Is there a wordpress listserv or email group plugin?

Question

There are plenty of WP plugins for one-way correspondence... ie mailing lists where the owner can send out newsletters, etc. but i am looking to integrate the functionality of a listserv or email group for my WP users, where anyone in the group can address the whole group, but those outside the group cannot.

i could do this in google groups, but was hoping to integrate it w/ my club's WP site so that i could use it in conjunction with a membership plugin to keep track of who has paid the club dues and so forth.

edit to add: i think that MailPress or especially Email Users might work (Email Users if I adjust the capabilities) but ideally the group would be able to send messages from their emails to a single address (like with google groups) and not have to log in to send a message from the admin. there is no way i am going to be able to teach all of these people how to use WP, so i want the friction to be minimal. is this possible w/ WP?

Answer 1

We're currently developing this for a client. It turned out to have pretty complex needs. For example, as the group grows, the number of emails being sent becomes huge (i.e. every email response goes to hundreds of people), so we are running that part of the service through SendGrid. We want everything to run through the front end, so we had to develop that. There's also all sorts of permissions, and automatic emails that need to have a space for configuration. Emails need to be stored in some kind of thread in an archive, so we had to work that out. We're almost finished development, and then we have to see how it runs. We are considering turning it into a plugin/theme (it needs both components), but that would take a while to release. It's been a very interesting project.

Answer 2

A great WordPress plugin for group discussion via email is WP Mailster.

From the plugin description:

WP Mailster allows your users to be part of a group and communicate by email without having to log into a website. Similar to programs like Mailman or Listserv this plugin allows you to run a discussion mailing list.

That means that every email sent to a central email address is forwarded to the rest of the members of the list. When members reply to such emails WP Mailster again forwards them to the other list recipients. Unlike newsletter plugins this allows true two-way communication via email.

There is a free edition in the WP plugin repository.

Bigger lists who need more features can use the paid versions.

Answer 3

Wordpress Mailing Group Plugin is a perfect listserv plugin for creating stand-alone mailing groups in Wordpress. Its a Two-Way mailing group just like Yahoo Groups or Google Groups etc and can serve as an alternative for them. WPMG has a long list of customization available for listserv like modifying email footer, putting some members on hold temporarily, email moderation and displaying emails on front-end. It comes with many hooks and filters so custom development is possible.

Wordpress mailing Group - Listserv WPMG

Answer 4

I am using WP Mailster. They are very helpful and the plug-in generally works well. But the server only allows a maximum of 100 recipients of each email to prevent it being used as spam. There are potentially more than 100 people on the listserv. I don't know if there is any way round this. So the limitation is not in the plug-in.