Need an integration with WP Mailster?
Feel free to reach out to us and discuss your needs.
Need an integration with WP Mailster?
Feel free to reach out to us and discuss your needs.
If you want make the mailing list emails available on the website you can setup a frontend email archive.
Below you find an overview of which shortcode does what. For details and the available options refer to our shortcode documentation.
This shortcode displays all mailing lists while adhering to the lists’ access settings.
From this overview, the user can view each list’s emails. Furthermore the subscription settings can be changed.
This shortcode displays all past emails in a chronological way.
Note that you can choose to only display the emails of a certain mailing lists with the shortcode parameters.
This is a list of mail provider settings that you might find useful when you create your mailing list.
Mail Provider Settings | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hoster | Host / Server | Login / User | Port | Protocol | Security | Authentication | Notes |
1&1 – EN | |||||||
Inbox | imap.1and1.com | login@domain.tld | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | |
Sender | smtp.1and1.com | login@domain.tld | 25 or 587 | SMTP | None / SSL | Yes | SMTP only for non-1&1 web servers, WordPress mailer works |
1&1 – DE | |||||||
Inbox | imap.1und1.de | login@domain.tld | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | |
Sender | smtp.1und1.de | login@domain.tld | 25 or 587 | SMTP | None / SSL | Yes | SMTP only for non-1&1 web servers, WordPress mailer works |
1blu.de | |||||||
Inbox | pop3.1blu.de | login | 995 | POP3 | SSL | No | |
Sender | smtp.1blu.de | login | 465 | SMTP | SSL | No | |
All-inkl.com | |||||||
Inbox | pop3.domain.tld | login | 110 | POP3 | None | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | smtp.domain.tld | login | 587 | SMTP | None | Yes | |
Amazon SES | |||||||
Inbox | Amazon SES only allows to so send, not to receive emails | ||||||
Sender | email-smtp.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com | SMTP user | 587 | SMTP | TLS | Yes | The SMTP endpoint depends on your region. The example here is, if you’re in the eu-west-1 AWS Region. More information here. |
AOL | |||||||
Inbox | pop.aol.com | login | 995 | POP3 | SSL | No | |
Sender | smtp.aol.com | login | 587 | SMTP | None | Yes | |
Arcor.de | |||||||
Inbox | imap.arcor.de | login | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | |
Sender | mail.arcor.de | login | 465 | SMTP | SSL | Yes | |
Bluehost | |||||||
Inbox | boxNNN.bluehost.com | login+domain.tld | 995 | POP3 | SSL | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | boxNNN.bluehost.com | login+domain.tld | 465 | SMTP | SSL | Yes | |
Celeros | |||||||
Inbox | mail.domain.tld | web###p# | 143 | IMAP | TLS | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | mail.domain.tld | web###p# | 25 | SMTP | TLS | No | |
Digital Valley | |||||||
Inbox | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 110 | POP3 | None | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 25 | SMTP | SSL | Yes | |
Domainfactory | |||||||
Inbox | sslin.df.eu | login@domain.tld | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | |
Sender | sslout.df.eu | login@domain.tld | 465 | SMTP | SSL | Yes | |
Freenet | |||||||
Inbox | mx.freenet.de | login@domain.tld | 143 | IMAP | TLS | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | mx.freenet.de | login@domain.tld | 587 | SMTP | TLS | Yes | |
GMail | |||||||
Inbox | imap.gmail.com | login | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | login@gmail.com might also work for login. Important: |
Sender | smtp.gmail.com | login | 465 | SMTP | SSL | Yes | login@gmail.com might also work for login |
GMX.de | |||||||
Inbox | imap.gmx.net | login@gmx.de | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | mail.gmx.net | login@gmx.de | 465 587 | SMTP | SSL TLS | Yes | |
Hetzner | |||||||
Inbox | mail.your-server.de | login@domain.tld | 143 | IMAP | SSL | No | Host is actually “mail.your-server.de”, not to be replaced with your domain! |
Sender | mail.your-server.de | login@domain.tld | 587 | SMTP | TLS | Yes | Host is actually “mail.your-server.de”, not to be replaced with your domain! |
Host Europe | |||||||
Inbox | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 143 | IMAP | TLS | No | |
Sender | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 25 | SMTP | TLS | Yes | |
Hostgator | |||||||
Inbox | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 143 | IMAP | None | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 26 | SMTP | None | No | |
Hostinger.com | |||||||
Inbox | imap.hostinger.com | login@domain.tld | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | |
Sender | smtp.hostinger.com | login@domain.tld | 465 | SMTP | SSL | Yes | |
Hostmonster | |||||||
Inbox | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 143 | IMAP | TLS | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 26 | SMTP | None | Yes | |
Inmotionhosting | |||||||
Inbox | secure82 .inmotionhosting.com | login@domain.tld | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | |
Sender | secure82 .inmotionhosting.com | login@domain.tld | 465 | SMTP | SSL | No | |
Lunarpages | |||||||
Inbox | yourserver .lunarXXXX.com | login@domain.tld | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | yourserver .lunarXXXX.com | login@domain.tld | 465 | SMTP | SSL | No | |
Office365 – please read our blog post | |||||||
Inbox | outlook.office365.com | login@domain.tld | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | |
Sender | smtp.office365.com | login@domain.tld | 587 | SMTP | TLS | Yes | |
One.com | |||||||
Inbox | imap.one.com | login@domain.tld | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | send.one.com | login@domain.tld | 465 | SMTP | SSL | No | |
Outlook | |||||||
Inbox | imap-mail.outlook.com | login@domain.tld | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | |
Sender | smtp-mail.outlook.com | login@domain.tld | 587 | SMTP | TLS | Yes | |
OVH | |||||||
Inbox | pop3.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 110 | POP3 | None | No | |
Sender | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 587 | SMTP | None | Yes | |
PowWeb | |||||||
Inbox | imap.powweb.com | login@domain.tld | 143 | IMAP | TLS | No | |
Sender | smtp.powweb.com | login@domain.tld | 587 | SMTP | None | No | WordPress mailer works |
Readyhosting | |||||||
Inbox | pop.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 110 | POP3 | None | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | smtp.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 587 | SMTP | None | Yes | |
Register.com | |||||||
Inbox | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 143 | IMAP | None | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 587 | SMTP | None | Yes | |
Rochen | |||||||
Inbox | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 143 | IMAP | None | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 1025 | SMTP | None | Yes | |
Sendgrid | |||||||
Inbox | Sendgrid only allows to send, not to receive emails | ||||||
Sender | smtp.sendgrid.net | apikey | 465 | SMTP | SSL | Yes | The user is actually the word apikey. The password is the long API key. |
Strato | |||||||
Inbox | imap.strato.de | login@domain.tld | 993 | IMAP | SSL | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | smtp.strato.de | login@domain.tld | 465 | SMTP | SSL | Yes | |
WEB.de | |||||||
Inbox | pop3.web.de | login | 995 | POP3 | SSL | No | 15min min. poll time Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | smtp.web.de | login | 587 | SMTP | TLS | Yes | |
WebhostOne | |||||||
Inbox | ???.domain.tld | login | 143 | IMAP | TLS | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | ???.domain.tld | login | 25 | SMTP | None | Yes | |
WEBNet77 | |||||||
Inbox | mail.domain.tld | login@domain.tld | 110 | POP3 | None | No | Use special parameter /novalidate-cert |
Sender | Sender: Use WordPress Mailer | ||||||
Yahoo | |||||||
Inbox | pop.mail.yahoo.de | login | 995 | POP3 | SSL | No | Activate POP in mailbox settings first |
Sender | smtp.mail.yahoo.de | login | 465 | SMTP | SSL | Yes |
You might get an error message like this when checking the connection:
“Certificate failure for [server] Server name does not match certificate”
or: “Certificate failure for [server] unable to get local issuer certificate“.
If this is the case read the following: if you use your own mailing server (with a self-signed certificate) you might have to deactivate the automated certificate check to get a connection to your inbox. Do this by adding the following line in the special parameter box: /novalidate-cert
If you use a public mailing list provider that is not in the above list: mail us your settings (of course without your password 😉 to info@wpmailster.com and help other WP Mailster users to get started more quickly.
Note: We do not recommend a certain mail provider and do not state that the usage of one of the given providers is in accordance with their respective terms & conditions. We do not endorse or accept any violation of the providers’ service conditions. It is your own responsibility to ensure your usage complies to the terms & conditions of your email service provider. Make sure you read and understand the terms & conditions and, if necessary, use another suitable mail provider.
IN NO EVENT WILL Holger Brandt IT Solutions BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL OR OTHER CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES FOR ANY USE OF THE SETTINGS ON THIS PAGE, OR ANY WEB SITE ON THE SUBJECT, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY LOST PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF PROGRAMS OR OTHER DATA ON INFORMATION HANDLING SYSTEMS OR OTHERWISE, EVEN IF WE ARE EXPRESSLY ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
The settings are organized in the following tabs:
WP Mailster uses a normal email mailbox that can be accessed with IMAP or POP3.
You can either choose one of the readily available settings or, what we recommend in most cases, use your own email provider (e.g. of the domain hosting you are using).
Choose “New Server” in the Server dropdown menu.
You will see input fields to enter the server login information.
The settings in this section are crucial for a working mailing list. Ask your mail provider (of the mailing list email you provided in the last section) for the needed details or have a look at the settings of popular providers.
You can click on ‘Test connection‘ to make sure your settings are correct.
You have two choices here: the easy way is to use your normal mailbox sender (the one WordPress uses).
The other way (which is recommended) is only a little more difficult: using an SMTP server.
You can either choose one of the readily available settings or, what we recommend in most cases, use your own email provider (e.g. of the domain hosting you are using).
First, choose “New Server” in the Server dropdown menu.
You can click on ‘Test connection‘ to make sure your settings are correct.
You can add custom elements to the mails posted to the mailing list.
Besides of normal text you can use text variables to insert texts dynamical. These are the available variables:
The variables can be used in the subject, the custom headers and custom footers.
If you want to create nice unsubscribe links use the {unsubscribe} variable as the link location:
The settings in this tab largely determine how the list works and how it can be used.
Use the moderation functionality (Society & Enterprise edition only) to guard your lists against inappropriate content such as spam, off-topic discussions or unwanted solicitations.
The list administrator gets informed about a new message to be moderated. Approval or rejections can either be done via links in the emails sent to the moderator or in the WP Mailster email archive in the WP admin area.
One of the following recipient (groups) can be notified:
It is important to understand that WP Mailster is a part of WordPress which is a PHP based web application. That means: it can not act/run without being triggered and it can not run forever when triggered. This is a technical limitation coming from PHP, not from WP Mailster or WordPress.
Triggering means that somebody accesses the site. During the page load WP Mailster is handling the jobs to do (mail retrieving and sending). Thus mails can only be send/retrieved when somebody is browsing your site, otherwise the delivery is delayed or never done.
As your site might not be browsed every few minutes 24×7 we recommend you to use a cron job that opens the site periodically.
There are two main options available for dealing with your cron jobs:
The differences between the two are explained in the following.
This is the easiest way to setup a cron job – we setup a cron job for you.
When you are a paying subscriber of WP Mailster, then you already have one cron job included that we will setup for your site.
You can do this by logging into your account at our site. There you will find a section where you can manage your cron jobs. Here you can also purchase additional cron jobs or extend the yearly subscription period.
The cron job services provides this features:
We offer the Mailster Cron Job Service as a managed service on subscription basis.
It can be booked independently although the following subscriptions are included when you purchase our products.
Included cron job service:
The cron job service can work with all of WP Mailster’s product versions. It uses either the “lazy cron job” or the “dedicated cron job” mode that are described below.
In order to setup a cron job yourself, your hoster either needs to offer cron jobs as part of their hosting package, or you need need to have access to a URL-based cron job service like Easycron.com or Webcron.org.
There are two types of cron jobs:
If you can (based on your WP Mailster product edition), then you want to use the dedicated cron job mode given the above advantages.
This type of cron jobs work by simply opening your WordPress site periodically. So it basically means a program browses an URL of your site.
The (sub-)URL of the cron job is not important, as WP Mailster is working during the pageload and the content of the loaded page itself is not interesting.
Don’t slow down your visitors!
You want to point a lazy cron job always to the admin login screen (wp-login.php) to avoid too much traffic / false page hit statistics.
If you have setup your cron job to point to the login screen, then you can change the Trigger Source in WP Mailster’s setting to “Backend only”.
This avoids that your regular site visitors will have to wait longer for a page to load because WP Mailster is sending an email in the background …
So, in short: setup the cron job to use the URL like http://your-site.com/wp-login.php (replace http://your-site.com with your address and make sure to use HTTPS if applicable).
Please read our separate section on where to enter the cron URL.
If you have use a cron job targeted at your admin/login screen you can also avoid page load delays for your site vistors. This can be done by setting the system plugin “Mailster Email Forwarder” which is responsible for retrieving/sending emails to only execute by page accesses in the backend. The setting can be changed here:
This type of cron jobs have the advantage that they do not cause page load delays for site users at all.
Furthermore, no unnecessary server resources are used. We strongly recommend using them.
To use it you will have to change the “Trigger Source” for Mailster accordingly. The setting can be changed here:
You may also want to increase the “Max. execution time” setting, recommended is half of your PHP max. execution time.
Dedicated cron jobs work with special URLs.
You most probably will only need this one URL:
The meaning of the parameters:
Working with the all task is the recommended dedicated cron job setting and suitable for most setups.
However, there are more tasks available for dedicated cron jobs:
While the task all is suitable for most cases, we recommend to use multiple cron jobs (e.g. one with the task fetchall and one with the send task) for big mailing lists (> 100 recipients) or high traffic lists.
Further examples:
Retrieve and send in one run, cron job key was set to “secret”:
Retrieve emails for all active mailing lists:
Retrieve emails for mailing list with ID 3:
Work on emails in send queue:
Debug mode:
To check whether the cron job is successfully executed you can copy the cron job URL into the browser and append this: &debug=true.
Example (retrieves emails from the the mailing list with ID 1, the debug mode is active):
You should get an output like the following:
Finishing up
Let’s get back to setting our cron job.
As already mentioned: there are different ways to setup a cron job. This depends entirely on the options available to you.
We will introduce you to the following methods:
This method applies only if your webhoster offers you a graphical administration interface (like cPanel) with cron job functionality. Most interfaces look similar to the following screenshot:
You specify the frequency of the cron job executing by selecting the appropiate options. We recommend to create a cron job that is run every 5 minutes.
Do this by selecting the every year/month/day/week day/hour option and by selecting multiple minutes in a 5 minute interval (e.g. 0/5/10/15/20/25/30/35/40/45/50/55).
Many hoster allow to only run local PHP scripts. Thus you create a PHP file named cron_job_mailster.php with the following content (here an example with a dedicated cron job URL):
You need to pay attention what you insert as the command to run.
In the example given, the first part, /usr/local/bin/php on our server, is the path to the PHP executable. This is a little different for each webhosting environment – but in most cases well documented in the hoster’s setup guide.
On some servers it is enough to write php or php5 without an exact path.
The second part, the parameter -f, tells PHP to parse and run a file. It is optional and may be omitted.
The last part is the path to the file, relativ from the root directory (that you can access). A good way to figure out this path is to login via a FTP client and navigate to the root. From this root the whole path to the cron_job_mailster.php file has to be used for the cron job command.
Most cPanel offer a way to review the cron job result, either by logs or by emails. You should use this at first to see whether you get the desired output (as previously when you accessed the cron job URL with the &debug=true parameter with your browser).
This method applies only if you have command-line access to your (Linux) server and the suitable user rights.
As the first step create a file named cron_job_mailster.php, see the section above on what to put into the file.
Edit /etc/crontab with a text editor and add the following line: * * * * * php /path/to/your/cron_job_mailster.php
This is the scheme of the crontab file:
Minutes [0-59] | Hours [0-23] | | Days [1-31] | | | Months [1-12] | | | | Days of the Week [Numeric, 0-6] | | | | | * * * * * php /path/to/your/cron_job_mailster.php
The * means “every”. So our line makes the cron job run every minute (in every hour, day, month, year).
As this might generate too much unnecessarily server load we change it to “every 5 minutes”: */5 * * * * php /path/to/your/cron_job_mailster.php
For small, low traffic lists (e.g. announcement mailing lists) you might find an “every hour” setting more suitable: 0 * * * * php /path/to/your/cron_job_mailster.php
Basically every interval is possible. Many more examples on the crontab’s syntax can found on the web, e.g. on Wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron).
An alterantive to use the PHP executable to trigger the site is using other applications that act like a web browser. This has the advantage that you don’t have to work with PHP scripting file.
Here is an option of a cron job that is executed every 5 minutes using the command-line tool wget:
That’s the best option in order to not download/save anything while executing wget – otherwise you would save the returned HTML on each cron job execution
Note that you have more options in terms of command-line programs to use (e.g. lynx or curl). You have to see what is available and working on your host.
There are many web cron job providers out there. For example Easycron.com and Webcron.org.
They all enable you to setup a URL-based cron job relatively easily.
Here an example based on Easycron’s user interface:
You need to enter the URL and define the frequency (here every 5 minutes).
This tutorial will help you to set-up a mailing list.
This includes
Let’s do this!
If you don’t have installed WP Mailster yet, have a look at the installation tutorial for the system requirements and the quickest way to install WP Mailster.
In this section you will provide some basic data of your new mailing list.
After that click on the next tab (Mailbox settings).
WP Mailster uses a normal email mailbox that can be accessed with IMAP or POP3.
You can either choose one of the readily available settings or, what we recommend in most cases, use your own email provider (e.g. of the domain hosting you are using).
Choose “New Server” in the Server dropdown menu.
You will see input fields to enter the server login information.
The settings in this section are crucial for a working mailing list. Ask your mail provider (of the mailing list email you provided in the last section) for the needed details or have a look at the settings of popular providers.
Click on ‘Test connection‘ to make sure your settings are correct.
After that click on the next tab (Sender settings).
You have two choices here: the easy way is to use your normal mailbox sender (the one WordPress uses).
The other way (which is recommended) is only a little more difficult: using an SMTP server.
You can either choose one of the readily available settings or, what we recommend in most cases, use your own email provider (e.g. of the domain hosting you are using).
First, choose “New Server” in the Server dropdown menu.
Click on ‘Test connection‘ to make sure your settings are correct.
At this point you have the basic setup for a working mailing list.
Of course, there are further tabs with settings helping you to customize and finetune your mailing list. Those settings are covered seperately and can found (under the respective settings title) in the tutorial section.
After that click on Add mailing list to save your settings.
If you did all settings you will get the message that your new mailing list was saved and will be back at list where you can manage all your mailing lists. Now we are ready to add recipients to our mailing list.
It is nice to have a mailing list. It is even nicer to actually have some people that want receive the list’s mails. Now let’s add some of those folks to our recipients…
The tab ‘All recipients’ gives an overview of all recipient names and email addresses – well, not too much until now.
You can add every WordPress user as a recipient. Don’t worry if not all recipients belong to your WordPress users – you can store them under the user section and add them later.
A feature that you might find useful if you want to manage several mailing lists are user groups that you can add to the recipients.
Example: you have a group ‘Designers’ that is enrolled in the mailing lists ‘Support’ and ‘Development’. Whenever the designer department has a new co-worker or intern their email addresses have only to be added in the group ‘Designers’ not in every mailing list.
All set!
Now go ahead and send a greeting email to your mailing list – all recipients should receive it 🙂
In our case we would send an email to project-group2@example.com.
You can send it any way you like – use your favorite email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, GMail, …).
Now it is time for testing the list and, if needed, to adapt the other mailing list settings.
Mailster has some requirements to work properly on your WordPress installation, please take a minute and check them.
Mailster (Free, Club, Society, Enterprise) | |
WordPress | Version 4.3+ |
PHP | Version 5.5 / 5.6 / 7.x / 8.x PHP IMAP extension installed & enabled |
If you are not sure whether your server fulfils the requirements make sure to find out before purchasing as we do not issue refunds when your server does not meet the system requirements.
A good way to check if your server meets the requirements is to install the free edition of Mailster – when it is working the other product editions will work, too.
Mailster is a mailing list plugin for WordPress. It enables you to offer automated electronic mailing lists.
You may be familiar with similar software/services such as GNU Mailman, Listserv, Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups.
You can organize a group of persons using their email addresses and build either an announcement or discussion list setup. The two basic variants can be described as follows:
All mailing list variants have in common that one central email address is used to send a message to all list subscribers. So a sender only has to remember one email address to create a message that is then forwarded to all subscribers. You can setup both of the mailing list types with WP Mailster and also fine tune the behavior.
First of all you need to setup a mailing list. For that you choose/create one email address, no matter if it is located at your own mailing server or at a free email service. The only prerequisite: it is possible to access the mails through one of the standard protocols POP or IMAP. Also, this email address can and should only be used for the mailing list communication, so you should not re-purpose your personal email address.
WP Mailster is ideal when you want your users registered in WordPress to be part of a group and communicate by email without having to log into the site or elsewhere. The mailing list administrator can easily select all recipients for the mailing list in WordPress’s admin area. Don’t worry: of course also users can be subscribed or self-subscribe that are not registered WordPress users.
When the mailing list is setup and the subscribers are in place, everything is ready so that WP Mailster can process emails. From now on WP Mailster will periodically check your email address for new messages.
The email checks and the sending are only done as long as there is adequate visitor activity on your site.
Why is that?
WP Mailster is a part of WordPress which is a PHP based web application. That means: it can not act/run without being triggered and it can not run forever when triggered.
This is a technical limitation coming from PHP, not from WP Mailster or WordPress. Triggering means that somebody accesses the site. During the page load WP Mailster is handling the jobs to do (mail retrieving/sending). Thus mails can only be send/retrieved when somebody is browsing your site, otherwise the delivery is delayed or never done.
As your site might not be browsed every few minutes 24×7 we recommend you to use a cronjob that opens the site periodically (e.g. by a command-line tool like wget). If this is a problem in your server environment you can also have us host your cronjob. Depending on your product edition this is already included in the yearly subscription.
Now back to the email conversation.
WP Mailster will check the mailing list’s inbox. If there is a new message this message will be forwarded to all list recipients and stored for reference in your WordPress database.
The nice thing
All your list participants have to do is use the one mailing address to reach everybody – no more manual maintenance of the recipients in their clients – the admin takes care. You can also offer the possibility for users to self-subscribe and -unsubscribe.