Ok but not great

  • MailPoet works fairly well, but it’s accompanied by a whole whack of problems…

    -Emails are not responsive without manual modification of the plugin files.

    -Signup forms are not accessible without using the provided html option and making manual modifications to the markup.

    -When using the html signup form, the method for including the necessary scripts doesn’t follow best practices (scripts are simply added to the head section instead of being registered/enqueued, which means that other plugins like Better WP Minify won’t work with those scripts).

    -It’s not possible to add an antispam CAPTCHA to signup forms without php/js coding knowledge and manual modification of the plugin files. This means that even if you’re using the confirmation option so that spam email addresses don’t get added to your subscriber list, you’ll still send out an initial email to spam addresses and your mail could be flagged as spam.

    -The automatic newsletter schedule is buggy. For instance, if the schedule is set to send out a newsletter on the last Tuesday of each month, in months with five weeks, it sends out on the fourth Tuesday. That is, last and fourth are always equal.

    -It’s difficult to include Newsletter-only content to automatic newsletters without significant manual configuration since MailPoet only works with public post types.

    -Shortcodes in posts are stripped out, which means that content doesn’t always make sense. Similarly, screen-reader-text (WordPress CSS class) content is visible.

    -There’s currently no way to disable tracking, which raises two concerns. Firstly, this is a huge problem in some EU countries. Secondly, MailPoet doesn’t disclose most stats to free plugin users. Most of the paid plugin’s “features” are actually just releasing these stats. So MailPoet collects and gathers data that website owners must pay to access. NB: I have no problem paying for features, but the paid version of MailPoet doesn’t really have much to it once you take out the stats-related stuff.

    I have posted in the forums several times to try to figure out many of these issues, without much success. I have been able to deal with most of these issues by myself, but because of the incorrect method of including scripts with the html signup form, the lack of antispam options for the signup form, and the inability to disable newsletter tracking, I have decided to search for a new mail plugin. MailPoet works well enough to continue using until then, but its downfalls are too big to ignore.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Author MailPoet

    (@mailpoet)

    Hi Julie

    Sorry we took so long to reply to this, thought we’d done it already.

    Thank you for your extensive feedback, it’s really helpful to us! Some of these things like the scripts for the forms will be fixed in MailPoet 3.

    We wrote a blog post recently about why you don’t need CAPTCHA on a signup form here: https://www.mailpoet.com/you-dont-need-captcha-on-email-signup/

    Also, you mention the need to disable tracking due to EU countries. We are a French company so are fully aware of the laws surrounding tracking. However, there is nothing in the EU Cookie Laws about email tracking, so it is fine to track as the user has opted in for marketing emails. Of course, you could always mention it along with the rest of your cookie declarations on your site. Or even in your email footer if you wished. Disabling tracking would make MailPoet pretty useless.

    As for the stats…yes some of the stats are in the Premium feature. We are a 9 strong team working on MailPoet full time, so we need to offer a Premium version so we can get paid and continue to improve MailPoet.

    Best wishes
    The MailPoet Team.

    Islo

    (@nuytun)

    Maybe you should address the point made:

    When using the html signup form, the method for including the necessary scripts doesn’t follow best practices (scripts are simply added to the head section instead of being registered/enqueued, which means that other plugins like Better WP Minify won’t work with those scripts).

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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