Question

Voting application: how to send the voting links without being blocked as spam?

I am planning a web-application for voting in closed groups, such as clubs or parties. It should work as follows:

  • The club manager uploads a CSV file with the names and emails of the club members.
  • The webapp sends each member an email with a unique URL for one-time voting.
  • Each member can click the unique URL to vote.
  • After the voting deadline, the webapp computes the results and sends them to the club manager (the votes are not secret - the manager may need to know which member sent which vote).

My main concern is that sending many emails to the club members might be considered as spam. I read this other question about how to not be considered a spammer, but that question considers promotional emails. In that case, the best solution is to use a mailing-list handling service such as MailChimp. But for my application it is not a good solution, because:

  • My app needs to send a unique voting-link, automatically generated by the webapp, in order to track the voting and associate them with the voters (and to prevent multiple voting by the same person).
  • My app typically sends one-time emails - I do not need a service for periodic emailing to a list.

What is a right way to send the voting links from this application?

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Bobby Iliev • January 15, 2022
Accepted Answer

Hello,

What I could suggest in your case is to use a managed SMTP service like SendGrid for example, they offer a free plan which might be sufficient for your initial needs.

That way you would not have to manage and maintain your own mail server.

This post here might be a good read too:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/why-you-may-not-want-to-run-your-own-mail-server

Best, Bobby

alexdo • January 15, 2022

Hello, @erelsgl

As per Bobby’s suggestion, I’ll also recommend to use a third-party email bulk provider like SendGrid which you can use as a SMTP server in order to send emails from your droplet using your algorithm.

https://sendgrid.com/blog/create-an-smtp-server/

You can also use other providers but make sure to check their policy for sending bulk emails. Most of them will require sign-off/unsubscribe links or the list to be OPTED-IN (meaning the users have agreed to receive your emails) and so on.

Hope that this helps! Regards, Alex