The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

I was looking for a Joomla newsletter extention which could be operated by front-end or email, as it needed to be used by luddites. This fits the bill very well, as the content can be provided by email, and subscription can be handled by recipients as well as in the back-end.
Installation was fairly easy, although I found the server options a bit over-complicated, and it worked first time. It took a while to find all the appropriate settings, but the process was fairly painless.
I can see one major problem--the lack of full integration with the Joomla user list. Subscription seems to default to the user's registered email, but this can be changed at subscription time. If the user subsequently changes email address, this does not update Mailster's address, and they get out of sync. Finally, removing a user does not remove it from the mailing list.
Otherwise, this is a very good extension, and I would recommend it for simplicity of operation.

This extension is easy to install and use. If your site is not frequently visited but you want the mailing lists to work after all, then pay attention to the help on how to create automated visits to your site and keep the framework awake.
One thing drove me crazy for a few hours: if you manage a site through httpS and Chrome, be sure to allow Insecure Content to be loaded, otherwise many functions misbehave.

My web-host is great, but their mailing list software sucks (sending commands via email?!). So I'm very glad this extension for Joomla exists. It turns a Joomla installation in a full featured mailing list server. There are tons of options and the interface makes it very easy to configure and maintain. Update cycle isn't the fastest, but I'm not looking for tons of new features anyway. Reliability is important. If the next Joomla version should make Mailster incompatible, I'm certain an updated version will be available in no time. I've been using Mailster Pro for like 8 months and it sent about 600 emails to mailing lists (5 up to 40 recipients). Maintenance effort on my part? Negligible. E-Mail Support is good, no complaints here. The Pro version is bit pricey, but it's well worth the money.

I was looking for a replacement for dadamail in a Joomla environment about 6 months ago. I found Mailster and I couldn't be happier. The extension is easy to use and fits my needs perfectly. The pro version is well worth it for me. I have had very few problems, but when I have, Holger provides lightning fast answers to my questions and I'm up and running again in no time.

Our organisation needs an effective way for members of several small special interest groups to communicate with each other. Many of the group members are not comfortable using discussion forums and prefer email. I have tried a number if similar extensions in the past but they were poorly executed and too difficult to use, especially for the group administrator to maintain the list(s). Mailster has provided an ideal solution with easy to use quality software and excellent support. Thanks for the free version.

Having installed Mailster on a Joomla 2.5.2 version without any error notification, the extension was not running properly. Having contacted the Mailster developer it turned out, that this was due to a previous GCalendar installation disturbing the proper run of Mailster. Many thanks goes to the developer identifying and fixing this problem by "just" installing the latest version of GCalendar.

Hy,

Thanks to this plugin, our association www.tec66.com was able to forget google mailinglist and become the master of our marketing.

Thanks a lot to the mailster team.

Regards from france

After installing Mailster I was able to set it up and get it working and from appearances it looked like exactly what I was looking for for a mail list component. Then I tried to backup my site with Akeeba. I had done due diligence and backed it up immediately before installing Mailster with no problem. After Mailster it failed with an indeterminate AJAX error right about the time the status bar was getting alphabetically to the Mailster component. I uninstalled Mailster and tried again and the backup succeeded without any errors as usual. I've been using Akeeba with great success for a long time now so I'm not willing to give it up for mailster, and Akeeba's support basically says poorly written components will result in AJAX errors. I wouldn't go that far, this looks like a good component with a lot of great features that might just still have a few bugs to work out. I could try just excluding the Mailster component directory from Akeeba and rolling like that, but I think I'll wait for future revisions before trying it out again... and if it works without a hitch in the future I'll update my rating here.

Having run a Mailman mail list on a non-Joomla site when we switched to using Joomla I needed an alternative to Mailman that could be integrated with the Joomla user list. Mailster fits the bill perfectly.

As a test I first installed the free version and set up a simple list. It worked first time and the documentation to help with the install and set up was excellent! I was so impressed that I have now paid for the pro version as our list is 250 long but to be honest, the 49EUR is worthwhile for the other addon features alone in my opinion.

Highly recommended!

A raft of programs and bridges let users sign up for lists to receive newsletters and other one-way mailings. But Mailster is the only real solution I've found to incorporate the interactive discussion functionality of the venerable Mailman listserve into a Joomla site. You simply set up an email account and Mailster will forward emails sent to that address to every list subscriber.

I've used Mailster's non-commercial version for more than a year, and recently purchased the Pro version to accommodate a couple of larger lists (over 50 subscribers) and provide some other functionality. Most functionality is identical in both, including everything mentioned in this review.

Options are broad, and seem to expand with each release. You can limit lists to registered site users, or allow visitors to subscribe. You can limit posters to specific individuals or subgroups, or allow every subscriber to post. A large number of message formatting and sending options as well.

As expected in a pre-1.0 release, a few edges are still rough. There's no way at present to send validating or welcoming emails to new subscribers. The only way to catch signup spam comes via a large-format Captcha; that works fine if you use the signup plugin, but doesn't fit well inside the signup module.

But these are small issues, and Holger's ultra-responsive support more than makes up for them. I found a small bug importing a CSV user file from a freestanding Mailman installation, and he had a fix in my Inbox about two hours later. It's not often that you see support like that.

After having trouble with the update installation from version 0.2.2 I've contacted Holger and he quickly responsed and offered to help me out. Now the installation is better documented (mailster has to be stopped before due to trouble on some customer sites) - Thank you, Holger.

This version is really easy to setup now and is working immediately. It really does what I wanted to get.

I have been using Mailman for my users to communicate with each other through email. My hosting provider imposed a limit of 100 users for the discussion list so when user 101 came along I had a problem!

Mailster has fixed that and I can now have a discussion list with up to 1000 users! Also, it now has a subscription service for our newsletter.

Support was excellent as well with the couple of minor problems I had - and fast.

A great product if you want to have the same users for your mailing lists as well as your Joomla website. As a non-profit-organization, we need to offer services to our members (through various other Joomla components) as well as maintain mailing lists. Thanks to Mailster we now can do all of this though our Joomla website.

The current version is much improved compared to older versions, especially in a Mac-and-PC-Environment. The admin interface takes a little time to get used to, but once you get it, its really easy.

But the highlight is the support! Fast response time, extremely knowledgable and approachable developers!

Does exactly what it says, and awesome customer support!!!

Definitely does the job as advertised. Would give 5 stars if a subscribe module was included.

After using mailman, and not having it itegrated into one site without lots of work, Mailster is a real win. It does what it says and just works, Easy to setup and use.

I had an issue where it suddenly stopped working and mailed thier support. Holger got back very promply, and assisted me in a professional friendly manor. Turned out my provider was the culprit by changing the smtp port.

Thanks Guys for this awesome add on for Joomla.

I have been running a listserv on mailman for the last 5 years and recently turned it into a membership site using Joomla. Mailster was the best solution we found that replicated the functionality of Mailman and integrated with our Joomla site.

At first I was disappointed. It was not usable in its current form. We were getting auto responders back to the list, there were discussion threading issues, and our clients were use to hitting "reply" to mail the person who posted and "reply to all" to reply to the list in general. This was not possible to do. But since it was a close solution we contacted the developer.

Holger was extremely helpful, very responsive and when we told him what we needed, he was able to implement changes quickly and integrate the features we needed to mimic Mailman.

We were able to get content filtering installed to prevent out of office autoresponders, the ability for the list email address to be put into cc field and today we installed the final fix which clears up the discussion threading issue. It is now working exactly how we need, is easy to set up new lists, and works like a charm.

Those who had negative things to say should take another look. It is a great product now, vastly improved over what it was just 30 days ago. Thanks to Holger for being so responsive.

After reviewing nearly all newsletter components for Joomla, I ended up with Mailster. It allows you to maintain mailinglists from the Backend, while the creation of the newsletter itself can be done from any member of the mailinglist without being a registered user of the site. It is the most easy way to allow communication between closed groups. The developer responds to questions very quickly and very satisfactory. With the already announced features like HTML support and the ability to copy mailinglists it will be a really must have tool for nearly every site. Thanks a lot for this great extension !

Obviously a very young product that doesn't deliver. I've installed it and spend 3 hours configuring and not 1 email work. Looking at the discussions below, many other users suffered too. At the end i gave up and tried to uninstall it which surprise surprise fails to remove table and uninstall errors appears. Stay away.

There's never really been anything close to Mailman for Joomla. This is finally a very good alternative for small to mid-size lists and is actively getting better with each new release. Developer is very responsive to questions and issues. Great job!