[SalesForce] Understand Workflow vs Apex Email limits

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.

Best Answer

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.

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