I have implemeted a system that dispatches between 600 to 2000 emails every night. An email is sent for each recepient. My system is hosted on a shared Linus server. I have not heard any complaints from the hosting company so far.
Here are my recommendations: - Have a cron job that kicks off your PHP script at intervals long enough to guarantee the completion of an earlier execution of the script. - Have a sleep interval between a predefined number of emails sent. You need to figure out what works well for you depending on your dispatch frequency, etc. (I would keep the sleep interval short.) - No need to nice anything. The problem is the load on the smtp server. You need to give it some time to process what you sent already before sending more emails. - Log all outbound activity. We log the email addresses of who receives each message. That provides auditing and helps in recovering any failures. - We use flags in our database to flag what messages were sent successfully. That way, we can search and resend any failed messages. Hope this helps. -- Anas Mughal
