PHPmailer - SMTP vs Mail & time out issues

[matthewod]

I am trying to send out 50,000 + emails through PHPmailer.  I am using the $mail->Send();.  Is it better to use SMTP so my server won't get blocked for spam?  Is SMTP better for the server resources, it's a lot of HTML mail going out?

 

The PHPmailer program does not seem to be sending out all the emails and it seems to time out.  Is this due to the max_execution_time in the php configuration?  Or has anyone used the PHPmailer to send out over 100,000+ emails?  Our email list is growing and I need to make sure all emails are going out.

 

Thanks

 

Matt