third party solution for customizing alert emails

Question

I would like to know if there is any third party tool out there where administrators/webmasters can easily change the email templates that sharepoint sends.

I am very interested in changing the branding of the Site Feed emails. When you follow someone, or some likes your conversation, or somebody follows a hashtag, etc.

In another stackexchange question, somebody pointed that the styling was hardcoded (SHAME on microsoft) Notification emails/ news feeds, can they be customized?

So I guess my only option is a third party tool. The INOtifyHandler, does not look a good option to me, not easy to maintain.

Answer 1

I don't have personal experience with any of them, but there are a few products that let you do this (if you're willing to shell out the money). Check out the links below.

One of the more well-known vendors, Bamboo Solutions, has this product: http://store.bamboosolutions.com/sharepoint-alert-plus-web-part.aspx

This is another well-known vendor, though the solution may be overkill for your purposes: http://www.pentalogic.net/sharepoint-products/reminder

For a slightly lower price tag you could use this one: http://www.harepoint.com/products/harepointcustomalerts/default.aspx

Beyond those types of solutions the only way I'm familiar with is to edit the XML templates themselves or to create your own event handlers as you mentioned above. Neither of those is particularly difficult if you have a seasoned programmer at your disposal, but it sounds like you're looking for a no-code solution.