Is there a good SMTP service to send bulk emails (or other solution?)

• Is there a good SMTP service to send bulk emails (or another good solution for sending bulk emails, using the tools I already have, rather than a service like Mailchimp?) I have a couple of email lists I use to promote local events. The lists are in the range of 2000 to 3000 people. I've been assembling the names on these lists for several years, through a mix of different ways: Sometimes people sign up on a paper email list at events, sometimes they email and ask to be on the lists. Everyone who is on the lists asked to be on them, and unsub requests are, of course, respected quickly. I send emails to these lists in a couple of ways: Sometimes just using my regular email client (I use Thunderbird, and my email provider is Fastmail). More often, I use a script I wrote a very long time ago in ColdFusion, that is hosted at The Small Business Authority (formerly Crystaltech.) The thing is, most ISPs are not set up to encourage people to send 2000 or 3000 emails in a short period of time: They throttle the sending, or in some cases, temporarily shut down your account if you send too many messages. I tried Mailchimp, and it's a great service, but it requires, at least for now, too many changes in how I do things: It has its own list management, its own rules about how to send, etc. Re-arranging all my lists to happen in Mailchimp is a lot of work that I'd rather not do, at least for now. I'm wondering if there is some SMTP service that I can sign up for that will allow me to send 2000 - 3000 emails without causing a lot of hassles. Something where I could allow be to continue to use my existing tools, without stressing the SMTP servers at my regular email provider, or web host. Does anyone have any recommendations for services like this? There are plenty out there, but it's really hard to judge which ones are good. Some criteria I'm looking for: 1) Ideally, a very simple solution that does not require a lot of change to how I already do things. 2) Ideally, not too expensive (less than $50 a month, I'm hoping) 3) A reasonably reputable and reliable company to deal with. (This is the hardest thing to judge on my own, and why I'm asking the green rather than just googling). 4) If the solution could help a bit with list management, deleting addresses that bounce, reducing the percentage of messages that get tagged as spam, that would be great, but not totally necessary. Any help much appreciated. Thanks!

• Answer:

  Mailchip offers SMTP service through http://mandrill.com/, their transactional email service. More info http://help.mandrill.com/forums/20689696-smtp-integration. Basically you can set up your current mail clients to point to the mandrill server, and your outgoing mails will get sent out through mailchimp's architecture.