Email help

[tamaranth]

Can anyone advise?

I have a client for whom I've set up a database-based email system. The database is Access, it creates a 'to' list of targetted contacts and sends emails using (spit) Outlook. Client is now complaining that she can't use Outlook to send emails when she's not logged into her usual ISP: all pretty standard (though not helped by her being in Uganda).

Question, then, is:
Can you suggest a solution for mass emailing, using a contact list created on an ad-hoc basis by a query within the Access database, that would permit Client to send emails regardless of how / where she's logged on?

Any solution would have to be free, and pretty low-maintenance.

EDIT: I have no access to the PC (in fact, a laptop) or the user, except via very intermittent email. She is PC-illiterate. And I am not so good at all this pinging and SMTP, either. (Didn't know that you could get around the ISP-reliant sending thing, for example.)

Thanks in advance!

Comments

[incy.livejournal.com]

yes, ona absic level. you need to have a list of isps she uses and there outgoing smpt server. Then when she logs on to a different one find the command line code to change the smpt outgoing server of the current ISP (I would guess it is somewhere in the registry, but i am sure google can answer that).

However you need to detect which isp she is connected to, would suggest try pinging round the servers until you get a hit. Then reset back to the default isp at the end.

Not sure if this will work or not, but it is an idea

[drplokta]

It seems unlikely, as a free outgoing mail server that can be accessed from anywhere is exactly what spammers want in order to send their emails, and so will quickly be blacklisted.

There are two solutions, neither of which fits your criteria entirely.

You could run an SMTP server on the local PC, and have it send email directly -- which is fine, except that some ISPs block outgoing traffic on port 25 to anything but their own email servers -- the best known is Postcast, which isn't free, but there are free programs out there.

Or you could set up a paid SMTP account -- which isn't free, but is pretty cheap. www.authsmtp.com charges £14 per year for an account that can send up to 1000 emails per month.

[spride.livejournal.com]

What the good doctor said. AuthSMTP is what she needs; a mail-sending server that requires a user and password before allowing her to send mail. With an account on such a server she can use whichever ISP she likes to reach that server, provided that ISP doesn't force all SMTP (mail) traffic to its own servers.

Mass mailing....from West Africa...hmmm. She's not starting with the decks loaded in her favour when approaching ISPs, unforch; I imagine many of them will immediately leap to the conclusion she's a 419 artist or spammer.

[soulstar.livejournal.com]

Ah, so she doesn't always log on from the same location / isp? Does she have webspace / a domain name / anything like that? Because sending from her own domain mail servers could be one way around it - if they are still isp dependant, then there would still be the option of setting up some kind of online script (php if the facility is there, perhaps) to handle the mail sending.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Most of the time she is in Kew, but her husband works in Uganda so she visits from time to time. I had no idea she was going to do a mailshot from there. I have very little idea about any of this SMTP stuff (my role, as I thought, was to provide the database and queries that'd generate a 'to' list) -- would she be able to carry on using Outlook?

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

see above -- no, she's usually in Kew, but currently visiting her husband in Kampala. I won't be able to do anything with her current set-up (doubt she'd pay my travel!) and doubt I'd be able to talk her through setting anything up either. Plus am not sure about any of it myself!

May be in touch again when (if) I get a reply from her. But thanks!

[spride.livejournal.com]

Yes, she should. (Woudn't you know) Outlook doesn't always play nice with some implementations of AuthSMTP but the cases I have come across are very rare. One ISP I know that have good knowledge of this isWizards (http://www.wizards.co.uk/), run by a friend of mine Chris (who doesn't run a LJ but is known to many of the CIX/LJ community as A Good Egg.

[soulstar.livejournal.com]

Ahhh. So basically, she didn't give you all the relevant information, and now is moaning cos it doesn't work how she hadn't told you it needed to? ;-) I think she might just have to live with it as it is unless she's willing to pay out to fix it.