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Hi,

I was looking through the emailing list extensions but none of them mentioned if they would work effectively with 10,000 or even 50,000 people. I have a huge list already and I want people to be able to subscribe to my newsletter category. (there are 3 categories and they would have the option to just subscribe to 1.) I was wondering if anyone would recommended a newsletter and/or emailing list extension that they know could handle a large number of subscribers.

Thanks!!

I'm guessing I may get some flak from Joomla! developers for saying this, but...

In my opinion, it's much wiser to use an outside third party newsletter emailing system rather than any Joomla! based extension solution. There are many fine Joomla! third party extensions available for running newsletters and subscriptions from within Joomla!. However, below is a list of just a few reasons why Joomla! based solutions aren't necessarily ideal when it comes to conducting any level of serious email marketing:

1) Any email list that is greater than 1000 subscribers is likely going to prove problematic when emails are generated and sent via a shared server hosting account. Especially any cheap or "free" web hosting account. Most web hosts limit the number of email messages that can be sent out on either an hourly or quantity basis. It isn't uncommon for a shared server account to limit or restrict the number of messages sent via your Joomla! installation. And, if you can only send out 50-100 messages per hour... It will take many hours to send 1000+ email newsletters to your subscribers.

2) Storing tens of thousands of email subscribers in your Joomla! database will bloat it and potentially slow down processing for the base site itself. The bigger the tables, the more sluggish your MySQL database potentially can become. And, if you choose at some point to switch to a different CMS platform for your base website, what are you going to do with all of those subscribers sitting in your Joomla! based tables? Yes, I know that many Joomla! newsletter extensions offer the ability to export your lists, but in reality... The exporting features and reliability has proven to be either poor or suspect for many Joomla! newsletter extensions.

3) Newsletter creation and subscriber management is not as feature rich or stable with the majority of Joomla! third party newsletter extensions available. Not a huge problem when dealing with only a few hundred subscribers but if you have tens of thousands... Good luck trying to manage importing, exporting, editing or deleting subscribers very easily or efficiently. In the real world, good management of your list of subscribers is critical to the success of your ongoing and long term email marketing campaigns. Non-Joomla! based newsletter email systems are much better at assisting you with the tedious daily chores associated with newsletter creation and mailing list maintenance.

4) Email delivery is more likely to be achieved in larger numbers using a legitimate third party non-Joomla! based newsletter emailing service. Email sent through professional bulk email systems are done so with a greater delivery success rate than via your own web hosting account and website. It has to do with how major players on the Internet such as Google Mail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, AOL and others block large numbers of email arriving from non-verified mail systems. Many professional newsletter emailing systems are recognized by these major players as "safe" non-spamming mailers and as a result, email delivery rates are generally much greater.

5) If you send out a very large number of email messages via your web hosting account and you either overload the mail server or worse, get excused of spamming... Your web host will shut you and your website down in a heartbeat! This is certainly true if you're sending large mailings out and doing so frequently. Anything over a 1000 emails when sent out all at once will likely be a problem, unless you have a premier business web hosting account and that can be very expensive. The only way around this is to send out small batches of newsletters to spread out the load on the mail server over time. But even if you don't mind it taking many hours (days even) to send out thousands of newsletters, you're still at risk of losing your web hosting account due to being labeled a "spammer".

These are just a few of the roadblocks and land mines that anyone will face when attempting to manage and run large email marketing campaigns. While third party email systems such as Constant Contact, aWebber and others do cost money... In the end, your email based marketing efforts will only be effective if the email is actually delivered, easily managed and you (or your website) isn't shutdown in the process.

Again... I imagine there will be those that will strongly disagree with what I've posted here. But it's been our experience over the years that anything other than a "hobby" level newsletter, should be done remotely outside of the base Joomla! system via a professional email delivery system. If you have a business and are serious about your email marketing efforts succeeding, think ahead and do it professionally and responsibly. In the end, you will find it well worth the cost.

Jim

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Worldwide TeleNet - Joomla! Website Design & Web Development
Cincinnati - Northern Kentucky - USA
http://www.wwtelenet.com/web-design/articles.html
http://www.wwtndomains.com

I agree with what wwtn is saying. It has been my experience in trying to manage email lists and the variety of available services that are out there that it's a whole task in itself.

http://www.campaignmonitor.com
http://www.mailchimp.com
http://www.pure360.com
http://www.ecircle.com

These are a few that are dedicated and setup for mailing services. You can go far and also spend a lot of dollars as well. All comes back to how many emails/newsletters per week/month and to how many people.

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It looks like you have a 1D-10-T error: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_error

@kari_sinkko Can you please let me know whether the following 3rd party news letter providers has any api to Joomla? What i mean i want to know whether subscriber list in joomla should be synchronized with any of these providers :

http://www.campaignmonitor.com
http://www.pure360.com
http://www.ecircle.com

I just did a quick search:

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... dges/12476

This might help out.

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It looks like you have a 1D-10-T error: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_error