

Ask HN: sendmail vs mailto: links for viral content sharing? - tconfrey

I have a widget that has share-on-digg and email-to-your-friends type functionality. I've implemented the emailing in what seems to be the standard fashion - a minimal dialog allowing entry of the to/from details, with the email then being sent using sendmail from my server. However there seem to be lots of issues with scalable email sending - host throttling, getting caught in spam filters etc. I'm wondering why I shouldn't change to using a browser mailto: link. I can still fill in the needed email content but the sending is then done from the users local machine and email mechanism.<p>Having each user do their own sending seems like a more scalable and robust solution to me. But it doesn't seem to be standard practice with similar apps. Any thoughts on why? Are there a significant percentage of folks who don't have an email client set up correctly for mailto: to work?
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qhoxie
_Having each user do their own sending seems like a more scalable and robust
solution to me. But it doesn't seem to be standard practice with similar apps.
Any thoughts on why? Are there a significant percentage of folks who don't
have an email client set up correctly for mailto: to work?_

It might be more scalable, but it's (in my mind) not more robust. Most people
I know use webmail with no mailto setup.

The impact will really depend on your content and your audience. Is your
audience savvy enough to _Copy Email Address_ if they don't have a mail client
setup? Is your content worth their trouble to do so?

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mooism2
Most people who use webmail won't be able to use mailto: links. (Yes, I have
set up my Firefox install to use Gmail for mailto: urls, but I'd been using
Firefox a while before I discovered this was possible.)

Also, people using it from work might not want it using their work e-mail
address and going through their work's mail server.

