Hi
We have approx. 900 newletter subscribers and I understand that many are not receiving our newsletters due to limits imposed by our host. Our method of sending emails is currently “via php mail function”.
Would signing up with a SMTP host such as “AuthSMTP” or “SMPT.com” be a simple solution? They have plans for about $9/mth for 3000 emails. I am not at all technical, and don’t wont anything else to change with our emails such as origin address.
I realise I could use 3rd party software/service but we are using CS-Cart 1.3.5 which does not allow me to export just the news subscribers.
Hoping someone can shed some light…
Cheers
b4lly
Most hosts have a limit on so many emails per hour. Interspire newsletter, for example, allows to limit the que to so many emails per hour that works very well with our host. We can do about 250 emails per hour, no limit on hours. We use a cheapo account for this, about $4 a month for this email rate.
I also had trouble sending newsletters - I don’t think it was a host issue - and I am also using Version 1.3.5.
I purchased Atomic Mail Sender - [url]http://www.amailsender.com/massmailer/[/url] and now use it for all of my newsletters.
You can export your newsletter subscribers from your database using phpMyAdmin.
Is phpMyAdmin difficult to use? I really don’t have many technical skills and I’d be worried about buggering up the database. (I assume you are talking about the software at “www.phpmyadmin.net”)
EDIT
Sorry Lyn, I just found the phpmyadmin in my console. Do you know what the name is that I’m looking for to export?
If I can do it … you can too! I don’t understand this part of it either.
The list you want to export is cscart_site_subscribers. You can export it as a .csv and then import it into whatever email program you end up using. I do this each time I send a newsletter as you don’t receive notifications when people sign up to your newsletter so need to export the whole list each time so you reach everyone.
Thanks Lyn, you’re a star!
Found the record and did the export. I’ll checkout the mail program you suggested too. Thanks again.
B4lly
I know that I am now becoming annoying, but can I just ask you one more thing? The native newsletter in cscart added an unsubscribe/optout link at the bottom of each newsletter. Using Atomic, due you add this in any way? Just wondering how you manage this (if at all). I would like to continue giving subsubscribers the chance to opt out.
b4lly
I haven’t sent a newsletter for a while but I think when you export them you get a “Y” for those who are subscribed and an “N” for those who aren’t. You can sort the list in Excel and delete those who have opted out of receiving the newsletter.
What I do with AMS is put an unsubscribe link in my newsletter which sends me an email when people want to unsubscribe. I then manually go in to CS-Cart and untick the available box.
There are not that many people each time who want to unsubscribe and this seems to be the easiest method for me.
I think with AMS you are able to have people unsubscribing automatically but I haven’t taken the time to learn my around properly and I’m not sure whether this is an “extra”. You can probably also incorporate it on your home page and have people actually subscribing to the newsletter through AMS but again, this is something I haven’t really looked into.
That’s great Lyn. A simple link on the newsletter and manual deletion sounds the easiest option. Like you said, I can’t imagine heaps of people actually wanting to opt out.
Thnaks once more for taking the time to answer my queries. Much appreciated.
B4lly
We are currently in 2.0.15 and this is my little solution. I put a sleep(8); timer in /public_html/lib/phpmailer/class.phpmailer.php on lines 609 and 625. If you’re using something other than sendmail you will probably need to put it in the MailSend or SmtpSend functions of this class file. The reason I set it to 8 seconds is because the code is taking 10 seconds so 8 more nets me about 200 per hour and my hosts limit is 250. Leaves us a little room for sending other correspondence. This should work as long as you have set “Newsletters sent per step” to ‘1’ in the News & emails options under Administration->Addons.
Since you were now able to export your subscribers, I’d go with mailchimp if I were you… since a short while, it’s free for up to 2000 subscribers!
And if you ever upgrade your CS-cart, there’s a nice plugin by that connects your cart and the monkey without any hassle and with many features 
See [url]http://www.ez-ms.com/addonproducts/mailchimp-integration.html[/url]