[SalesForce] What’s the Advantage of using MassEmailMessage instead of multiple SingleEmailMessage

I'm scoping out a project that will involve sending outbound email messages, and I'm a little confused about why one would use a MassEmailMessage instead of multiple SingleEmailMessages.

If you look at the documentation, Singles have far more options available when it comes object types that can be used in the setWhatId methods, especially since they can accept Custom objects. Mass emails have very limited options for the setWhatIds.

SingleEmailMessage: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/apex_classes_email_outbound_single.htm

MassEmailMessage:
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/apex_classes_email_outbound_mass.htm

Single and Mass emails have separate limits, but they both have the same limit of 1,000 external email addresses per day.

And when it comes to using the Messaging.sendEmail(), you have pass in an array of messages anyway, so why not send in an array of many Singles instead of an array of one Mass?

So what am I missing? What's the advantage of using a MassEmailMessage for sending out a batch of emails when the SingleEmailMessages have more options?

Best Answer

What MassEmailMessage appears to give you is a more optimal coding route if you are focusing on sending to Contacts, Leads or Users relating to either Contract, Case, Opportunity or Product objects.

So if you had 50 such Contacts to email you need only have a single MassEmailMessage instance and set a list of those Id's into it. Instead of creating 50 SingleEmailMessage instances each setup accordingly (you'll have to pull the email addresses yourself) to achieve the same. So there is arguably a marginal heap and statement benefit as well. As you say there are quite a few more features on the SingleEMailMessage, but if you don't need any of those perhaps the MassEmailMessage has a place.

If you scaling above my earlier example of 50 and working with these objects, this is indeed an additional benefit to those I've described above. Though ultimately its only dictating how many instances of each you pass in the array to the send email, which ultimately then governs overall what can be sent anyway.

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