Threadloom to be retired

Grant

Well-known member
As we all thought when it was acquired by VerticalScope the company is now shuttering its services

Over the past 7 years, Threadloom has provided enterprise-grade Search and Newsletter services to over 2,000 forums. Threadloom Search was the first forum search engine with threaded results, image search, spell correction, and more, resulting in over 40% click-through rates. Threadloom Newsletter was the first service to automate content curation, sender verification, spam trap navigation, GDPR management, and more.

Since acquiring Threadloom last year, our parent company VerticalScope has fully supported our commitment to the forum community. During this time, our team has maintained Threadloom services while contributing to new efforts. Over time, however, it's become clear that we will soon be unable to deliver the quality of service and innovation we initially committed to. As a result, the Threadloom team has made the difficult decision to retire our services.

On November 2, 2022, we will turn down all Threadloom services, including Search, Newsletter, List Builder, Insights, Primary Login, and Primary Explorer, and delete all customer data within 30 days of this date. We recommend that customers backup their site and database prior to uninstalling our add-ons, in order to mitigate any potential data loss. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@threadloom.com.

On behalf of the entire team, thank you for your support. It has been a privilege to serve and help grow your communities.

Paul

Does anyone have any good alternatives for the newsletter? I would use the built in Xenforo ones, BUT I'd need it to support separate settings for non-transactional emails
 
This is a bummer since they offered a pretty great newsletter solution!

I'm also looking for an alternative.

Here are my top requirements in order of priority:
  1. Allows me to insert html into the first part of the newsletter to feature specific content and/or sponsored items.
  2. Integrates seamlessly into XF (new forum signups can opt-in. Existing users can opt-out at any time)
  3. Has EASY one-click unsubscribe from each newsletter (that is also tracked back in the user's account in XF)
  4. Is as automated as possible (similar to the "activity summary" email system)
  5. Can use Amazon SES to send emails.
  6. Tracks bounces, spam reports, etc. (maybe not a requirement... but nice to have)
 
Main thing for me is the curated thread newsletter. I'll probably look to have a new xf add-on created that integrates with sendy which uses Amazon ses. Sendy has an api so the add-on can subscribe or unsubscribe users as well as create campaigns.
 
With how effective newsletters are to bringing in (back) visitors, I'm shocked there haven't been a handful of amazing XF addons for newsletters over the years.

Threadloom's solution was great... better than any of the other options out there (with their mix of automation + customization), and it's a bummer to lose it.

Sendy seems like the best (only?) real option at this point for features and sending out lots of emails (for cheap), but definitely will require a lot more manual processes and management :(
 
With how effective newsletters are to bringing in (back) visitors, I'm shocked there haven't been a handful of amazing XF addons for newsletters over the years.

Threadloom's solution was great... better than any of the other options out there

You kind of answered your own question there, I think. If Threadloom did the job so well (and I only know them by reputation, haven't used them), there wasn't much incentive for the add-on developers to try to compete with it. They would have been fighting an uphill battle to fill a niche that was really already filled.
 
If Threadloom did the job so well (and I only know them by reputation, haven't used them), there wasn't much incentive for the add-on developers to try to compete with it. They would have been fighting an uphill battle to fill a niche that was really already filled.
That's a valid point. I guess I'm mostly referring to the years and years before Threadloom even existed. I would have thought a solid weekly newsletter would have either been a part of the core from the early days, or at least a dev or two providing awesome solutions.

Hopefully some enterprising and expert developer will read this and jump on the opportunity to fill a big need that just opened up. I know of at least a handful of site owners (myself included) that would happily pay for an awesome newsletter addon.
 
I'm very curious what other forum owners that are using Threadloom's newsletter are going to be transitioning to for a newsletter solution.

Any ideas?

There's Sendy and this integration addon: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/tl-sendy-integration.6314/

For those that don't want to host Sendy, I found this as a potentially good option: https://www.sendybay.com/

Also, these addons:
www.xenforo.com/community/resources/dbtech-dragonbyte-mail.5867
www.xenforo.com/community/resources/weekly-newsletter.8091

Other thoughts / ideas?
 
I don't think that there are any alternatives. At least not if you want to send a nice looking newsletter with custom content and content that caters to the preferences of individual members.
 
Wasn't Threadlook bought out by some company? Maybe they just want that technology all to themselves or else start charging for it under a different brand or something.
 
Wasn't Threadlook bought out by some company? Maybe they just want that technology all to themselves or else start charging for it under a different brand or something.
Threadloom was bought by VerticalScope. Not sure if they are going to continue using it or sunset it completely.
 
TAZ will have the option to continue running TL services for now. This is because external support takes up the most time and a large part of our costs (plug-in testing, config support, troubleshooting, billing, etc.).

FWIW, turning down TL services (including Search) wasn’t planned before the acquisition or as a part of it. This is something the TL team (painfully) decided on its own for the reasons in the email.

That's such an utter lie 🤣.

Either the cost of business was already growing to be too high and Threadloom looked for an acquihire deal or talks of acquisition were brought up at a time Threadloom was already thinking of shuttering in the future. If it was really painfully decided, changes in the business model would have been tried before or after the acquisition to make the current services sustainable.
 
I'm very curious what other forum owners that are using Threadloom's newsletter are going to be transitioning to for a newsletter solution.

Any ideas?

There's Sendy and this integration addon: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/tl-sendy-integration.6314/

For those that don't want to host Sendy, I found this as a potentially good option: https://www.sendybay.com/

Also, these addons:
www.xenforo.com/community/resources/dbtech-dragonbyte-mail.5867
www.xenforo.com/community/resources/weekly-newsletter.8091

Other thoughts / ideas?
Of the two, the dragonbyte add-on looks to be the closest to replacing what Threadloom did. Has anyone tried it?

Mike
 
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