Post to WordPress by Email: 3 Alternatives While Postie is Suspended

Post to WordPress by Email: 3 Alternatives While Postie is Suspended

The ability to post to WordPress via email has been around for a long time. However, the surge in mobile technology has made posting by email more relevant than ever before, especially for people on the go.

Whether you run a news site or blog with daily updates, an eCommerce store, restaurant, or any kind of business really, composing and sending emails from a mobile device and posting these to WordPress by email is probably going to be much easier than doing it through your dashboard.

You may be surprised how easy it is to send posts by email to your site. Here are a few different options that will keep you publishing content on the go:

WordPress Plugin: Postie

Postie is the go-to plugin for posting to WordPress via email.

Postie offers many advanced features for posting to your blog via email, including the ability to assign categories by name, included pictures and videos, and automatically strip off signatures. When you set Postie to prefer HTML messages, you’ll be able to get inline images for your posts. URLs to Youtube or Vimeo videos within the body of your email will automatically be converted to embedded videos.

Many post-by-email plugins have come and gone but Postie seems to have become the go-to plugin for creating posts in WordPress from emails.

That is, until…

*** NOTE ***

WordPress recently suspended Postie temporarily from its plugin repository due to an exploit.

Postie suspension noticePostie was recently suspended from the WordPress plugin repository for a potential security exploit.

According to the plugin developer,

“there is little impact if you don’t publicize your secret Postie email address and the email addresses of those users allowed to post.”

More importantly for users and anyone interested in downloading and using the plugin, however, the site also states…

“I expect this will get resolved in the next couple of weeks and Postie will be restored to the WordPress plugin repository.”

In the meantime and while the above issue with Postie gets resolved, here are 3 alternatives you can use to post to WordPress via email:

WordPress Plugin: Use Jetpack And The WordPress Mobile App

Jetpack post by email

One option for posting by email is to install the Jetpack plugin on your site and download the WordPress Mobile App to your phone.

WordPress Mobile App screen displayed on iPhone and Google pixel phones.The WordPress Mobile App lets you post to your WordPress site or blog from iOS and Android phones via Jetpack.

Jetpack’s post by email feature integrates seamlessly with the WordPress mobile app. Jetpack requires a unique email address to post to (not from). To enable the Post by Email feature, go to your site’s WP Admin > Jetpack > Settings > Writing > Publish posts by sending an email.

Once the app is installed and configured, just type an email on your standard mobile email app or an email client like Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail, send it to your unique address and Jetpack will publish it on your site.

Software Automation: Use Zapier And Make A Zap

Zapier - Email to WordPress IntegrationZapier gives you email to WordPress integration and many other automation processes.

Zapier is a powerful, easy to use, and really cool service that lets you connect hundreds of different software applications together to automate many time-consuming processes and save you truckloads of time and productive hours. The basic idea behind the way Zapier works is that you connect “this software” with “that software,” so that when “this happens” (called a ‘trigger’), “that happens” (called an ‘action’). Each connection you create is called a “Zap” and you can create Zaps between all the different kinds of software programs supported by Zapier.

Once you set up your Zapier account (you can start with a free trial and a free plan) and learn how to use the service (there are plenty of tutorials online), you can easily integrate your favorite email client with WordPress.

For example, you can connect your Gmail account to your WordPress site and make a “Zap” (i.e. a connection) so that creating a new email in Gmail creates a post in WordPress.

Post from Gmail to WordPress using ZapierZapier lets you turn an email sent from Gmail into a WordPress post.

Or, if you prefer to use Microsoft Outlook instead, you can create a “Zap” that will convert an email sent from your Outlook account into a WordPress post.

Post from Outlook to WordPress using ZapierOr, use Zapier to post emails from Outlook to WordPress.

There are a number of other email integrations you can make to set up your post by email process with Zapier.

Tip: If you need to extract certain types of data from your emails to integrate with other applications, take a look at Zapier’s Email Parser tool.

Email Parser by ZapierEmail Parser by Zapier lets you extend your email integrations.

Email Parser lets you send data through Zapier that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. It takes bits and pieces from an email so that you can use it in a Zap.

Email Parser by Zapier data extracts.Zapier’s Email Parser tool lets you choose which parts of the email you want to send as data to other apps.

Experiment with Zapier and you will discover many other ways to automate your processes. As Ronnie Burt, our Chief Business Officer says, “Zapier – it’s quirky, but it works!” 

Use The Built-In WordPress Feature: But There’s A Trap

WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you set up posting via emails but the function is now deprecated and will be removed in some future release. The WordPress Codex has a tutorial called “Post to your blog using email” that outlines the steps it takes to set up email posting. If you go to Dashboard > Settings > Writing, you’ll find instructions for setting up an email account with POP3 access for WordPress to use in posting.

How To Post By Email: Quick Recap

We recommend avoiding the built-in post-by-email feature of WordPress as it could soon be removed altogether. Even WordPress itself recommends using a plugin to create WordPress posts from emails.

Hopefully, the issue with the Postie plugin will soon be resolved and users will be able to download and use it to set up post by email. Until then, we recommend using either the WordPress Mobile App with Jetpack’s post by email feature or learn how to use Zapier and create a Zap that will automate this process for you. Both of these options will keep you posting content to your WordPress site on the go.

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Keep reading the article at WPMU DEV Blog. The article was originally written by Martin Aranovitch on 2020-01-14 23:06:32.

The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.

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