Just a heads up if you are looking to use Viarts newsletter function with hosts, (such as Bluehost) that have a limit on how many emails you can send in an hour. (and they view going over that limit as a terms of service violation that can lead to termination of your hosting account). Bluehost has a limit of 500 emails per hour (you have to manually ask to have it raised to this limit).
 
The Viart’s newsletter “cycle” function does not stop sending emails between cycles waiting for a manual “continue”, it will pause for a short time and auto-continue one it’s own.
 
So unless you sit and watch Viart’s newsletter function ( a real good use of your time), you can end up without a hosting account. (no hosting account = no store = no income...)
 
Viart wants $50 to stop sending emails at the end of a cycle.. otherwise you’ll need to sit and watch the newsletter send function or risk loosing your hosting account.

. . .or you can move to a host with a more commercial proposition?

actually I'm very happy with bluehost, the limitations on email protect all the other sites they host from getting taged as spammers, and thier built in utilities and proactive notifications crush the previous host we used.
 
Having a "cycle" function that forces an admin to babysit the mail send function is pretty week and not a good use of someones time.
 
Because of the CANSPAM act, spam blacklisting and the rest: a newsletter function that can't be easily controled is a risk to any shopowner

Yes most reputable hosts will not allow unlimited e-mails. Exactly as ccberries says; "to control spam'.
 
Our e-mail module does need to be revisited, so we can have more control on how we send out e-mails. Currently we do not have enough info on a subscriber.
 
Well ccberries, I don't think $50 is too bad a deal.

I went an looked at the source code, it's much easier for me to just change the time delay between the sends so that it can't cause problems.
 
For me, right now, I'm not giving them any more money (even $50) for something that was poorly designed, epecially when they still have not corrected the previous work I paid for (it has caused me to have to fix every product description, custom page, custom block, catagory description.. basicly every place custom text could be entered, and the other sites in a multi-site config still don't work.)
 
I agree that the current system does not have enough data on the subsciber, it does not have access to even the basic data of the subscibers name, nor does it allow you to see even basic data reguarding the emails performance.

I have put a lot of time and $$ into a lot of email/newsletter/autoresponder programs. I've learned that many carts offer a simple newlsetter program, but VERY few and only VERY expensive cart programs offer any extended nesletter features.
 
My conclusions a couple of years ago for a significant sized email list, are that you must either
 
1. Get a dedicated or virtual private server, and pay $50 to $500 for a good mass-email handling program. Or use phplist for free, good but incomplete and no support
 
OR
 
2. Use a subscription service like aweber or constant contact or others that were mentioned in another thread here.
 
ViArt is not deficient in this area, they offer about the same level of newsletter support as other shopping carts who happen to offer it. I looked REALLY REALLY hard for a cart program under $3500 that has created the solution ccberries is looking for and I really don't think anyone is there yet. My bet is that ViArt will be the first one to do it.
 
To have a cart that would automatically populate a newsletter/autoresponder database with each order AND have all the high end features of a high end mass-mailing program with chron files and bounce management etc. would be beautiful!!!!
 
Or, almost as good, a cart like ashop pro that can export to a newsletter/autoresponder program with an easy interface tied to every product. Haha, this is about the only great feature for that cart, otherwise it only has about 5% of ViArt's features.
 
Maybe some of us should distill our thoughts of what we would really like in the way of Viart having some of these ultimate newsletter/autoresponder features. I bet they could do a great design, but I also bet it would take some time and real $$$
 
Greg

It is true that the newsletter function is very basic.
 
I use Group Mail that handles opt in and opt out and all the usual merge and other features - I download my users weekly (that latest since last download) and maintain an external customer mailing list.
 
The problem with Viart is that the newsletter is linked to a table that just contains e-mail addresses - it is a shame they do not link it to the user table and have a field for opt in/out.
 
I think you may be right Greg about the way forward - but I doubt it really would take a lot for this feature to be improved to be, at least, very useful.
 
Chris

Oh wow, I'd forgotten that ViArt only has emails addresses in the newsletter subscribers table. Chris, maybe you are right that there is a realistic intermediate point between what the newsletter feature does now and "very useful".
 
I admit I would really miss automatic bounce processing, click-through stats, or autoresponder features, but it might be worth giving up something just to have my customers and subscribers in the same database.
 
Greg

For what it's worth; another option is to use an e-mail program that can use the Viart tables.
 
Whilst I am not confident in setting it up (beyond my skill set), I am aware that Group Mail has a version that will do just this.
 
Chris

changing the time delay was a bad idea.. it looks like they are not using a pause between the sends, but instead are doing some type of countdown loop that just ate up cpu

Why don't we just write a php script that will send emails properly from the viart tables? How difficult can it be to do that? I hit my tables for all kinds of things outside the Viart scripts, it's no big deal as long as you're not writing back to the tables without knowing what you're doing.