5

I have a client who is looking to send emails to groups of contacts when a particular event it scheduled announcing the event.

We had been using regular mass emails but quickly ran into the 500 at a time limit. I know all about the various ways around the limit by breaking up the list into multiple groups but i'm considering either using Apex or Workflows to send the emails.

There are a number of ways to do this using either method but my question is about limits

According to salesforce workflows have a limit of 1000 per license per org per day. http://na9.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/workflow_email_limits.htm

Where as the apex limit seems to just be 1000 total per day? http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/apex_gov_limits.htm

So a couple of questions

  1. For the workflow emails does it limit it so that if i want to send 1500 emails i need to spread them out across two senders/licenses or does just having the licenses add to a total shared pool of available emails?
  2. For the apex route, am i reading it correctly that you simply cant send more than 1000 emails per day this way?

I'm less concerned with the code i'd need to implement either of these approaches and really just curious about best way to insure i dont run into any issues limits. The client has more than 20 licenses and wouldn't be looking to send more then 5000 emails a day. Thanks for the advice.

2 Answers 2

5

Reference: Salesforce App Limits Cheatsheet

  1. Workflow limits are a shared resource, so assuming they have five licenses, that would give them 5,000 workflow emails per day. This may or may not be practical financially.

  2. Correct. You cannot send more than 1000 messages per day via Apex Code. I believe this limit is currently non-negotiable. However, if you were using the Customer Portal, you could make your contacts portal users, which can be emailed with impunity.

You are allowed to ask for temporary increases to the standard mass email limits for special events. Just ask in advance. There's no charge for this temporary increase. This is for the feature located on the Contacts or Leads tab (Mass Email X).

You could also use a third-party mass-mailer, such as Vertical Response, Marketo, or Got Marketing (note: I do not endorse any specific mass emailer; these are simply the ones I have seen/heard of). Most of these services are "pay to play", e.g. buying 10,000 "credits", which you can then exhaust as necessary.

5
  • 1
    Just for info, one of my clients managed to get the Apex daily email limit upped to 15,000 (yes, 15k) for SingleEmailMessage(s) Aug 11, 2013 at 19:15
  • One quick follow up tho, in this case everyone is a customer portal user. How do I specifically email users via apex, and are there no limits at all on emailing users? Can you even use the built in mass email users without any limits? Aug 11, 2013 at 19:19
  • It's in the documentation, but in short, there's no limit on mass emailing users (use Setup > Manage Users > Mass Email Users, or setTargetObjectId in Apex Code).
    – sfdcfox
    Aug 11, 2013 at 23:40
  • @sfdcfox Lets say I'm sending emails to 10 Contacts ie by setting setTargetObjectId (using single api call of Messaging.sendEmail with list of 10 SingleEmailMessage records) and in each of this email CC and BCC address is specified. As said above setTargetObjectId will not be counted against limits, but as the same email is going to CC and BCC email, would those CC and BCC email be counted against limits? so logically 20 emails (10 CC and 10 BCC) will be counted against limits ? Dec 17, 2013 at 13:38
  • @ChiragMehta I'm sorry I missed this message. Yes, if you use setToAddresses, setCCAddresses, or setBCCAddresses, they will each count towards your limit, even if the same email address is specified more than once.
    – sfdcfox
    Apr 16, 2014 at 20:51
1

I understand that Salesforce is having for Mass Emailing limitations. Based on my experience, you may want to play around with a native Appexhange app MassMailer which bypass the Salesforce limitations. Here is the link you can visit - http://www.mansasys.com/massmailer

A nice blog post that covers details about this app at http://www.mansasys.com/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-salesforce-mass-email-limits-and-options/

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .