FireMail
FireMail is an Expression Engine 2.0 add-on that improves the way you send emails from your control panel. It is both an email manager and tracker in one.
Support can be found in the comments and in this EE forum thread.
Current Version: 1.3 (released 13 June 2010)
* Works with ExpressionEngine 2.0 and higher.
1. Concept
The built-in email tool in EE found under Tools > Communicate is sufficient for simple email sending, but it lacks many important features. In addition, the changes in EE 2.0 mean that developers will not be able to customise or add features to it.
FireMail is a complete email tool that replaces the Communicate tab, but that reuses the best of EE's built-in email libraries. It adds a WYSIWYG editor when composing emails, supports batch sending for sending of mass mails, and allows you to track opens, clicks and unsubscribes resulting from any email you send.
2. How It Works
The main screen of FireMail shows you all of the emails that have been sent out (including those sent from the Communicate tab), as well as the number of people that have clicked on a link in the email and the click-through rate.
Every email that was sent from FireMail has relevant statistics that can help you measure your email's success in real-time. The individual statistics are:
- Unique Opens: the number of people who opened the email (see notes about opens below)
- Clicks: the number of people who clicked on a link in the email
- Unsubscribed: the number of people who unsubscribed from a mailing list using the unsubscribe link in the email
- Unopened: the number of people who did not open the email (how dare they!)
The line graph displays opens and clicks in the first 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, week and month.
The top links that were clicked on in the email are also displayed. A full report shows the links along with the index of each link (the position of the link in the email as the same link can appear multiple times in the same email) and the number of clicks.
Emails can be sent with FireMail in a more email-like fashion than on the Communicate tab. A WYSIWYG email editor is included to help you get the look and feel you want, and can be switched off if you prefer to code in html. Mailing lists and member groups can be added and batch sending is supported (through EE's normal mail configuration settings).
Templates can be added to make it easy to send out pre-designed emails using CKEditor's templating system. To create or edit an existing template, open up themes/firemail/ckeditor/editor_templates/editor_templates.js and make the appropriate changes. Upload the template images to the themes/firemail/ckeditor/editor_templates/images folder.
You can use the template tag {email_link} to output a url that will link directly to the email.
Click here to view this email in your browser: {email_link}
Things to Note
* An email can only be recorded as "opened" if the reader's email client is capable of displaying html with images, and if that option is turned on. If it is not, then there is no way to record open rates unless the recipient clicks on one of the links in the email.
* You should be aware of any limits on the number of emails that you are allowed to send out per hour based on your web hosting account (especially people on shared hosting accounts) and don't exceed them or you'll get back a LOT of mail delivery failure notifications.
* You might want to create a new email address especially for sending mass emails so that you have bounce backs all in one place (no-reply@yoursite.com for example).
3. Planned Features
The following features are in the pipeline and will be coming soon:
- Ability to add template tags to emails
- Option to add google analytics tracking to emails
4. Installation
Thanks to EE 2.0's new features, installing third party add-ons is really easy. Download and unzip firemail.zip, then follow the simple steps below:
- Upload the firemail folder to the system/expressionengine/third_party folder
- Upload the themes/firemail folder to the themes folder
- Install the FireMail module (Control Panel -> Add-Ons -> Modules -> Install)
- Create an upload destination called "Firemail" (Control Panel -> Admin -> Content Administration -> File Upload Preferences)
- Check your email settings (Control Panel -> Admin -> Email Configuration)
5. Download
Each individual license costs $79.95, which allows you to use the add-on on one installation of EE. You must purchase a license in order to download FireMail. Once you have completed payment you will be sent a code that will allow you to download the file.
By purchasing FireMail you agree to the license agreement.
If you have already purchased FireMail then you can download it by entering your email and code below.
6. License
By purchasing FireMail you agree to the following conditions:
- One license grants the right to perform one installation of FireMail. Each additional installation requires an additional purchased license.
- You may not reproduce, distribute, sell or transfer FireMail, or portions thereof, to any third party.
- All copyright and proprietary notices within FireMail files must remain intact and unaltered.
- FireMail is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind.
- You assume all risk associated with the installation and use of FireMail.
7. Changelog
Version 1.3- Added {email_link} tag so emails can be viewed in browser
- Added auto-fill to plaintext version on email
- Added file manager so images can be uploaded and placed directly into email
- Added sample email templates to CKEditor
- Moved CKEditor files into themes folder
- Emails checked for uniqueness before sending so that no duplicates are sent
- Added CSV export option
- Added PDF export option
- Added preview button to email editor
- Added option to send all batches at once or just the first batch
- Added seperate view file ckeditor_config.php for easy customisation of email editor
- Minor bugfixes
- Changed email WYSIWYG editor from TinyMCE to CKEditor 3.1 (which supports templates)
- Minor bugfixes
- Initial release
8. Comments
Jim Pannell
14 January 2010
Wow - you've been busy Ben! Congratulations on the launch - I can see this becoming a very, very popular addons in 2010 and a great reason to switch to EE 2.0.
jeremy douglas
14 January 2010
This is excellent. Would be great if in the future a feature is added to be able to design and setup email templates for clients.
Ben
14 January 2010
thanks for the positive feedback. i agree templates would be good for a future feature, in the meantime you can resend previously sent emails which could be a workaround.
John Faulds
14 January 2010
If I understand Jeremy properly, I think he's probably referring to the ability to combine the content of the WYSIWYG editor with a predesigned HTML email template, so the client can create their content and it gets sent out with header and footer images etc. Like what the now-defunct Boomerang module allowed you to do.
Nevertheless, this looks like a great add-on!
Brendon Carr
15 January 2010
This looks like a really good start at matching the suddenly- (and strangely) departed Boomerang, this time for EE 2.0.
I'm curious to know, Ben, as you are experienced developing for EE 1.x and now EE 2.0 -- is the move to CodeIgniter all that it's cracked up to be, in terms of making it easier to develop add-ons for ExpressionEngine? EllisLab went off on almost a four-year detour to move the product onto the CodeIgniter framework, with the promise of igniting the add-on space. Did they achieve the objective?
Ben
15 January 2010
thanks for the clarification john. regarding templates, i've made a quick decision to switch the WYSIWYG editor to CKEditor (over TinyMCE). i was considering it anyway, but the requests for templates and the ability of adding templates with CKEditor sealed the deal. so now developers will be able to easily set up email templates for themselves and for their clients.
thanks for the question brendon. since the answer is quite a long one, i think i'll write a short piece rather than a comment to answer it. i'll let you know where i end up posting it soon.
Brendon Carr
15 January 2010
I think a lot of longtime ExpressionEngine users and developers are quite curious to know: Did EllisLab reinvent the wheel and, after all the tooth-gnashing, get a much better wheel -- or simply a different wheel?
Ben
15 January 2010
well like i said i have a lot to say, so i'll take a bit of time to write my full opinion.
in general i really enjoyed developing this add-on for EE 2.0. as i am used to developing with CodeIgniter it was a totally painless switch and for the most part well the code is very well documented. however i do have some minor gripes that i think are issues that should be discussed, and i plan on bringing them up in the forums soon.
overall i'm happy with EE 2.0. converting old add-ons isn't fun as its a slow, tedious process, but one which has to be done. a bigger concern for me though is it will not be possible to convert many of the EE 1.6 add-ons, especially those which help to customise the CP. i'll explain in more detail soon, promise!
John Faulds
18 January 2010
Wow, quick work on adding templating capability in Ben! I had thought TinyMCE also had a templating feature, but it's been some time since I looked into it.
Ben
19 January 2010
well there were other factors in the decision to switch to the CKEditor.
i think the templates make it an even cooler add-on so why wait?!
Atiosis
01 February 2010
Is it still possible to download (purchase) a version for ee 1.x.x?
Also, can be this module accessed or used from an SAEF?
Thanks.
Ben
01 February 2010
this add-on was built especially for EE 2.0, so there never was one for 1.6 i'm araid
Erwin van Lun
13 February 2010
Excellent! Exactly what we need. We're currently developing a custom Code Igniter module that will sent email batches, a forum daily/weekly/montly digest. We're interested in what members do: whether they read their notifications, read their digests etc. Furthermore, we'll sent emailings manually. This seems to be the perfect tool. We might need to do some custimisations but all the graphics.. awesome!
Dave
20 February 2010
Wow, my prayers have been answered! Will definitely be downloading a few copies of this over the next few months!
Jim
24 March 2010
Hey. Great work! Just one quick question. What's the best way to include an unsubscribe link in CKEditor template I've just added?
Ben
24 March 2010
hi jim, it will be included automatically when sent to a mailing list. you can edit the text from the mailing list module.
Luke McReynolds
12 April 2010
Man, it'd be nice to have this for 1.6, especially since Boomerang went south. :-(
Chris Cox
26 April 2010
This looks great but I was a big fan of the way you could add template tags in Boomerang. If this feature was added here it'd fantastic.
Another thing that would be great, which I guess would be a separate module, would be a mailing list module. The standard EE one is limited as it only allows very basic info. One that allowed custom fields, ability to choose mailing lists and integration with FireMail would be great. E.g. send an email to everyone on a mailing list who said they're interested in 'Music' and 'Arts'
Ben
14 June 2010
template tags are coming.
FireMail is an email manager and isn't trying to be a mailing list module. i am focusing on making it as good as possible at what it does, so i won't developing EE's built-in mailing list module, at least in the foreseeable future.
Ben
17 June 2010
Can FireMail throttle the mail sending? I'm on a shared host (justhost) and they have throttling rules for the amount of mails sent per hour.
Looks awesome though, mailing list manager right in EE is greatly needed.
Ben
17 June 2010
yes, you can choose to send in batches of a size that you can preset and then only send one batch at a time. however each batch has to be sent manually (once per hour in your case) unless you set up a cron job to do this.
Andrew Macpherson
09 July 2010
Hi Ben
Just installed Firemail. I thought I followed all the instructions to the letter -- install madule, create upload destination, etc -- but I'm not getting any of the CK Editor buttons and stuff when I open up FireMail.
Paths to my themes folder are correct, but I do have a theme folder that is outside the site's domain (I'm using MSM and all of the themes are stored in the main site). The CK Editor stuff doesn't appear in the main site either, though, so it's probably not that.
Any ideas about where I might start looking in order to fix this little issue?
Thanks in advance for any advice you may be able to give.
dennis
13 July 2010
Just purchased firemail and I think the it's great. Just wondering what your timetable might be for adding template tags.
And when you say "add template tags" are you talking about something like "Entry Mailing" from utilitees http://utilitees.silenz.org/index.php/addons/software/entry-mailing/. If so, that would be amazing and would pay for an upgrade if necessary.
dennis
14 July 2010
Hello, I'm working with firemail and I have a problem. It seems that I cannot create anchor-links within the email. Is there any way to do this.
Thanks in advance
steve
21 July 2010
Is v1.3 fully compatible with ExpressionEngine 2.1? (because of the changes from 2.0.xPB to 2.1)
BEN
23 July 2010
when i select and check the box for a specific mailing list to send to, i always get an error
An Error Was Encountered
no_email_matching_criteria
It wont send becasue it thinks there are no emails addresses to send to.
Ben
23 July 2010
what version of EE are you on?
Danny
24 July 2010
Will Fire Mail also let you send BCC emails to users?
Ben
24 July 2010
yes it will let you send BCC emails
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