I have tried  using both  yanc and Mamml  I was unable to get yanc to mail out my total database  of over 1600 members  on test with a smaller database i could only get around 25 of a150 names database to send.  Mamml  I manages to get  100% of my small database sent and received.  I can get the 1600 member database to report that it has sent all the names but only ever get around 400 newsletters reported  in the statistics as having been read. I have sprinkled  control  email address throughout the database and i get all of these  newsletters delivered back to this address.

My client is jumping up and down complaining that their members are not getting the newsletter  and it seems their old supply is having to send the newsletter to the membership,  strangle the same newsletter is getting through to the membership which they don't get them from  Mamml.

I had assumed  That Mamml was mailing out the complete list  and that the reporting software was incapable of handling the number of members
Also that  many of the newsletters were being stopped by spam filters. but my clients previous supplier is disproving that assumption.

I have Mamml throttled to one email every five seconds,  recommended by my isp, this take nearly two hours to send and i get a page with each email listed and confirmed as sent. The database is sprinkled with address which i receive  just after  Mamml reports that it has been sent.

I felt that i have done as much as i can to verify that the newsletter plugins works.  Can anyone  suggest  an alternative  which they know work or a better strategy for confirming the performance of  components


Graeme

I could not find anything that worked in Joomla for email newsletter, i had to go to phplist because my isp dropped mailman. Like phplist because you can add unlimited number of lists.

I am always surprised that more people don't want a good mailing list for Joomla as it is critical to many businesses. Maybe this says something about why Joomla has not had more of an impact on the business world...yet.

AFAIK, both MaMML and YaNC integrate with the Joomla user table and have the ability to include existing Joomla content in your mailing. YaNC has the powerful advantage of integration with the upcoming version of CommunityBuilder. This will allow its subscription info to be included directly in your registration and user profile - a big deal! I hope that many other 3PD take interest in CB's plugin framework. Many of our community's great projects are on board already!

I should be clear that I have not tried to use YaNC or MaMML / ANJEL in a production environment. Both are actively being developed. Have you considered a donation to the developer in return for help with your custom application of their free software? Your donation could help create a more solid product for all Joomla users!

I have used mosListMessenger and have to say that it is a very capable mailing list script. I like it a lot, actually! There are a few drawbacks with its integration with Joomla that have kept us from embracing it as a production solution:

• WYSIWYG editor only works in IE
• no support or updates for a released core modifications that automatically added Joomla users to mosLM
• no native ability to include existing Joomla content in the email

Without the integration of Joomla's registration process or at the very least the ability to import them makes mosLM is pretty useless for most of our clients. I don't understand why mLM doesn't use Joomla's WYSIWYG editor, seems a simple modification. mosListMessenger is a modification by Phil Taylor of an existing stand-alone script written by someone else. Phil modifies it to work with Joomla and resells it per an agreement with the original developers. Because of this situation, we think that it's safe to assume that that the potential for future integration with Joomla is limited.

We have used Mailman and PHPlist effectively but neither are integrated with Joomla. Mailman is written in Python and has been the most robust web-based mailing list script we've found for large lists. It allows for newsletter / blast one-way communications as well as a listserv / mailing list two-way communication vehicle for subscribed users. Mailman's interface is extremely clunky and very difficult to modify as it is usually installed for the entire server. Hopefully future versions will be more customizable and offer an API to help integrate admin functions into Joomla. Until then, it remains a very good solution for a large mailing list that is not integrated with your Joomla site.

PHPlist allows only newsletter / blast one-way communications but does so admirably. The main drawbacks of PHPlist for us were the one-way only abilities and the need to create the mail in the web-based admin rather than simply sending an email to a special email address. Most users we've found would rather create and send the email in their own email program (Outlook, Thunderbird, OSX Mail, etc) which Mailman allows but not PHPlist.

I have spent a some time with YaNC  its quite a polished solution with regard to administering the component creating mailing list and newsletter, its by far the best solution, or would be if i could get it to mail out successfully i spent a few weeks  with it installed on two completely different servers  trying every conceivable throttling option and mailing option(smtp, sendmail etc).

I Produced a database of 150 names all going to one domain the most i ever received from YaNC was 25  the average was between 6 and 18 a mailing.

MaMML is a lot simpler less features and i have managed to get the small database to  complete a mailing  One of the poor features is that you have to maintain  contact with the mailing page in the case of the large database this can be over two hours. If i loose contact with the page, say i open a new browser window this breaks contact with the site and the script stop.

It would be helpful to be able to mail those which did not get sent but you can only resend the whole database . Thanks for the other suggestions will look into them.

Graeme

I have an important question. It seems YaNC requires the browser window to be open THE ENTIRE TIME it takes to send the emails. My host limits email sending to 500 per hour so to send 10,000 user emailer it would take 20 Hours! Which ties up the computer for 20 hours.

Does anyone know of the four main Mambo newsletter components - - Yanc, MAMML, MosList, Letterman - - which sends in the "background" so to speak on the server versus on the client machine. I have no idea why YaNC ties up the browser to send messages. Its too delicate.

Thanks for any advice,

- Kevin

i think they all do, with a list that big you may want to look into phplist or similar.

I always thought that MaMML / ANJEL has more features than its parent YaNC. Is this not correct? Its difficult to create a feature comparison because the info on their respective sites is slim. I seem to remember that MaMML was initially developed to allow for registered and unregistered subscribers and to be able to send a mailing from the frontend.

We have reviewed YaNC, Letterman, and MaMML at http://reviews.joomlaya.com including screenshots. We are currently building a Overall comparison between the three.

Bohn002,

Thanks for the notes. I can confirm 100% that YaNC does *not* send emails in the background. It requires the browser (client) to be open and uninterrupted for hours at a time while it sends. This is a show stopper for any newsletter that has more than a thousand subscribers.

Not be to harsh, but its difficult to tell if joomlaya.com actually uses these components before their reviews (or they simply install and poke around only).

Thanks all. This is a great thread with very useful information.

If anyone knows for certain if any Mambo/ Joomla mailing list do a throttled send via the server (so that the browser doesn't have to remain open) I'd love to know. I will post any news I can find.

Thanks,

- Kevin

At joomlaya.com we install, stress test, explore, hack, edit and run it and much more. The only thing we dont do is send 10,000 emails out to stress test the system. #1 because our 12000 members probably wouldn't like getting a test message. #2 every server and setup is different and so what may work great on our setup may be horrible on yours. #3 if you think we missed something on our review please let us know, the community in part makes the community as a whole better.

Hi bohn002,

Thanks for the reply. It would be great to review the sending mechanics of the newsletters, that is, do they tie up the browser when sending or only the server. Non Mambo/Joomla mailng lists never tie up the client (browser), they spool messages on the server only (like Sonic Mailer Pro http://www.sensationdesigns.com/products/scripts/smpro/index.php or PHPlist).

It may be good to stick to a paragraph intro summary then bullet points of pros and cons to make the reviews more scanable. I really hope I'm sounding like a jerk. Just giving some input.

- Kevin

Does Anjel / Mamml offer the option to let anonymous users view past issues of a newsletter?  I can't find this setting and I recall Yanc did this.

This would be a feature to include in your comparison

Pretty good info here, thanx for that.

Maybe stupid, just brainstorming aloud: Asumed you have SSH or root access to your server. Is'nt it possible to open the send mail URL from a textbased browser? Could be a workaround.

http://www.qrios.nl

Hi,

I've been using MaMML for a while and appreciate its simplicity. It has done all that I ask so far, though soon I may be looking for more complexity. I like that YaNC is integrated into CB, however, as that is important to my site.

If I switch to YaNC, can anyone tell me what I'll be mising? Is that comparison chart available somewhere yet?

YaNC seem the most polished of the two programs you can only gain by switching to  YaNC,  I like the component but as i said in my original post, I could not get it to post out my lists, I used two different  servers  and have never been able to complete a posting only ever achieving a very small percentage of the database.

Where as I have successfully sent out a large  list with MaMML.  I have noted that MaMML has renamed itself  Anjel. Is there an upgrade path from users of MaMML there seems to be no reference in the download about upgrading or migrating .

Graeme

Later today I will try to add an upgrade option for MaMML users. The newer ANJEL version allows for the browser to be closed and still send the messages, which seems to be one of the concerns here. The other issues could also be added to the bug tracker for ANJEL.

-Schmalls

Are any of the other newsletter components looking to integrate Community Builder's new plug-in structure? I'm particularly wondering about ANJEL- but curious about the others as well.

I have got in touch with the CB team and they are adding me as a developer so that I can find out how to implement ANJEL to work with the CB plugin architecture.

-Schmalls

Excellent news, Schmalls. Thanks for the update - I know many folks will be looking forward to this integration!

I have installed the latest version of CB with YaNC. I have set up CB so that it classifies the registered users into three lists. Basically, each user is classified depending on his residence (South, North or Center Italy). Now, I'd like to send different newsletters to each of the three CB lists without asking an explicit subscription by the users.

Is that possible?

Thanks a lot and sorry if this appears like a basic question.

Luigi

It seems you guys can send the mails, for me no matter which com I use, the links (even content link) in the body part of the mail returns a syntax failure when clicked and gives a blank IE window  !! any thoughts will be helpful

Thanks

Have just updated from MaMML to Anjel  via the Update  feature

First thing i have noticed is that  my members all 1600 have been unsubscribed from the two newsletters I have  on the site.

When i tried ti manually  ad them to the newsletters i get this error

Error (admin.anjel.php->subscribers() line 476): Error updating subscriber information in database. Database error:
Unknown column \'list_1\' in \'field list\' SQL=UPDATE\n `mos_anjel_unregistered` \n SET `list_1` = 1 \n WHERE `unregistered_id` = 1Unknown column \'list_2\' in \'field list\' SQL=UPDATE\n `mos_anjel_unregistered` \n SET `list_2` = 1 \n WHERE `unregistered_id` = 1



Graeme

Gang,

After today I have to ANJEL is by far the best Newsletter component out there. I use both Letterman and ANEL...letter man is great for those small newsletters that need to go out and everything....awsome...quick easy and dirty...but what if you have a huge list? Letterman quite out of me after the 1000 email....so i had to come up with a new solution since i have 4000 emails that needed to go out. I used ANJEL...and it worked flawlessly....not a single email missed and all 4000 + emails where dispatched.....

So what ever your needs are for newsletters let it be known that ANJEL (i pronounce is Angel) is one of the best newsletters (out of all that I have used) that work great and are awsome.

- Small mailing list - smaller features - Letterman
- Larger Mailing List (even the small ones too) - more features - ANJEL

Rock on and keep it going.

Is there a German translation for Yanc. If I shall use Yanc I will need one.
I am interested in doing it myself please contact me!

I have partial funding for a bridging project between PHPlist and Joomla.  I need more funding and a willing developer/programmer.

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,30369.0.html

We've been using PHPlist for a couple of years. It is a great program, we have been able to do amazing stuff with it. The importing of large lists and the ability to handle a huge users database (+30000) easily is a big plus. The bounced mails handling is indispensable.

We tried the Yank and other mail list managers done for mambo sometime ago and none was able to handle more than +200 names list...

There is a thread that talks about the possibility of integrating PHPlist with Mambo via an API wich will finally let us integrate the mambo and PHPlist user databases. This will be a godsend for us.

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?topic=23324.new;topicseen#new

What we've seen with Mambo is that must of the heavy duty work that falls outside the CMS framework –like forums, advertising handling and mailing lists – are better served by specialized apps. Mambo should strive to make it easier for developers to create bridges with this apps instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

I very much agree.  The Joomla! dev team have stated that J! 1.1 will have several enhancements for 3rd party developers.

I'll just add my 2 cents here about PHPList being the way to go with serious lists.

Like Ganar said, the bounce processing in PHPList is incredible - with the option to customize which bounce messages are ignored (on vacation notices, mailbox full, etc.)

With the right internet provider, you can rally crank out a mailing to.  I am currently sending to 30,000 subscribers at just over 11,000 messages per hour - and this is with a .2 second throttle delay between each message.

PHPList can be set to run in the background and off of a cron job too (though cron set up is a bit fiddly - but worth the reward for persevering)!

Tim

I'm sure you guys have seen the joomla-phplist bridge is now available!

http://www.joomlart.com

I'm seriously looking into it for our site.

Please post your experience to this thread and/or as a review of the extension at the directory:
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/