Thread

I am putting together a ‘solutions’ list for some issues a current website I handle has.  One issue is how to handle mailing lists and sending mail on a shared server with an email per hour limit.  Right now I use PHP list to manage the list and send email.

Is there a feature, plugin, or extension that will throttle/limit emails being sent per hour so I don’t exceed the server limit?

and…if not…

Is there a way to get EE to work with email services such as aweber.com for memberships so that a person doesn’t have to have a login for the website and a login for their email list management?

Also, does EE support multiple lists? 

Thanks
Kevin

I haven’t used the mail module, but I think it is for very small lists and casual use.

The conversations I’ve had around here lead me to think most folks are using a third party service like Campaign Monitor or MailChimp. Many of the email marketing companies provide an API, but I’m unaware of any integration with EE. If I had the chops I’d build one for CM.

Thanks Trif3cta -

I’m looking at a list of about 3500 people so I think I’ll have to use a 3rd party.  I noticed you mentioned Campaign Monitor a couple times, is that one you prefer?

Using an external service will save you tons of work and doesn’t cost much.

Campaign Monitor (and its sister product MailBuild) are awesome, they are geared towards web designers and do a great job. My other choice would be MailChimp.

There are a lot of other options. I have used Constant Contact and Vertical Response in the past. I think I saw an extension for CC somehwere, probably Solspace.com.

Solspace do indeed have a Constant Contact add-on for Freeform but I lean towards Campaign Monitor.

If your clients are used to using EE, you can use the newsletter extension. It’s not really well supported, Paul Burdick made it, but regarded it as a test only. Still one of my clients uses it for 1.000 recipients and is happy with it.

Advantage may be that you can use entries and images from the EE system and that messages can be sent from the same server as the website.

Another advantage is of course that it is absolutely free

iContact & Emma are also worth checking out.

I use icontact and love it. But honestly all of them work well. But there is no replacement for a good email newsletter system. At some point in time I would love to have a plugin that allows for usage of one of these systems…

Just wanted to say thanks for all the input on this thread!

I only have experience with self-hosted mail solutions, but again, with the limit on shared hosting it’s hard to send out mails. 

Wonder how hard it would be to make an ext/mod/plug for a service…?

I just create a form that uploads data directly to Campaign Monitor

yeah but does it also input the email address into your expressionengine db?

I’d be willing to pay for a CM module, I’m sure there are scores of us. One of you enterprising PHP wizards should make one and sell it for 30 - 50 bucks a pop.

already looking into it 😉 but I would probably price it cheaper…

Yes I can see the advantage of having a plug-in is now. I guess all you would need is a very simple system that also passed the data to Campaign Monitor.

Campaign Monitor also allows custom fields so a system that matched them up too would be nice. Leevi!