DECENT newsletter software, anybody?!

[gateone]

Hi!

We've been using the newsletter tools that are around with Mambo for quite a while. The demands however crew over time and eventually we outgrew the solutions around with Mambo.

So we've tried various other Open Source software, have tried 1-2-All and eMailManagerPro, have had a very close look at oemPro by octeth (nice guys from Turkey, by the way). However, nothing yet sattisfied our needs. Either the software was clumsy to use or large-scale email-lists could not easily be imported... We've tried our luck even with Mailman, however never succeeded in making that one work on our servers.

So, basically we are looking for something like Oi! - This one by Miro does look good, but it's the price that is not really an option for us now.

We have a powerfull linux server at a large hoster that offers good performance, so anything from a linux application to a web based system would be great! However, it must be able to handle more than one newsletter, must be able to handle large numbers of subscribers and must somehow be able to schedule newsletters in advance, must be able to send both HTML and text...

Any suggestions?

Thanks, Stephan

[Regenerate]

Maybe you can find something here: http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Script...ers/index.html.

Good luck!

[gateone]

Hi!

In fact I have gone through nearly everything I found on hotscripts.com and scripts.com - ok. Nearly! :-) There's a lot out. But also a lot of apps that promise much but offer little.

Okay. I should have had a second look at MaMML and YaNC. Both have grown tremendously since I had a last look on them (which was somewhat last year). But, hey, Mambo has grown since then - more than taken one evolutionary step really: THANKS TO ANYBODY CONTRIBUTING TO THIS GREAT SYSTEM!!!

So I installed the latest of both newsletter tools on the latest Mambo for testing. Both seem to have a common base somehow with similar features, YaNC but being a bit more detailed about links and (propably) link tracking?!

So what are your experiences with YaNC and MaMML and maybe can someone do a comparative review of both?

That would be great,
Stephan

[plebe@plebeian.org]

HI,

Did you ever find a good solution?? I have been down the same path as you and am struggling with finding a comprehensive solution.

I know PHil Taylor's mosListMessanger is pretty cool, but I don't see anything about it's ability to generate reports such as for click throughs, views, etc.

ANJEL is the new MaMML for the "new" mambo, but it's still very cryptic and very bad manuals. Not to knock them, and I know it's a LOT of work to do this stuff, but I think it really takes looking at the software as a user, not a programmer, which is usually the reason for very cryptic software and illogical layout. Oh well. Can't really complain for stuff that's free.

Any help appreciated. Thanks,
Joel

[gateone]

Hi,

yes, we've found a brilliant piece of software called oemPro from octeth. This offers all you need in professional opt-in permission based marketing. From automated bounce management, multiple mailing list that can become REALLY large at no problem, mail send throttleing, a "member area" where recipients can adjust their mailing preferences, which list they are subscribed to, deletion of their data, to a real nice templating system for HTML newsletters, making it so easy to send out campaigns, including one click opt-out links, one click membership area links, absolute perfect link and click logging, so you always know, WHO has clicked WHERE in your newsletter, a great statistic section and so forth. So for professional grade mailings, this is perfect and the price at around 300 $ or so is okay for it.

We have a test installation, a site that is not in use currently but runs on Mambo and has oemPro seamlessly integrated into the site: http://www.feinerlei.de - this was just a little experiment, but feel free to have a look around. The site is in German but it will propably be rather self explanatory, anyway. If you can help you with anything further, just drop me a line at panatlantica@googlemail.com.

Apart from that, we have - like some others - however switched from Mambo as our CMS of choice to Drupal. Drupal has some nice newsletter-modules, that are somewhat similar to those of Mambo, however, offer some more control over what you are doing. Also, as typical for Drupal, they integrated much more seamlessly into the entire CMS then is currently possible with Mambo. Although Mambo offers the possibility to have components and modules "plug in" to the system, a component or module must basically be programmed from scratch and there are no real guidlines on the user interface or API of how to programm a Mambo component/module. With Drupal, there are so called "hooks" in nearly all system calls of the core. This is nice because, you can simply hook into those hooks at any given moment overriding standard procedures and diverting them to your own procedure. At the same time, Drupal offers a great toolkit of user interface and system functions which means you can use A LOT of core libraries for your own development with no need to really start from scratch. This has some advantages, mainly in useability: Drupal modules are therefore much tighter integrated with Drupal and they are just so easy to use because they feel and function like anything else in Drupal.

I guess, the concept of hooks and a stronger guidline on how to programme and especially design the user interface of Mambo components / modules could help Mambo - or Joomla - a lot and are definitively worth having a look upon.

Steve.

[gsbe]

Very interesting post, Steve. Thanks for providing your insight about newsletters and Drupal. Can you explain to what extent oemPro is integrated in the site you link above? Did you receive help from Octeth with this integration?

Developers have been frustrated for a long time with the difficulty of 3rd party script integration. Better authentication methods have been part of forum discussions for quite some time now. Joomla's upcoming 1.1 release includes "Userbots for extending authentication methods". More info is available here:

• http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/to....html#msg70360
• http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/to....html#msg15183

I provide this information in no way to discount Steve's post. I am hoping to make existing Joomla / $ambo users aware of how the core team is addressing these important issues he has brought up.

[selenium]

Found this while looking for newsletter software. It's by a company called Tincan and is called PHPList. If you have the knowledge and patience, it is quite powerful (and free!)

[stnmc]