A Trek Through WordPress Mailing List Plugins – Email Mailing List Manager
I recently had a client who needed an easy way to manage e-mail lists from within their wordpress blog. The requirements included the ability to support multiple lists with additional properties and an easy import / export feature. I thought finding a wordpress plugin to take care of these tasks would be simple, but I was wrong. It appears that one of the big features left out of the 15 or so wordpress mailing plugins I tested was the ability to export the user list in .csv format so it can be used in other programs (like CRM). Technically you can export this list directly from the mySQL database, but that’s cumbersome and not “client friendly”. I wanted an option that worked through a simple admin interface that allowed for easy exporting and importing.
There was a nice solution which still integrated into wordpress. I installed PHPlist a stand alone, open source, powerful mailing list manager. I then used the wordpress plugin PHPlist form integration to integrate the various forms. So users can subscribe, and unsubscribe without leaving wordpress. The customer can then login to PHPlist and have access to a powerful but simple admin with capabilities that including multiple import and export options.
Here is a brief list of the wordpress mailing list plugins I checked out in no particular order.
MailList for WordPress
http://blue-anvil.com/archives/maillist-for-wordpress-a-mailing-list-mass-mailing-mailer-plugin
Looks great, but couldn’t get it to work. The author is no longer supporting it, so I don’t recommended using it.
WordPress Email Notification Plugin
http://watershedstudio.com/portfolio/software/wp-email-notification.html
Mainly designed for sending e-mail notifications when your blog is updated. Isn’t this sort of thing outdated by e-mail RSS subscribptions?
Subscribe 2
http://subscribe2.wordpress.com/
Contains a nice widget version widget compatible themes. Works with the latest version of wordpress , but again setup mainly to send updates on when blog is updated. Seems unnecessary with e-mail RSS.
Subscribe Me
http://www.octeth.com/products/freetools/subscribeme/
Didn’t get a chance to test this one, but it looks the most promising out of this list because it includes the ability to export subscriber data to a common CSV format so you can use it easily with other programs as well as having a confirmed opt-in and opt-out. By default it only records the visitors e-mail and name. You’ll have to do some code editing to expand the list and attribute sections.
WP-Campagin-Monitor
http://www.instinct.co.nz/wp-campaign-monitor/100
very simple with no way to export users, but comes with built in integration with WP-liteecommce plugin so is an excellent way to capture a mailing list if you’re using that shoping cart. Also is very fast to install and supports a sidebar widget “out of the boxâ€
WordPress Newsletter Plugin
http://www.shiftthis.net/wordpress-newsletter-plugin/
Full features, excellent easy administration features. Can create multiple lists, send mail or newsletters, contains every feature I wanted except 1. There is no included, fast or easy to export the lists. So you can’t get the lists out without using other software. I need the client to be able to export the various maililng lists in a standard format like CSV. Not to mention this plugin cost $20 (which is cheap if it ONLY had tat one feature).
PHPList Form Integration
http://projects.jesseheap.com/all-projects/wordpress-plugin-phplist-form-integration/
A nice simply way to integration the forms form PHPList into wordpress. Includes admin functionality so you can adjust the list options and attributes from PHPlist in the wordpress admin. I love this plugin and I’m using it for all my mailing list needs. Only problem is you have to install and work with a separate program PHPlist, but once you get use to it, PHPlist is full featured and does everything I need it to do including multiple import / export options.
PHPlist Helper
http://zeroasterisk.com/w/WP_plugin_PHPlist_helper#Download
Another PHPlist integration wordpress plugin. This one requires changing a few lines in the core of PHPlist so I choose to use PHPList Form Integration instead.
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[...] I read about PHPlist and its WordPress Plugin options at Email Mailing List Manager, which seemed to be the best option for me. Lorelle also reviewed some good mailing list and [...]
Hi Solomon,
I realize it’s been a few months now, but as I’m setting up a mailing list for a client on WordPress, I too was looking for a good solution. Specifically I need one that’s easy for an older woman (not as tech savvy), and wanted to look into one where she wouldn’t have to pay a monthly fee, as she’s just growing it now.
Anyway – I found this one, that seems to be really good. Did you check it out at all? It has the export thing you were wanting.
http://tribulant.com/products/view/1/wordpress-mailing-list.html
I think I’m going to install it now & give it a shot. Just wanted to see if you had looked at that and/or if you wanted to add it to your list of resources. I honestly couldn’t find a very good list of comparisons on the subject, so your post is very helpful!
All the best
~ Willo
I had mailing list needs again and I choose to use phplist. This time I used it in conjunction with a plugin that allows you to export your wordpress users and commenters to a csv file, which can then be imported into phplist to jump start your mailing list.
CSV WordPress Plugin
http://yoast.com/wordpress/users-to-csv/
If you decide to use phplist (like I did – see blog post above) I’d definitely download the CSV WordPress plugin and important all of your wordpress users. PHPlist automatically deletes duplicates, so you can do this every so often to make sure all your new users and commenters and included.
Great list of plugins, but since your article was posted, BigTie! was released has raised the bar for ease of use.
BigTie! is a completely integrated mailing list plugin for wordpress that allows users to seamlessly connect their wordpress blog with a mailchimp mailing list.
I have purchased this plugin (WordPress Mailing List Plugin), unfortunately it doesn’t work with Content Gallery plugin, so some premium themes will not work. The bad thing is that Tribulant didn’t refund money. So please be careful before purchasing.
@Sly
Thank you for your message. Unfortunately Tribulant Software (CC) doesn’t take responsibility for 3rd party factors such as other plugins since we cannot control the way they were written. If a plugin was written correctly according to WordPress conventions, you shouldn’t have any problems with it. Please see our refund policy which you agreed to upon purchase : http://tribulant.com/policies/refund/
All the best,
Antonie
Thank you for posting the information and links! Very helpful — by sharing the results of the time you spent researching, you saved me doing it again. I appreciate it!
WRT Tribulants Mailing List plugin, In my opinion a great fully featured product with one failing. It uses prototype.js which is one of the biggest bloatware java scripts out there at 124kb. This had a knock on effect to the loading times of my site to the extent I had to remove it. Great product if you dont care about the knock on performance hit to your site.
In addition, Just saw this on the WordPress Newsletter Plugin website mentioned above “The WordPress Newsletter Plugin is no longer under active development. It is now freely available as is, with no support. You are welcome to edit, create and share this as you please.”
Hi Solomon,
I’m going to follow your advice and go for phplist. Seems by far the best solution, it’s open source and the available plugins are easy to tweak and adapt to your theme. Thanks a lot for writing this article!
Cheers
Yorik
FYI Re: Tribulant Mailing List Plugin
I made an inquiry based on @Jim’s comment (May 12th 5:59) above to Tribulant Software and received a reply on 7/13/09:
“The mailing list plugin no longer uses Prototype & Scriptaculous.
It was 100% ported over to jQuery several months ago.
Please see these release notes: http://docs.tribulant.com/wordpress-mailing-list-plugin/wp-newsletters-v368-release-notes/ .
(the 10th list item).”
Hey there,
I’ve tried subscribe2 and I’m currently messing around with Shift This.
What I’m trying to accomplish is automatically create an e-mail for my subscribers at the end of the month which will recap the month’s posts by their title and category.
I’m having a helluva time getting this functionality… even by searching for it. No one is asking for it. My needs are either off the pulse of development or I’m a certifiable genius — ha!
If you had run across anything that could help me, please let me know.
Thanks
i also found MeeNews at http://www.wp-newsletter.com/.
i have not tried it but it looks fully featured.
but i suspect it will be hard for any of these plugins to keep up with all the features that a paid service like mailchimp offers.
Blog notifications by newsletter are not dead. RSS etc. is not used by everyone
Either in 2009. Regarding to a specif target group my client wishes a simple blog notification by mail. Thanks for the hints above.
Very valuable article. Thanks for sharing info.
Regards,
Neo
Tried using PHPList but there seems to be a problem with PHP 5 so it causes database problems
Thanks for breaking down all of the different options out there. It was very helpful. I’m bookmarking this on StumbleUpon for future reference.
Cheers,
Edward
Update: We are running PHPList very successfully, have been able to import all kinds of lists, and no problems: working demo here:
http://rothmanmarketing.com/lists/
The WordPress Newsletter Plugin by ShiftThis seems to have disappeared. The link above doesn’t work. It’s been a few months since the last comment, so I’m wondering if there have been any updates to be aware of.
I checked out BigTie and it looks expensive. It also seems to require MailChimp, which also costs $. I just want to be able to send a mass email to all my forum members once or twice a month to update them on my WordPress posts and forum activity (I’m using simplepress for my forum). I don’t need to export their emails to csv. However, I don’t want to install a plugin that slows my site or isn’t supported. I’m using WP 2.9.2, so it would need to be compatible with the newest WP version. Any advice? Thanks in advance.
Tyler
projectsinmetal.com
Im would really recomend that you put a seperate branded installation of PHP list in a /lists/ directory, it runs it’s own database opt-in system. i have built a 15,000 person opt-in list this way here:
http://rothmanmarketing.com/lists/
Thanks for the info, it save me the time you spend to get the answer you need. I used PHPlist before but I didn’t there is a plug-in for wordpress.
Thanks
Has anybody tried the phplist plugin on a WPMU installation?
Yes, we tried it two years ago and it would not work, but many changes since then.
However, if I were going to do MU, I really believe that I would integrate a separate installation of PHP list on a separate domain and account to make it scalable (lots of PHP calls) and then integrate on the web page level. PHP is very stable and stable running by itself.