GatewayAPI vs Virfice –

Virfice is a self-hosted email marketing and automation plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce. Create newsletters, send targeted email campaigns, capture and manage subscribers, build automated workflows, customize transactional emails, and track campaign performance—all from your WordPress dashboard. Unlike subscriber-based email marketing platforms, Virfice keeps your contacts and campaign data on your own WordPress site. There is no per-contact pricing or artificial subscriber limit. Connect your preferred SMTP provider and retain control of your audience, sending infrastructure, and email marketing data. Get Virfice Pro | Documentation | Support What Can You Do with Virfice? 🎨 Create and send targeted email marketing campaigns 🧲 Capture subscribers with customizable signup forms 🗂️ Organize and segment contacts using lists, tags, and custom fields 🔍 Target audiences with include/exclude filters ⏰ Send campaigns instantly or schedule them for later 🔁 Resend campaigns to non-openers 🤖 Automate emails based on WordPress and WooCommerce events 🛒 Recover abandoned carts with automated follow-up emails 👋 Create welcome, birthday, post-purchase, and customer-engagement workflows 🛍️ Send WooCommerce-triggered emails based on purchases, carts, and customer actions 🧾 Customize and fully brand WooCommerce transactional emails 📧 Customize WordPress system emails 📦 Design emails using ready-made templates and reusable content blocks 📊 Track deliveries, opens, clicks, bounces, and failures ✉️ Connect, configure, and test your preferred SMTP provider—no additional SMTP plugin required A complete Self-Hosted Email Marketing Solution for WordPress Virfice brings email marketing into WordPress, giving you direct control over your audience and campaign data. Your contacts remain on your website instead of being locked inside a third-party email marketing platform. No per-subscriber or per-contact pricing. No artificial limit on the number of contacts you can manage. Send through your preferred SMTP or email delivery provider. Keep your audience, campaigns, and marketing data in WordPress. Manage newsletters, automations, forms, and transactional emails from one dashboard. Your practical sending volume, deliverability, and sending costs depend on your hosting environment and chosen email delivery provider. WordPress Newsletters and Email Campaigns Create, design, schedule, and send newsletters without leaving WordPress. Use the visual email builder and ready-made templates for product updates, company news, offers, announcements, and regular subscriber newsletters. Target the right audience using lists and tags, include or exclude specific subscriber groups, personalize email content, send immediately or schedule campaigns, and resend campaigns to contacts who did not open the original email. Visual Email Builder Create professional, responsive emails with a visual builder built directly into WordPress. Add and arrange content, personalize messages, apply global brand styles, and reuse sections to design faster while keeping your emails consistent. Visual email-building experience. Reusable ready blocks and content sections. Professionally designed email templates. Responsive email layouts. Brand-wide header, footer, colors, and styles. Dynamic placeholders for personalized content. Email preview and test-email options. Audience and Subscriber Management Manage your email marketing audience directly inside WordPress. Add and update contacts manually. Import contacts from CSV files. Export audience data. Organize contacts with lists and tags. Store custom contact fields. Include or exclude audience groups from campaigns. View and edit individual contact information. Manage subscription and unsubscribe status. Email Marketing Automation Build event-based email automation workflows using triggers, conditions, delays, and actions. Automatically welcome subscribers, engage WordPress users, follow up with customers, recover abandoned carts, and deliver timely messages based on activity across your website. Available Automation Triggers Forms Form Submitted Users & Customers New Signup User Birthday User Logged In WooCommerce Order Created Order Paid Order Processing Order Completed Order Cancelled Order On Hold Order Refunded Order Pending Payment Customer Account Created Cart Abandoned Use these triggers to create welcome emails, birthday emails, order follow-ups, post-purchase sequences, payment reminders, customer onboarding, cart-recovery campaigns, and other WordPress and WooCommerce email automations. Abandoned Cart Recovery for WooCommerce Recover potential sales with automated abandoned-cart emails. Virfice can initiate a workflow when a registered or guest customer’s cart becomes abandoned, allowing you to send timely reminders and guide the shopper back to checkout. When an abandoned cart is purchased or emptied, its queued recovery workflow is cleared automatically, helping prevent unnecessary follow-up emails. Lead Capture Forms Grow your email list with customizable, mobile-friendly signup forms—without installing a separate form plugin. Capture leads directly in WordPress, collect custom information, and connect form submissions to your email marketing automations. Email Analytics and Tracking Track campaign delivery, opens, clicks, bounces, and failures from a centralized dashboard. Review campaign performance, understand subscriber engagement, and use the results to improve future newsletters and email campaigns. Open and click tracking can be affected by recipient privacy features, email-client behavior, and other technical factors. WordPress and WooCommerce Transactional Emails Design and manage supported WordPress system emails and WooCommerce transactional emails from one visual interface. Apply your branding, customize the content, preview the result, and send test emails before using a design on your store. Supported Emails New Account Email – Welcome customers or WordPress users after account creation. Reset Password Email – Customize password-reset messages. New Order Email – Notify the store administrator when a new order is placed. Cancelled Order Email – Notify the store administrator when an order is cancelled. Failed Order Email – Notify the store administrator when an order fails. Order On Hold Email – Update customers when an order is placed on hold. Order Processing Email – Notify customers when an order is paid and processing. Order Completed Email – Notify customers when an order is completed. Order Refunded Email – Inform customers when an order is refunded. Customer Invoice Email – Send order details and payment links when applicable. Customer Note Email – Send notes added to a customer’s order. Built-In SMTP Configuration Connect your preferred SMTP service directly inside Virfice. Configure authentication, send a test email, and manage email delivery without installing an additional SMTP plugin. Virfice does not operate an email delivery network. Actual delivery is handled by your configured SMTP or email service provider. Virfice Free and Virfice Pro Virfice Free includes the core tools available in the plugin downloaded from WordPress.org. Virfice Pro extends the platform with additional email marketing, automation, WooCommerce, and audience-management capabilities. Feature availability may vary by plan and version. Visit the Virfice website for the current feature comparison. How to Use Virfice No coding or advanced technical knowledge is required. Install and activate Virfice. Open Virfice from your WordPress dashboard. Configure your sender information and preferred SMTP provider. Import or capture contacts and organize them with lists and tags. Design a newsletter, create a campaign, customize a transactional email, or build an automation workflow. Send a test email, review your settings, and activate or schedule your email.

Send SMS notifications for WooCommerce orders, create SMS campaigns, manage contacts, and add two-factor authentication – powered by GatewayAPI.com. 📝 Description GatewayAPI for WordPress is a powerful SMS plugin that combines WooCommerce transactional SMS notifications with a high-performance campaign and contact management system. The plugin allows you to automatically send SMS messages when WooCommerce orders change status, as well as create and send personalized SMS campaigns to large contact lists. You can also add an extra layer of security to your WordPress site with SMS-based two-factor authentication, helping protect your login process with verification codes sent directly to your mobile device. Version 2 is a complete rewrite of the plugin, with a strong focus on performance, reliability, and modern WordPress standards. All SMS messages are delivered via GatewayAPI.com, one of Europe’s leading SMS gateways. ⭐ Main Features 🛒 WooCommerce SMS Notifications Send automatic SMS messages based on WooCommerce order status changes Separate message templates for customer and internal recipients Fully configurable per order status Supports all standard WooCommerce order statuses 🔐 Two-Factor Authentication Add an extra layer of security to your WordPress login SMS-based verification codes sent automatically during login Can be limited to specific roles and phone countries Works with standard WordPress authentication Uses GatewayAPI’s reliable SMS delivery 📢 SMS Campaigns & Broadcasts Send SMS campaigns to large contact lists High throughput and stable delivery using Action Scheduler Designed to work reliably even on shared web hosting Background processing 📇 Contact & List Management Manage contacts directly in WordPress Import and export contacts using CSV files Store custom fields per contact Reusable contact lists for campaigns Use contact fields for mail-merged SMS content ✉️ Personalized Message Templates Mail-merge support for campaigns and WooCommerce messages Use dynamic placeholders such as customer data, order data, and custom fields Supports both GSM and Unicode SMS Configurable sender ID per message 🧩 Frontend Shortcodes Signup: Allow users to subscribe to your SMS lists directly from your website. Update Profile: Enable users to update their contact details and group subscriptions. Unsubscribe: Provide a simple way for users to opt-out of SMS communications. Send SMS: Enable SMS sending from the frontend (e.g. for internal tools). 🚀 Built for Reliability & Scale Uses Action Scheduler (the same job system used by WooCommerce) Non-blocking background processing Suitable for very large campaigns (100,000+ recipients) No PHP timeouts or long-running requests ⚠️ Coming from v1.x? Some features are gone The following features are not part of this plugin anymore: Receiving or processing incoming SMS messages Contact Form 7-integration These features had very low usage and were removed to simplify the plugin. If you need this, consider the legacy version of the plugin (any version before 2.0). 🌍 About GatewayAPI.com Founded in 1999 One of Europe’s leading SMS providers Offices in Copenhagen, Odense, and Aalborg, Denmark Hundreds of millions of SMS messages delivered yearly No subscriptions – pay only for what you send Fast and reliable SMS delivery worldwide 🔧 Installation Create a free account at https://gatewayapi.com/ Install and activate the plugin Go to GatewayAPI → Settings Add your API Token from your GatewayAPI.com account Play around! Send a test campaign or setup a WooCommerce Order hook 🚀 Getting Started 🛍️ WooCommerce Notifications After installation, you can enable SMS notifications per WooCommerce order status. Each status can send messages to customers, internal recipients, or both. Place a test order to confirm everything is working as expected. 📨 Campaign Messaging You can create SMS campaigns without WooCommerce: Import contacts via CSV or add them manually Organize contacts into lists Create a personalized SMS campaign 🔐 Two-Factor Authentication To add SMS-based two-factor authentication to your WordPress site: Go to GatewayAPI → Settings → Two-Factor Enable two-factor authentication Configure which user roles should use two-factor authentication Optionally limit to specific phone countries for security Set a grace period if needed 🧩 Shortcodes The plugin provides shortcodes to integrate SMS features into your frontend. 📝 Common Attributes action: (required) One of signup, update, unsubscribe, send_sms. recaptcha: Set to 1 to enable Google reCAPTCHA (must be configured in settings). embed_css: Set to 1 to embed basic styling for the form. groups: Comma-separated list of group/tag IDs to target. allowed_countries: Comma-separated list of country codes (e.g., 45,44). ➕ Signup Form [gatewayapi action=”signup” groups=”1,2,3″] 🔄 Update Profile [gatewayapi action=”update”] ❌ Unsubscribe [gatewayapi action=”unsubscribe”] ✉️ Send SMS [gatewayapi action=”send_sms” groups=”1″] Security Warning: The send_sms action allows sending SMS messages from your frontend. This can be dangerous if left open to the public as it could be abused to send spam or drain your GatewayAPI credits. We strongly recommend combining this with a security system, such as: * Placing the shortcode on a password-protected page. * Restricting access to specific user roles using a membership plugin. * Always enabling recaptcha=”1″ to prevent automated abuse. ❓ Frequently Asked Questions Can this plugin handle very large SMS campaigns? Yes. Campaigns are processed using Action Scheduler, ensuring stable delivery, high throughput, and retries — even on shared hosting environments. Does this plugin support personalized SMS messages? Yes. You can use dynamic placeholders from contacts and WooCommerce orders to send fully personalized, mail-merged SMS messages. Is WooCommerce required? WooCommerce is only required for order-based SMS notifications. Campaign messaging and contact management work without WooCommerce. 🔗 External services This plugin connects to the GatewayAPI.com service to send SMS messages. This external service is required for the plugin’s primary functionality, which is delivering transactional and campaign SMS messages. When sending an SMS, the plugin transmits the recipient phone number, message content, and related metadata (such as sender ID) to GatewayAPI.com. For WooCommerce notifications, order-related data may be used to generate the message content before it is sent. No data is sent to GatewayAPI.com unless an SMS is actively being sent by the site administrator or triggered by configured WooCommerce events. This service is provided by GatewayAPI ApS. Privacy policy, terms and conditions, data processing agreement, and security certifications (including ISAE 3000 and ISAE 3402) are available at: https://gatewayapi.com/security-and-compliance/ 📋 Changelog 2.1.4 Improved UI for tag dropdowns when there are many items. 2.1.3 New bulk actions for all contacts matching current filters: Delete/deactivate/activate contact + add/remove tag. Contacts list UI update, more sleek import/export buttons. 2.1.2 Improved contact import: Papa Parse CSV parser with auto-delimiter detection and auto-created meta fields from unknown columns. Fallback support: Support for our previous (<v2.0) CSV format support. 2.1.1 Bugfix: The recipient tags were not properly sent to the campaign creation UI. 2.1.0 New feature: Shortcodes for signup, updating contact details, and unsubscription. New feature: Shortcode for sending SMS from the frontend (use with caution and combine with security-system). Bugfix: Contacts filtering by tag didn’t work. 2.0.8 The migration tool should now be available to all users of the 1.x-versions, as some were missing it. 2.0.7 Tool for easy and automatic migration of old contacts, contact fields and contact groups included. Automatically migrates and uses old OAuth key. 2.0.5 Bugfix: For users upgrading from 1.x, a missing capability upgrade made the plugin unavailable until deactivate + reactivate. 2.0.4 Two-factor authentication has been re-added to the plugin. 2.0.2-2.0.3 No changes. These versions exist because we have been working on automating release processes. 2.0.1 Minor modifications to ensure best-practices as per WordPress guidelines. 2.0.0 Complete rewrite of the plugin! 1.8.3 Compability up to WordPress 6.3.1. 1.8.2 Bugfix: Built in shortcode defaulted to the posts title as the name of the new recipient. Now defaults to ”, as expected. 1.8.1 Bugfix: Built in shortcode for signup did not work properly, when allowing the user to select groups. 1.8.0 Support for using our GatewayAPI.eu-setup! Bugfix: 2FA login security could fail on PHP 7.4+. 1.7.6 Bugfix: Fixing that GatewayAPI Shortcode for signup had stopped saving some meta-fields since 1.7.2. 1.7.5 Bugfix: Default country code did not apply correctly in the country drop downs. 1.7.4 Compability with Contact Form 7. Bugfix: Signup via Contact Form 7 works again (upgraded to being compatible with CF7’s newer window.fetch based approach of AJAX). Bugfix: Notices in CF7-integration (PHP) and a typo, causing an exception in frontend JS on CF7-forms. 1.7.3 Bugfix release. Bugfix: Saving recipient details using the UI and via Excel-importer, works properly again. Bugfix: SMS Reply-feature works again. 1.7.2 This release strengthens the overall security, thanks to input from an external security audit. We highly recommend upgrading to this version, as it hardens the security of our plugin, especially on WordPress-installation with multiple users which may have users of lower roles than editor. Consistent use of nonce’s in AJAX requests, to prevent CSRF and prevent privilege escalation. Enforce correct roles for various actions, preventing potential privilege escalation. Improved sanitizing, validation and escaping of input and output. All PHP-files are now secured from direct access. Refactored function prefixes from gwapi_, _gwapi_ and _gatewayapi_ to gatewayapi_ only. 1.7.1 Bugfix: Notifications were not sent. 1.7.0 New: Notification module: Receive SMS-notifications when various actions occur in WordPress BETA: Please get in touch if you have ideas/suggestions for improving this feature. New: Default country code field setting (previously all country selectors defaulted to +45/Denmark). New: Programmer actions gwapi_form_subscribe and gwapi_form_unsubscribe added. The first is triggered when new recipients complete signup via our shortcode-forms and the latter on unsubscription via the shortcode-forms. Optimization: Removed various unneeded dependencies. Danish translation updated, including the notification-module. Readme updated to inform about notification-module and other text improvements. 1.6.9 New! Create Notifications to automatically notify recipients by SMS when a WP action is executed. 1.6.8 Bugfix: Prefix wasn’t specified for all instances of db_table usages. 1.6.7 Bugfix: Previously imported recipients was prevented from being re-imported if they had been deleted. 1.6.6 Bugfix: While using recipients import, group recipients was not counted correctly after the import was completed. 1.6.5 Improved: Import of recipients optimized. 1.6.4 Compatible with WordPress 5.5 Improved: Integration with Contact Form 7 now supports shortcode for mandatory fields Tweak: Updated UI and descriptions. 1.6.3 Compatible with WordPress 5.4 New! Recipient groups can now default to unchecked when using short-code Tweak: Minor updates to UI. 1.6.2 Tweak: The frontend forms now use regular SMS instead of Display SMS for two-factor, as requested by multiple users. Bugfix: When using tags, the list of tags sent to GatewayAPI could end in a situation, with the same tag-data repeated. 1.6.1 Removed URL in two-factor SMS as it was unnecessary and caused SMS’es to be blocked by GatewayAPI’s new link-scanner. 1.6.0 New! Custom encoding for SMS’es, allowing SMS’es with emojis and other special characters. UI which detects what encoding should be used, always recommending the cheapest option (ie. most characters per SMS). API-method gwapi_send_sms has new argument for setting encoding. Fully backwards-compatible, defaulting to standard-encoding. Compatible with WordPress 5.1 1.5.2 Compable with WordPress 5.0.3. Fix: Excel-export of recipients did not work unless “SMS Inbox” was enabled. Fix: Notices in Excel-export. 1.5.1 Updated Danish translations (primarily the two-factor settings and frontend). Fix: Our shortcode had unintentionally been renamed. We now support both [gwapi] and [gatewayapi]. Fix: Two-factor-module caused fatal error on PHP 5. Also fixed general notices in two-factor module. Fix: Two-factor module caused fatal error when creating new WordPress-users. 1.5.0 New! Two-factor security upgrade to your WordPress! (optional) New! Blacklisting of phone numbers. Improved: Searching recipients by phone number works. Improved: Better support for 10.000+ recipients + a progress bar for showing progress. 1.4.2 Recipients: Added option to blacklist phone numbers. Added support for searching recipients list by phone number (previously only by name). Added drop down on recipients list, for filtering by group. Fix: Improved handling of huge lists of recipients (ie. 1.000+ recipients in one SMS) 1.4.1 Fix: List of countries is now always correctly parsed, even when the JSON-file (which is fetched via AJAX) does not have right mime-type. 1.4.0 Note: v1.4.0 may break your Countact Form 7-forms containing GatewayAPI-fields, as the shortode-syntax has slightly changed for most of our fields. We needed to do this change to fix multiple bugs and inconsistencies. Please re-add the GatewayAPI-fields to your Contact Form 7-forms when updating the plugin. Contact Form 7: Ability to send SMS’es from the frontend. Updating a subscriber: Forms now only updates groups specifically selected for the form. Bugfixes and code cleanup, improved shortcode syntax. Complete user guide for the system (available online). Export of recipients to Excel and CSV-formats. 1.3.3 Contact Form 7: Added support for forms which also contained a reCaptcha-field. Code cleanup 1.3.2 Bugfix: A menu item had gone missing in the backend. 1.3.1 New UI for creating automated actions. Currently supports “autoreply” based on keyword. 1.3.0 Support for receiving SMS’es added, including setup-wizard and inbox. 1.2.3 Bugfix: The new verification SMS for Contact Form 7 had a typo, breaking verification SMS’es. Missing translations: The popup-messages related to verification were not translated to danish. 1.2.2 Better international phone numbers support: Prefixed 0’s in the phone number itself (between country prefix and phone number) is now correctly working. 1.2.1 User synchronization: No longer requires a country code meta field, instead allowing a default country code when this value is missing. Now possible to trigger a “one time” synchronization. Contact Form 7: Now possible to send an SMS-reply on form success automatically. SMS-validation for signup, before allowing the form to submit successfully. Bugfix: Validation now works for all GatewayAPI-fields. 1.2.0 Contact Form 7: Integration supporting signup, update and unsubscribe forms for frontend. Two-factor flow possible for update-flow. 1.1.6 Bugfix: Safari-specific issue with SMS-counter. Bugfix: Hidden required fields …