Plug me in to a subscribe plugin for wordpress

November 4, 2012 9:55 PM

What is the best free WordPress plugin for subscribers to get an email update about a new post on my girlfriend's blog? (Hopefully using HTML and images, not boring plain text updates).

I'm looking for suggestions for the most effective free subscriber plugin, so subscribers get an email update about a new post to my girlfriend's blog. She's self hosting from the Wordpress platform version 3.4.2 (latest)

She was using a Feedburner subscription so subscribers got an email when a new post was made. Then she heard Feedburner wasn't being updated, so changed to the 'Follow' plug-in. Problem is Follow plug in sends 'public subscribers' a pretty ugly plain text only email. As the blog is about fashion, ideally she's looking to have a HTML email update, including an image and text, encouraging people to the blog for more detail. 'Follow' allows this for 'registered users', but that's hardly anyone.

I can't seem to find an answer... Thanks

posted by MT to computers & internet (8 answers total)

Has she enabled Jetpack? (Comes with every wordpress blog I believe) It does a ton of things and emailing blog posts is one of them. I just added this feature to my own blog this past week, and am happy with it so far. She'll need to link it to/create a wordpress.com account to use Jetpack, but after that it's really easy. The full text of the blog post is sent with pictures and it provides an easy way for people to manage their subscriptions/unsubscribe etc.

There are a million and one plugins, so I'm sure there are other good ones, but here are two anti-recommendations: Subscribe2 (worked for several months, mysteriously stopped working and couldn't get it to start again even after uninstalling/reinstalling...hence my switch to Jetpack) and Navayan Subscribe (tested it out but never got it to work properly.)
posted by Bella Sebastian at 10:23 PM on November 4, 2012

Hm. The vast majority of high-profile blogs I subscribe to are still using FeedBurner. Maybe check out MailChimp?
posted by phaedon at 11:44 PM on November 4, 2012

Here you go.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:45 AM on November 5, 2012 [4 favorites]

2nding Feedburner, which makes this super simple. Just add the RSS feed to feedburner, and turn on email updates in the options. I think there is then a plugin and/or chunk of html code you can add to wordpress blog.
posted by 0bvious at 7:08 AM on November 5, 2012

I use feedburner and mailchimp together. Mailchimp has really nice templates that are easy to customise, which would be nice for fashion.
posted by tardigrade at 1:54 PM on November 5, 2012

Thank you everyone. DarlingBri's suggestion of WYSIJA was the best for our needs. http://www.wysija.com/
posted by MT at 9:01 PM on November 7, 2012

Awesome suggestion, DarlingBri. I've been trying to figure out a solution just like this. Gracias!
posted by barnone at 6:19 PM on November 29, 2012

You are very welcome!
posted by DarlingBri at 10:39 AM on December 6, 2012