G-Lock EasyMail is in-house email marketing software for Windows, made by G-Lock Software and currently sold as G-Lock EasyMail7. It manages subscriber lists, builds newsletters and sends them through a mail server the user chooses. Lists and statistics stay on the user’s own machine or server. A free version with hourly and monthly sending caps is available alongside paid editions.
A server with separate clients
EasyMail7 Server holds the contact lists, messages and program data and performs the actual sending. It can run on a desktop PC, a network server or a cloud machine such as Amazon EC2 or Azure. EasyMail7 Client is the desktop interface that connects to it over an encrypted link; a browser-based client is also available.
Sending continues after the client is closed. Web subscription forms need the server on a computer that stays online.
Users and workplaces
An administrator creates users and workplaces. Each workplace has its own SMTP accounts, templates, sent items, contact groups and bounce settings, plus optional monthly sending limits. Permissions can let a user send campaigns without seeing addresses, or block importing and exporting.
Contact groups and segments
Recipients are stored in groups with custom fields. G-Lock EasyMail imports contacts from CSV files, Excel, Access, MySQL and MS SQL. A group can also read recipients directly from any ODBC database at send time, so the list stays current without re-importing. When a campaign targets several groups, the program skips duplicate addresses.
Segments are saved subsets of a group defined by conditions. Each condition combines a field, an operator such as “equals”, “starts with” or “is greater than”, and a value. The segment can require all conditions or any of them. New contacts that match are added automatically. Exclusion lists work per group or across the workplace, and rules can block addresses or masks such as abuse@ from receiving mail.
Composing and personalizing messages
A drag-and-drop editor builds responsive HTML from text, image and button blocks. Users can also load messages from HTML, ZIP or EML files, a web page or the template store. A built-in FTP client uploads images to the user’s web server and swaps local paths for web addresses.
Mail merge inserts group fields, a per-group unsubscribe link and social links into each message. Scripts can change field values during sending, for example substituting a default name where the field is empty. A variable in an attachment’s file path lets EasyMail attach a different file to each recipient. Before sending, a SpamAssassin check scores the message, and an optional GlockApps test checks inbox placement and authentication.
Sending through your own SMTP route
G-Lock EasyMail works as a front end to a delivery service. It can send through a custom SMTP server, an ISP or webmail account with SSL/TLS, or Amazon SES. With the SES API, the program follows the account’s sending rate on its own. Users can add relays such as SendGrid or Mailgun through their SMTP settings.
Several connections send in parallel, and throttling caps messages per hour or day to match a provider’s limits. Messages can carry a DKIM signature. The scheduler sends at a set time or repeats a campaign hourly, daily, weekly or monthly, optionally only to new recipients.
Autoresponder series
An autoresponder series belongs to one group and uses a subscription-date field to decide who enters it. Each message waits a set number of hours or days after subscription or the previous message, within allowed weekdays and hours. With click tracking on, a reminder can go only to people who clicked a given link.
Subscriptions, bounces and unsubscribes
Each group can have an online subscription form. EasyMail generates code to paste into a website, with spam protection and a choice of single or confirmed opt-in. Users can customize the confirmation and welcome emails and the pages after each step. Zapier and a REST API can also add contacts.
The Bounce Handler reads the return mailbox over IMAP or POP3, or from a folder on disk. It sorts messages into hard bounces, soft bounces, mail blocks, unsubscribe requests and abuse reports. Hard bounces and complaints can unsubscribe or delete the address in every internal group. External databases can be updated with the bounce type and diagnostic code. Unsubscribed contacts are skipped in later campaigns to internal groups.
Tracking and backups
Open and click tracking comes from G-Lock Analytics, a separate service that rewrites links during sending. Google Analytics and Piwik tags measure site visits and conversions. Users can back up the server while it is running, on a schedule or manually, to a local or cloud-synced folder. They can restore it when moving to a new machine.
Free version and paid editions
The free version of G-Lock EasyMail has the same functions but limits sending to 250 messages per hour and 12,000 per month. It does not add a “powered by” footer. The paid Personal, Business and Enterprise editions remove these limits. They differ in the number of users, included spam tests and the update and support period. Each server needs its own license. Users can install the client on any number of computers.
