As a comprehensive work resource for Web developers, the team thought eLance's freelance marketplace would be a great addition to the site. It allows users to post or bid on various types of technology projects. The engineering team could have easily added auction-styled features to bid on and submit projects but decided it was more efficient to outsource versus build. Additionally eLance provided such features as secure workspaces for projects. All registered members of the site can opt to receive a customized email newsletters .
Users select to receive topical mailings from a master list.
The URL is to the OptinServlet, which finishes the subscription process and puts new members on the subscription list for that particular mailing. To send email out to current subscribers, a dedicated machine is used as a bulk mailer. The current system, which uses sendmail, pumps out anywhere from 80,000 to 200,000 messages per hour, depending on network traffic. We needed a custom SMTP sender in order to get the performance that we require. The app spends most of its time talking SMTP over a socket to some machine on the Internet.