What is the Battle Between WordPress’s Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine about?
The MailPoet Newsletter Plugin (former Wysija) is without doubt the best and most popular newsletter plugin for WordPress - scoring 4,8 out of 5 stars with thousands of installations.
It also features quite a smart Freemium model when it gets to commercially exploiting their code.
Free Version of MailPoet WordPress Plugin and MailPoet Premium Addon
There is a free version of MailPoet available in the official WordPress repository at https://wordpress.org/plugins/wysija-newsletters/ which pretty much does most of the stuff in a very relaible way.
Some features are a limited and only available in the MailPoet Premium Version, e.g. sending newsletters to more than 2000 subscribers, getting a beautiful statistics dashboard to compare your newsletters, detailed stats for each subscriber and newsletter, an automated bounce handling that helps you keep your subscribers' list clean, a spam score analyzer that can be used before sending a newsletter to your subscribers and an improved deliverability with DKIM signature.
If you want all features of MailPoet Premium, you need to get a support license which basically gives you some additional code that needs to be installed next to the free version of MailPoet and which checks your license every now and then to charge you again when the license runs out.
To allow you running MailPoet Premium for free we had a look at the code and put together some simple step by step instructions how to use the plugin without a license.
How to make your own "nulled" MailPoet Premium WordPress Plugin - Instructions
- Download the latest free version of MailPoet from the official WordPress repository (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wysija-newsletters/) or from the GPLDL repository (Special Gifts for Premium Members)
- Download the latest Premium addon for Mailpoet from the GPLDL repository (Special Gifts for Premium Members) - allowing you to turn the free version of MailPoet into MailPoet Premium
- Unzip and upload the free version of MailPoet to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory via FTP so that is resides in /wp-content/plugins/wysija-newsletters
- Unzip and upload the Premium addon for MailPoet to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory via FTP so that it resides in /wp-content/plugins/wysija-newsletters-premium
- Check again that you Premium addon for MailPoet is in the /wp-content/plugins/ directory and is NOT uploaded to /wp-content/plugins/wysija-newsletters
- Go to the following sub-directory where the free version of MailPoet is installed /wp-content/plugins/wysija-newsletters/helpers/ and find a file named "license.php". Make a local backup of this file (just in case things go wrong). Then open the license.php file with your favorite HTML- or Texteditor and the PHP code in line 93 from "if($decoded['result'] === true) {" to "if($decoded['result'] === false) {" (without the quotation marks at the beginning and at the end!). These code manipulation essentially removes the license check from the plugin.
- Save your "nulled" license.php file.
- Go to the admin menu in your WordPress backend, activate both plugins and select MailPoet > Premium and click "Activate Premium". Go back to the MailPoet-menu on the sidebar and see all premium features enabled
- Make sure that you do these changes again when you have updated the free MailPoet Newsletter Plugin with a newer version (and the old one has been overwritten)
- Make also sure to replace the Premium addon for MailPoet when a new version is available at GPLDL
Final Words
Use these instructions to try out the MailPoet Newsletter Premium WordPress Plugin for free and if you like it and realize its value, please consider buying a full license.
It not only allows you to update the MailPoet Premium in a much more convenient way right through your admin panel but also allows the developers to monetize on their code and dedicate time and ressources for maintenance and future improvements.
Let us know if it worked for you or if you are running into any kinds of problems.
Related posts
