[DBTech] DragonByte Mail [Paid] 4.7.0

[DragonByte Tech]

Is 1 hour the only option or can you let's say also configure it with "x amount of emails every 10 Minutes"?

1 hour is the only option. It’s a simple number input field that determines how many emails can be sent from your forum within an hour.

This is because the feature was designed to help deal with shared hosts that limits emails by the hour, they do not limit by 10 minutes.

Second question: If you purchase the lifetime version with removing the copyright, is there still any hint or link within the email sent out to your site or your products?

There is not.

 

[snoopy5]

This is because the feature was designed to help deal with shared hosts that limits emails by the hour, they do not limit by 10 minutes.

I know several webhoster who limit it in 10 minutes intervals. And this will get only worse over the time with shared webhosting.

1 hour is nothing else than 60 minutes. It might be easy to change that field in the code so that it is open for other numbers, but in minutes, not in hours. So the user can decide himself what he needs. That would be a suggestion.

Without that flexibility, I can not buy it and probably many others neither

 

[DragonByte Tech]

Honestly, if you're using a host with mail policies that restrictive, you should look into using an external service like SES or Mailgun instead. Even better; look for a better host.

 

[Robert9]

Do you have thought about an alarm, if the number of mails to send is to high for the settings?
Example:
Send one in a day, send mail one time in a week.
You have eight mails to send.

After the first week, we have 9 to send ...
After the second week, we have 10 to send ...

 

[DragonByte Tech]

Do you have thought about an alarm, if the number of mails to send is to high for the settings?
Example:
Send one in a day, send mail one time in a week.
You have eight mails to send.

After the first week, we have 9 to send ...
After the second week, we have 10 to send ...

I think that might be a bit complex, since it would require tracking over time as opposed to just over the past 1 hour. That being said, there might be some value in checking whether the mail queue is larger than the emails per hour. If that occurs, then it's possible the system will be infinitely backlogged.

 

[Alternadiv]

@DragonByte Tech -- Sent my first newsletter. The add-on is very useful, but I have some suggestions:

• A keyword that uses too many characters will throw a server error. It also doesn't tell you what the character limit is.
• The port 25 option, because if used wrong can set your entire email list to bounced email, should have some short of additional method to enable it. Maybe require the administrator's password? Or require you to type ENABLE into a text box?
• I purchased the branding free license. I think there should be no branding in any of the URLs. The mailing list should be called something like example.com/mail/ or example.com/newsletters/.
• The mailing list page is very bland. I wouldn't allow my users to have access to this page as it looks.
• On that note, I don't see the need for a public mailing list page. Yes, you can disable the navigation link to it, but:
  • You should be able to send your newsletter from the XF control panel.
  • You should be able to save your template within your control panel, so you can use it again next month (especially having BBCode access to the template, so you don't have to type out the image URLs again.)
    • As a workaround for saving templates, you could either add it to the mailing list description in the control panel or make a thread with it in your hidden administrator node. Obviously you could save it to your computer, too.
  • Users should be able to manage their subscriptions in their own control panel.
  • The user control option for keywords should not be in their control panel if you have keywords disabled.
  • Having the newsletter viewable on the website like this (https://tacoma3g.com/mail/mail/tacoma3gs-july-rig-of-the-month-more.4/) is fine, but probably not needed for every application. I don't need that. Should be an option to not do that.
• There should be a test send AND confirmation before sending to thousands of members.
  • If you hit that send button by mistake, it's over. You also can't send yourself a test email like default XF can. The word around is to make a test mailing list that only you will receive, and do it like that.
• The {unsub} shortcut is confusing.
  • First test: I just put {unsub} -- this put the full unsub URL in the email and didn't automatically hyperlink the first time, but on my second test it did.
  • Then I tried to get it to hyperlink AND use the unsub phrase. This part is confusing. Does the shortcut go in the URL box? Does it go in the text box? Does it go in both of the boxes? A small note on how it should work would be helpful.
  • There should be an option in the add-on options to just append this to the bottom of either all emails, or by specific mailing list, like default XF can do.
• There should be a way to view an unsubscribe feedback log in the control panel. Also, the unsubscribe email notification I get only shows their username and not their email. Their email would be helpful there.
• Rebuild mailing list should have a description of what that does like the other two rebuilds have.
• I'm not sure if this is possible, but it would be nice to allow the mass unsubscribe too to allow you to select the emails that were bounced.

Overall, I'm very happy I found this add-on. These suggestions would just make it that much better.

 

[DragonByte Tech]

Unfortunately it's not possible to handle suggestions @ this forum, they need to be posted @ DBTech.

One thread per suggestion would be preferable, since it will not be possible to implement all suggestions at the same time.

 

[FloV]

Is there a way to subscribe all users within a selected usergroup to a mailing list? As a batch update or so?

Also: Where can i see the stats about the unsubscribed reasons. Why a member has unsubscribed and which reason was picked most.

 

[DragonByte Tech]

Is there a way to subscribe all users within a selected usergroup to a mailing list? As a batch update or so?

Also: Where can i see the stats about the unsubscribed reasons. Why a member has unsubscribed and which reason was picked most.

Set the "Default subscribed" for each user group in your mailing list permissions, then go to Tools -> Rebuild caches and run the "Rebuild default subscribed" maintenance action.

 

[DragonByte Tech]

DragonByte Tech updated [DBTech] DragonByte Mail with a new update entry:

4.4.0 Gold

Update highlights

There have been no changes since Beta 1, so please find the release notes for v4.4.0 below:

----

This version adds a single major new feature; the ability to limit the maximum amount of emails your forum sends in an hour.
To be clear, this affects all email across the whole of your XenForo installation, so long as all 3rd party add-ons use XF's own email feature.
This means if you are running your site on a shared host, or your web host is limiting...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Robert9]

I have found the new option "mails per hour";
the mails are distributed over the whole time?
Means sending 60 in an hour means one per minute (aprox)?
Or just 60 in the first seconds and wait another 59 minutes?

If so it would be better to have Mails per minute or ten minutes?

 

[DragonByte Tech]

I have found the new option "mails per hour";
the mails are distributed over the whole time?
Means sending 60 in an hour means one per minute (aprox)?
Or just 60 in the first seconds and wait another 59 minutes?

If so it would be better to have Mails per minute or ten minutes?

It does not stagger email, though it does attempt to keep the queue order by re-queuing the email in the order they are attempting to be sent.

This is merely intended as a stop-gap solution for people on terrible shared hosts that cap emails per hour. It is not intended to be a replacement for finding a good web host, or using a 3rd party solution like Amazon SES or Mailgun.

 

[Robert9]

I am sorry that i have not more infos for you.
While using the DBTech Mailer (and XONs Email Queue) and the setup with Enable automated email validation
I got many errors like

• Swift_TransportException: Email to contact@***.com failed: Unable to send mail.

I would await now that such mail-adresses (user-accounts) would be deleted from mailing; but nothing happens.
This means that all these dead adresses are prooved again and again and again, i guess, because i see the errors every sunday again, when the mailing should be done.

 

[DragonByte Tech]

I am sorry that i have not more infos for you.
While using the DBTech Mailer (and XONs Email Queue) and the setup with Enable automated email validation
I got many errors like

• Swift_TransportException: Email to contact@***.com failed: Unable to send mail.

I would await now that such mail-adresses (user-accounts) would be deleted from mailing; but nothing happens.
This means that all these dead adresses are prooved again and again and again, i guess, because i see the errors every sunday again, when the mailing should be done.

That is entirely unrelated to this or any other add-on. This means your server is unable to connect to the remote mail server to send the email. Contact your server administrator if you believe it should be possible to email those addresses.

 

[Robert9]

Maybe you are right, but i have some thousand mails that are sent. I dont believe that the mail server was not reachable for some minutes,
so the error comes from something else. But maybe not from you addon, i dont know it. I just mention what's happen.

 

[DragonByte Tech]

DragonByte Tech updated [DBTech] DragonByte Mail with a new update entry:

4.5.0 Beta 1

Update highlights

!!! THIS VERSION REQUIRES XENFORO 2.2.0 AND PHP 7.2.0 !!!

This version contains coding style updates and changes for XenForo 2.2.0 / PHP 7.2.0.

The "Digest" feature has been removed, as XenForo 2.2 has an "Activity summary" feature which will be much more widely supported by 3rd parties, and contains many of the same features.

Furthermore, a bug that could have affected 3rd party add-on compatibility has been resolved.

This version...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[JasonBrody]

Waiting for stable release

 

[DragonByte Tech]

DragonByte Tech updated [DBTech] DragonByte Mail with a new update entry:

4.5.0 Gold

Update highlights

!!! THIS VERSION REQUIRES XENFORO 2.2.0 AND PHP 7.2.0 !!!

Coinciding with the release of XenForo 2.2.0, all XenForo 2.2 versions are now Gold This is also the last version that will contain the XF 2.2 / PHP 7.2 warning in the release notes.


Complete Change Log

No changes, version bump only

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[snoopy5]

I have found the new option "mails per hour";
the mails are distributed over the whole time?
Means sending 60 in an hour means one per minute (aprox)?
Or just 60 in the first seconds and wait another 59 minutes?

If so it would be better to have Mails per minute or ten minutes?

+1

It does not stagger email, though it does attempt to keep the queue order by re-queuing the email in the order they are attempting to be sent.

This is merely intended as a stop-gap solution for people on terrible shared hosts that cap emails per hour. It is not intended to be a replacement for finding a good web host, or using a 3rd party solution like Amazon SES or Mailgun.

There are always pro and cons. With Amazon SES, you have to buy a dedicated IP address, if you want to avoid to get blacklisted very fast. This costs you 25 USD per month. This is 300 USD per year.

The second downside with Amazon SES is that you can not get this to work with XF bounce management. So you need to do all this manuall. THis is a nightmare.

All other newsletter services are way too expensive as soon as you need to send out more than 5k-10k newsletters per month.

Try to see it this way: Every XF-addon is only an added value if it solves an admin problem.

The selling point of your addon is to fill the niche for those admins who (no matter for which reason) do not want to use external newsletter providers AND who are fighting against any kind of email-sending restrictions. Offer for BOTH problems a solution and sales will go up.

I understand and partly agree that the first goal is to get a webhoster without those limits. But this is a decision the admin has to make. Not all admins can do what they want to do in an ideal world.

For you this is an exceptional opportunity to sell more licences, if you make this throtteling more flexible, i.e. x-numbers of emails per minute instead of hour.

With that very simple change, you get a lot more customers. At the end of the day, you want to make as many sales as possible, right?

 

[DragonByte Tech]

The second downside with Amazon SES is that you can not get this to work with XF bounce management. So you need to do all this manuall. THis is a nightmare.

This is not true at all. I have it working with the bounce management, you just have to setup the bounce notification topic in SES and send it to an email address you use for XF's bounce handling.

The selling point of your addon is to fill the niche for those admins who (no matter for which reason) do not want to use external newsletter providers AND who are fighting against any kind of email-sending restrictions. Offer for BOTH problems a solution and sales will go up.

There's no further changes needed, as SES as well as other 3rd party email providers work with XF's bounce handling