This topic describes three methods for sending emails using Direct Mail.
You can send emails with Direct Mail in three ways:
Send batch emails from the console.
Send triggered emails and batch emails using an API.
Send triggered emails and batch emails using SMTP. This method uses the standard SMTP protocol and is recommended.
Send emails from the console
You can send batch emails by selecting an uploaded recipient list, an approved template, a sender address, and an email type.
For more information about how to send emails from the console, see Send emails from the console.
The console supports sending batch emails but does not support sending triggered emails.
You cannot add attachments from the console. Instead, you can add download links to the email body.
Send emails using an API
Single-send API: Send a single email.
You can send triggered and batch emails without calling a template. The request frequency for a single user is limited to 100 calls per second.
Batch-send API: Send batch emails.
You can send batch emails by calling a template. The request frequency for a single user is limited to 20 calls per minute in the Chinese mainland and 10 calls per minute outside China.
For more information about how to call the API, see the 2015-11-23 version of the API overview and SDK reference.
You must use the 2015-11-23 version. The name of this version is unchanged and its content is continuously updated. The 2016-08-25 and 2017-06-22 versions are no longer updated.
To send attachments using the API, you must download the latest SDK. OpenAPI and the signature mechanism do not support this feature. Alternatively, you can add download links to the email body.
Send emails using SMTP
This method supports sending emails with attachments.
For more information, see How do I send an email with an attachment using SMTP?.
You can send triggered and batch emails using the SMTP interface without calling a template.
You must enable the SMTP sending feature before you can send emails through the SMTP interface.
1. Log on to the Direct Mail console.
2. In the navigation pane on the left, click Sender Addresses to go to the Sender Addresses page.
3. In the sender address list, find the sender address for which you want to enable SMTP sending. In the Actions column, click Set SMTP Password.
4. In the dialog box that appears, enter an SMTP password and click OK.
For more information about how to call SMTP, see SMTP endpoints and Code examples.
For more information about how to send emails using SMTP from the command line, see Send emails using SMTP.
Note: The SMTP sending frequency is limited to 12,000 calls per 180 seconds. This is the frequency from the client to the Direct Mail SMTP server. After an email reaches the server, Direct Mail delivers it to the recipient's system as quickly as possible. However, recipient systems may have different throttling policies. To improve the delivery success rate, we recommend that you send emails at a lower frequency if your business allows.
When you send emails using the API or SMTP, the server does not enforce fatigue control for a specific recipient address. This means that there is no limit on the sending frequency from the same sender to the same recipient. To set a limit, you must apply constraints before you send requests.