E-Mail Sending Limit

[chuck]

On my web page (chuck.heliohost.org) I have a Perl CGI program that is being used to register teams and volunteers for a problem solving competition for kids. One of the features is to send e-mail out to everyone who is registered. The problem is we keep hitting a limit of 60 e-mails per hour. We only send e-mail to people who have registered and supplied us with their e-mail address. Is there any way to get that limit lifted?

[chuck]

My site was suspended because of hitting this limit. When it was re-enabled, the limit was lowered to 1 / hour. I can't operate the site without hitting that limit. Each time someone registers or updates a registration the system sends them a confirmation and the administrator a notice. Please - I'm trying to get everyone registered by this weekend so we can train our volunteers. The tournament is in another month and then I'll make other arrangements to host the site. I just need to get through the next few weeks.

 

Can you help us?

[Krydos]

Yeah, it sounds like our automatic antispam prevention measures are working well. Thanks for testing them out for us. As you've already been told we recommend users only send about 50 emails per day without first asking and receiving permission to send more. If you greatly exceed that amount your account is throttled to 24 emails per day (1 per hour), and if you greatly greatly exceed that limit by a ridiculous amount your account is suspended.

 

Question #1: Do you ever send emails to anyone who hasn't personally signed up for them on your site?

Question #2: Are all of the emails sent instantly when someone directly does something on your site, or is it more of a mailing list that are sent out every once in a while to everyone who has signed up?

Question #3: How does one stop receiving emails from you if they don't want them?

[chuck]

Question #1 - I don't have a way to verify that they personally supplied their e-mail, but we run the site with the understanding that all e-mails are only supplied by or for people who have agreed to receive e-mails from the program. At any point if someone indicates that they don't want to participate, they are removed from the system.

Question #2 - Both. When a participant in the tournament registers, they get a confirmation e-mail. As the tournament approaches, we use the list to provide information to the various participants. Question #3 - There are two lists, Teams and Volunteer Judges. Once a team signs up, they will be on a list to receive announcements related to the program as we go from year to year. They may remove themselves from the list at any point or ask us to do it. The Judges e-mails are only kept until we send them a thank-you e-mail the day after the tournament. At that point, they will most likely never hear from us again unless they sign up for another year. Some years we have sent out one more announcement at the beginning of the next tournament year. Some of our Judges aren't affiliated with a team and we want to make sure that they know when the system is available for them to register for another year.

 

Quite frankly, I signed up for the Heliohost account to have a personal space to develop the software, mostly because there was no advertised e-mail limit. I've been working with the New Jersey affiliate of the organization for a few years (http://www.njdi.org), but am getting ready for a move to Florida. I've offered the registration system to more affiliates of the DI Organization (http://www.destinationimagination.org/) and have some interest, but none of the others have taken it up at this point - only NJDI. As such, I was looking for a more generic host than any of the individual affiliates could provide. It's also easier to manage the software somewhere I have full access to the site.

 

In the end, if you can help me get past the NJ tournament next month, that would be great. After that I have another year to figure out what my options are.

 

Thanks.