How to send mail to hundreds of receivers?

Question

Now i do send emails with this loop:

while($data = mysql_fetch_assoc($resultat)){
    ...
    sendMail();
}

function sendMail(){
    ...
    mail($to, $subject, $text, $headers);
}

But this is not so memory efficient what I can understand. The script should be able to send to over 1000 receivers.

Do you know how to do this in a better way? I want to keep it simple and do not wont to install any framework.

Answer 1

Drop a "note" to a cron job. In other words, write a file that a cron job picks up and performs the lengthy operation outside of the PHP session.

Of course you can use PHP for the actual script that cron will run :-)

The reason I am suggesting this: you probably don't want to hold up your PHP session hanging for too long: delegating to an external process makes (probably) more sense.

Also note that each PHP session is very often limited in memory: delegating to an external process might relieve this strain.

Answer 2

Similar question

Answer 3

$to='[email protected];[email protected];[email protected];...';

Answer 4

You say you don't want to install a framework, but I don't think PHP's mail is really built for sending out massive amounts of email quickly and efficiently. I would try Pear's Mail_Queue or Mail.

Answer 5

AJAX is probably the best for such operations.

With AJAX, you can call a small *.php-File containing just the function to send an email to the next user. That is called every bunch of seconds and you're done.

Of course, if you don't like client-scripting, such operations become quite difficult to manage with PHP.

Answer 6

Look into integrating with list manager software such as Majordomo. It's easy to do an adequate job broadcasting emails. It's hard to do a great job, and these people have put a lot of blood sweat and tears into making this work well.

Just be mindful that your recipients are expecting the email, or you'll end up getting yourself put on realtime spam blacklists, and possibly have your host kick you off their network.