CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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

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.

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.

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