Comparison Of Open Source Mailing List Managers
Posted by Peter | Posted on 14-06-2010 |
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One of my clients wants to send out email newsletters and possibly get into the e-basting market. Being the LAMP, pro-open source person that I am, my first thought was to hit what I could find. The three major players that I found were:
- poMMo : The post modern mailer
- PHP List
- DaDa mail/DaDa mail Pro
Feature Comparison
| Web interface | Message tracking | Click tracking | User-specific content | Multiple lists | User Groups | Bounce handling | Attachments | Resume | Last release | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| poMMo | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | 5/2008 |
| PHP List | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | 4/2010 |
| DaDa Mail | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes1 | Yes | Yes | Yes1 | No | Yes | 6/2010 |
1: Via a plugin
Overall Thoughts
By far, poMMO had the best interface; everything was nicely laid out. I especially liked how you could adjust the throttling with AJAX-y slider. PoMMo also supports resume and sends all messages in the background, a very handy features of large lists. If you run into trouble, though, you’re on your own. The project is no longer under active development, it has some PHP5 compatibility problems, and its forums are overrun with spam.
PHP List has a lot of great features and is still being actively developed. It’s interface is very simple, with no frills. You’ll find yourself digging through a lot of configuration files, though (personally I love config files, but not everyone does 
) as many of features cannot configured via the web interface. In addition, when mailing, a window pops up showing you the status of the current mailing. While this is nice, if the window goes poof, the mailing stops dead in its tracks, with no option to resume.
DaDa mail has two versions: free and Pro ($50). Both have the same feature set, but free has limits that Pro does not. The interface, like PHP List is very simple and plain Jane. There a bunch of plugins which build upon DaDa’s feature set, but the site choked up 404′s for some of the plugins (never a good sign). DaDa does have the options to pause and resume, but it’s unclear if it will resume in case of a crash.
Points to Ponder
Hosting your own system, while cheaper the short run, may not be the best option. As you send out more and more emails, your incur the frowns (and possibly the wrath) of your hosting provider. In addition, you run the risk of being marked as a spammer. The delivery success rate will probably not be as good as a service that specializes in mass email mailings. They build relationships with email providers, gaining their trust and work hard to keep their success rate at an optimum.
If you have a small list, grab one of the above projects and blast away. However, if this is going to be a critical part of your business strategy, you might want to opt for a email marketing service instead.