> > > How many users will you have reading mail, or this outgoing mail
> > > only -- for "marketing" purposes?
> >
> > Outgoing only
>
> Ah. It sounds like you will be sending out UCE. Perhaps I
> should be as blunt as Ben Bolker, but I will go against my
> better judgment and continue responding -- and hopefully
> you'll do the right thing.
>
> > > Hardware-wise, Postfix can easily handle the sort of
> drops you are
> > > talking about.
> >
> > I am more familiar with sendmail, so would prefer it as a
> MTA. If this
> > is a problem, I'll have to learn Postfix, which is possible.
>
> Well, any MTA will send out mail for you. Sendmail is IMO the
> worst choice for an MTA because of its poor record of
> security and horrible maintenance issues. qmail is more
> secure, but it is horrible to maintain (to do anything useful
> with it, you have to apply at least 25 patches, and good luck
> maintaining it after that).
>
> qmail is also 10+ years old and hasn't been touched in most
> of those 10 years, although I hear very recently that the
> author is putting it into public domain.
>
> Postfix is the best choice in terms of being a modern MTA,
> secure, and easy to manage. It is also very efficient at
> sending and receiving mail, which should a priority for you,
> since you will be sending out so much mail.
>
> > > > what is your recommended software solution
> > >
> > > Postfix, LDAP, Dovecot, with a NetApp backend.
> >
> > Not MySQL but LDAP? Could you explain?
>
> Well, since you do not have local users reading mail, you can
> do away with LDAP and/or MySQL entirely, as well as Dovecot.
>
> You will definitely need a bounce server or two though, i.e.
> something to handle the high amount of bounces/rejections you
> will get. You will also definitely want a web server or two
> to handle unsubscriptions.
>
> > > How big are your lists and where did you get them from? A million
> > > emails a day sounds like you would run into trouble very quickly.
> >
> > Right, looks troublesome. Is there an equation to know approximate
> > maximum of emails/day per IP/domain?
>
> Not really. It's a gray area, and it changes all the time.
> There are companies that purport to know the thresholds that
> most major ISPs set and will give you a preconfigured MTA
> that won't surpass these limits (c.f. port25.com), but I
> submit to you that this is all fuzzy math and at the volumes
> you are talking about, you will run into trouble everywhere for sure.
>
> You need a deliverability team (see below).
>
> > The lists are 1-2 millions, legally bought.
>
> You may have purchased them legally, but I will bet you
> dollars to donuts that the list broker that you purchased
> them from didn't get them legally. After your first drop,
> you'll see what I'm talking about.
>
> > > In addition to the admins you hire to manage this mail setup, I
> > > would strongly recommend you have a dedicated team of
> deliverability
> > > people.
> >
> > I am sorry, I don't understand the meaning of
> deliverability people -
> > could you please explain this a bit further?
>
> All ESPs have a deliverability team. These people exist soley
> to manage relations with large ISPs (GMail, Yahoo, AOL,
> Hotmail, etc.), and to deal with ISPs and blacklists (Spamhaus, etc.).
>
> With a list number in the millions you will need people to
> manage all the complaints you will get. You can of course
> burn your bridges and jump from ISP to ISP as the number of
> unresolved complaints increase and your ISP loses its
> patience with you, but of course, that would make you a
> spammer, and you are not, right?
>
> > > Also, you should have multiple upstream ISPs, most ISPs
> nowadays are
> > > fairly strict nowadays and a million message drop/day sounds like
> > > you will be getting lots of cease-and-desist notices from
> your ISPs.
> >
> > Even if the servers are co-located and distributed among
> data centers
> > and have dedicated pipes each?
>
> Do you think the people you sell you colo services are going
> to put with you tainting their networks for very long?
>
> Thomas
I see.
Well, all notes taken, including whether to take this job or not.
I am not along with myself in this...
Thank you very much, indeed!
Arthur
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