best way to send email in php

mail function or phpmailer

[ashokarorain]

I am sending email to the member of wmy ebsites through cron job which run every minute, the job pick one name from database and send a mail to his email id. Presently I am using phpmailer which uses smtp and smtp username and password to send the email. I have another alternative to send email, mail function. I want to know which method is best, i.e which causes less load on server and more reliable, I suppose phpmailer is more reliable as I find out that all mails using mail function does not reach destination. I need advice and suggestion from more experienced user, that which method is best and what are their pros and cons.

Ashok

[coopster]

Does this get you started?

Best options for sending confirmation email [webmasterworld.com]

[ashokarorain]

Thanks coopster, actually that thread is more related with spam issue, but I want to know about which is more efficient and causes less burden on server. You told in previous thread

I don't think you need to be concerned as much with which method to use

But I suppose phpmailer which uses smtp causes more load on server. And If smtp failed it does not retry to send mail again. Am I right?

[coopster]

Sooner or later any one of these solutions is using SMTP to send the mail off. Even if you are using a MTA like the sendmail utility it is going to open and use the protocol (SMTP) to finish the job.

About the only issue I have heard about is amount of email and workaround solutions for this were to use a database to queue up and send massive amounts of emails off in batches using a cron job or otherwise.