List email plugin - unable to send attachments

[BasilC]

I've been trying to attach a document (PDF or docx) to an email sent using the list email plugin.

At first the message arrived, but without the attachment. After a few retries I updated Fabrik using the Fabrik-master zip. Since doing this if I attach a document the email doesn't arrive at all. If I sent the email without attaching a document it does arrive. (Testing by sending the email to one of my own email addresses.)

Any suggestions?

 

[cheesegrits]

Works OK for me.

https://www.screencast.com/t/Yf2szf2s02On

Forgive the slowness, my laptop is groaning under the strain of running everything (browser, web server, database, PHP development environment, xdebug, etc).

Can you enable full error reporting in the J! global settings, then open Dev Tools in Chrome, and see if you see any errors being reported after hitting Submit.

-- hugh

 

[BasilC]

Thanks Hugh.

Tried that and there were no error reports - I assume they would appear on the Console tab? (I'm not terribly up to speed on error reporting and debugging.)

I've tested again several times and the results are consistent: if I attach a file, the email doesn't get through, if I don't it does. I tried sending to an email address that uses a different provider - no difference.

 

[cheesegrits]

Can you point me at the page?

-- hugh

 

[BasilC]

Sorry for the slow reply. And for wasting your time - it turns out that I was using Elasticmail to send the emails and to use attachments you have to have a paid subscription. I've switched to PHP Mailer and tested with an attachment and it got through.

Very sorry about wasting your time, I can see how busy you must all be.

And thanks for all the work on Fabrik - where would we be without it?

Basil

 

[cheesegrits]

I strongly advise not using the PHP mailer. It's very unreliable.

Bets bet right now is a free SendGrid account, http://sendgrid.com (the "try for free" is not time limited, it just restricts you to X thouand emails per month, I forget the limit), then use the SMTP method in J!'s mail config. There's instructions out there on configuring J! for sendgrid, just google it.

And thanks for all the work on Fabrik - where would we be without it?

Feel free to express your thanks in the form of a subscription, help keep the lights turned on.

-- hugh

 

[BasilC]

Thanks Hugh.

Sendgrid looks pretty much on the same lines as ElasticEmail, which also uses SMTP and is free for my sort of scale - it's just the attachments that aren't free (not really surprising). I had a quick look at Sendgrid but couldn't see whether attachments were free. But in any case I can use the SMTP settings that come with the hosting account. Just tried that and it worked.

I went over to using ElasticEmail coupled with AcyMailing for my weekly newsletter (on a different website) and it works well because they work very hard to get off blacklists of suspected spammers. If an IP gets blacklisted they just switch to an alternative. You can send at a much faster hourly rate too. That newsletter doesn't have attachments though, so I hadn't run into this issue.

I did have a subscription a while back. Time to take out another one and put something into Fabrik rather than just taking. All my websites are totally non-commercial, but there are extensions that I do pay for that aren't in the same league as Fabrik.

Cheers,

Basil

 

[cheesegrits]

I've never had any trouble sending attachments through Send Grid, even on the free plan.

Of course using your host's SMTP relay is fine, but as you say, it's the "reputation" management of people like ElasticMail, Send Grid, Mandril etc. which are worth the effort. They go to a lot of time and trouble to keep off blacklists and maintain high reputation scores, which is not always true of server hosting relays.

I also find the dashboard on Send Grid very useful, showing your outbound delivery stats. Not quite as good as (say) Mandrill, but still useful.

The issue with the PHP Mailer is that it doesn't use a relay. It just attempts to directly deliver to the recipient(s) mail server(s). So if a site's mail server is down, or there's a network hiccup between you and them, your mail doesn't send. Using an SMTP relay, it then goes in a queue for redelivery attempts if it can't immediately be delivered.

-- hugh