Sendstudio NX Beta!

Hey all,

I know it has been a long time coming but it has arrived! Sendstudio NX has gone into beta testing! I sent it to a few people on Friday (no major bugs and now all fixed) then a few more today so we'll see how it all goes. Sorry, we're not taking any more beta testers - we have quite a few already.

I'm sure I missed a few things along the way but the feature list is around 100 items long. I must say I'm pretty excited about this release - the user interface looks awesome but it's still nice and simple (thanks to Eddie, Elena & Mitch), the features are all useful (well I think so anyway!) and it will only get better from here.

I'm not sure when the full version will become available (it depends on what's found in the testing) so please don't ask ;) It will be at least 2-3 weeks to give the beta testers plenty of time to try different things and uncover any issues. I've been testing it as much as I can as I've been going, then the guys in the office also doing some heavy rounds of testing found some issues (all fixed of course) so hopefully nothing too critical will show up.

The upgrade process hasn't been done yet, that's the last major thing for me to worry about. I'll be working on that as well as watching for bug reports & questions from the testers.

Not sure what else to say apart from *phew!* it's done!

I have to say thanks to Rod for helping me with sendstudio support, otherwise it would have been a bit longer before this happened ;)

The final feature list is below:

General Features
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- Language support (language files separate from php code)
- Templatized (html separate from php code)
- Server / User Timezone support
- Paging everywhere
- Change per-page results easily
- PHP Developer API
- Postgresql support
- Forgot password option
- Copy things (eg lists, newsletters, templates, autoresponders, forms)
- Built in templates (easy to add more)
- Only need to set up one cron job for scheduled sending, autoresponders and bounce processing, or they can be set up separately
- Reminder about cron setup. If it's switched on it will show a message telling you it has been switched on, that message will disappear once a job runs successfully.
- See when a cron job will run. It will count down and give you an idea of when the next send will go out.
- Remember login details
- Built in tutorials
- context-sensitive help / tutorials
- New design
- Improved user-interface
- If you only have access to one mailing list, you are automatically taken to the next step in whatever process you are performing

Lists
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- Bulk changes to list subscribers (change all to html/text, make them active/inactive)
- Copy lists
- Merge multiple lists into one list
- Save reply-to, bounce-address, bounce account information with a list
- Allow imap bounce account
- Allow extra mail settings to be saved per list (eg /notls or /nossl)
- Cron bounce processing if account information is available
- Bounce processing differentiates between types (hard, soft)

Custom Fields
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- Associated with a mailing list not with a user (means sharing a list between user will show custom fields correctly)
- Can be associated with multiple lists at once
- New "radio button" type
- Better data checking when importing/subscribing

Manage Subscribers
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- Search all of your lists at once
- Option to bypass filtering step
- Bulk changes (delete multiple at once, change them to html/text)
- Save different stages of subscribe. Eg subscribe request (time + ip address), subscribe confirm (time + ip address)
- Save different stages of unsubscribe. Eg unsubscribe request (time + ip address), unsubscribe confirm (time + ip address)
- Only show custom fields associated with the list a subscriber is on
- New "bounce" & "unsubscribe" status

Import Subscribers
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- Import subscribe date
- Handle quotes around field names properly
- Much better reporting about import results (see duplicates, problems with data etc)
- Option to add subscribers to any autoresponders the list has

Banned Subscribers
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- Global ban list (bans across all lists)
- Upload a file of email addresses to ban

Newsletters
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- Bulk actions (make multiple newsletters active/inactive at once)
- Better attachment handling
- Save/Save & Exit buttons (can save as you are going)
- No need to refresh to upload a file or import from a url
- Check & warn about missing unsubscribe links
- Archives are an rss feed so easily changed and easily ported to an external website
- Choose whether to archive per newsletter

Sending Newsletters
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- Can send to multiple lists at once (removes duplicates before it starts)
- A send through the popup can be paused, cron turned on, it will pick it up and continue the send & vice-versa
- Cron sending will create the queue just before it starts (so if you schedule in advance, new subscribers will be picked up and any unsubscribes will be removed before starting the process)
- Can embed images into an email
- Change character set / encoding for each send
- Cron sending can pick up "broken" or interrupted mailings
- Auto-optimizing of sends (database is automatically optimized before & after a send)
- Admin & user get notified if a user goes over per-month of max-emails limits

Templates
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- Global templates
- Bulk actions (make multiple templates active/inactive global/not global at once)
- Save/Save & Exit buttons (can save as you are going)
- No need to refresh to upload a file or import from a url

Autoresponders
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- Bulk actions (make multiple autoresponders active/inactive at once)
- Save/Save & Exit buttons (can save as you are going)
- No need to refresh to upload a file or import from a url
- Option to add existing subscribers to the autoresponder
- Can embed images into an email
- Change character set / encoding for each autoresponder
- Better attachment handling
- Check & warn about missing unsubscribe links
- Only show custom fields associated with the autoresponders mailing list. Don't let a user include custom fields that aren't associated with the list

Forms
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- Send-to-friend form (with appropriate stats)
- Better management for ordering custom fields / form options (move things around in an easier fashion)
- "subscribe form" can now be a "contact form".
- use appropriate smtp server details that are set (ie will pick up general settings or user settings)
- can send text & html parts of confirm/thanks emails
- modify details & send-to-friend can be customised within sendstudio (still can't go on a website though)
- option to show/hide subscriber format choice
- Easier customising (form html is outside of code and easily edited)

Users
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- Better (more flexible) permissions
- Maximum emails (like "email credits"). These count down with each email sent
- Option to allow them to edit their own details
- Text/HTML footers which will get appended to the bottom of every email that user sends out
- Info tips can be turned on/off per user
- Give a user permission to specific templates
- Enable / disable a user easily

Settings
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- Global Text/HTML footers which will get appended to the bottom of every email that the system sends out
- Default character set / encoding
- Max hourly rate. This is the maximum any send runs at, not the maximum across the whole system.
- Sending allowance flexibility
- Force an unsubscribe link to the bottom of newsletters & autoresponders
- Option to allow ips of subscribers to be tracked
- Set default system wide smtp server details

Stats
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- Show more information (how many sent, how long it took, unique opens)
- Show open stats, link stats, bounce stats, forwarding stats, unsubscribe stats per newsletter or autoresponder
- Show trends in subscribes/unsubscribes per mailing list
- Show trends per user for their send history
- Show per domain information per mailing list (eg 50% are yahoo subscribers)