minute in Mailman - you told us to do this, we called you and told you that there is no such option in the Mailman admin, and you said wait for the email. *sigh*

[Stef]

nate,

did you get a reply from Support already, as they told you to wait for a mail?
If not, I'll see if someone can take a look at this.

I know you have other things on your mind, but when possible can you please read this thread and provide the requested info. Thank you!

Stef.

[nate_s_]

Hi Stef,

We called them a couple of times (once around 9:30am EST and once again around 12:30pm EST) and spoke with Ben, who basically told us to wait for an email. Apparently, "they're working on something else [!] and will get to your stuff as soon as they can" or something along those lines.

At this point, mailman has been down (this affects all of our domains, of course) pretty much since Wednesday afternoon, which completely sucks because any mail being sent to those lists is simply vanishing into a big black hole. We don't get them in the catch-all email account, they're not held pending moderator release, and they certainly don't send, so at this point if any list members have sent messages, those messages are lost. I have to say HostGator has been less than helpful on this one, as I have had to pretty much pull teeth to get any sort of idea of what's going on, and I haven't gotten an email from them since 12:30pm EST yesterday (Thursday Sept. 16).

[nate_s_]

Figured I may as well update this.

Just called again (since it's been another three hours and no emails from them) and Ben tells me that they are NOT working on it. I ask him why not, he says that they have a server down (? interesting, didn't tell me that this morning when the response was that HG was also not working on it) and they'll work on this later.

At this point, we are just sitting here twiddling our thumbs and losing money. Joy.

[GatorJustin]

Sorry for stopping in so late, but I was not available for most of the day.

Nate, is it safe to assume that your issue has been resolved?

[nate_s_]

Hi Justin,

The problem has definitely not been resolved, and it's ongoing since Wendesday. In fact, I still haven't even gotten so much as an email from HG since the last I mentioned earlier, so that means that I haven't heard anything since my call yesterday afternoon which I mentioned in the last post.:-P

[GatorJustin]

Nate, I have forwarded this to Brent so hopefully it will be resolved for you soon.

-Justin

[nate_s_]

Just so you know, it's still broken and I still haven't heard anything and it's almost noon EST, Sunday Sep. 19.

[GatorJustin]

Nate, I'm being told that this has now been resolved. Can you verify? Thanks.

-Justin

[nate_s_]

Hi Justin,

Seems to be. Hopefully it stays fixed. A couple points of interest for anyone who was following this thread:

1) HostGator basically says that they only support 200 emails/hour (Ben)
2) HostGator apparently drops any emails over that 200/hour limit (Ben)
3) MailMan supports lists of indefinite size (CPanel)
4) HostGator says Mailman sends all its messages out at once (Ben)
5) HostGator says there's no way to make it send, for example, 2/minute (Lyron)
6) Therefore, it seems likely that by default, HostGator only supports mailing lists up to 200 members. (can someone confirm?)

This should probably be posted somewhere, as it's fairly important information.

[kraftbj]

Is there any knowledge if this problem exists with a dedicated account? I would assume not...

[kmaw]

You can set the limit in WHM under Tweak Settings

The maximum each domain can send out per hour (0 is unlimited):

[Serra]

Originally Posted by nate_s_

Hi Justin,

Seems to be. Hopefully it stays fixed. A couple points of interest for anyone who was following this thread:

1) HostGator basically says that they only support 200 emails/hour (Ben)
2) HostGator apparently drops any emails over that 200/hour limit (Ben)
3) MailMan supports lists of indefinite size (CPanel)
4) HostGator says Mailman sends all its messages out at once (Ben)
5) HostGator says there's no way to make it send, for example, 2/minute (Lyron)
6) Therefore, it seems likely that by default, HostGator only supports mailing lists up to 200 members. (can someone confirm?)

This should probably be posted somewhere, as it's fairly important information.

This is part of the TOS. If you read it, it will provide all of your answers on mailing lists.

Everything you sayin 1-6 is correct, but misleading. You can use something like PHPLists to feed lists larger than 200 records. You may have a mailing list with 1000 members, you will just need to create 5 mailmail lists and send them out spaced out over 5 hours.

On a dedicated server, the owner of the server sets the list size. If you are the only person on the server, set it to 0. (unlimited) if you have customers on the box, make sure you don't let them send more than about 200 an hour. Sending more than that can lead to black listing. (thus why HG uses 200)

http://www.hostgator.com/mailpolicy.shtml

[kmaw]

Also, note that those posts are over two years old... many things have changed since. Same with the other thread in this category that was recently revived on the same subject.