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Why do I receive "4.3.2 connection rate limit exceeded" error message using the mail merge extension and what can be done about it?

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  • Last reply by Matt

dchyde
dchyde
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I am using TB 31.3.0 with Mail Merge 3.9.1. I routinely send an email to 435 members of an volunteer emergency responders group that I coordinate. I do so using a .csv list with mail merge. While there were no problems in the past, more recently the mail merge function will hang after sending a varied number of messages successfully and I get the following error message:

"An error occurred sending mail. The mail server sent an incorrect greeting: 4.3.2 connection rate exceeded.."

There is an "OK" button in the error message pop up that can be clicked to resume the mail merge process. It would appear that if I click the "OK" button immediately whenever the error message is received I must do so frequently and some members do not receive their email. If I delay clicking the "OK" button, I found that I only needed to click the "OK" button twice to send to all the members.

An on line search suggests this is the result of some sort of throttling by my ISP, Sonic.net. There is also this comment: "If you are receiving this error, you are likely using mailing list software which cannot decipher the temporary fail codes. If so, you will need to set your software to slow down its delivery rate and/or reduce the number of active connections per remote host."

I am not super technical. Is it realistic to think that I can tweak mail merge to that I do not have to babysit my email to this group?

I am using TB 31.3.0 with Mail Merge 3.9.1. I routinely send an email to 435 members of an volunteer emergency responders group that I coordinate. I do so using a .csv list with mail merge. While there were no problems in the past, more recently the mail merge function will hang after sending a varied number of messages successfully and I get the following error message: "An error occurred sending mail. The mail server sent an incorrect greeting: 4.3.2 connection rate exceeded.." There is an "OK" button in the error message pop up that can be clicked to resume the mail merge process. It would appear that if I click the "OK" button immediately whenever the error message is received I must do so frequently and some members do not receive their email. If I delay clicking the "OK" button, I found that I only needed to click the "OK" button twice to send to all the members. An on line search suggests this is the result of some sort of throttling by my ISP, Sonic.net. There is also this comment: "If you are receiving this error, you are likely using mailing list software which cannot decipher the temporary fail codes. If so, you will need to set your software to slow down its delivery rate and/or reduce the number of active connections per remote host." I am not super technical. Is it realistic to think that I can tweak mail merge to that I do not have to babysit my email to this group?

All Replies (3)

Matt
Matt
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just a guess, in the bottom left corner of Thunderbird is two monitors click them to go offline, do your merge, go back online. I think that the outgoing mail might just go out as a block using a single connection attempt and bypass the server limit.

dchyde
dchyde Question owner
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Thanks for your suggestion Matt.

I tried using the "send later" function of Mail Merge which accomplishes the same thing by queuing up the messages in the outbox. However when I sent them I got the same error message.

Modified by dchyde

Matt
Matt
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then I suggest you send using a mail provider that is not actively trying to block your outgoing mail. Or use a yahoo / google groups mailing list feature so you only send a single mail.

Or use a free account from the likes of http://www.ymlp.com/ who limit free account mailing lists to 1000 subscribers. ( Googled them this morning)