Plugin Author
WDM
(@wdm-team)
Hi meme1234,
thanks for your message!
The behavior you’re seeing comes from how FluentCRM starts a campaign: it sends the first batch immediately during the start request, and only switches to its regular, throttled queue for everything afterwards. Mail Queue catches that regular path perfectly – which is why everything after the first batch is queued – but that first immediate batch is handed straight to FluentSMTP before it reaches the queue, and that’s what hits your server limit.
Here’s the more important point, though: for your use case you most likely don’t need Mail Queue at all. FluentCRM already has its own sending queue with rate control, so running Mail Queue on top means two queues are trying to throttle the same emails – and that overlap is exactly what causes the first-batch issue.
My recommendation:
- Set your sending limit directly in FluentCRM (Settings → Email Settings → sending speed: emails per second / minute / chunk) so it stays under your provider’s limit, and
- make sure WordPress cron runs reliably – ideally as a real server-side cron job (FluentCRM has a guide for this).
- You can then deactivate Mail Queue for this purpose – there are no longer two competing queues.
Mail Queue really shines when you want a site-wide safety net and alerting across all outgoing emails – things FluentCRM’s own queue never sees. But for FluentCRM newsletters alone, FluentCRM’s built-in throttling is the cleaner solution.
Hope this helps!
Kind regards,
Nicolas
Thank you for the quick reply. I’ve already tried changing those settings and I have set the limit to the lowest possible (4 emails per second) but it’s not enough to keep it under the limit. I have the free version and possibly the paid one has more settings (per minute / chunk). That is the reason why I added the mail queue plugin as a means for additional email throttling. I guess I will have to find a solution within FluentCRM. Thank you again for your help. The plugin is awesome.
Plugin Author
WDM
(@wdm-team)
The good news: you already have FluentSMTP installed, which is the perfect tool for bypassing the server limits. You just need to connect it to an external sending service. For newsletters via FluentCRM, I’d recommend:
- Amazon SES — very cheap, high sending limits, and FluentSMTP has a native SES integration. A great fit for bulk/newsletter sending.
- Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) — built for marketing email, generous sending rates, and very easy to set up.
Once FluentSMTP routes your campaigns through SES or Brevo, your emails no longer touch your host’s mail server, so the per-hour limit simply doesn’t apply anymore – the first-batch spike becomes a non-issue, and you also get noticeably better deliverability (proper SPF/DKIM, better sending reputation). At that point you won’t need Mail Queue or FluentCRM’s speed limits for throttling at all.
So in short: keep FluentSMTP, connect it to SES or Brevo, and the problem should disappear at the source.
Thanks again for the kind words about our plugin!
