Strongmail API PHP Sample Code
Strongmail is a mail delivery company that we began using about a month ago. They’ve got an amazing delivery platform and are a very world class company, except when it comes to their API. With a lot of the stuff that we do, we needed to have a mail auto-responder, and unfortunatly that’s one feature that Strongmail doesn’t provide. The solution is to code the auto-responder yourself and then use the Strongmail API to send the emails on a transactional basis.
I wondered “how hard can it be?” I’ve worked with Authorize.net’s API, Twitter’s API, Facebook’s API, Paypal’s API, you name it. When it comes to working with an API, it’s not that challenging for me… Until Strongmail came along. They sent me the documentation, and I was immediatly lost. The API is a SOAP based API (not that untypical), but their documenation is horrible, so I asked if they had any sample code to implement it with PHP (not that untypical). They provided me with some sample code and it immediatly game me errors.
Turns out it was meant to run on a PHP server that doesn’t have SOAP compiled in with it… well, that’s a problem I tell them. I try to get their help on the errors I’m getting, and with such little documentation on how the API works, and what options are needed for each call it’s pretty much like throwing a rock at a bucket in the dark from 50 yards away and trying to hit it. I was in desperate need of help. I finally got one of their professional service members to take me seriously and start providing some actual help, but even then it seemed futile.
Last night I finally cracked it. Everything began working! I ran into a couple of small errors, but they were easily solved and it began working! After two long weeks of sending code back and forth, reporting error codes, deciphering documentation I finally figured it out on my own. They bill us thousands of dollars a month for their service, and I had to show THEM how their own API works.
If anyone out there finds themself in the same situation, I’m providing you with the sample code that I rewrote for them. I asked them to make it available in their support site, but I don’t know if they will or not. I really hope this sample code can help someone out there that’s trying to do the same thing.
4 Comments
Tim,
I am a CTO at StrongMail. It is good to see your feedback. I am glad you like our platform. I also appreciate your honest feedback about API. It will help us as we continuously improve our product.
Thank you for posting sample code. We’ll add it to our support site – with your name as the author, if you do not mind .
Thank you
Bob
Hi Bob,
Great to hear from you! Thanks for listening to my feedback. I Hope it was constructive. I wish you guys continued success as we really enjoy your product.
Tim
Their doc and API usability is just horrible and make the user code brittle. Need so much work to do all the defensive coding. Same experience here. I would not recommend their product. There are already quite some alternative of mass mailer.
Some of their happy customer already moved on to other product or just “Evaluated” their product. They still list them as their client list. What the heck!
Hi Phil,
Thanks for your feedback. It’s good to get some honest testimony about their platform. Hopefully other people will see it and take heed, or possibly Infusion will be better because of it.
Tim