We usually use a paid service for sending newsletters on our sites. We decided to try something new for a smaller site, and this one seems to be the best so far.

It was simple to install and set up, and although it lacks many of the features you would get from a paid service (templates, text or html option, customisable forms, extensive tracking, etc.), it does the job for this purpose.

The only thing lacking so far is the CSV import. We didn't get the CSV workaround to work yet, but have posted in the forums and will hopefully get it fixed soon. The option to choose HTML or Text for each campaign would also be great.

This is by far the easiest and best component I have tried to use for sending out mass emails. The Synchronizing feature makes it truly one of a kind (at least with the ones I have tried)

I like the clean design and easy of configuration (primarily because it is simple). Unfortunately, I had a number of problems which I did not email to the developer. Is this right or wrong?

Pros:
- Simple & clean
- Easy to install and configure
- Virtue mart integration (didn't test it)
- very simple test newsletter option


Cons:
- When having a problem it would be nice to search a forum to find the solution. I didn't email the developer because I want to plug and go without even waiting for 1 day or so. So my problems may be easily resolved but without the forum I will not know
- The newsletter would not send out if I registered a subscriber manually from the back-end. The same, name & email address would receive if I subscribed from the front end.
- Unsubscribe didn't work. It says it did but it didn't. In the back end the user status changed to disable however on the front end it still thought the user was subscribed. I had to manually delete the user to be fully unsubscribed. You may argue that one should keep old logs of those who sub and then unsubscribe. Fine, but a user who unsubscribe may wish to subscribe again later. Given this implementation this would not be possible without a different email.
- A different style was shown whether I was logged into the front end when subscribing or not. I used the module in the left position (first order) using yootheme shuffle.

Suggested improvements (some have been said b4)
- templates
- groups of subscribers against a particular newsletter (for recurring newsletters). now all subscribers against the newsletter. Although you can publish and unpublish subscribers b4 sending out, I do not think this is practical as you may forget which users belongs to which "group" and I do not like the idea of "playing" with subscribers subscriptions
- front end access to previous newsletters

This component has been working great with the exception of one thing. It would be very useful to have a template that can be adopted whenever the user goes to create a new newsletter. Other than this lack of functionality this is a great basic newsletter tool.

This is a great extension, but it doesn't seem to work correctly with Search Engine Friendly URLs set to Yes in the Joomla SEO Settings.

In my Joomla 1.5.7 site, I have the Menu Assignment for mod_ccnewsletter set on 'All' menus, causing the module to appear on all of my pages.

When the Subscribe button is clicked from any of my top level pages, everything is fine. But when clicked from any sub-pages, there's a problem. While the Subscriber Name, Subscriber Email and Subscribed Date are all added correctly, the redirect goes to a nonexistent URL, which displays a '500 - Layout "blog" not found' error.

When I set the Search Engine Friendly URLs in the SEO Settings back to No, the problem disappeared. Clicking the Subscribe button sent me to a page on my site called Newsletter Subscription, with the message, "Email Address Subscribed Successfully."

I wonder if the author is aware of this problem.

Very good newsletter component for a simple newsletter solution that doesn't require too much effort to setup and run. Excellent support for multi-lingual websites.

This is a great extension and does just what I needed. It was easy to install and easy to use. As some others have mentioned, importing contacts and adding a customized thank you landing page would be great.

CCNewsletters is a nice newsletter component. It works real easy and smooth. A few things that I would like to see added:

- sending of MIME: text and html in one message. Not everybody likes html in their email.

- a "read this newsletter online"-feature. The component saves the newsletter in the db, but this is not accessibel through the frontend for users to read the newsletter online.

- a forum on the dev's website, so I can sort out my questions before bothering the developer with noob stuff

I like it, I use and I look forward to next releases!

Owner's reply:
Thank you for your review!



We will start work on all these issues soon :-)

I needed a simple newsletter and this extension provides that. It's easy to install and use. The documentation provided made everything so easy for a new Joomla user like myself.

My only complain is that after someone has subscribed to the newsletter, the thank you page shouldn't show the username and email textboxes on that thank you page.

Still, this is a good extension and many thanks for the people who made it happen.

Owner's reply:
We have fixed this in 1.0.3, will release it this week!

The main thing I need in an newsletter component is the option for my subscribers to choose whether they want html or plain text email. This doesn't have that option.

Also when I installed and tested it, when signing up the form doesn't appear to do anything after the user clicks the subscribe button. Your registration does go through but the end user doesn't get any indication of that so that would need to be fixed.

I've tried all of the non-commercial Joomla 1.5 newsletter extensions. This is the only one that works as advertised.

The programming looks to be very well done, and the component is extremely easy to set up and use.

I don't see the design issue as a big flaw, anybody with basic knowledge of HTML/CSS can adjust it in a second.

The only thing lacking for me:
1. Community Builder Integration
2. A method of automatically including already-published content with tags (similar to Vemod / YanC without having to copy and paste it into the newsletter

Many thanks to the team who built this, keep up the good work!

Owner's reply:
Great idea, will do this soon:

automatically including already-published content with tags

Very good component, works excellent with no errors.

One thing I would like to see edited is the subscribe/unsubscribe redirection page.

I find it a tad confusing, it looks as though it is asking you to re-enter and re-submit your details.

Maybe you could add a redirect-to-page option in the settings area? That way, admins can redirect their subscribers to a page of their choice. (Most likely a Thank You page)

Keep up the good work, I believe this could go far.

I think almost any website could use a newsletter system. I know mine and my clients need it. This component is free and effective.
The team knows the work, and works towards fixing and improving it.

Since the 1.0.1 would be delivered this week, the things I would like to see is in the next edition : a timer for messages (advanced autoresponder), an ability to divide the subscribers into groups, statistics (sent, read) and better multilingual support.

Great work, keep it up!

I haven't used this extension yet, but I have set it up. Easy install and didn't have any big problems.

However, there desperately needs to be a forum. I emailed the developers 3 or 4 weeks ago and never heard back. There is a need for a Joomla extension this simple, but I imagine a forum could really improve it.

A few suggestions:
-Support for multiple lists/subscriptions
-More focus on style. The signup form is incredibly drab. An hour of CSS could quickly improve the look of it.
-Don't automatically add Joomla Users to the list.
-Move "Name:" and "Email:" address into the fields instead of taking up all that space on the module.

Nevertheless, I couldn't find a better extensions for this, so keep up the good work and push this to the limits of greatness!

Owner's reply:
These are some good ideas, thank you!

this is a great newsletter component! I use it on my website and it works very easy. the only improvement I would like to see in the future: csv import!