fastest way to send mails using phpmailer smtp? - php

Question

i am using following phpmailer function to send 1000+ mails
<?php
function sendMail($sendTo,$Subject,$Body){
require_once 'PHPMailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php';
$mail = new PHPMailer;
$mail->isSMTP();
$mail->Host = 'smtp.example.com;smtp.example.com';
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = 'newsletter#example.com';
$mail->Password = 'password';
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'ssl';
$mail->Port = 465;
$mail->From = 'newsletter#example.com';
$mail->FromName = 'xyz';
$mail->WordWrap = 50;
$mail->isHTML(true);
$mail->addAddress($sendTo);
$mail->Subject = $Subject;
$mail->Body = ( stripslashes( $Body ) );
$mail->AltBody = 'Please Use a Html email Client To view This Message!!';
if(!$mail->send()) {
$return = 'Message could not be sent.';
// echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
$return = 'Message has been sent!';
}
return $return;
}
and this is the code i am using to call function
foreach ($emails as $email) {
$subject = "sample subject";
$body = "sample body";
sendMail($email, $subject, $body);
}
size of $emails array is 1000+
is there any faster and better way to do this?

Answer 1

You should start by reading the docs provided with PHPMailer where you will find this example.
Of particular note in there, make sure you use SMTPKeepAlive - you may find benefit in sorting your list by domain to maximise connection re-use.
As zerkms said, you should submit to a local mail server for best performance, though surprisingly using mail or sendmail options in PHPMailer is not always faster than SMTP to localhost, largely because postfix' sendmail binary opens a synchronous SMTP connection to localhost anyway - postfix' docs recommend SMTP to localhost for best performance for this reason.
If you are sending to localhost, don't use auth or encryption as the overhead doesn't gain you anything, but if you are using a remote server, use tls on port 587 in preference to the obsolete ssl on port 465.
Generally sending directly to end users is to be avoided - the SMTP client in PHPMailer is somewhat dumb - it does not handle queuing at all, so any domains with greylisting or delivery deferrals for traffic control will fail to be delivered. the best approach is to use SMTP to a nearby MTA and leave the queue handling to that. You can get bounces back from that as well so you can remove bad addresses from your list.

Answer 2

Untested, but this should work.
Basically, it reuses the original object (thus reducing memory allocations).
require_once 'PHPMailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php';
class BatchMailer {
var $mail;
function __construct () {
$this->mail = new PHPMailer;
$this->mail->isSMTP();
$this->mail->Host = 'smtp.example.com;smtp.example.com';
$this->mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$this->mail->Username = 'newsletter#example.com';
$this->mail->Password = 'password';
$this->mail->SMTPSecure = 'ssl';
$this->mail->SMTPKeepAlive = true;
$this->mail->Port = 465;
$this->mail->From = 'newsletter#example.com';
$this->mail->FromName = 'xyz';
$this->mail->WordWrap = 50;
$this->mail->isHTML(true);
$this->mail->AltBody = 'Please use an HTML-enabled email client to view this message.';
}
function setSubject ($subject) {
$this->mail->Subject = $subject;
}
function setBody ($body) {
$this->mail->Body = stripslashes($body);
}
function sendTo ($to) {
$this->mail->clearAddresses();
$this->mail->addAddress($to);
if (!$this->mail->send()) {
// echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $this->mail->ErrorInfo;
return false;
} else {
return true;
}
}
}
$batch = new BatchMailer;
$batch->setSubject('sample subject');
$batch->setBody('sample body');
foreach ($emails as $email) {
$batch->sendTo($email);
}

Answer 3

Drop the function into c++ via cgi. A c++ mailer would be far more robust than hitting the entire http framework first. http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/windows/86562/
But PhP already uses hash table for it's associative array, so you won't pick up anymore speed with a hash table. So you really are sort of maxed out in your web framework.
Drop it to a system level function and c is your fastest/leanest choice.
Unless you are really talented with assembly language.