Sending has stopped and all campaigns are stuck on pending-sending

[corey34]

I have been sending emails with multiple customers for about a week now. All of a sudden, starting last night, all campaigns are stuck at "pending-sending".

I have not made any changes so I'm not sure how this would happen. I have seen people having the same issue and it looks like it's usually related to cron jobs but I have not changed the cron jobs recently and it was not an issue until last night.

I have some entries in the Application log but not sure how to read them or if it's even relevant.

Thanks

 

[frm.mwz]

I have been sending emails with multiple customers for about a week now. All of a sudden, starting last night, all campaigns are stuck at "pending-sending".

I have not made any changes so I'm not sure how this would happen. I have seen people having the same issue and it looks like it's usually related to cron jobs but I have not changed the cron jobs recently and it was not an issue until last night.

I have some entries in the Application log but not sure how to read them or if it's even relevant.

Thanks

Most likely no DS available with sufficient quota (or not renewed).
Have a look into 'sending' tab in customer (group).

 

[corey34]

Most likely no DS available with sufficient quota (or not renewed).

I have not set up any quotas so I don't think that's it. Unless I did something on accident. I am looking at backend/settings/customers/quota-counters and it's set to -1.

Have a look into 'sending' tab in customer (group).

I don't have any customer groups set up at the moment.

 

[frm.mwz]

I have not set up any quotas so I don't think that's it. Unless I did something on accident. I am looking at backend/settings/customers/quota-counters and it's set to -1.


I don't have any customer groups set up at the moment.

What does it say in the app log?
Please see all settings in the 'sending' tab.

 

[corey34]

Please see all settings in the 'sending' tab.

Sorry, what is the sending tab?

What does it say in the app log?

Here are 2 of the latest entries:
---
2017/01/22 08:49:22 [error] [exception.CHttpException.404] CHttpException: Unable to resolve the request "phpMyAdmin". in xxxxxxx/public_html/apps/common/framework/web/CWebApplication.php:286
Stack trace:
#0 xxxxxxx/public_html/apps/common/framework/web/CWebApplication.php(141): CWebApplication->runController('phpMyAdmin')
#1 xxxxxxx/public_html/apps/common/framework/base/CApplication.php(185): CWebApplication->processRequest()
#2 xxxxxxx/public_html/apps/init.php(227): CApplication->run()
#3 xxxxxxx/public_html/index.php(18): require_once('/home/xxxxxxx...')
#4 {main}
REQUEST_URI=/phpMyAdmin
HTTP_REFERER=http://96.30.7.81/phpMyAdmin
---
2017/01/22 13:27:31 [error] [exception.CHttpException.404] CHttpException: Unable to resolve the request "feed". in xxxxxxx/public_html/apps/common/framework/web/CWebApplication.php:286
Stack trace:
#0 xxxxxxx/public_html/apps/common/framework/web/CWebApplication.php(141): CWebApplication->runController('feed')
#1 xxxxxxx/public_html/apps/common/framework/base/CApplication.php(185): CWebApplication->processRequest()
#2 xxxxxxx/public_html/apps/init.php(227): CApplication->run()
#3 xxxxxxx/public_html/index.php(18): require_once('/home/xxxxxxx...')
#4 {main}
REQUEST_URI=/feed/
---

 

[corey34]

@frm.mwz, I think I am getting close to diagnosing this. I changed my delivery settings in backed > settings > cron so that I have 100 campaigns at one. That made everything start sending.

But I don't understand how that fixes this, unless I am not understanding how this works. If I have autoresponders in place, are they included in that 100 all the time? In other words, if I have 105 autoresponders in all my customers, does this make it impossible to ever send a regular campaign?

 

[frm.mwz]

the sending tab

Would be here:
backend...settings...customers
there you find the 'sending' tab to check if all is set to move continuously forward (also see info [ i ] ).

 

[frm.mwz]

@frm.mwz, I think I am getting close to diagnosing this. I changed my delivery settings in backed > settings > cron so that I have 100 campaigns at one. That made everything start sending.

But I don't understand how that fixes this, unless I am not understanding how this works. If I have autoresponders in place, are they included in that 100 all the time? In other words, if I have 105 autoresponders in all my customers, does this make it impossible to ever send a regular campaign?

Yes, this makes a difference, if they are all busy, then eventually some campaigns stay behind in pending-sending status.
Yes, ARs are included, they are recurring campaigns (vs regular campaigns).

 

[corey34]

Yes, this makes a difference, if they are all busy, then eventually some campaigns stay behind in pending-sending status.
Yes, ARs are included, they are recurring campaigns (vs regular campaigns).

OK, that was the issue then.

This then makes it hard for me to manage the number of campaigns that can send at once and may make me have to set this to unlimited. But maybe there is a better way to handle this.

Here is my situation:
Let's say I have 50 customers. Some of them could potentially have 5, 10, 20, .... autoresponders. Some of them may not have a huge number of subscribers but have a funnel that moves the subscribers around depending on what the subscriber does so they have multiple autoresponders.

So if I set my maximum campaigns to 100, this could quickly make it so that regular campaigns can never get sent because these autoresponders are always on. It shouldn't be a strain on the server though because it's not a lot of emails going out. So I could then maybe just up my the maximum number of campaigns to 10,000 (for example) so that this is not an issue. But the problem with that would be what if all of a sudden most of the customers want to send a regular campaign and now it really is a strain on the server.

Is this making sense? Is there a solution to this scenario?

Thanks

 

[frm.mwz]

OK, that was the issue then.

Yeah, sorry, I always forget about this one til the end, once all else is checked

This then makes it hard for me to manage the number of campaigns that can send at once and may make me have to set this to unlimited. But maybe there is a better way to handle this.

AFAIK, 10k is the max for camp@once.
It all is sensible what you wrote.
To handle peak server loads, ideally have sufficient computing power that runs most of the time only on average/50% load, and by watching it closely evolve, you may anticipate when to add more resources (perhaps as automatic as possible by load balancing, cloud, etc).
If you can run 50 send processes in parallel with only 50% server load, you are fine.

 

[corey34]

Thanks. I guess I am still learning how all of this works and how the settings all work together.

So if my customers have 100 autoresponders, will MailWizz cycle through them even if there isn't an email to send?

Let's say in my settings, I have 100 campaigns at once, loading 2,000 subscribers, sending 1,000 emails at a time, and pausing 10 seconds after each send. If it's loading 50 autoresponders and 2 regular campaigns, does it cycle through all the ARs and then pause for 10 seconds after each of those?

So it will load 1-50 ARs and may have no emails to send, but still takes 8 minutes (50 ARs pausing for 10 seconds each). Then it goes to the regular email campaigns and sends 2,000 emails for each. Then it goes back to the 50 ARs, takes 8 minutes, and sends 2,000 emails for each of the regular campaigns.

Am I understanding this correctly?

 

[frm.mwz]

So if my customers have 100 autoresponders, will MailWizz cycle through them even if there isn't an email to send?

mwz will check if there is anything to do, and if, takes part of it for the current cron.

Let's say in my settings, I have 100 campaigns at once, loading 2,000 subscribers, sending 1,000 emails at a time, and pausing 10 seconds after each send. If it's loading 50 autoresponders and 2 regular campaigns, does it cycle through all the ARs and then pause for 10 seconds after each of those?

Better take small batches, it executes better overall, as big batches increase workload exponentially.
It pauses as set, but only if there is anything to do. If nothing has to be sent, then that would be nothing included in the current cron and hence not count towards the pause after x messages.

So it will load 1-50 ARs and may have no emails to send, but still takes 8 minutes (50 ARs pausing for 10 seconds each). Then it goes to the regular email campaigns and sends 2,000 emails for each. Then it goes back to the 50 ARs, takes 8 minutes, and sends 2,000 emails for each of the regular campaigns.

That should not be and I have not observed that so far.

 

[corey34]

Better take small batches, it executes better overall, as big batches increase workload exponentially.

OK, thanks.

My sending has gotten extremely slow after starting to add autoresponders in. My autoresponders don't send that many emails at all but they seem to be slowing down my sending. I started with 1 daily recurring campaign that sent 20,000 emails in about 4 hours. I started playing with the settings and got it to about 3 hours. I have been trying to get it to 1 hour. But then as I started adding in autoresponders, my latest send looks like it will take over 12 hours to send. The autoresponders I have added are sending less than 50 emails a day, with an occasional day that sends about 1,000. So the autoresponders are not sending very much at all.

What settings do you think are causing this? In my mind, adding the small number of autoresponders sends should not make this happen. My server is not even close to capacity so I have lots of room to increase sending.

Should I decrease "subscribers at once" and "send at once"? Should I then concentrate on increasing "emails per minute" and decrease "pause" to help make it faster?

It pauses as set, but only if there is anything to do. If nothing has to be sent, then that would be nothing included in the current cron and hence not count towards the pause after x messages.

OK, that makes sense, and was hoping that was the way it was. I'm still learning how this all works and there are many more people that better understand this (like yourself) but would it make sense that if nothing was sent, that it would not get counted as a campaign towards the "campaigns at once" setting? Again, not sure the full spectrum of how MW is used across everyone, but for my case, that would make a lot of sense. Just a thought.

 

[twisted1919]

For what is worth, this is all explained at https://kb.mailwizz.com/articles/un...ery-settings-and-how-they-impact-performance/

 

[corey34]

Thanks @twisted1919. I have read that a few times and thought I had a good understanding of it but as I start to tweak the settings, I'm not getting improvements. And actually things are getting slower. I think I just need to keep testing and figure out how things affect my sending. As I find improvements, I will add them here for help to anyone else that might have issues as well.

Thanks

 

[frm.mwz]

For what is worth, this is all explained at https://kb.mailwizz.com/articles/un...ery-settings-and-how-they-impact-performance/

Thanks @twisted1919. I have read that a few times and thought I had a good understanding of it but as I start to tweak the settings, I'm not getting improvements. And actually things are getting slower. I think I just need to keep testing and figure out how things affect my sending. As I find improvements, I will add them here for help to anyone else that might have issues as well.

Thanks

When re-reading the kb article, I could not find how 'pause' settings were affecting overall send time needed, perhaps it would be good if that was explained there as well. Thx @twisted1919