I am seeking advice on choosing a WordPress plugin that will send notifications by email to a list of contacts and subscribers.
Hoping someone can help me with some advice on this.
As far as I can see, the "wants list" for such a plug-in would include:
1) be able to send email notification to subscribers when a new post is published
(maybe with an option of not sending out an email every time (e.g. so can send out a notification once a week, so it doesn't act like spam to people)
2) be able to add a list of emails to it
(i.e. can add a list of contacts, so it is not just subscribers to the site)
(and to be able to add to the list from a file in a format such as MS Word, Excel)
3) be able to edit the email list
4) be able to download the email list from the site (in a format that can be read by MS Word, Excel, or the like)
5) can send out an email to an email list
(i.e. to send out an announcement, not necessarily re. a post)
(no. 5 is not essential though)
Any advice would be welcome.
Also, since I am a WP newbie, I was wondering how it works.
Do you need an email programme as well, or do the notifications just get sent from your WordPress server?
If the latter, would it be correct to assume that you have to nominate an email address that they come from?
Thank you.
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BTW, I have looked at the following:
http://wpmu.org/4-plugins-that-enable-your-wordpress-site-to-send-html-emails/
http://www.webhostingbillboards.com/wordpress-plugins/12-free-latest-email-marketing-plugin-for-wordpress/
http://wordpress.org/plugins/subscribe2/
http://subscribe2.wordpress.com/
looks good, but there was one negative comment re. it crashing a site
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?996546-How-to-send-email-to-registered-users
http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/e-newsletter/?utm_source=org&utm_medium=ipa&utm_campaign=ipa
http://wordpress.org/plugins/email-newsletter/
http://wordpress.org/plugins/newsletter/
http://wordpress.org/plugins/html-emails/
This plugin hasn't been updated in over 2 years.
It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.
http://wordpress.org/plugins/mass-email-to-users/
http://wordpress.org/plugins/mailpress/
http://watershedstudio.com/portfolio/software-development/wordpress-email-notification-plugin/
http://www.wysija.com/
http://www.wysija.com/post-notify-solutions-wordpress/