Newsletter (aka Mailinglist) software / resources for ModX

Hi everyone,

I am currently researching available mailinglist options. I am looking for something that has :

- (HTML) templates in-built and a good editor.
- User friendly way to manage subscribe and unsubscribes.
- Placeholders like [subscriber_name] would be a plus
- And integrates well with ModX naturally.
- PHP as the codebase.

What I’ve tried sofar :

KoopsMailinglistX -- As a ModX module, it’s certainly nice and shows a lot of potential. It does not offer HTML-templates yet though, and each time you have to write the newsletter from scratch. No placeholders as well like [subscriber_name] or something. It would be cool if one could simply sent a special modx document as a newsletter.

PHPList -- Looks like a nice option, however, it does not seem to work on my server. Testing is still on-going to see where the problem lies. It does seem to have all necessary options

Pommo - Again, lot of potential, but no HTML templates yet.

OpenEMM - I just stumbled upon this one, so no review yet, but looks solid at a first glance. Not PHP based though, alas.


So I was hoping to hear / have a discussion on newsletter (aka Mailinglist) solutions out there.

we’re using OEMpro from Octeth, and this works quiet well, although it’s not pefect imho (as is nothing).
It quiet possible to integrate it with MODx, as you can create outsourced mailinglists, that are connected to a database-server and/or table, that can be a newslist-subscription table in your MODx setup. The other way around is also possible ofcourse, by creating a custom MODx module that connects to the OEMpro subscribers database-table.

Personally, i think Pommo looks quiet promising, especially if/when they are going to implement SwiftMailer in the upcoming release.

I couldn’t get KoopsMailinglistX to work, and PHPlist is nice but very basic.

Been thinking about creating a simple mailinglist functionality for MODx, but i don’t really believe in reinventing the wheel. What would be the integration you would like to see in MODx? Only managing the subscribers, or also creating campaigns or mailings and sending and reporting them from MODx?

Olaf

Hi Olaf,

I will check out that Octeth OEMpro.

Well, the most important thing in a mailinglist software is (for me) the ability to create a HTML template. So if one could style the header for instance, and then make custom paragraphs (This would be TVs in MODx) With a small picture and a bit of text. Then there is the footer. So basically if one could convert a ModX document to a newsletter, that would be a great feature. (And why re-invent the wheel?)

The second would be to have the ability to use some placeholder like [username] , but this is not terribly important. Dear Subscriber would be ok to use.

An activation mail would be a must ofcourse, this goes without saying. So at least a basic subscriber management tool would be required I think. (To check the status of subscribers)

For KoopsmailinglistX they are working Sendmail on integration I believe, which is cool since so many hosts use this as the mail gateway.

Actually, Pommo does have mailing templates. All you do is save a mailing as a template and it’s available in a drop-down list of templates to start from. It’s also very easy to use alongside of MODx (I haven’t integrated its admin interface with the MODx Manager yet because I haven’t had the need, but I can imagine it would be easy to load as a module).

Hmmm, well, I saw something like that, but you don’t have full control to create DIVs / CSS if I am right. You can only save out FCKedited documents (I am assuming it was FCKeditor on Pommo here)

That’s where you’d used the "Toggle HTML/WYSIWYG" button (just like in MODx)...