Send email via ISP or host account?

[Jon12345]

What is the most reliable way to send an email? I have a script that will send an email out but I get errors saying "SMTP cound not connect to any DNS server. Either none are configured or all are down."

Is it more reliable sending via the host or the ISP?

Regards,

Jon

[oilman]

are you sure your host provides smtp? not all hosts do - most only offer pop accounts for receiving and then you send with your ISP account. It keeps the hosting companies off the hook for spam.

As for reliability that really depends on your providers - it could go either way.

[dataguy]

I just finished a test on this situation. I host on Windows, so the specifics may not apply.

I have a web site that sends out a few thousand welcome emails a day to visitors. The email contains a link to an image on my server that records when the image is viewed.

For two weeks I used CDONTS to send out the welcome email from the SMTP service built into the web server. For those two weeks I recorded a 35% view rate.

The next two weeks I used ASPEMail to send the emails though a standard IMail mail server. I changed the image link so not to mix in views from email sent the previous weeks. The view rate for the email sent from the mail server ended up being close to 75%.

I'd love to know if the emails sent from the web server didn't all get delivered, got stuck in spam filters, etc. I haven't been able to nail that down, but for whatever reason, I've learned that the mail server is definately the way to go.