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This may be a stupid question, but I can't find an answer...

I'm sending an attachment to multiple people using python:

sendMail( ['person1@mail.com', 'person2@mail.com'], 
    "Your Mail","", 
    ["letter.pdf"]
)

I'll be using Gmail and SMTP to send the mail. There will be anywhere from 50 to 5,000 recipients. The files should be about 2 MB.

My question - Will the attachment be resent to Gmail for every recipient or just once? I'm trying to figure out what my Bandwidth out will look like - 2 MB or (2MB *500 people) 1000 MB?

citruspi
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  • I think I can safely say that you will *not* be using Gmail to send e-mail to 500,000 e-mail addresses. Maybe not even to 50. – kindall Sep 08 '12 at 19:58
  • @kindall Whoops. That was a typo. I meant to type 5,000. But either way, I completely agree (with the first part). Once the app gains some traction and moves past 1,000 or 5,000 users, I would probably move to Amazon SES or a similar service. – citruspi Sep 08 '12 at 20:24
  • @kindall and I'm not just using Gmail... I would be using Google App's Mail and I would be paying so I think numbers like that may be feasible. – citruspi Sep 08 '12 at 20:26

2 Answers2

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You upload the file once. How they distribute that file to all of the recipients, I'm not sure. But that's something they handle for you so you don't need to worry about it. Hope this helps.

https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/5639/how-does-an-app-like-gmail-handle-attachments

Community
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btstevens89
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  • It definitely helps... Now, I don't have to worry about my bandwidth quota every time I send an email :D – citruspi Sep 08 '12 at 15:06
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It depends on your MTA, but a correctly written MTA will deliver just one message per target domain, provided you send one message in the first place (use multiple To: / CC: / BCC: etc headers to specify recipients).

tripleee
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