Can I use fewer modules for implementing my newsletter?

Question

I came across a Drupal 7 site that combines following modules to send a newsletter for contact-form users (till now 6000 people subscribed): "Simplenews", "Mail system", "Mime mail", "simplenews rules", "variable email", "HTML mail" & "Rules".

I think this whole combination of 7 (or even more) modules is a wired solution.

1. Shouldn't only the modules "Newsletter' and "Webform" be enough?

2. If I move to a more minimalist solution, how could I save all the 6000 or so leads?

Answer 1

I think that with 6000+ emails to send you need to use an external mailer like MailChip or MailUp. Remember that these services have the correct infrastructure to support massive send email and dashboard report.

We have written a module for 1 of our clients that permits to create NewsLetters in Drupal and send it via MailUP for example.

However 7 modules to send an email are not a big number because in Drupal each module exec a single work:

• Simplenews is the module that manages the newsletter (user subscribe, unsubscribe, check, etc etc).
• Mimemail, htmlmail and Mail system permits to create correct HTML email and send it in correct way. And in this case you can reuse all for the internal mail (wellcome, lost password, etc.).
• Rules manage "the" rules of sending email (in this case).

In other systems you have a big module that manages all but not so good like single modules for single works. And in many cases the big module is not compatible with other modules. In Drupal I have found only very few cases where a module is not compatible with other modules.

Answer 2

Have a look at my answer to the question about "How to eMail a file uploaded to a Webform to a sysadmin using the Rules module?".

It explains how to use the Rules module for sending an eMail. To do so, it uses the Mail System and Mime Mail modules ... only!

With some commonly used Rules techniques (like Rules Scheduler, Rules components, etc), it should be pretty forward to make that work for your case also. Possibly you may want to add the Webform Rules modules also to further improve your implementation.

Answer 3

The MailChimp module is very minimalist, giving you a very good ecosystem !

You call sync all your leads (users) to a normal mailchimplist.

Here's a tutorial: How-To Article: MailChimp Module for Drupal.