Alright, before we get into the modules themselves, I’m going to be asking all of the guests in this series the same two questions about newsletters in Drupal.

  • What do you see as a benefit of using a “Drupal” setup like the Message stack over an external service like MailChimp?
  • And for the sake of argument, what might you see as the benefit of using an external service as opposed to a “Drupal” specific setup?

Message

  • What is the Message module?
  • What are some of the features?
  • Can users subscribe/unsubscribe?
  • What is the documentation like? Are there screencasts?

Message Notify

  • What is the Message Notify module and how does it integrate into the message stack?
  • What are some of the features?
    • SMS - how do you use this?
  • Can users subscribe/unsubscribe?
  • What is the documentation like? Are there screencasts?

Message-Subscribe

  • What is the Message-Subscribe module and how does it integrate into the message stack?
  • What are some of the features?
    • Messages sent on the fly/batches
    • Can you setup daily/weekly digests?
  • How does it scale?
  • How custom can each message be?
  • Can you setup autoresponders?
  • How do you include site content?
  • How does it deal with images in a newsletter?
  • Are there analytics?
  • Can users subscribe/unsubscribe?
  • What is the documentation like? Are there screencasts?

Use Cases

  • What are the appropriate use cases for each module?