Civicrm MailChimp Integration

[sonicthoughts]

It looks free to run your own mailserver, but there are many overhead costs with keeping things running smoothly and getting on a blacklist is like catching a virus.  To avoid the distraction, we are looking into Mailchimp integration.  Its a very powerful platform with a strong API and good pricing.  They claim to have integration: http://connect.mailchimp.com/integrations/mailchimp-civicrm-sync but after looking at their forum and testing / reviewing the code its a long way from prime-time.  Furthermore the project seems to have lost momentum.

I'm gauging interest in gathering funding to move the project forward.  Its 80% done and well thought out, but definitely alpha code. It looks like a pretty modest effort but I'm unable to fund entirely.  Please let me know if you have some interest.

S.

[beenlouis]

I have limited budget, but would love to see this project funded. Can you let me know specifically what kind of money you think it would take to get this moving?

[Coleman Watts]

There already seem to be at least two partially-finished integrations:

• CiviChimp
• Mailchimp CiviCRM Sync
• I think there is a 3rd that I just saw someone blog about but can't find it now...

What's needed is to pick up where these projects left off, repackage it as a native CiviCRM extension and place it on github where others can collaborate.

[sonicthoughts]

Completely agree - just a question of funding.  Drupal has a serious integration effort:http://drupal.org/project/mailchimp .  I think -http://www.targetintegration.com/downloads/mailchimp-civicrm-sync.html is fairly close in terms of logic (needs to support smartgroups) but implementation is off the mark.

[beenlouis]

Thanks Coleman and Sonicthoughts. I too agree, I would love to see one of these projects developed.

I am currently working with civicrm installed on a wordpress site and have test the "target integration" module. However, I could only get it to work if I disabled the security check. Additionally, it messed up many of my groups in civicrm and the though the groups were created in mail chimp no contacts were assigned to each group. But I was able to move the contacts alone to mailchimp :-)

I am not a developer (just enough knowledge to get me in trouble) but I would be happy to support someone else's development. Just let me know how I could best be of assistance. 

[JoeMurray]

On the Target Integration forum for CiviCRM - MailChiimp Sync there have been repeated promises / hopes of getting a chunk of work time to improve that implementation. We've spent a fair bit of time on both 1.03 and 1.1 versions and decided it may not be easier to fix it than to take a different approach. Fen Labalme, the author of CiviChimp, says that his implementation is pre-alpha. I've examined the Drupal MailChimp project and it is very well coded and feature complete, and has a sizable user basis of over 8k and rising for the D7 version. Perhaps it might be possible to replace the Drupal entity and UI code and make use of the rest of the code. Or perhaps it would be best (sigh) to start from scratch using http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/api/downloads/#php.

[sonicthoughts]

Yes Joe, it's a shame.  I've not been able to drum enough client interest to fund, but what is nice about this approach is that newsletters and civicrm can be integrated but run seperately and for different parts of the organization who want to share a common list.  Let's face it mailchimp and their templates, etc. are much easier to use for many folks who are not trained in civicrm, and not everyone wants to run a mail server.

A more radical approach (shooting from the hip here ...) might be to write an extension that can sync with drupal for mailings and leverage all the nice mail integration ....

I wrote some points here on the forum but they fell on deaf ears http://www.targetintegration.com/CiviCRM-MailChimp-Sync/433-MailChimp-Sync-won-t-run/Page-3.html?Itemid=0:

There is definitely interest, but I think it has to be done properly for this to get traction. IMHO it is quite close and I can help with product management to get a spec nailed down. Been trying to get funding to sponsor (and fork unless you want to maintain) but not much success yet. Off the top of my head I see some important considerations:

1. Edge case error checking (so things break gracefully / inform.)
2. Use latest civicrm APIs (these are depreciated.) Not a big deal to upgrade but important...
3. Support SmartGroups (I think the API was updated to make this trivial.)
4. Create Civicrm Extension - this will give you much more exposure and make it easy to manage updates, etc.
5. Address issue of unsubscribe with multiple groups
6. Civicrm Job support (this is probably just documentation...)
7. use civicrm error logging (makes sense...)

Another approach (entirely) might be to hook into the drupal mailchimp module (drupal.org/project/mailchimp) which has a LOT of traction .... that would lock out civicrm on Joomla / Wordpress although they are currently minority platforms.

I'm not sure of your business model, but this integration would be of high value to many who are using civicrm and I expect it could win you some business.

[ChrisChinchilla]

Hmm, we also had some bad recent experiences with the target plugin, which is a shame, probably caused by changes in APIs more than anything else. Our client is very keen on using it, so we may end up 'fixing it' and contributing back…

[polestar]

Hi Guys,

I can understand the frustration and problems with the module and the little time that we have makes it worse.

At the moment we don't have any real customers using the sync and hence there is very little development going on. As you will appreciate every open source project requires funding and so does Civi MailChimp Sync too.

So far we have had no one to fund this except the initial development which was funded by MailChimp themselves and they haven't recently shown any interest in supporting an upgrade of the script.

We would like to support further development of the script as much as possible. I will not commit something but yes we have recently increased our strength and there is a possibility that some updates will come up soon. We are also in talks with another prospect who may use the application.

In the meantime if any of you would like to support the improvement of the script further please feel free to drop me an email directly using info (at) targetintegration.com

[Donald Lobo]

Another approach (entirely) might be to hook into the drupal mailchimp module (drupal.org/project/mailchimp) which has a LOT of traction .... that would lock out civicrm on Joomla / Wordpress although they are currently minority platforms.

Note that joomla and wordpress today are approx 37%+ and growing of the installed CiviCRM base. We should not consider them minority platforms. WP is catching up really nicely and i suspect with the 4.3 permission integration will gain even more market share in the civi community.

In general any open source project and extension will benefit a lot if:

* Users post issues with as much details as possible
* If things are broken / structured badly / cause damage to other records: a issue is filed along with details
* patches for issues are always great

lobo

lobo

[polestar]

Well said Lobo,

We are more than happy to receive fixes and then release them as part of the original application. That's what community development is all about.

[ChrisChinchilla]

When we've figured out what the problems are and hopefully fixed them, we shall do our best!

[JoeMurray]

Just to confirm polestar's posting here that Target Integration doesn't have current funding for bug fixes or new version from their forum:
http://www.targetintegration.com/CiviCRM-MailChimp-Sync/495-New-version.html?Itemid=0#506

SonicThoughts has produced a pretty good list of work. We have blown a budget on a small project trying to install this extension and get it working but ended up deciding it was not feasible to get it to an acceptable level of functionality and quality for production within the scope of that project. We have another client who wants a better UI for newsletter creation than provided by CiviMail who may be able to fund an integration. It's an open question for me if it would be better to start over or work to fix this old implementation. The Drupal integration module is very well coded, though it would be work to refactor away from Drupal entities.

[championofliberty]

What kind of funding is necessary to make this happen? We would really like to see this happen, I can see if I can pull anything together.

[Coleman Watts]

I recommend talking to Michael Mcandrew asap because he is putting together the list of MIHs (make-it-happen campaigns for crowd-sourced improvements). MIHs need seed money to get started, if you can provide that, then lots of other folks can chip in and we'll have it made