> > > 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