How to get the result of send email via SMTP protocol? - php

Question

everybody,
I am working on Email system to send emails via SMTP protocol with PHP,
everything goes fine and now I can send messages without a problem, I have tow problems Actually and I hope I will find a solution,
1 - I send email to users using a phpmailer library, but I can not control and get the result of sending email because I send about 10 emails at one SMTP connection.
this is my send code
$mail = new PHPMailer;
$froms=$respu['froms'];
$mail->Timeout = 3600;
$mail->SMTPDebug = 2; // Enable verbose debug output
$mail->isSMTP(); // Set mailer to use SMTP
$mail->Host = $respu['server']; // Specify main and backup SMTP servers
$mail->SMTPAuth = $respu['authentication']; // Enable SMTP authentication
$mail->Username = $respu['username']; // SMTP username
$mail->Password = $respu['password']; // SMTP password
$mail->SMTPSecure = $respu['security']; // Enable TLS encryption, `ssl` also accepted
$mail->Port = $respu['port']; // TCP port to connect to
$mail->SetFrom($respu['username'],$froms);
$mail->AddAddress($to);
$mail->Subject = $subject;
$mail->MsgHTML($message);
if(!$mail->Send()) {
//$errors=$mail->getSMTPInstance()->getError();
$date=date('Y-m-d h:i');
echo $msg= "Message Not Sent: to $to " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
$date=date('Y-m-d h:i');
$sql="insert into log (log_text,user_email,log_time,status)values ('$msg','$to','$date',0) ";
$this->query_return($sql);
exit();
} else {$date=date('Y-m-d h:i');
$sql="insert into log (log_text,user_email,log_time,status)values ( 'Message Sent Successfully ','$to','$date',1) ";
$this->query_return($sql);
}
the if(!$mail->Send()) condition return true every time even if the email is wrong . it working like to test if the SMTP connection is done or not, I want to know if the email received by users or not.
my second problem is, I have more than 3000 mail address and I want to send email to them at the same time, what is happening is the procedure take a long time and I have to wait for a long time to finish it, how can I do it faster.

Answer 1

For sending to lists, use the mailing list example provided with PHPMailer as a starting point. Also read the wiki article about sending to lists.
For maximum performance, you want to be submitting to a local or nearby mail server, which then takes responsibility for onward delivery. Some messages may fail to be delivered, in which case you will need to rely on bounce handlers; when a message fails to send, it will be returned to the Return-path address, which you can control by setting the Sender property in PHPMailer (by default it uses your From address). Note that as a sender you should never set a return-path header yourself; that's the receiving server's job.
Be warned though: handling bounces is very unpleasant; because bounce messages are fairly "invisible" in normal use, it means that they are extremely variable in quality. For example, it's possible for bounces from some Microsoft Exchange servers to omit the address that the message bounced for! You can handle that scenario (and many other shortcomings of badly-configured mail servers) by using VERP addressing to help you identify original recipient addresses, or even individual messages. However you deal with this, you need to be on very good speaking terms with your mail server. Using an external service to handle sends like this isn't necessarily any better, since they face exactly the same problems, though at least they may deal with much of the unpleasantness of bounce handling.
FYI I run https://smartmessages.net, an email marketing service; it's built around PHPMailer (which is partly why I'm the maintainer), and we can send at about 300 messages/second (using a very good mail server), so decent throughput is entirely possible with PHPMailer.