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Frequently Asked Questions

Pre-sales questions

Is it a one-time or a monthly fee?

Once purchased, you can use AcyMailing for as long as you want with no additional fee.
You can download our upcoming versions for free for one year after your order.
After one year, you can renew your subscription to continue to get new versions, support and extra services (our web cron) but if you don't, you can still use your version of AcyMailing.

Can I install AcyMailing on several websites with a single license?

You can install AcyMailing on as many websites as you want, only our web-cron service, auto-updates and support are limited to one website per license.
You can opt for our Unlimited pack to get support, web-cron and auto-updates for as many websites as you want.

What's a web-cron service?

To execute automatic tasks, AcyMailing has to be triggered regularly (let's say every 15 minutes).
You have to set up what we call a "cron task" to do that. It may be complicated to set it up on your server so we decided to develop a "web cron" service so you simply have to click on a single button from your AcyMailing configuration page to enable it.
You have the choice to use our web cron service or to create a cron task on your own server, we don't force you to use our service.
You can find more information about it on our cron documentation page.

Can I change my license to another website url?

You can attach your license to the website you want and change it at any time you want via your account.

Can I easily upgrade to a paid version?

Yes, you should simply install the new version on your website.
You don't have to uninstall your current version and you won't loose data.
All your newsletter/subscribers/lists/configuration will stay intact.

I purchased AcyMailing Business, can I switch to Enterprise?

Yes, you can easily switch from one version to another and pay only the difference.
You can do that via your account.

Install / Update AcyMailing

If I update or upgrade AcyMailing, will I loose my data?

No, you can safely update or upgrade AcyMailing, you won't loose data.

Your configuration, existing subscribers, templates, newsletters, lists... will be kept intact.

Do not uninstall your current version, simply install the new one via the Joomla Extensions Manager.

I have an error when I try to install AcyMailing

This article will help you a lot to determine what could be the problem.

Configure your Subscription Module

Why do I see my own name and e-mail on the module?

As you're logged in, AcyMailing "recognized" you and displays your own subscription.

There is an option on the AcyMailing Module to not automatically identify the user if you don't want it to happen.

Auto identify logged-in user

How can I display lists on my module?

If you want to display some lists on your module (with checkboxes or dropdown), then you should make sure you didn't select lists for the parameter "automatically subscribe to".

The lists you selected for the field "visible lists" will be displayed but only if they are not selected in the "automatically subscribe to" parameter.

Visible lists

Configure your send process

My sending limitations are 300 e-mails per hour and I use your commercial version, how do I configure AcyMailing?

With a limitation of 300 e-mails per hour, we recommend to configure AcyMailing to send 280 e-mails per hour so 70 e-mails every 15 minutes.

Go on the AcyMailing configuration page, tab "Queue Process" :
- Queue processing : Automatic Only
- Send 70 e-mails every 15 minutes
- Click on the button "Create/Edit your cron task", select the frequency "15 minutes" in the popup and click on the button "save"
Save the AcyMailing configuration page to apply the changes.

Example

I don't have any limitation, what configuration do you recommend with your commercial version?

Even if you don't have any sending limitation, we don't recommend you to send more than 300 e-mails per batch. Why?

To reduce the probability to be flagged as a spammer
To spread the load on the server
To spread the traffic that's being generated from the newsletters

If you don't mind your send process to take an entire day (or even more), the best configuration is usually to send 120 e-mails every 15 minutes.

Go on the AcyMailing configuration page, tab "Queue Process" :
- Queue processing : Automatic Only
- Send 120 e-mails every 15 minutes
- Click on the button "Create/Edit your cron task", select the frequency "15 minutes" in the popup and click on the button "save"
Save the AcyMailing configuration page to apply the changes.

You can increase your number of e-mails per task if you want to speed up the send process and/or create your own cron task with a frequency of 5 minutes.

Do I have to keep the window open during the send process or can I log out?

It depends on the sending method you're using.

If you use our free version, you will use the "manual" sending method so if you close the window then the send process will stop.
If you use our commercial version and use the "automatic only" send process, then AcyMailing will add your e-mails in the queue and take care of the send process using a cron task.
So you can log out, turn off your computer and do something else.

Sending issue

I have 800 users subscribed to my list but AcyMailing only sends e-mails to the first 498 users and then the send process stops, what's going on?

If you successfully sent an important amount of e-mails and suddenly you can not send e-mails any more then it's probably due to your hosting limitation.
Most of hosting companies apply a limit on the number of e-mails you can send per hour (300 per hour or 500 per hour) so if you try to send more e-mails, your mail server will refuse to send the rest of your Newsletter and display you error messages.
AcyMailing kept all the non-delivered e-mails in the queue so you can resume your send process later. You should read this article to know how you can spread your send process and avoid this sort of issue. Some servers won't return to AcyMailing any error. They will send the first 500 e-mails but don't deliver the rest.
In that case it's even more important to configure AcyMailing to respect your server limitations.

Could not instantiate mail function

There are many reasons to get this error message when you try to send a Newsletter...
But they are all listed here!

AcyMailing tells me the Newsletter will be sent to 35 users but I have 281 users, why?

Please make sure that:

Your users are subscribed to at least one of the lists you selected for that Newsletter
Your users are enabled
Your users are confirmed (only if you require a confirmation on the AcyMailing configuration page)
Your users accept to receive messages

You can use our filters/actions interface to mass confirm, enable or subscribe users to your lists.

Create and send your first Newsletter

Newsletter archive section

Create your campaign with follow-up messages

You just published this follow-up. Click here to add this follow-up in the queue for users currently subscribed to your campaign

If you publish a follow-up, you will see this message...

If you click on the link, then this follow-up will be added in the queue for users currently subscribed to your campaign less than X days before (X days is the delay of your follow-up).

For example, I already have an active campaign and many users are already in it.
If I create a new follow-up with a delay of 20 days and click on that link, then this follow-up will be added in the queue for all users subscribed less than 20 days ago to my campaign (so that they will receive it 20 days after they subscribed to the campaign).

Users subscribed more than 20 days ago won't receive it.

You just changed the delay of this follow-up. Click here to update the send date with this new delay on the follow-ups already inserted in the queue

If you change the delay of one of your follow-up, you will see this message...

If this follow-up is already inserted in the queue, you can decide to update the delay for all current users.

That way, if I switch the follow-up delay from 4 days to 3 days and click on that link, current users will receive the message 3 days after their subscription instead of 4.

Create an auto-Newsletter

My Auto-Newsletter is generated properly when I click on the Generate button but it does not do the job automatically, why?

The automatic process requires a cron task. Please make sure you configured a cron task on our server or on your own server and test your cron task to make sure it's working properly.

The Newsletter is created automatically. But this Newsletter is published and no e-mail are added to the queue, why?

First, make sure your auto-Newsletter is attached to at least one published list and that this list contains at least one subscriber!

But this case is a normal behaviour if you selected the option Generating Mode: Wait for the confirmation before sending so you should edit your auto-Newsletter and make sure you selected the option Generating Mode: Send the generated Newsletter

I created a new article but the Newsletter has not been sent, why?

First of all, you should make sure your cron task is configured properly and running.

AcyMailing won't send the Newsletter immediately.
AcyMailing needs to be trigger twice by the cron task:

The first time AcyMailing will generate the Newsletter
The second time AcyMailing will send the generated Newsletter

So if you have a cron frequency of 15 minutes, AcyMailing will send your Newsletter from 15 to 30 minutes after the article creation (if your auto-Newsletter frequency is 0)

What happens if I add several tags?

You can add several tags with different categories (or even the same categories).
If you do that, the Newsletter will be only generated if each tags meets its minimum number of articles.
So if you have two content tags with a minimum set for both but one of them has no new article, then the Newsletter won't be generated.
Of course, you can set the minimum to 0 so it won't block the generation.

Can I add a tag in the Newsletter subject?

Yes, you can! That's very useful if you use the auto-responder as a notification system so you can even add the article title in your Newsletter subject.
Simply copy/paste the tag you want to use in your auto-Newsletter subject and it will do the job.

Create a Newsletter-template

I have another template exported from another program, how can I use it in AcyMailing?

First create a zip file of this template (including the pictures) and then upload it on AcyMailing.

I'm testing my Newsletter on Outlook and a different style is applied to the text inside a table, why?

Outlook applies a style to the text inside your table, that's why the text outside a table is different than the one inside the table.
To avoid this issue, you should force the style of your content by adding some CSS to your Newsletter-template, for example:
Show / hide css code
```
table,div{ font-family:Verdana;font-size:12px;}
```

How to apply a colour to all my links?

You can apply a colour to your links by adding the code color:red; to the field "Style of the links" in your Newsletter-template

Upload a Newsletter-template

I created a template with Dreamweaver, how can I import it in AcyMailing?

First save your template with Dreamweaver in a specific folder.

Then create a zip of this folder and select it on our interface (using the browse button).

What's the import newsletter-template format?

If you want to create your own template and import it, you should create an index.html file which contains the template html code.
Then create a zip of this file and all the necessary pictures and import the zip via our interface.
The index.html file can display pictures using relative path, AcyMailing will convert the picture path properly during the import.
You can also include a file thumbnail.png in the same directory as your index.html file, it will be used as thumbnail.

Here is the default structure of your index.html :

Show / hide html4strict code

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Newsletter-template TITLE</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
Your CSS stylesheet here...
-->
</style>
</head>
<body>
Your html code here...
</body>
</html>

Import Users

My subscriber's name are truncated during the import - Special characters are not imported properly

Text can be truncated and special characters not imported properly if the file you submitted is not encoded as utf-8.
The easiest way to solve that issue is to use the "import via text-area" method instead.
If you know your file encoding, you could select that charset during the import and Acy will convert it automatically.
Greek users, you should select ISO-8859-7
If it still does not work, you should open your file with a text editor such as notepad++ to convert it into utf-8.

How can I import extra fields?

Using AcyMailing Enterprise you can create as many extra fields as you want on the user profile.
Once created, you can add these extra fields to your import file by adding the column name to the first line of your file:

name,email,phone,country
John,john@example.com,8390264,France
Mike,mike@example.com,2907165,USA
...

Custom fields

How many custom fields can I add?

You can create as many custom fields as you want.
You can delete some of them or create new ones when you want...

How can I translate the inserted fields?

If the label of the field is in upper-case, then AcyMailing will look for a translation in the language files.

Our language files already contain some translations so you can directly use:

FIRSTNAMECAPTION (First Name)
LASTNAMECAPTION (Last Name)
CITYCAPTION (City)
COUNTRYCAPTION (Country)
PHONECAPTION (Phone Number)
ADDRESSCAPTION (Address)
BIRTHDAYCAPTION (Birthday)

How can I display the user custom fields on the notification message?

By default, the notification message contains the user name, its e-mail address and its IP.
You can add other fields to that message by editing it via the AcyMailing configuration page and add the tag:

{user:COLUMN_NAME}

So for example if you created a custom field called "country", you should insert the tag {user:country} in the notification message.

Do not use {subtag:country} otherwise the receiver information will be displayed, not the one from your newly created user.

Bounce Handling

What happen with auto-reply messages such as “I’m out of the office” or “Thank you for your message”?

The rules won't consider this kind of message as a message indicating that the mailbox does not exist.
So no action will be applied to the subscriber and this message will be simply deleted or forwarded to another e-mail address based on the rules configuration.

I sent a Newsletter to a non-existing e-mail address but I didn't receive the bounce immediately, why?

Sometimes there is a delay and sometimes you will receive the bounce immediately.

When you send a message to a non-existing domain name : john@fmqlksjdfmlqksdfj.com,
your own mail server won't be able to send the message and so you will immediately get a bounce e-mail saying this address does not exist.
Depending on your mail server configuration, even this bounce might be delayed if your mail server keeps your message in a queue to try to re-send it later.

But when you send a message to a non-existing user account (but an existing domain name): mfqlkjsdfmlqkjsdmflqjsldf@gmail.com
Then your own mail server is able to deliver your message.
And GMail will read your message, try to deliver it to the right person, detect that the account does not exist and then return you a bounce message.
Depending on the configuration of the receiver's domain, this action takes some time as some servers double check (sometimes during more than a day) that they really can not deliver your e-mail.

On our own website, when we send Newsletters to all our users, it takes 2 days to handle all the bounces but sometimes we even still receive some of them a week later.

How can I check the bounce address specified in my Newsletters?

AcyMailing will use the bounce address you specified in your AcyMailing configuration page.

Nevertheless some servers do not allow AcyMailing to set it and another e-mail address will be used so your bounce messages will be sent to this other e-mail address.

To check it, you can do a spam test or test your message on http://www.mail-tester.com

Bounce address

Some mail servers will force this bounce address to another one if you use the PHP Mail Function or an external delivery service.
This can be solved by using the SMTP method instead of the PHP Mail Function or by making sure your bounce messages are redirected to your own bounce e-mail address if you use an external delivery service.

What's the difference between "failed" and "bounced"?

On the statistics page, you will see two columns: failed and bounced.

The two columns indicate two different information.

"Failed" is the number of e-mails AcyMailing or your server refused to send whereas "Bounced" is the number of e-mails your server sent but then a bounce message has been generated and sent back to your mailbox.

I would like to get back the default rules... how can I do that?

If you're using our latest version, you can see a button "re-install rules" at the top of the bounce page.

Simply click on it, Acy will delete all your rules and reinstall the default ones.

It does not work...

You have 0% bounce in your statistics and you find it odd?

Here is what you should do:

1. Send a spam test via the preview screen and make sure the bounce e-mail address returned by the spam test is the right one! (the one you entered in the Acy configuration page as "bounce address")

If it's not the right one, then two options:

You use an external delivery service and they handle your bounce messages... you should make sure that this third party also redirects bounce messages to your own mailbox so you can handle them as well
Your host changes your bounce address into a weird one... Please contact your hosting company to know how you can make sure that messages are sent using the bounce e-mail address you specified!

2. Go on the AcyMailing bounce handling system and make sure that you try to connect to the right mailbox. If you have a connection issue then try to fix it. (see above) 3. Bounce messages will be redirected to your mailbox and Acy will handle them only if:

Messages are still in the mailbox!
If you use Outlook to check that mailbox as well, messages will be downloaded and won't stay on your online mailbox so Acy will not be able to handle bounces at all.
The bounce messages should be in your main folder!
Sometimes your mail client will flag bounce messages as spam... in which case Acy won't be able to handle them any more.
Please make sure your messages stay in your main folder and create some rules in your mail client if needed to assure you they are not automatically considered as spam

Front-end Newsletter edition

I have two registered users and two lists, how each user can manage his own list?

The owner of the list will be able to manage his list from the front-end regardless to the groups selected on the "Front-end management" option.
So you should make sure that each user is set as owner of his list and that the option "None" is selected for the "Front-end management" option so he won't be able to send Newsletter to another list.

How to have a different template loaded for each user?

You should create a custom field called "template" (type "text").
Then edit the user profile and enter the template ID the user wants as default template.
So if this user creates a Newsletter from the front-end, this template will be loaded by default.

What's the direct link to create a Newsletter from the front-end?

You should create a new Joomla menu and select the type AcyMailing : create a Newsletter.

List: Add/Edit

How can I subscribe all my users to my list?

Save your list
Go back to the lists management screen
Click on the button "Filters"
Don't select any filter
Select the action AcyMailing List -> Subscribe users to -> select your list
Click on the button "Process"
All your users will be subscribed to your selected lists.

I want my registered users to be automatically subscribed to this list...

Save your list
Go to the AcyMailing Configuration page
Click on the tab "Subscription"
Select your list for the parameter "Auto-subscribe on Joomla registration" (using the button Select)
Save your AcyMailing configuration page

Mass actions

What's the format to create dynamic dates?

On many of our filters, you can write a date. This date always has the database format: YYYY-MM-DD. You can optionally add a time to it: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.

Using our automatic filters, you will find it handy to create dynamic dates so instead of a fixed date, you can write a tag or an operation which will be replaced by a date depending on the executed time.

{time} will be replaced by the current time (in seconds) and you can execute some operations on this field so:

{time} + 60 will be replaced by the current time plus 1 minute (60 seconds)
{time} - 60 will be replaced by the current time minus 1 minute (60 seconds)
{time} + 3600 will be replaced by the current time plus 1 hour (3600 seconds)
{time} - 3600 will be replaced by the current time minus 1 hour (3600 seconds)
{time} + 86400 will be replaced by the current time plus 1 day (86400 seconds)
{time} - 86400 will be replaced by the current time minus 1 day (86400 seconds)

The same way, you can create any date you want ({time} [+-] [amount of seconds]) based on the time the filter will be executed. When you create a condition on a date, you can't use the equal sign (created = 2010-03-19), you should create two filters instead:
created > 2010-03-19 and created < 2010-03-20 You can also use the tag {year}, {month} and {day} which will be replaced by the current year, month or day.

Can I do an OR condition between two filters?

Filters are connected with an AND condition only, we don't support OR conditions.
Nevertheless within the same filter you can do an OR condition by using the REGEXP operator.
use : "tennis|handball|football" to select users having tennis or handball or football in the field.

Birthday Newsletter

I'm using the free version and just want the birthday plugin, how can I do that?

This birthday plugin requires our automatic send process so it will only work with our commercial versions (AcyMailing Essential, Business or Enterprise).
If you want to use our birthday plugin to send birthday Newsletters to users handled by another component, then AcyMailing Essential will be enough.
If you want to display a birthday field on your subscription form, then you will need AcyMailing Enterprise to be able to add custom fields.

I record the user birthday with another Joomla component, can I use your birthday plugin for that?

If the component you're using is not listed above, then please go on our forum and create a new thread asking for an integration with another component for the birthday Newsletter.
It should take no more than a week for us to add it and we will do it for free.

I use VirtueMart and sometimes the birthday plugin does not queue the message, why?

AcyMailing is not able to send a birthday message to users which are not already in AcyMailing.

VirtueMart handles users with and without Joomla account. If you handle users without Joomla account on VirtueMart, you should make sure the plugin "VirtueMart checkout Subscription" is enabled so any user inserted in VirtueMart will also be inserted in AcyMailing.

In testing mode the birthday Newsletter is added to the queue properly but it's never sent, why?

Please make sure you created a cron task on our server or on yours and that your cron task is working.

Also, make sure your birthday Newsletter is published, AcyMailing won't send unpublished Newsletters.

Statistics

My statistics are not working, what can I do?

AcyMailing inserts a small picture in your Newsletters to track the open rate. This picture should be accessible for everybody and you should make sure to click on the button "display pictures from that website" when you received your Newsletter.

Your website should be online and publicly accessible.
If you have a restricted access to your website or if your website is a local one, it won't work.
AcyMailing should be attached to a menu with a public access.
Please check the menu attached to Acy on the AcyMailing configuration page to make sure it's publicly accessible.
Do you have sh404SEF installed?
If so then we recommend you to edit the sh404SEF configuration and configure it to skip AcyMailing.
Then access the sh404SEF urls and delete all urls containing com_acymailing.
With AcyMailing v2 we added a column "IP" on the acymailing_userstats table.
You should check the structure of this table via phpMyAdmin to make sure it has been added as it should.
If not, that would also prevent the statistics from being recorded.

External SMTP service

I have sending limitations with my hosting company (ie, 400 e-mails per hour), will I be able to send more e-mails using these services?

Yes. Your own server won't send e-mails any more. E-mails will be delivered by an external server so you won't be under your hosting limitations any more.

For now AcyMailing sends 200 e-mails every 15 minutes, can I speed up the send process?

Yes, you can use our multiple queue system to handle parallel threads.

I use an smtp delivery service but Acy does not receive and handle the bounce messages any more?

SendGrid
There is an option in SendGrid to redirect the bounce message to another e-mail address so Acy can still handle your bounce messages.
Connect to your SendGrid account, Email Reports > Settings > Forward bounces
This option enables you to forward bounces to a specific email address.
Please check the box below and enter the forwarding email address which should be your AcyMailing bounce address.

ElasticEmail
You can specify a forward e-mail address on your ElasticEmail account under the tab "setup" so bounce messages are redirected to another e-mail address.

Plugin: Subscriber

What's the different between the "Subscriber" and the "Joomla User" plugin?: The information you can add are different, one come from the Joomla User table, the others come from the AcyMailing User table.

All Joomla users will have an AcyMailing account but if you handle visitors on AcyMailing, they don't have a Joomla account and so adding tags from the "Joomla User" table won't display any result in that case.

If you want to add the name of the user, please always use the "Subscriber" information, not the "Joomla User" ones to be sure that all your subscribers will have a name.

Plugin: Joomla User

How can I add the User Password in my Newsletter?

You cannot.

The User password is encrypted in your database so even if AcyMailing is technically able to add it in your Newsletter, AcyMailing cannot get the real password (the non-encrypted one). To avoid any surprise using this field, we decided to remove it from the list of available fields.
If you want to insert the encrypted password in your Newsletter, you can use the tag {usertag:password}

I added the tag {usertag:name} but some of my users received their Newsletter with an empty result, why?

This plugin adds information from the Joomla User table.

So AcyMailing will be able to add the correct value only if all your users have their AcyMailing account linked to a registered User in Joomla.

You should rather use the Subscriber plugin to add the name of your users to be sure that the name will be always populated.

Plugin: Community Builder

I published the AcyMailing CB Plugin but the lists are displayed at the top of my registration form, how can I order the lists so they appear at the bottom of my form?

You will be able to order your fields in Community Builder depending on their position.
Two fields with the same position can be moved and reordered so first, you should set a position to the AcyMailing tab:

Click on the menu Community Builder -> Tab Management and edit the AcyMailing plugin.
Select the position "Main area" and save the plugin. You can now order your lists at the bottom of the CB registration form by editing the ordering field.