You didn't say what the total number of emails being sent are. If it's small (in the hundreds), I would look at wrapping Mail::Mailer and a tuned sendmail configuration; however, if it's in the thousands, Mail::Bulkmail may be fine. Mail::Bulkmail hasn't been updated in a while but I just looked at the code last month and except for a few colorful comments by the author, it was still quite solid.

You may also want to look into some of the mailing list managers out there.

-derby

At present the list is just short of 500, but new signups come in about ten a day, so realistically it's going to have to cope with thousands rather than hundreds. I'm reassured that you think Mail::Bulkmail is sound. I wonder why nobody's maintaining, given that it meets such an obvious need.

§ George Sherston

I've just recently used Mail::SendMail to send out 600 invitations and reminders for a graduate research survey. It took all of about 5 minutes or so. I've had no problems with it yet. I'd be interested in knowing what the magical cutoff point is--just in case I have to help someone with a larger mailout.

--Jim

If you don't want to mess with Mail::Bulkmail, the fastest option by far is to use qmail with the qmail-inject program. I know companies that use this to do their mail with great results. You can find wrappers around qmail-inject at Mail::Transport::Qmail and Mail::Mailer.

@users = &Get_Users_from_Db("$some_db");

while ( defined($usr = shift(@users)) ) {
   chomp($usr);
#
# Assume the rcpt and send methods appropriatly process the
# reponse from the server also here we would add error
# checking for properly formated email addie.
#
   $smtp->rcpt("$usr");

   $cc_head ? $cc_head .= ", $usr" : $cc_head = "$usr";
}

print $smtp->send("DATA");
#
# At this point we talk directly to the socket because the 
# smtp server does not repond with anything till we are done
#
$socket = $smtp->socket();

print $socket "From: $from\n";
print $socket "To: $list_name\n";
print $socket "CC: $cc_head\n" if ($CC && $cc_head);
print $socket "Subject: $subject\n\n";
print $socket "@message_body\n\n";

$ok = $smtp->send('.');

&Some_Error_Routine("sending mail") if (!$ok);
[download]

I send out anywhere from 3 to 6 automated emails every Friday afternoon to a list of around 35 people using Mail::Sendmail. It's very slow but so far it's never failed. I'm more concerned with the receiving server bouncing the message because the pager it's going to can only handle so many characters.

At least you can pull the addresses from a MySQL database... I have to parse an Excel spreadsheet to get mine. That might actually be why it's so slow. ;)

I think I'll look at Mail::Bulkmail. Who knows, maybe it's exactly what I need.

Makeshifts last the longest.