SOLVED would a VPS be better for email campaign

[keat63]

Let me start by saying that I'm not spamming, anyone who knows me on here knows that I'm a legitimate user.


About 4 times per year, we send an email campaign to our customer base.
We currently have about 45,000 customers of which around 15,000 are opted out from email marketting, and we respect this.

I won't send these emails from my dedicated server or domain for fear of being blacklisted.
I usually use mailchimp for this.
But the pricing on mailchimp is now ridiculous, so I'm wondering if I might just be better off having a seperate VPS for this purpose.

I can buy a cheap VPS for £100 per year, mailchimp will cost me almost £800 per campaign. (4 x £800 = £2400)

Lets assume I were to go this route and send out a 30,000 strong email campaign in say a 30 minute period, whats the likelyhood of this VPS becoming blacklisted within this 30 minutes period and all my emails failing to be delivered.

As I say, I'm not spamming, but I dare not risk our main server landing on an RBL.

 

[cPanelLauren]

Hi @keat63

A VPS will work for this, actually when I used to work for a hosting company I had a customer that did this. He hosted his sites on a separate VPS and sent his email campaigns (completely legitimate emails) from his mail VPS. It worked out really well for him but there are some things to keep in mind.

1. IP reputation is something that is built up over time. Unfortunately, in the beginning, it may be that you do encounter more issues with blacklisting. I always used the following to check IP reputation in those days: IP and Domain Reputation Center || Cisco Talos Intelligence Group - Comprehensive Threat Intelligence
2. It is imperative you properly configure SPF, rDNS, DKIM and I'd suggest DMARC
3. If you're going to send that many emails out I'd suggest looking at modifying some exim settings like deliver_queue_load_max in the configuration as exim mail processes are short lived but that many can cause a huge spike in load which will cause exim to hold mail until the load drops below the specified value which defaults to 12 in the Advanced Exim Configuration Manager
4. You may want to participate in some of the feedback loops such as AoL/Yahoo's here: Verizon Media Postmaster
5. I'd run my newsletters through something like Newsletters spam test by mail-tester.com and check the server configuration with MX Lookup Tool - Check your DNS MX Records online - MxToolbox before sending any mail
6. Unfortunately, even after doing all of these things, and doing them correctly you will end up being blacklisted in some places, though taking all the mentioned steps will greatly reduce the severity. Even large companies that do this function solely experience blacklisting.
7. Familiarize yourself with how to remove yourself from blacklists as well as looking them up and keeping an eye on this when your campaign is in progress

I hope this helps!

 

[keat63]

Thanks Lauren.
Switching to a VPN would have been a little tricky given the time it takes to set it up, and the short time I had to react.

I found a bulk email sender late last week, which was much more competative than Mailchimp, so I switched providers.
My mail campaign went out with them this morning, and is looking healthy so far.

 

[SamuelM]

Hello @keat63,

I'm glad to hear that switching to a new provider helped with your mail campaign. I will go ahead and mark this thread as solved. Please feel free to update it if you have anything to follow up with.

Best regards