How much email can I send from an ASP script?

There is no hard limit on the number of emails that your script can send, but it is subject to the ASP script timeout parameter for your site. To prevent run-away processes from taking down servers, we normally only allow scripts to run for 90 seconds. (This is not your session inactivity timeout, that is usually 5 to 20 minutes).

If you have a long mailing list, you may need to break the job up into smaller parts when your scripts hit the timeout limit. We may be able to raise the the script timeout limit for your page but if the list gets very long (usually around 1000) or if the individual messages are quite large large (>50K, or so), you may not be able to run this from a shared web server.

If the mailing list grows to the point where you can no longer run it on a shared web server, we can possibly execute your job on one of our batch servers. This usually means you need a SQL server database so the batch server can get to your mailing list, or you may be able to FTP an MDB file (or text file) containg the list to the batch server prior to running the batch.

Another option is to use a dedicated server. If your site is already large, complex and has high traffic, this may be your best alternative. For more information on dedicated server capacity and pricing, please contact our Sales department.

Normally you should not worry about any of this you start to experience problems with your existing scripts. Usually, your first step is to break the job into smaller parts and run them separately. The next step is to contact us about setting up a batch job. Note that we do have to charge for off-line batch processing. Typically the cost for off-line batch processing is 5 to 10 dollars per month per batch job, depending on the load on the batch server and run frequency.

For giant mailing lists the only alternative is a dedicated server and possibly dedicated bandwidth. Of course, you can always try running your mail job locally. The ability to do this depends on your connections to the Internet, your local ISP's outbound mail policy and other factors. 

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