MetaChat - Emailer service

MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.

01 February 2008

Emailer service Do any of you have recommendations for good email services? I mean the kind you use to manage a mailing list.→[More:]We've been using GMail for my Slow Food mailing list, but it's up over 500 now, and we can't send to the whole list at once. That, and I'm forever editing the list because of dead addresses bouncing back.

Do any of you have experience with using those commercial email services? I've heard of Constant Contact and was just looking at this BluePogo. I do know what we need:

-Will handle 1000 addresses with ability to upgrade to get more if we need to
-Pretty email (templates, images, logos, WYSIWYG editing ideally)
-automated management of bouncebacks
-low low cost

Any advice? Thanks in advance.

post by: Miko at: 16:47 | 8 comments

I just went through the process of signing up with Constant Contact and there were really professional and really know the email business. I'm not sure that they're that cheap though.

posted by drezdn 01 February | 16:54

I can't help you if you're looking for a company, but numerous mailing lists I'm on are powered by PHPList - if you have the stuff to get that up and running, then that might be a possibility.

posted by TheDonF 01 February | 17:54

Wow, that looks awesome, DonF, but I have neither the stuff nor the technical knowhow. That's too bad - it does everything I need, and it's open-source. Rats.

posted by Miko 01 February | 20:04

I came in to recommend PHPlist as well. It's really nifty once you familiarize yourself with it and get your templates just so.

I've used it mostly for announcement lists though. One of the sites I manage has 8,000+ people on the list and it has worked just fine.

A lot of hosts now offer PHPlist as a fantastico or one click install these days.

posted by fluffy battle kitten 01 February | 22:27

Yeah, phplist is pretty good feature-wise, although personally I think the interface needs to be taken outside and beaten. But if you've had a play around with the demo, and in particular the interface for creating a new message (click 'send a message' in the menu on the right-hand side), and it looks like it'll work for you, then it's probably a good option.

I can probably help you out with some setup and finding a host if it looks like you're going with phplist.

Other commercial hosted options are Campaign Monitor and MailChimp, although these are mostly geared towards companies sending out marketing messages, and are probably overkill.

A final thought is to use a Yahoo! Group. This might seem a bit weird, but you can set up a Yahoo! Group to literally just be a send-only email newsletter -- i.e. you can turn off all of the web-based and group emailing features if you want. To send messages, you send a normal email to the group email address, so you can use the Gmail interface you're already familiar with to compose your messages. And the system handles bounces, according to the docs. Might be worth a look.

posted by chrismear 01 February | 22:38

A final thought is to use a Yahoo! Group.

I believe b3ta sends out its weekly update of filth and idiocy via a Yahoo Group, and that seems to work well, with 96,192 members.

posted by essexjan 02 February | 04:35

Yes, I too have heard such rumours, from a friend of a friend.

posted by chrismear 02 February | 05:36

Thanks for the help. I'll scratch around in these options and see what's what.

posted by Miko 02 February | 13:19

← Something you've done recently that you're proud of? || At some point last night, I woke up out of a dead sleep →

HOME || REGISTER || LOGIN