Thanks for the responses. There are various reasons why mgmt doesn't want to handle this in-house, although I am fairly certain that's what we'll end up doing (along the lines of what Ken suggested). I need to present the options, though, so thanks David for the Mailgun recommendation, and to Steve for the caveats.
Joe On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:52 PM, Steve Kallestad <[email protected]> wrote: > ** I've been down that rabbit hole and the potential problems are an > enormous headache. > > The problem with using a commercial service to handle your mailing list is > that you're very dependent on not only their infrastructure, but their > reputation as well. > > All it takes is one of their *other* customers to end up on a spammer list > for your messages to have problems with delivery. Not to mention your own > messaging setup could trigger auto-flagging of that company as a spammer. > > If you can avoid it, you're better off handling things internally with > whatever infrastructure you have in place. Otherwise you run the danger of > learning way more about email delivery than anybody should ever really know. > > If you have to go external, choose a service that will leverage your own > companies hostnames for delivery. (autonotifications.yourcompany.comrather > than > mail.biglistprovider.com) so that when you do end up having users with > flagged messages you can whitelist without having to whitelist a plethora > of other companies at the same time. > > And if you do that, you want to make sure you use > SPF/DomainKeys/DKIM/SenderID again to ensure that your whitelisting is > valid. > > It really is a simple thing that you want. Unfortunately, spammers have > really mucked things up for the rest of us. > > Sorry - I don't have a recommended provider. I just had to throw my 2 > cents in. > > Steve > > On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 2:23 PM, Joe Castleman <[email protected]>wrote: > >> ** >> Howdy, >> >> I flagged this as off-topic since it really isn't a Remedy question per >> se, though it does involve a Remedy system. >> >> We need to send different kinds of notifications from ARS to various >> distribution lists. We would rather not build up these lists within ARS >> (mainly because many of the recipients don't have Remedy access; also so I >> won't have to be the one maintaining the distribution groups; and finally >> so ARS would only have to send one message to 1-5 recipients instead of >> 487). So we were thinking about setting up a separate server running >> Mailman, Listserv or similar, and maintain the distribution lists on that >> platform. >> >> However, management said, "why worry ourselves with more infrastructure?" >> and suggested looking into a commercial distribution service. For example, >> when Pottery Barn/Gap/whatever sends out a weekly marketing email, at the >> end of the email it says "Powered by MegaSpammer" or some such. Trouble >> is, these seem tailored to sending out feature-laden emails (as opposed to >> the plain text we need to send out), and to one particular distribution >> list. >> >> So, I'm back to looking for something like Mailman or Listserv, but >> paying someone else to take care of it (all we'd have to do is configure >> our mailing lists and send our messages). Can anyone recommend something >> like this? (Alternately we're thinking of getting a virtual server on the >> cloud somewhere like AWS, then installing Mailman on it, but then we'd >> still be on the hook for maintaining Mailman, and management prefers that >> we wouldn't even have to do that.) >> >> I wouldn't be surprised if I've overlooked something really obvious, but >> so far all I'm finding are the "Powered by SpamRockets" with the fancy HTML >> templates etc. >> >> Thanks, >> >> I'm Joe Castleman >> _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ >> > > _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ > _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years"
