Where do i start??

[Tezux]

HI guys , I have a website written totally in html. I have my own server setup and host it myself. I want to be able to get my server to send automatic emails to my clients. What would I use to do this?
Im no expert programmer at all, just know html and very littel basic. Php looks ok. Can you please tell me how I can do this. If I need to learn a new language to write up a cgi script to do this myself then i'll do that but which one? Im a fast learner but still dont wanna use a real complex language so from a beginners point of view if you wanted to get your webserver to send out automatic emails how would you do that? Remember BEGINNER

OS = Ubuntu Server

[AdmiralBeotch]

when you say "...automatically email clients..."

Automatically in response to what event?

[Tezux]

when you say "...automatically email clients..."

Automatically in response to what event?

Well, for example, if a client goes to my website to book in a job they want us to do for them then I want to be able to get my server to send an email to them the next day to remind them of there booking they made on my website

[GNU-Fan]

There are two principal ways for this.

a) You have an email account somewhere else and your server connects to the according SMTP server in order to compose and send a mail. This is similar to what you do when you write a personal email with Evolution, Thunderbird or KMail. Only that this time it is done by "a robot".

Pro: Very easy to setup. No hassles with dealing with the SPAM policies of other ISPs.
Con: Unfitting for very frequent mail traffic (>~100/day). Business use may be violation of contract with the email provider.

b) Set up a complete mail transfer agent on your box who takes charge of getting the mail out on its own. It will talk to other mail provider's servers with a certain language, and then push the mail to the provider of the receiver.

Pro: It's your own mail server. So you have a lot of control and need not to share resources with others and it is very performing.

Con: You need to learn how to properly configure the whole mail system. If your server fails to abide certain "code of conduct", it will end up on a spam list so nobody will ever again accept mails from your server. You will also need to invest some time to secure it against improper usage.


EDIT:
If this scares you off, you should probably just rent a webspace hosting package where the mail server has already been set up for you. Then you can easily send emails with PHP commands like "mail()".