I’m starting a subscription service that will send out 6 newsletters each week to subscribers. I have Paid Memberships Pro, and now I need a plugin to help me design the emails and deliver them all for one price. I want to publish a post on WP, and that post should go out as the email with the same layout and design—full text, no ‘click here to see the post.’ Most subscribers prefer reading it in their inbox instead of on the website.
The issue is that every newsletter plugin seems aimed at marketers. I am NOT marketing to my subscribers. They have already paid me, and I just need to deliver what they paid for. It’s really that simple.
Besides being overly focused on marketing, many plugins let you design but don’t handle delivery well, which leads to emails bouncing or landing in spam. I need to send 30,000 emails a month to 5,000 subscribers, but all these plugins are charging by the email… I’m feeling overwhelmed. Please tell me I’m using the wrong search terms or something and that there’s actually something out there for me.
Maybe check out companies that focus on sending bulk emails, like MailChimp or Vertical Response? This article ‘How to use MailChimp to send WordPress blog posts by email’ suggests their plugin and mentions other options too. (I don’t have experience with their plugin.)
@Hale
MailChimp is exactly what I’m trying to avoid. You can’t just buy email delivery from them. It comes with a lot of marketing features and very little sending ability, which I don’t need. I need to send emails without all the ‘campaign’ fuss.
@Ellis
I understand. We use MailChimp and just ignore the marketing parts. The real question is if it’s worth the price.
Our nonprofit pays around $120/month for MailChimp to send unlimited emails to about 6,000 addresses. We usually send 6 times a month, totaling around 36,000 emails.
We considered another option (Brevo/Sendinblue) which is cheaper. With their prepaid email credits, we could pay $940 in advance for 500,000 emails, roughly $67/month. Flodesk charges about $35/month for similar services. It sounds tempting, but we have to look at the fine print.
What’s the deliverability like? Can we set up DMARC and SPF? How are undeliverable emails managed? (Some services like Flodesk might cancel accounts with too many undeliverables, which is an issue since some of our subscribers use temporary school email accounts.) Do they support multiple logins? Is there a way to preview how the email looks on different devices? Can we easily send test emails to our team and gather feedback? Is there a ‘View On Web’ link that’s auto-generated? How long does that link remain active?
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to email builders. Some options might be better or worse for creating emails with different design elements. (MailChimp is okay, but there’s room for improvement.) Can we bypass builder limits with custom HTML? (I’ve heard Flodesk can’t do this.)
In the end, we’re unsure if the cheaper options would bring more headaches. MailChimp works fine for now and meets our needs.
For your situation, I think you should focus on email sending companies and check which have the WordPress integration you want and other features you need. From there, pick the cheapest one that fits your needs. If the cheapest option includes extra features you don’t need, just don’t use them. In that sense, MailChimp might still be a good choice, but I wouldn’t dismiss it just because it has a lot of additional features.
It’s on my super long list. I’ll definitely look into it.
I’m the founder of Newsletter Glue. Thanks for the mention! We could be a good fit since we focus more on publishers than marketers.
Based on what you shared, I suggest pairing us with Sendy (which uses Amazon SES).
It will take some technical skills or patience to set up. But in the end, you’ll have a pretty affordable sending service that you can manage directly in WordPress.
Feel free to reach out at newsletterglue.com/contact for more info. Or you can DM me on Twitter (@lesley_pizza) since I’m not often on this forum.
Or try this one: Newsletters
It mentions ‘Send Post as a Newsletter’.
A while back, I tried MailPoet. From what I understand, their Business Subscription includes unlimited emails, and you pay per subscriber. So for 5,000 subscribers, it’s $55/month or $564/year.
Check out their pricing.