Hi all. Run a small but fast-growing social network and we're getting to the point where our email notifications (e.g., SoAndSo Added You as a Friend) isn't scaling and we need to find an alternative solution. We're going to be sending out 1,000+ notifications a day and one option would be to run Postfix (or something similar) on our servers. Of course the challenge with this is message delivery. Our concern is that even if abide by strict protocols and give our people unsubscribe options we'll still get listed as Spam. Some of the hosted services seem to have solutions that help with this given that they have good relationships with major ISPs, email hosts, etc. Just curious as to how other social networks handle problems like this. Appreciate any help!
1000+ messages a day is nothing. I've managed servers that deal with that much mail traffic in less than an hour. If you're concerned about getting blacklisted or something, keep a pool of IPs that you can use to send email and either divide the requests across those or keep them as a backup in case the main IP gets blacklisted. Where you'll have to work hard is making sure your mails authenticate and aren't treated as junk by the majority of recipients out there. There are a number of ways to improve on this. Make sure your reverse lookups are correctly configured, publish SPF/SenderID records for your domain, sign outgoing mails with DomainKeys/DKIM etc. It is becoming a very tricky business so you may just be better off getting a third-party service for this part.
Thanks Boltok. Yeah, I think it's avoiding having our message treated as junk that most concerns us. In terms of the third-party services that handle this do you have any specific recommendations?