Thread

I am interested in integrating an EE 2.1 installation with a newsletter service and am looking at several options.  In the past I’ve used both Feedblitz and Feedburner but want something more complex.
One thing I’m looking into is possibly using PHPList and I like it since it’s free and no monthly fees.  It appears powerful but hard to set up.
Another solution I came across is MailChimp.  Has anyone else used this and is it easy to integrate with EE?
I want to be able to use RSS feeds so daily, weekly, or something like that an email can go out with all the new posts on my website.  Also, I want to be able to manually send posts out at times of special news, events, etc.
Thanks for your advice.

I left this out in my original post but I’m interested in any other suggestions of an email newsletter program or service. i want to make sure I look at everything that’s out there so I make a very good choice that I can use long-term.

Hi,
to me the most important reason for a professionel mailing service is the whitelisting. Everything else you can do on your own. It may take you a lot of time and it may not be a sound business decision, but it can be done.
The only think only the pros can offer is whitelisting. And this is what you want. You want your mails to be delivered into your customers mailboxes and not to be put into the spam folder.
If your mailinglist becomes successfull and you start sending thousands of mails, you and your provider will be tagged as spammers very quickly.

My recommendation would be: Do whatever you want, but send your mail always through a whitelisted server. You can prepare your mailing on your own server with your own software, but rent a whitelisted server to send it.
Be prepared, that the mail service provider wants to look at your mails and asks for written confirmation, that you don´t spam.
Being whitelisted with AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, MSN and the like is a valuable asset, that they protect.

Cheers
awa

Campaign Monitor is excellent in my experience. There’s a module for 1.x with a 2.x version coming in the next few weeks.

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/downloads/expressionengine-plugin/

I’ve used MailChimp.  It’s really pretty simple to use - nice interface.

It has no direct integration with EE.  You could use one of the ‘feed grabbing’ addons to export a mailing list and import it into MailChimp.

I would second for Campaign Monitor.

Thank you.  I have looked at a variety of programs including MailChimp and Campaign Monitor but also Aweber, Constant Contact, and iContact.
I see that there is some type of module for MailChimp use with EE.  Has anyone tried it to see how well it works?
I like what I’ve read about Campaign Monitor but it seems the prices are quite a bit higher than MailChimp since I plan to do at least one email newsletter per week, possibly more.