The best email news­let­ter plugins for WordPress

Below is an overview of some of the top WordPress news­let­ter plugins. Here, you’ll find stan­dalone ex­ten­sions and those that connect to an external news­let­ter service.

Before you can use the WP news­let­ter plugin, you need to link your WordPress using your Mailchimp API key. Once entered, the plugin confirms the in­teg­ra­tion. After that, you can create as many re­gis­tra­tion forms as you wish, adjust settings and positions. MC4WP displays the HTML code for these directly in the backend.

The news­let­ter sub­scrip­tion forms are:

• User-friendly
• Optimised for mobile devices
• GDPR-compliant (double opt-in can be (de)activated)
• Suitable for setting up automatic for­ward­ing
• Suitable for embedding in posts or pages via WordPress shortcode

To design your news­let­ter, MailPoet provides a user-friendly editor in the backend and a handful of templates. Drag and drop fields, headers, images, etc. to the desired location. Al­tern­at­ively, you can redesign your news­let­ter re­gis­tra­tion form from scratch.

The forms you can create with the WP news­let­ter plugin have the following features:

• Op­tion­ally presented as pop-up, slide-in, fixed bar or box at end/edge of page
• GDPR-compliant (double opt-in can be (de)activated)
• In­di­vidu­al colour design of back­ground, font, and frame
• Pro­gram­ming in CSS possible
• In­teg­ra­tion in posts or pages via shortcode possible

The Clev­er­Reach WP WordPress news­let­ter plugin connects your WordPress page to the Clev­er­Reach news­let­ter tool developed in Germany. Once you’ve installed the extension, simply log in with your Clev­er­Reach in­form­a­tion in the backend. Al­tern­at­ively, you can create an account if you have not used the tool before. Af­ter­wards, you can im­me­di­ately use the limited Lite version of the software and send news­let­ters (up to 1,000) to up to 250 re­cip­i­ents with WordPress for free. Paid monthly tariffs are available to send higher volumes.

You create news­let­ters, emails, and recipient lists from the browser using the separate Clev­er­Reach web ap­plic­a­tion. Use the THEA auto­ma­tion tool to plan and automate your news­let­ter dis­tri­bu­tion.

Other features of Clev­er­Reach WP are:

• Tagging system for re­cip­i­ents
• Multi-level bounce man­age­ment to improve the delivery rate
• Simple data export and import of recipient lists
• GDPR com­pat­ib­il­ity
• SSL/TLS en­cryp­tion for all forms

The user-friendly editor of the WP News­let­ter plugin not only provides various ready-to-use templates (ap­point­ment an­nounce­ments, blog summaries, product present­a­tions, etc.), but also offers numerous ready-made modules you can use to freely design your digital news­let­ters. You can easily drag and drop the in­di­vidu­al elements to the desired position.

Other features include:

• GDPR com­pli­ance (double-opt-in including tick box to confirm data privacy)

• Automatic spam check for all news­let­ter re­gis­tra­tions
• Detailed planning options for sub­scriber groups
• Com­pat­ible with all common SMTP plugins
• Sub­scriber import from a file possible

Mailster takes over your existing WordPress user entries; al­tern­at­ively, you can import a CSV list of re­cip­i­ents. Once in­teg­rated or created, you can subdivide the sub­scribers into lists and define in­di­vidu­al settings for the news­let­ters to be sent (for example, whether or not tick boxes should be used for a par­tic­u­lar user).

Other high­lights of the WordPress news­let­ter plugin at a glance:

• Auto­ma­tion of mailing process
• Real-time analysis of campaigns and sub­scribers
• SMTP support
• Bounce man­age­ment
• For each campaign a web version is auto­mat­ic­ally created

The web is ac­cess­ible from anywhere in the world. This means that your sub­scribers and page viewers may be based in the European Union. As of May 2018, the General Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion (GDPR) applies across all EU member states. This means that the following now applies when sending news­let­ters: The recipient has to consent to the pro­cessing of their personal data and the pro­cessing needs to be legally compliant. In addition, you must be able to provide in­form­a­tion at any time about how a sub­scriber’s personal data such as an email address is stored and used.

However, the GDPR doesn’t stipulate that consent must take the form of a double opt-in procedure. If you don’t issue a con­firm­a­tion email to consent to a news­let­ter sub­scrip­tion, you’re tech­nic­ally not in violation of the GDPR. However, since the reg­u­la­tions stipulate that you must be able prove at any time that a user has agreed to receive your news­let­ter, you can use double opt-in as a proof of this re­quire­ment.