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We offer a free and paid version of our product. We have about 100k users who have used one or the other. We'd like to start sending a monthly email newsletter to them (that they can opt out of). We're trying to figure out the best way to send the email.

So I see that iContact offers plans of up to 100k people, but its $600 / month which is more than we'd like to pay. So we're thinking of sending them from our dedicated server. Although we're not spamming, I'm afraid of getting blacklisted just due to the quantity we send. So I guess my questions are:

  1. Are our fears of getting blacklisted legitimate? I'm not really sure how that works.
  2. Do you guys have any other suggestions (including cheaper paid services)?

Thanks! Jim

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If you've got 100,000 users, it doesn't sound to me like you're a startup. – Chris Morgan Sep 29 '11 at 11:04

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First off, don't attempt to do this yourself. Sending mass amounts of email quickly, reliably and dealing with all the spam protection mechanisms today is an immense amount of work. Sending 100,000 emails is not trivial, you will get flagged for spam if you don't do it correctly.

I recommend MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com/), they have lots of tiered pricing so you might be able to get something cheaper.

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Agreed. Mailchimp is the best. Doing this from your own server could have some negative consequences. – Ryan Doom Sep 29 '11 at 4:21
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MailChimp Compliance team will want you to give a lot of information before they will let you add and send a 100k users. You will need to prove how the list was collected and that you have the permission to market. – Tim Nash Sep 29 '11 at 10:21

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