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Email Delivery Speed

The amount of time needed for email messages you send through Volgistics to be delivered to a volunteer or Coordinator may vary. Most email messages are delivered within a few minutes, however some may take longer to reach a recipient for the reasons explained in this topic.

Email you send through Volgistics travels like this:

Chart of Email Delivery Processs

When you send an email message, your message is added to the Volgistics mail queue in a matter of seconds.

How long it takes for the message to appear in the recipient's mail system depends on a number of variables, and these variables are often outside of Volgistics' control. Here are some of the things that impact delivery time:

  • The number of volunteers and Coordinators you send a given message to. While Volgistics can process many messages at the same time, each message requires a certain amount of time to deliver. So when you send an email message to hundreds or thousands of recipients it will take longer to deliver all of the messages than messages sent to individuals or a smaller number of recipients. The Volgistics mail queue uses a progressive polling technique rather than simple first-in first-out processing. This means that Volgistics will begin delivering email messages you send right away, even when the queue already contains other messages.
  • If the message includes attachments. Messages sent without attachments can usually be delivered to recipient mail systems in a matter of minutes. Messages sent with attachments may take longer. How much longer depends on things such as the size of the attachment files, how many attachments were sent, and the speed the recipients' mail systems can upload the sent message and attachments. Mass mailings to hundreds or thousands of recipients that include multi-megabyte attachments could take an hour or more for delivery to recipient mail systems.
  • The availability of the recipient's mail system. Most mail systems are always available to accept new messages; however, some recipient mail systems will decline to accept new messages at certain times such as when the mail system is under a heavy load or when they are having operational problems. In these cases, Volgistics trys to deliver the message again periodically for up to 24 hours. Because these kinds of delays are caused by the recipient's mail system, they are beyond the control of Volgistics and if the recipient's email system does not become available during the 24 hours the message will not be delivered at all. In this case, if the recipient email provider sends Volgistics a notice that the message was not delivered, we will record this on the History tab of the volunteer record as shown in the Track Message History help topic.
  • Greylisting. Sometimes recipient mail systems try to reduce SPAM by greylisting messages. Greylisting intentionally delays delivery of mail so if the volunteers and Coordinators use an email provider that greylists messages, your email message's delivery will be delayed. Volgistics will attempt to send the message again in these cases so it should eventually be received, but the delay is beyond our control. There are changes volunteers and account holders can make to avoid greylisting delays. You can learn about these in the Recommended Email Settings help topic.

Once Volgistics delivers a message to a recipient's mail system, their mail system takes over. While most mail systems will add the message to the recipient's mailbox quickly, there are occasionally delays on the recipient's side. These delays are beyond the control of Volgistics as the message is in the recipient's mail system at that point. Recipient mail systems may delay delivery for a variety of reasons. On occasion, a volunteer's email provider may delay delivery to check a message for SPAM.

When you send an email message to multiple recipients, it is unlikely that all recipients will receive the message at the same time because of these variables. In addition, because volunteers and Coordinators typically have email addresses on many different mail systems, a given email message could be received by one recipient in a matter of minutes, while another may not see the message in their mailbox for hours.

VicMail and Text Messages

In addition to email you can send messages in two other ways in Volgistics.

For volunteers, you can send VicMail if you use the VicNet or VicTouch modules. Mail sent as VicMail (in addition to, or instead of, email) is available for volunteers to receive in VicNet or VicTouch immediately. There are no delays because the message never leaves the Volgistics system.

You can also send text messages as long as you use the VicNet module and text messaging is enabled. Text messages can only be sent to volunteers and Coordinators who have opted-in to receive texts. Because text messages need to leave the Volgistics system, text messages may have delivery delays similar to email messages.