I'm not sure if I should categorize this as a support request or what, but I just spent several hours testing a variety of configurations to find that nothing I did helped to speed up the sending of a newsletter.

First, I know the MTA and such are configured well, because I have another mailing list app (ListMailPro) which sends 25 emails PER SECOND to the Exim queue.

About 6 months ago, when I was sending out newsletters on a regular basis, Simplenews with MimeMail would send 500 emails in less than 90 seconds, which I found acceptable.

Now, it's taking 160 seconds to send 200 emails.

Yes, I have more modules enabled, and the ones I have, have had a few updates since then, but they are required for my site. Here's a list of enabled modules in case it may be related:

404 Blocks 6.x-1.3
Advanced help 6.x-1.2
Auto Assign Role 6.x-1.2
CAPTCHA 6.x-2.3
CKEditor - WYSIWYG HTML editor 6.x-1.2
Content Construction Kit (CCK) 6.x-2.8
Date 6.x-2.6
FileField 6.x-3.7
Fivestar 6.x-1.19
Go - url redirects 6.x-1.2
Google Analytics 6.x-2.3
ImageAPI 6.x-1.9
ImageCache 6.x-2.0-beta10
ImageField 6.x-3.7
IMCE 6.x-1.4
Insert View 6.x-2.x-dev (2010-Jul-11)
jQuery UI 6.x-1.4
LoginToboggan 6.x-1.7
Mime Mail 6.x-1.0-alpha6
Pathauto 6.x-1.5
Permalink 6.x-1.6
Profile role 6.x-1.3
Read More Link (Drupal 6 and earlier) 6.x-5.0-rc7
Scheduler 6.x-1.7
Secure Pages 6.x-1.8
Simplenews 6.x-1.3
Simplenews on register 6.x-1.0
SWF Tools 6.x-2.5
Taxonomy Access Control Lite 6.x-1.4
Token 6.x-1.15
Token Filter 6.x-1.0
Ubercart 6.x-2.4
Ubercart Affiliate v2 6.x-2.5
Ubercart Discounts (Alternative) 6.x-2.x-dev (2010-Nov-16)
Ubercart Ticket 6.x-1.0-beta6
UC Variable Price 6.x-1.0-rc3
Views 6.x-2.11
Voting API 6.x-2.3

In my testing, I added Elysia Cron and set it so Simplenews was the ONLY thing being triggered. Didn't help.

Anyways, the point is that when I added PHPMailer, the performance of sending newsletters didn't change one iota. Exactly the same amount of time to send each batch of 200 emails. (And yes, the keepalive option was checked, and tests indicated that emails going out were from PHPMailer and not the default mail engine.)

At this point, I'm at my wit's end. I don't know what else to test. It seems that adding the PHPMailer module should have had SOME effect, but it didn't.

Any ideas why PHPMailer did not improve sending speed?

Comments

Gabriel R.’s picture

Gabriel R. commented

I am seeing similar speed issues. It actually takes several seconds to send 25 emails via SMTP.

AlanT’s picture

AlanT commented

I found that the core of my speed problems were that I did not have a "mail.css" file in my theme, and this caused a MAJOR slowdown. (Note that I listed MIME Mail as an installed module.)

Once I added a "mail.css" file, sending speeds returned to 500 emails in 45 seconds (without PHPMailer). I have not yet tested PHPMailer again to see if it affects the faster speed.

oadaeh’s picture

oadaeh commented
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

This issue is being closed due to Drupal 6 being at the end of its life. If you feel this is still a valid issue for the Drupal 7 compatible branch of this module, feel free to re-open this issue and provide updated information.