Hotmail and newsletter mailing lists?

[stockhausen]

Someone I know is the membership secretary of a walking group. She uses Hotmail to communicate with members of the group - monthly newsletter, forthcoming walks, etc. For convenience, she has created "Groups" of email addresses, each consisting of between 12 to 50 addresses. From time to time, a particular mailshot gets blocked, presumably because Hotmail flags it as SPAM.She does not want to get her IP address or the email account blacklisted.

I have not been able to find any Microsoft "rule" covering this.

Does anyone know what is and is not acceptable with Hotmail?
Any recommendation for a very low cost but reliable hosting company with a SMTP facility?
Does anyone have any experience of Amazon's Simple Email Service (Amazon SES)? Is it a mechanism for harvesting email addresses for marketing purposes?

 

[stockhausen]

Thanks for that, MailChimp does have a free option for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month - well within her limits.
My only concern there is whether they would harvest / sell on her mailing list.
Probably not worth asking, but you never know