Email to Smart Groups

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I am a Mac Air 10.8.3 user. I have 16 Smart Groups of contacts for an event I manage, to all of whom I send out monthly notifications. There are no more than 90 contacts in each group and this has worked very well for 7 years. The only problems in the past have occurred when I send out emails to too many groups in the same session, when on my 9th or 10th group, I get the message: "Sending the message content to the server failed.Select a different outgoing mail server from the list below or click Try Later to leave the message in your Outbox until it can be sent."
I think this is sometimes known as 'tarpitting". This has always righted itself if I turn the computer off and resume a few hours later.
However, since yesterday I have been unable to send any emails to my smart groups, getting the above message straight away.
Emails to individuals however send without any problem, likewise I receive emails without a problem. I deleted one smart group, and then created it again under the same name, hence with the same contacts. This too did not send. I created an entirely new smart group with a new name, containing some contacts chosen at random. This did send without a problem.
Can anyone explain what has happened and what I should do?
 

Slydude

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M1 MacMini 16 GB - Ventura, iPhone 14 Pro Max, 2015 iMac 16 GB Monterey
I assume that the server/isp involved has not changed since you were able to do this successfully? My first gues is that the ISP has changed its rules for the number of people that the same message can be sent to at one time. In essence the "tarpitting" rules are now triggered by sending the same message to a smaller group. I think i read somewhere that some ISPs trigger this with as few as 25 letters at the same time.

I'm not sure about this. It might be worth checking into with the ISP.

BTW thanks for letting me know what that is called. Every time I have seen it discussed it has been in very general terms and the word had not been exactly defined.
 

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