I have a widget that has share-on-digg and email-to-your-friends type functionality. I've implemented the emailing in what seems to be the standard fashion - a minimal dialog allowing entry of the to/from details, with the email then being sent using sendmail from my server. However there seem to be lots of issues with scalable email sending - host throttling, getting caught in spam filters etc. I'm wondering why I shouldn't change to using a browser mailto: link. I can still fill in the needed email content but the sending is then done from the users local machine and email mechanism.
Having each user do their own sending seems like a more scalable and robust solution to me. But it doesn't seem to be standard practice with similar apps. Any thoughts on why? Are there a significant percentage of folks who don't have an email client set up correctly for mailto: to work?
It might be more scalable, but it's (in my mind) not more robust. Most people I know use webmail with no mailto setup.
The impact will really depend on your content and your audience. Is your audience savvy enough to Copy Email Address if they don't have a mail client setup? Is your content worth their trouble to do so?