# Spread out Digest emails to mitigate sudden traffic?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/spread-out-digest-emails-to-mitigate-sudden-traffic/31425
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** activity-summary
**Created:** [July 25, 2015, 2:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/spread-out-digest-emails-to-mitigate-sudden-traffic/31425 "2015-07-25T14:54:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@jesselperry](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jesselperry)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2015, 2:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/spread-out-digest-emails-to-mitigate-sudden-traffic/31425/1 "2015-07-25T14:54:09Z")
I notice that Digests are sent in batches together to a lot of users at once. I’m curious if it would be possible to have those spread out more so that you’re not causing a big sudden spike of traffic from the Digests being sent. I notice from my MailChimp stats from campaigns that go out, people seem to open/click emails by a huge margin in those first few hours after an email goes out, if they’re going to at all. So spreading out the Digest emails in Discourse could help. I have over-provisioned with the DigitalOcean droplet I have, so it’s not a big deal for me - but might be helpful for those that are just on the edges of hardware for their Discourse.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2015, 12:49am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/spread-out-digest-emails-to-mitigate-sudden-traffic/31425/2 "2015-07-26T00:49:09Z")
We should add some random variation to when we send these out. But it seems unlikely you would have perf problems from even a few hundred people clicking through. And people don’t always read their email at the same time.
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### Author:  [@jesselperry](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jesselperry)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2015, 2:40am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/spread-out-digest-emails-to-mitigate-sudden-traffic/31425/3 "2015-07-26T02:40:26Z")
Most email opens happen soon after a campaign is sent: [http://www.quora.com/On-average-how-soon-is-an-email-opened-by-the-recipient-after-it-is-sent](http://www.quora.com/On-average-how-soon-is-an-email-opened-by-the-recipient-after-it-is-sent)
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### Author:  [@watchmanmonitor](https://meta.discourse.org/u/watchmanmonitor)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2015, 3:13am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/spread-out-digest-emails-to-mitigate-sudden-traffic/31425/4 "2015-07-26T03:13:27Z")
Related - [Digests fire very quickly in a slow forum](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digests-fire-very-quickly-in-a-slow-forum/31325)
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### Author:  [@chapoi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chapoi)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2025, 11:36am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/spread-out-digest-emails-to-mitigate-sudden-traffic/31425/5 "2025-12-04T11:36:51Z")