Based on WordPress.org star rating and count alone, MailPress is the most popular free newsletter plugin for WordPress. However, in my tests I faced several bugs, glitches, and even fatal errors. I felt as if the plugin focused too much on packing features while overlooking robustness of the code. But it’s very feature rich, which means: if you manage to get it to work, you will enjoy all sorts of benefits a newsletter solution could provide!
The plugin has add-ons of its own. These add-ons provide all sorts of functionality, like creating mailing lists, autoresponders, batch sending capability, and more. There are 26 of them.
Ease of Use and Installation
Installation for this free plugin is straightforward–just go to your admin dashboard and install it from there.
Using MailPress is not so easy though. I was able to import subscribers into the plugin, but when I went to the “Add New Mail” screen to create my email broadcast, first, I noticed a little PHP warning at the bottom of the screen. It seemed minor and not something that would prevent the plugin from working. So, I went ahead and filled out the textboxes and everything and clicked “Send”. I received “Email sent!” notification…but no emails went out…
Other newsletter plugins that I have tested just worked–without asking me to do much. I’m sure this one works too, it’s just not easy to get it working…
Other admin screens and options seemed a bit too technical. Maybe I’m an idiot or maybe the plugin isn’t so easy to use–you can check it out and decide for yourself.
Technical Support and Documentation
The author provides consistent support to his users on the WordPress.org forum as well as on a Google group for MailPress.
There’s a section on MailPress that’s dedicated to documentation. It’s a Wiki site. I found it a little hard to navigate. However, it is very comprehensive. It covers every aspect of using and customizing the plugin–from installation to building a custom theme!
Managing Subscribers and Mailing Lists
MailPress handles management of subscribers and mailing lists pretty well. There’s an add-on called “sync_wordpress_user”. It adds any new WordPress site registered user to your subscribers list! I think that’s a cool feature. But MailPress still maintains its own database tables for users and usermeta.
It is possible to add custom fields to subscribers, but an admin has to do it manually for every subscriber. You cannot capture custom fields, such as hobbies, age, or gender from subscribers at the time of sign-up, which defeats the purpose.
Luckily, MailPress allows you to segment your subscribers by mailing lists. Before can to use mailing lists, you’ll have to activate the add-on.
While you can import and synchronize WordPress users with MailPress using some of the provided add-ons, there is no way to export users outside of MailPress, which is a major drawback.
Opt-in Form Features
MailPress provides several convenient options for inserting opt-in forms.
You can use the sidebar widget, a shortcode within your post, or a PHP template code–each one of these is documented and described on the plugin’s website.
Customizing the fields that are displayed on these forms is not possible. Neither is it possible to utilize 3rd party plugins for capturing subscribers with MailPress.
Scheduling Autoresponders
Autoresponders are possible in MailPress also through one of the add-ons.
After enabling the add-on, you go to the autoresponder screen and add a new autoresponder. You can tie each autoresponder to a specific event that will trigger it. Those events can be: activation of subscription, joining a certain mailing list, or unsubscribing. Then, you go to the “Add New Mail” screen to create the actual mail that’ll go out and you can add it to whatever autoresponder and schedule it for the future.
I find this to be a bit convoluted and unintuitive and judging by the reports online, it seems a bit buggy and problematic.
Sending Site Content Updates as Newsletters
MailPress can send site content updates as a newsletter to your subscribers, but getting that to work is confusing. When you activate the newsletter add-on, you’ll be able to configure the newsletter functionality in the settings menu. You just set the number of posts to include in the newsletter. Then when you’re editing an individual post, you have more settings there, like send newsletter Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc…And these settings in those places doesn’t make sense!!
HTML Emails, Themes, and Attachments
MailPress handles the sending of HTML emails pretty well. It also allows you to specify a plain text version of your email. There’s no way to include attachments, however.
As for themes and designs, the opt-in forms that MailPress puts out can be styled by anyone who knows web design. They don’t have any built-in styles though.
MailPress does include five themes. Three in English and one in French. The author also provides instruction and documentations on making your own MailPress theme.
Bounce Email Management
MailPress provides extensive configurations for managing bounces. Obviously, you can specify the POP3 server and email that will receive the bounces. And you can set the maximum number of bounces before an email address is deactivated. But like many things in MailPress, this too can feel a bit technical. Luckily, there is comprehensive documentation for bounced email handling in MailPress.
Email Newsletter Analytics
MailPress has a powerful tracking add-on that attempts to track the open rate, clicks, and other activities pertaining to your emails. Checkout the screenshot below to whet your appetite. Now, if MailPress tracking and analytics works as depicted in this screenshot, I’d say it’s got killer tracking features!!
Money Matters
MailPress is completely free–no strings attached. I don’t see the developer trying to monetize his work in any way.
I had difficulty with MailPress as well. I got a fatal error when trying to do the setting and test option. I searched on the MailPress wiki site and found no answer to my issue. There was not enough information in the FAQ section.