Sending bulk emails

I have been asked by a church which ISP would allow sending bulk emails (250) at a time. The church uses their ISP BT Mail at present, but they have problems when sending their church notices to their members whilst the lockdown is in effect.
Would appreciate if anyone has any idea on how to overcome the limits BT Mail sending bulk emails.

What is the limit?

I currently send regular mail shots to the patrons at our local Community Centre, who've asked to go on the list, simply by merging a Word document to email with addresses and names pulled from an Access database. Each one goes as a separate personalised email. I haven't got that many in my list (about 120 at the moment) but not had any problems up to now (touch wood), and it's never more than one mailshot in a month.

p.s. PlusNet (so BT family)

Edited by longedge (Fri 10-Apr-20 17:45:49)

Thanks @ longedge for you input.

So by what you are saying it looks as though a mail merge would be the way to go?

The church would need no more than 250 email addresses from an Access database.

If you have users who are not comfortable with Access, you can also draw the data for Word Mail Merge down from an Excel spreadsheet (and it will probably work from a table in a Word document).

It works for my modest requirements. Very simple database where I hold email address, first name, surname, date joined, phone number and a few False/True fields for GDPR confirmed, committee member etc. A couple of queries to populate normal mailshot and one for committee messages.

You could just as easily do it from an Excel file, I go for Access even for the simple jobs just to keep my hand in

If there were a limit of say 150, you could always do it in two goes.

Because every email looks as if it's personal from me to the recipient I get a lot of replies each time from people thanking me which always makes me feel a bit guilty . To send a mail shot takes me less than a couple of minutes.

Obviously there are commercial solutions that have no limits but having looked at a couple, I decided it was overkill for what I wanted. There are also free entry level solutions. The 'proper' solutions have all sorts of bells and whistles like automated joing/leaving, monitoring and reporting etc. etc. none of which I need.

The only downside I've come across is that you can't send attachments but since you can send as html, once again it suits me as all I ever need to do is include an odd graphic, posters and the like.

Generally for sending bulk emails you don't want to use a normal email because senders get blacklisted and blocked in spam filters. Instead you use a service to send them for you who do an all-inclusive service to manage the emails, unsubscribes and such like. It's this I fear that may be the problem you might be having.

For 250 emails, this isn't really a big deal, and you can use one of the most popular mailshot platforms for free: https://mailchimp.com/pricing/

Thanks @GonePostal

I am confident in using Access to create a database but this is for someone who is not that savvy and giving her instructions over the phone to create an Access database would be impossible for her to take on!

I am now composing a Word document with instructions on how to send a Word document to multi recipients using the mail merge functions in Word. I think this would be easier for her to understand.

What I would like to know is if this method is sent like @longedge says as "Each one goes as a separate personalised email."?

I should add that my mail client is Outlook, and yes every email is a separate entity.

It avoids one of the big mistakes people make when sending bulk emails, using mailing lists and sending every recipients address to every user - ideal for malware to harvest.

@longedge This person will also be using Outlook, so, if the email is sent as a separate entity that is a bonus.
Thanks for that.

A few other suggestions to look at:

https://sendgrid.com/pricing/
https://www.mailjet.com/pricing/
https://www.mailgun.com/pricing