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Mailster

57 reviews
Get Mailster (v1.8.2)
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Introduction

Communication, Marketing, Newsletter, Mailing & Distribution Lists, Email

Mailster - a flexible mailing list solution for Joomla

Similar to programs like Mailman or Listserv this extension allows you to run a discussion mailing list.

That means that every email sent to a central email address is forwarded to the rest of the members of the list. When members reply to such emails Mailster again forwards them to the other list recipients.

Mailster allows your users to be part of a group and communicate by email without having to log into your Joomla site.

This is primarily made with discussion email lists (two way communication) in mind, although Mailster can also be used for newsletters.

Features
- For Group communication and newsletters
- Usable with any POP3/IMAP email account
- Recipients are managed by the admin in the backend
- Users can (un)subscribe with frontend plugin or module (optional)
- All Joomla users can be chosen as recipients, additional users can be stored
- Users can be organized in groups
- Single users or whole groups can be added as recipients of a mailing list
- Replies to mailing list posts can be forwarded to all recipients
- Mail archive for browsing the mails
- Full support of HTML emails and attachments
- Seamless installation: all plugins are included and are installed automatically
- English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Danish, Japanese and Slovenian translation included
- many more features

Designed for all...
- users that are tired of group messaging systems that require another login
- users who want to communicate with their favourite mail client
- admins that are tired of updating personal details on different systems
- admins who want to be able to use users within Joomla as recipients of a mailing list

Changelog
** Version 1.8.2 Bugfix Release (January 2nd, 2025)**
- Opening the user edit view works also when there are mailing lists with names that contain the & symbol
- Do not save attachment(s) when the email fails to be saved

** Version 1.8.1 Bugfix Release (September 17th, 2024)**
- Improve styling in Joomla 5
- Shorten (too) long subjects to the current max. length: 191 characters
- Issue warning when Mailster system plugin (Email Forwarder) has access level not set to Public
- Improve cronjob execution to bail if not all prerequisites are given
- Add selected logging about queue status and actions
- Servers can be published/unpublished/deleted again
- Other fixes

** Version 1.8.0 Major Release (April 4th, 2024)**
- Joomla 5 compatibility (Joomla 3 and Joomla 4 still supported)
- CSV import also supports file with only emails (no name column)
- Improve logging for sending (and errors reported)
- Better checks in cronjob_mailster.php template
- Fix reCaptcha (v2 is still used)
- Fix email character display/modification issues with Baltic encoding
- Bounce emails containing email addresses in angle brackets are showing the addresses
- Admin email archive toolbar buttons are enabled/disabled accordingly to "select all" checkbox actions
- Fix multiple PHP warnings and notices

** Version 1.7.10 Bugfix Release (September 9th, 2023)**
- When moderation is active, the list administrators (serving as moderators) should not need to approve their own messages to the list
- Mailster recognizes when the Joomla email sending is disabled (even though the Joomla mailer is used in one or more active mailing lists)
- Profile plugin (editing List subscription in Joomla user profile in backend) works now for Joomla 4
- Fix error: Non-static method PEAR::isError() cannot be called statically
- Fix issue in CB synchronization (when doing actions in CB backend)
- Fix two bugs related to email digests that could prevent digests from being sent
- Case insensitive blocked email addresses check
- Fix some PHP Deprecated messages (PHP 8.1 and later)

** Version 1.7.9 Bugfix Release (August 2nd, 2023)**
- Remove logging to the database since no longer a recommended way to debug
- When formatted HTML with very long lines is encountered, automatic line splitting may run into issues. e.g. when formatted Text from Google Docs is copied into the email body. This is now fixed.
- Fix CB Bride Plugin issue for saving changes in CB "my account" profile
- Avoid errors with empty body/html/attachments under PHP 8.x
- Fix error 1406 Data too long for column references_to
- Fix subscriber module problem with PHP 8.1/8.2
- Avoid PHP Deprecation Warnings under PHP 8.2
- Better capture enqueuing issues

** Version 1.7.8 Bugfix Release (Jan 20th, 2023) **
- Email without TO recipient will not stop email(s) from being retrieved from the mailing list inbox

** Version 1.7.7 Bugfix Release (Jan 1st, 2023) **
- Update Html2Text library
- Changing install script to use utf8mb4 instead of utf8 for the default character set
- Fix for better SMTP debugging
- Fix issue when no iconv functionality is available for charset conversion
- Fix issue to automatically use the core's DB field collation (of content.title) for Mailster's content fields.

Note that this version has limitations (e.g. max. 50 recipients per list) compared to our commercial products Mailster Essential, Business and Ultimate. Find a feature comparison overview here: http://www.brandt-oss.com/index.php/mailster/pricing

Write a review

Great extension



Posted on 13 August 2012
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.

Outstanding product



Posted on 30 March 2012
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.

Awesome extension and support!



Posted on 12 March 2012
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.

Fully Operationnal, Simple solution, Excellent support



Posted on 11 March 2012
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

Akeeba



Posted on 17 January 2012
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.
Owner's reply: Thank you for your review.
We are of course always interested in improving Mailster. As we have problems reproducing the issue you describe we would be glad if you can contact us (please use the contact form on our site) so that you can help us identify the root cause. Thanks!

Excellent replacement for MailMan



Posted on 07 January 2012
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!

Excellent Mailman replacement; great support



Posted on 31 October 2011
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.

Great (Version 0.3.1)



Posted on 05 September 2011
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.

Fantastic - solved a major problem



Posted on 22 June 2011
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.

Awesome product



Posted on 21 June 2011
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!

Mailster

Version:
1.8.2
Developer:
Holger Brandt IT Solutions
Last updated:
Jan 02 2025
9 months ago
Date added:
Nov 18 2014
License:
GPLv2 or later
Type:
Free download
Includes:
c m p
Compatibility:
J3 J4 J5 J5 (b/c plugin)
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Uses Joomla! Update System

Demo Support Documentation

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