[DBTech] DragonByte Mail

[DBTech] DragonByte Mail 4.6.3

No permission to buy ($14.95)
Compatible XF 2.x versions
  1. 2.0
  2. 2.1
  3. 2.2
Additional requirements
PHP 7.2.0+ (7.4+ recommended)
Updates duration
1 Month - US $14.95 (US $9.95 renewal) / 1 Year - US $39.95 (US $27.45 renewal) / Branding Free Add-On - US $75
Visible branding
Yes, but removable with payment
DragonByte Mail is a professional mailing list mod with advanced subscription management features. Additionally, it has a newsletter feature that highlights your most popular threads.

Uses
DragonByte Mail is the perfect solution for any forum who wish to send out large quantities of mail to users on a mailing list. It lets admins and users have fine-grained access to subscriptions, and also sends out automated newsletters with powerful algorithms for determining popular content.


Major Features:

Analytics Data Gathering: Data is gathered regarding how many of your users open your emails, and how long they read them for. This can be disabled per mailing list. This data will power advanced delivery features, ensuring maximum engagement with your content.

Automated Newsletters: Your users will receive an email containing the most popular threads since the last newsletter was sent. They can unsubscribe at any moment, or increase/decrease frequency of newsletters, without being logged in.

Automatic "Unsubscribe" Link Creation: A secure link to unsubscribe themselves from the mailing list will be automatically added to the bottom of the mail. It does not require the user to be logged in, so it complies with spam policies set forth by mail providers.

Mail History: Each past sent mail can be viewed at any time from the front-end.

Advanced Subscription Management: Users can quickly and easily (un)subscribe from the mailing list via the mailing list directory, or the admin can manually change the subscription status in the AdminCP.

SMTP Email Validation: Email addresses are automatically validated by connecting to the mail server via SMTP. This feature helps eliminate bounced email before they get a chance to bounce. Validation happens automatically, or you can manually validate them via CLI by running php cmd.php dbtech-mail:validate-emails <numEmails> (where <numEmails> is the number of email addresses you wish to validate).

Inactivity Reminders: You can optionally enable inactivity reminders, where users who have been inactive for X days will receive a reminder email about their account. You can also control which user groups receive these emails, as well as how many times they are reminded.


Complete Feature List

AdminCP

General Settings

  • Navbar Tab (Disabled / Left side of navbar / Right side of navbar with the Alert tab)
  • Enable Sign-Up Confirmation (users will need to confirm their subscription to the mailing list)
  • Enable Unsubscription Feedback
  • Inactivity Reminders
    • Enabled
    • Included user groups
    • Inactivity threshold (in days)
    • Email reminder repetitions (how many times to remind a user)
Mailing List Management
  • Create unlimited mailing lists with per-list usergroup permissions
  • Search for users to see whether they have subscribed or unsubscribed
  • Toggle users' subscription status
  • Custom "From" email
  • Choose whether to use the XenForo HTML wrapper or entirely custom HTML when sending this email - selecting Custom means you have complete control over the HTML in your email!
  • Optionally instantly send email (recommended only for test mailing lists) or using the XenForo Mail Queue system (recommended for public mailing lists)
  • Override SMTP settings per mailing list
  • Permissions:
    • Can Subscribe
    • Default Subscribed
    • Cannot View List
    • Can View List
    • Can Send Mail
    • Can Manage
    • Can View Stats
Digest Management [XenForo 1.5 / 2.0 / 2.1 only]
  • Configure an automated "Reader's Digest" of your most popular forum threads
  • Optionally only include public (guest-accessible) forums
  • Advanced sorting via a powerful algorithm
  • Limit the number of topics included
  • Choose sorting type if "Advanced Sorting" is disabled
  • Excluded Forums
Unsubscribe Feedback
  • When users unsubscribe from your mailing list, they will be asked for optional feedback
  • Add/Edit/Delete feedback options
Keyword Management
  • Users can optionally only receive manually sent mail that pertains to their interests, as defined by these keywords
  • Add/Edit/Delete keywords
Subscription Log
  • Whenever a user's subscription status changes, be it by them or an admin, it gets logged
  • Search the log using user name / start date / end date / log type
  • Paginated list of log entries
Inactive Users List
  • If a user has not been active on the forums for a while, DragonByte Mail will automatically email them asking them to come back
  • Search the list using user name
  • Paginated list of users
Maintenance
  • Rebuild "Default Subscribed" - If you have changed the "Default Subscribed" flag, or created a new mailing list, you can run this action to subscribe your users.
  • Mass Unsubscribe Users - This action lets you unsubscribe all users from one or more usergroup(s) from one or more mailing list(s) simultaneously.
SMTP Validation
  • Email addresses are automatically validated to check for defunct mail servers or potentially bounced mail
  • Manually validate addresses via CLI by running php cmd.php dbtech-mail:validate-emails <numEmails> (where <numEmails> is the number of email addresses you wish to validate).
  • Browsable log of all validation results
  • Email addresses are re-validated every six months
Front-End

Mailing List Directory

  • List all mailing lists
  • Links to send mail / view mail history / manage keyword subscriptions / (un)subscribe
  • Unsubscription stats
Send Mail
  • If you are using XenForo's HTML wrapper; uses the forum editor to enter the content
  • If you are using custom HTML; offers Plain Text and HTML text areas to enter your content separately
  • Replacement variables allow you to address the user directly with their user name & more
  • Uses XenForo's Mail Queue system to avoid overloading servers / avoid "maximum mails per hour" server restrictions
  • One-click unsubscribe without needing to be logged in
Mail History
  • Displays a list of all mail from that mailing list
  • View the mail in full HTML
  • Unsubscription stats per-email
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Author
DragonByte Tech
Views
9,848
First release
Last update

Ratings

3.67 star(s) 3 ratings

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Latest updates

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  3. 4.6.1

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Latest reviews

As a non-technical person, we found this addon pretty darn intuitive. There were a couple of mind benders and DBTech explained those as part of the setup process.
The user interface for this addon is not good. Going against the user interface conventions of most XF addons, the main interface for sending emails is on the front end, not the back end, and in a publicly viewable navigation tab. Non admins can't mess with your email lists, but it seems strange to take up precious nav bar real estate with a giant 'mailing lists' tab. Sure, you can turn off the nav tab, but then you can't control your email lists, can you?

In addition to this bizarre UI choice, there's absolutely zero documentation, and zero instructions for getting this addon configured.

So if you forget that sending emails via this addon is controlled on the *front* end and not the *back end* (like every other xf addon) and then ask for support on the author's website, he's pretty much going to mock you. I was told 'familiarize yourself with the interface' (again, ZERO documentation, and expected settings are not where they would be in a normal XF addon).

So with this kind of convoluted setup, and the author's attitude when seeking support, I can't recommend anyone purchase this addon.
DragonByte Tech
DragonByte Tech
This review is incorrect in a number of claims.

1. Having part of an add-on's management in the front-end is perfectly within the user interface convention of most XF add-ons. See the XFRM used to post this review. This claim is false.
2. It's perfectly possible to change the phrase used in the navbar tab, so the claim of "giant mailing lists tab" is false.
3. You can still navigate to the "dbtech-mail" route manually, so the claim of "you can't control your email lists" is false.

The author of the review also conveniently forgot to mention that when I told them they needed to input the HTML in the "Send mail" interface, they assumed I meant the mailing list description (???) and replied with a snarky reply stating their assumption.

With such a large amount of false claims in a single review, and the inability to understand that they can't come at a developer with an aggressive attitude and not expect pushback, I would be wary of selling add-ons to this person.
Complete mail suite that is perfect for large-scale forums. Very friendly and fast customer support.
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