Interspire on VPS - PowerMTA Ninja Blog

This is a very popular topic and a question to what VPS should you use and how to install Interspire email marketer setup isn’t that simple. But something not being simple never stopped me before so let's dive right in.

First, let's see what we want to achieve:

• Select a VPS (preferably cheap)
• Install Interspire email marketer
• Import our lists
• Send an email to X contacts

Ok, this shouldn't be that hard but what about that X? Here is where things get a bit tricky. You can't expect to be able to send 1 million emails per day from one IP. So it all depends on the size of your list. And some say size doesn't matter.

I can tell you my system setup for my main server. I try to keep my lists as clean as possible even tho we could argue a lot if they are legit or not. I also try to get as much info as possible about my contacts so I always create custom fields and try to segment my lists as much as possible. At the time of writing this, I have a bit less than 1.500.000 contacts in all my lists on this server. I can honestly say that I do my best and try to send at least 1 email per week to each of my 1.5mio contacts. I'm not going to use work subscribers. So from one system, I send about 6 million emails per month. For this, I am using a system with 20 external MTAs.

This way I am balancing these 6mio emails over 20 different IPs so each IP sends 300.000 emails per month or 10.000 per day. This is called IP rotation and if you want your emails to be delivered, well you should use it.

How much does it cost?

So I have or better yet had my Interspire on one more powerful VPS and MTAs on 20 cheap VPSs. My costs per month for a setup like this were around $60 per month which is nothing compared to what my contacts can make me in one month.

Another even cheaper option is to get yourself a VPS with more IPs and use those as MTAs. You could get a system like mine for about $40 or even lower per month or even less if you pay for hosting on an annual basis.

Of course, you also need something that will send your emails. This software is installed on your MTAs. We could also call these SMTPs. You could go with Postfix which is free but isn’t meant for stuff like this. I use and suggest PowerMTA. It allows you so much more and configuration is really easy and everything is done in one file. But we’ll get to this later.

Now let's get back to the Interspire setup and recommended VPS. I will assume for the sake of this tutorial that you need a setup like I have. For this you will need:

Scenario 1 - MTAs on the same server as Interspire

You will need one VPS with:

• 4 GB RAM (8 recommended)
• 2 cores (4 recommended)
• 20 GB disk (40 SSD recommended)
• 20 IPs

Scenario 2 - MTAs on external VPS (recommended)

Same server as above but with only 1 IP plus 20 cheap VPSs with:

• 1 Gb RAM
• 1 core
• 20 GB disk
• 1 IP

How to install Interspire Email Marketer on VPS?

For scenario 1 you must install Interspire and the software you use for MTAs on the same server whereas in scenario 2 you will install Interspire on your main server and MTA software on your cheap servers.

Install Interspire on your VPS like this:

• Upload the zip file to your HTML folder
• Unzip it
• Chown if needed
• Create an SQL database
• Access Interspire installer in your web browser
• Use data for SQL user and db from before
• You are done

I suggest you use PowerMTA as your MTA software. Read how to install PowerMTA.

Once you have MTA software installed it's time to connect it with Interspire. This is a long and boring process so I'm not going to go into too much detail here. I have a DIY guide you could use even tho it's not written for Interspire.

But hey, why are you still using Interspire?

Interspire is a software that hasn't been updated in a long time. To make it useful you will also need some very expensive Maborak addons. What if I told you there is a better alternative to Interspire that is more user-friendly and a lot easier to configure and integrate with PowerMTA? The software is called Mumara and the DIY guide mentioned before is written for Mumara and PowerMTA.

Head there and check it out. I'm sure it will make your email marketing business a lot easier and successful.