This screenshot is... uh ... small? I can't see a thing.

This is a great software, probable one of the best. It's missing some futures which can make it hands down champ however this has to be seen.

As far as tech support that is what make every product a SUPER PRODUCT ... here Direct Mail is stumbling, BIG TIME ...

I recently purchased DM Pro after evaluating several other options out there. It had the best combination of flexibility and ease-of-use out of the 3 or 4 other options I tested.

Setup was just about as easy as it gets. It pulled all of my email account information from Mail, so all of the important info was already set up.

As another user here mentioned, I too had some initial difficulty linking with mysql databases on my site, but turning on remote access to said databases via cPanel fixed the issue (imagine that).

While preflighting my first mailer, I ran into one glitch in the import from web feature-mailtos were getting borked. I was in the process of testing a workaround (manually pasting the html instead of importing it...which worked fine, btw) when I got a software update notice from DM. A quick download and the problem disappeared. Fixed before I could even complain. Not bad.

In the end, I sent out a multi-thousand quantity mailer from a few different databases, spread over the course of several hours (automatically dealing with the hourly email limit from my hosting provider) with minimum difficulty. It processed my one unsubscribe and several bounces with ease.

Since I never actually needed to contact support, I can't say whether it's gotten any "better" or not. The only "bug" I found was fixed before I could report it. The online documentation fully answered any questions I had about the actual software and the knowledge base for my hosting service helped answer the rest.

It was a bit expensive compared to other solutions, but personally I think it was well worth it. I didn't give it 5 stars because I rated it based on my notion "perfect," which it's not, but it's very very close.

Very Mac-like, easy to use, and functional. I couldn't get the MySQL connection working, though, and emailed their support but never received a response. Just as easy to dump my query to a text file and import it, so it's not a big deal. But the lack of response from support is discouraging. I would like to get the MySQL connector working and then see additional development in being able to set up custom/condition queries (e.g., IF title = 'md', 'Dr.', '') to create dynamic message fields.

I really want to love this software, as it seems to be a great answer for those with needs to complex for the likes of ConstantContact.

First, the Good:

List management is great and fairly seamless. It's a bit scary that your auto-management only syncs when your computer is online, but it's not a big deal. Works well.

The eThree mailing service is generally very good during the free trial, but after that, it's a bit pricey. May be worth it given lightning speed and good deliverability.

The ablity to turn a webpage into an email by just dropping in the link is brilliant. I've seen other implementations of this that continually failed or didn't get it quite right. In this one, what you see in Safari is *exactly* what you get.

The Bad:

Don't use this if email is time-sensitive or mission-critical for your business. Once, eThree mailing service was down without notice. And the response was a pretty weak "oops." Cold comfort when you have a weekly email newsletter with revenue attached.

And the program is buggy. After a couple updates, we got an error warning every time we booted up, but without apparent problems. Always clicked to send info to publisher.

But in two different cases, about a month apart, after taking an upgrade, the program would endlessly cycle and crash on boot. And guess what -- That means you can't even get your data out.

Customer service always has the same pattern: Quick response asking for the logfile followed by radio silence of 24-48 hours. Meanwhile, you're stuck.

On the most recent, we were enterprising enough to dig through Time Machine for an old version which we finally got working.

A shame. It's a program with great potential, but its flakiness makes it a no-go.

For some reason the Delivery Restrictions settings aren't working any more. I can't send more than 20 messages at a time thru smtp so I have it set to wait 2 minutes between each group of 20. It used to work fine. Now it just goes right past 20 and tries to send them all, resulting in hundreds of failed messages.

I deleted the plist file but that didn't help.

Any ideas?