Does anyone know of a plugin or something that can be used to send bulk emails for a Rails app?
Specifically, I’d like to be able to pass an HTML email file to a rake task or something and have it emailed out to everyone who has signed up to my site and checked the ‘please send me info about XXX’ box.
I wrote kind of a hacked-together version for myself, but I’d like something that throttles itself somewhat smartly and can pick up where it left off if interrupted.
Update: I eventually broke down and got out my credit card and signed up for a real bulk email service, and damn was that the right choice. The resulting emails are very professional, they have built-in analytics, also integrate with Google Analytics, and it’s awesome for a ton of other reasons.
If you’re looking to do bulk emails with Rails, I would suggest using the Mailchimp service (here’s my affiliate link that has a bonus on signup) along with the hominid gem. This will allow you to sync all your user emails from your database to Mailchimp, then use a real bulk service instead of some crappy patched together one.
Another Update: I heard about Maktoub today, and it’s pretty much exactly what I was describing. Disclaimer: I have never used it and would still probably steer clear and go with a paid service, but it’s still probably better than rolling you own.
I don’t know that this is the kind of thing that can be covered by a plugin as there are whole sites/applications dedicated to this kind of thing. If you wanted to use one of those then there is http://www.campaignmonitor.com, it’s pretty good and it has an api that you can hook into from your application.