Finding a 100% platform independant and portable Newsletter/Notification solution

Hi All,

Been trying to get my head around Drupal for the last couple of weeks, and am loving it. My site is currently on Xoops but am in full flight in trying to map out a plan of attack for migrating my site to Drupal. One of the first tasks I have is trying to match up where data in Xoops should go in my future Drupal environment while at the same time trying to ensure I maintain the same level (or better) of functionality. One thing I think Xoops does really well (from a UI perspective) is the notifications system, and I have not seen anything as good as it in any other CMS. So anyway, I have been looking at what Drupal modules I can use to fill the gap of the notifications system in Xoops at the same time as being able to have a basic newsletter functionality, with the major requirement that whatever I use must be highly portable (ideally operate entirely from within the Drupal environment) and must also be 100% platform independant (work on any OS, and any Webserver). I have been scouring the project pages and forum topics (such as the one below) for the past 3 days looking for answers.

A good topic on the subject;
http://drupal.org/node/18709

This is the list of modules I have come up with that appear to offer functionalty in the area I need, and a very brief comment of how usable I found them for my needs;

SimpleNews
http://drupal.org/project/simplenews

Nice and simple module that appears to work as advertised, but not a notifications system, just newsletters. You can create a newsletter through the "create content" menu, and via the admin interface you can see exactly who is subscribed, what newsletters have been sent, and what ones are still in draft. You can even import/export subscribers from indivudual newsletters from/to CSV. Not much to fault this module, but if anything it would be good to see some features to improve scalability such as batch sending and send throttling. It would also be good if you could set an newsletter to include new/updated content from selectable content types if you wanted automated newsletter generation, but that is not a biggy in my view. I'd really like to see how this module holds up under heavy loads with several thousand subscribers. Excellent newsletter module overall though in my opinion.

Notify
http://drupal.org/project/notify

This is the closest module I've been able to find that resembles the notification system in Xoops, but it is no where near as granular. With Notify you can only select the global notification options of receiving an e-mail if new content is posted and/or new comments are posted. You can also select wether the email should contain the title of the new content/comment, title and teaser, or title and body. On the admin side you can set the send frequency, and the number of failed sending attempts before disabling itself, and you canalso manage user notify settings from the user menu. Essentially this module works quite well, but it would be great to see the ability for people to set notifications of particular content types, and comments made on a particular content type. If your notification needs are simple though, this module is definitley worth a look.

Enewsletter
http://drupal.org/project/enewsletter

This module actually requires seven other modules to be installed in order to work (installation is well documented), and I was actually never able to get it working properly (failed on sending). As a result I can't give a full first hand account of how it operates, but on paper at least I think this is the most promising module of the lot. It has automatic newsletter generation which can be set to include/exclude any type of content, it has templates to customize the look of your newsletter, and it has a bounced e-mail function so you can see who your newsletter isn't getting through to as well as a bounce limit to prevent further sending to invalid addresses. Users subscribe to the newsletters they want, and how they want to get it (TXT or HTML) through their account settings, and delivery of the newsletters can be set to manual or triggered via cron.php . Added to this is that this module has a batch limit and delay setting which adds a lot of scalability to the module if you have a large subscription base. With this module you can effectly bridge the functionality of a notifications system and newsletter module all in one, although one thing I would like is to have the option to produce my own newsletters instead of just having them auto generated and for anonymous users to be able to subscribe to newsletters. If I can get this module working I will alost certainly be using this.

Subscriptions
http://drupal.org/project/subscriptions

Quite a granular module that leans more toward a notification system than an newsletter system. In this module you can quite simply manage you subscription for new content of each individual vocabulary, as well as subscribing to posts on individual items. On the admin side you can see how many are subscribed to each vocabulary, and in settings you can set which content type not to include in the subscription list. Simple and competent notifications system, and probably a better solution than the Notify module if you require a more granularity in what notifications you want available to your users.

Ezmlm
http://drupal.org/project/ezmlm

Ezmlm is a module that allows your users to subscribe to an Ezmlm mailing list. As Ezmlm is *nix based and requires qmail it does not meet my requirement of being portable and platform independent.

Mailing List Manager
http://drupal.org/node/44580

MLM is a module that allows your users to subscribe to various mailing lists managers via a plug-in system. As MLM requires an external list manager it does not meet my requirement of being portable.

Subscription
http://drupal.org/node/29868

This module tries to combine the functionality of the subscriptions and notify modules, and as such is a notifications system rather than a newsletter system for which it seems to do a pretty good job. A subscription link is shown in the footer of each item which allows users to subscribe at a content type level. Users can manage their subscriptions from their account settings. on the admin side you can create new subscription channels (handy for debugging), and can also set mail delivery for instant or triggered via cron.php. I like the fact that subscriptions are managed via the user account rather than in a menu item (as per subscriptions), but can be a little confusing to get your head around with the channel system and also not as granular as the subscriptions module.

Massmailer
http://drupal.org/project/massmailer

Masmailer is a module that allows your users to subscribe to mailing list which is then dispatched via the phplist engine. As phplist requires access to the bash shell it is *nix based and therefore does not meet my requirement of being platform independent.

Mail
http://drupal.org/project/mail

Mail is a module which allows you to automatically send mails to users who have opt-in to recieve them whenever you post to a content type that has been configured to send them. Nice and simple notifications system, but I didn't look into too hard as apparently it isn't going to be maintained from here on in.

Send
http://drupal.org/node/37480

Send is basic module that adds a l"send this item" link to each content type that is configured to display it. On the admin side you can set mail headers, message text, footers, as well as being able to set a send limit to prevent flooding. E-mail can also be tracked if the CiviCRM module is installed. Not really suitable as a notification system as no autmoated e-mails are sent, but a handy little module for what it does.

Listhandler
http://drupal.org/project/listhandler

Listhandler is a module that synchronises discussion between your Drupal forums and an external mailing list. Handy for generating forum/list traffic, but not much good as a notification or newsletter system.

-----------------------

The above is most certainly not meant to be any sort of conclusive run down on these modules or a reflection of all the hard work the devs have put in, and is as much for myself as anything so I can remember why I selected the modules I did. Hopefully it might help a few others in the same/similar situation to me. Please feel free to add/correct anything I haven't got quite right.