Description
Letterness is a complete, free newsletter and email marketing plugin for WordPress. Grow your email list with a beautiful newsletter popup and signup forms, then write and send newsletters to your subscribers straight from your dashboard, no third-party account, no monthly fee, and your subscriber list stays in your own database.
Most newsletter plugins make you choose: a pretty opt-in popup from one plugin, sending from another service, automations behind a paywall. Letterness puts subscriber capture, email sending, automations, and analytics in one lightweight plugin, controlled from a single screen.
Why choose Letterness?
- Free and self-hosted. No SaaS account, no per-subscriber pricing, no sending caps beyond your own host.
- All-in-one. Capture, send, automate, and measure without stitching plugins together.
- Lightweight and fast. Front-end CSS and JavaScript load only on pages where they are actually needed, so your page speed stays intact.
- Privacy-friendly. Built-in consent capture, signed one-click unsubscribe, and analytics that store a hashed key instead of raw emails.
- Works with your setup. Any theme (classic or block), Gutenberg, Elementor, page caches, and any SMTP/ESP plugin.
Capture subscribers three ways
- A responsive newsletter popup with time-delay, scroll-depth, or exit-intent triggers.
- A sidebar signup card for any widget area or placed with a shortcode.
- A subscribe button for a theme menu, plus an inline signup form shortcode and a Gutenberg form block.
Send newsletters from WordPress
- Compose in the standard WordPress editor with ten responsive email templates (newsletter, blog digest, announcement, welcome, product, simple, minimal, magazine, holiday, featured).
- Personalization merge tags such as
{first_name|there},{site_name}, and{unsubscribe_url}, with fallbacks so blank values never look broken. - Save drafts, schedule for later, or send now, with throttled batch delivery and live queue status (queued, processing, sent, failed).
- Sends through WordPress
wp_mail(), so any SMTP plugin (WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP, Post SMTP, and others) works automatically.
Automations
- Welcome email when someone subscribes, immediately or after a delay you set.
- New-post notifications that email your subscribers when you publish, instantly or as a scheduled daily or weekly digest.
Analytics
- Open and click tracking per campaign: opens, unique opens, open rate, clicks, unique clicks, click rate, clicked links, and top link.
- A subscriber-growth chart and source breakdown for your list.
Deliverability and compliance
- List-Unsubscribe and one-click headers (RFC 8058) so Gmail and Yahoo show a native unsubscribe button.
- Visible unsubscribe link, a branded confirmation page, a re-subscribe option, and instant suppression.
- GDPR-style consent checkbox with your own text and privacy-policy link.
Audience management
- Lists, tags, and custom fields with bulk actions and filters.
- Subscriber statuses (active, pending, unsubscribed, bounced) and CSV export.
Shortcodes
[letterness_form]– inline signup form.[letterness_card]– sidebar signup card.[letterness_subscribe_button]– subscribe button.
Letterness is built to be secure, accessible, translation-ready, and RTL-friendly. For the best inbox placement on larger lists, pair it with a free SMTP plugin.
Screenshots
Blocks
This plugin provides 1 block.
- Letterness Signup Form
Installation
- Upload the
letternessfolder to/wp-content/plugins/, or install through Plugins > Add New and search for “Letterness”. - Activate the plugin through the Plugins screen.
- Open Letterness in the admin menu to set up triggers, design, content, automations, and sending.
- (Optional) Add the signup card under Appearance > Widgets, or place
[letterness_form],[letterness_card], or[letterness_subscribe_button]anywhere. - (Recommended) Install a free SMTP plugin for reliable delivery.
FAQ
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Is Letterness really free?
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Yes. Every feature described here is free, subscriber capture, unlimited storage in your own database, newsletter sending, automations, and analytics. There is no per-subscriber pricing.
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Do I need a third-party email service like Mailchimp?
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No. Letterness stores subscribers in your own WordPress database and sends through
wp_mail(). For higher deliverability on larger lists we recommend a free SMTP plugin such as WP Mail SMTP or FluentSMTP, which Letterness detects and uses automatically. -
Can I send a welcome email automatically?
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Yes. Turn on the welcome automation and choose to send immediately or after a delay in minutes, hours, or days.
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Can Letterness email my subscribers when I publish a new post?
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Yes. New-post notifications can send instantly on publish or collect posts into a scheduled daily or weekly digest, filtered by post type and category.
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Does it track opens and clicks?
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Yes. Each campaign shows opens, unique opens, open rate, clicks, unique clicks, click rate, and the most-clicked links. Open tracking relies on a tracking pixel and is approximate, since many email apps block or preload images; click tracking is exact.
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How do visitors unsubscribe?
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Every email has a visible, signed one-click unsubscribe link and standards-based List-Unsubscribe headers, so inbox providers can show a native unsubscribe button. Unsubscribing shows a confirmation page and immediately suppresses the address.
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Is it GDPR-friendly?
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Letterness includes an optional consent checkbox with your own wording and privacy-policy link, records consent, and never sells or shares data. Analytics store a one-way hash of the email rather than the address itself.
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Can I show a different design on mobile?
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Yes. Colors, image, shape, size, and animations each have an optional mobile override, so desktop and mobile can look completely different. One “size” control scales every element responsively.
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Does it work with block themes, Elementor, and page caches?
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Yes. The popup shows via JavaScript and the form block is server-rendered, so it works with classic and block themes, Elementor, Gutenberg, and caching plugins. Use the shortcodes or the block to place forms anywhere.
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Is the popup accessible?
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Yes. The popup is a keyboard-accessible dialog: focus moves into it on open and back on close, focus is trapped inside, Escape closes it, controls are labeled for screen readers, and reduced-motion and RTL are supported.
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What happens to my data when I uninstall?
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Deleting the plugin removes its options, both custom tables (subscribers and newsletters), the analytics events, and any scheduled events.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“Letterness – Newsletter Popup, Signup Forms & Built-in Email Sending” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “Letterness – Newsletter Popup, Signup Forms & Built-in Email Sending” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
4.1.0
- Design: independent desktop and mobile controls, popup shapes, and a single “size” control that scales every element responsively so shaped popups never clip.
- Targeting: show or hide by page, post type, category, URL, login state, and device.
- Consent and inline forms: consent capture, a
[letterness_form]shortcode, and a Gutenberg form block. - Audience: lists, tags, and custom fields with bulk actions and filters.
- Personalization: merge tags such as {first_name|there}, {site_name}, and {unsubscribe_url}, with fallbacks.
- Templates: ten responsive newsletter templates across common categories.
- Automations: welcome email (immediate or delayed) and new-post notifications (instant or digest) on a lightweight event/delay/action scheduler.
- Analytics: campaign open and click tracking with unique counts, rates, top links, and a per-campaign breakdown. Open tracking is approximate by nature.
- Deliverability: works with any SMTP/ESP plugin via wp_mail(), configurable batch throttling with queue states (queued, processing, sent, failed), Reply-To, and RFC 8058 List-Unsubscribe one-click headers.
- Unsubscribe: visible link, branded confirmation page, one-click support, re-subscribe option, and immediate suppression.
- Hardening: keyboard-accessible popup with focus management and Escape to close, reduced-motion and RTL support, conditional asset loading, and a full security pass (nonces, capabilities, prepared queries, escaping, signed tokens).
4.0.1
- Enqueued the preview highlight styles and script instead of printing them inline.
- Housekeeping and code-quality improvements.
4.0.0
- Public release on WordPress.org.
- Independent desktop and mobile design for the popup.
- Built-in newsletter composer with drafts, scheduling, and batched sending.
- Sidebar signup card, header subscribe button, and shortcodes.
- Secure token-based one-click unsubscribe.
- Subscriber CSV export.