I have a question. What do you use to email your customers about updates, service announcements, etc..? Do you use a script you host on your servers? Or do you use a third party mailing list service? Which do you recommend.

All opinions/thoughts appreciated.

A third party service always sounds like a bad idea to me.. it means you will be relying on someone else :o

There are many free mailing list scripts written in just about any language (PHP, Perl, etc, etc) that will do everything you want. We use one of these ourselves, although we had to modify it to fit our needs. So, be prepared for this, unless your needs are basic.

Otherwise, almost every host out there offers mailing lists as a feature on the plans they provide, or charge a fee to add it. These are great for people with basic needs, because you simply add all your e-mails to a text file and place it on the server. Then, depending on the name you gave it, you just send one e-mail to: nameyougaveit@yourdomain.com , and the server will take care of the rest. We used this method ourselves in the past. Works well.

But, running a PHP (or whatever) script can offer much more advanced features, just like a third-party service would. So, it all depends on your needs really. If your needs are advanced, but you have no programming knowledge, then your best bet might be a third-party service. Least amount of hassle that way too. (hopefully)

Hey Justin:


I would have to agree about the third party mailing lists. I would not use them if I didn't absolutely need to. They will place their ads into your newsletter and make it cluttered. If you want to place your own ads in it, then it will be flooded with ads :(

If you do not have any mailing list abilities with your webhost, send me an email and I will see if I can setup one for you for free. I would just have to make sure it won't require too much work on my part... (mike@paradonsolutions.com)

You may also be able to find a free webhost that supplies mailing lists.... I don't know. This is making me think I should offer that.....

I've used phpNewsletters for quite a while. After applying a couple little hacks to make it just the way I like it, it has worked very well for me.

It's a pretty simple script and hasn't seen a new revision in a year or so, but you can still get it at http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/5645.html

The one that we hacked up was MyMail from www.codingclick.com

You people are mentioning "hacking" you mailing lists... Well... doesn't this break your agreement with them meaning that if they find out then they will vut you off?

I know this may be a workable solution for some people, but if you have to have that newsletter out, I don't think you can afford to have somebody just cut off your service like that. In my opinion, you should respect their agreement so they don't get upset with you. If they don't meet your needs, find a different service, or ask them to modify theirs for you.

Also, if you have to "hack" these programs and modify them to fit your needs, you should just be making your own... (or paying for your own)

Just my 2 cents.

You people are mentioning "hacking" you mailing lists... Well... doesn't this break your agreement with them meaning that if they find out then they will vut you off?

We are referring to free software that is intended for this. We would of course not break any agreements with any software vendors. The only agreement with most free software is that you cannot modify the code and then try to distribute as your own code. That would be very illegal.

I know this may be a workable solution for some people, but if you have to have that newsletter out, I don't think you can afford to have somebody just cut off your service like that. In my opinion, you should respect their agreement so they don't get upset with you. If they don't meet your needs, find a different service, or ask them to modify theirs for you.

Again, we are not talking about a service here, we are talking about free code.

Also, if you have to "hack" these programs and modify them to fit your needs, you should just be making your own... (or paying for your own)

Why would you keep re-inventing the wheel? Don't you understand the whole point behind free software? It's an effort to create more and more advanced code so that the world is a better place. If someone has already spent hours on code that does exactly what you need, and can save you those hours by reusing it, wouldn't it be a smart business decision to build off of current code instead of starting from scratch? Then, if you are a good person, once you have improved the code, you can give it back to the community and benefit others the same way they benefitted you. Sounds like a win-win situation, doesn't it?

From the preamble to the GNU Public License that was delivered with my copy of phpNewsletter:


Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.


As a developer myself, I am very sensitive to copyrights and licenses. I adhere to the rules as I expect others to as well.

Quote:
We are referring to free software that is intended for this. We would of course not break any agreements with any software vendors. The only agreement with most free software is that you cannot modify the code and then try to distribute as your own code. That would be very illegal.

Sorry about that. My bad :o

I thought you meant a service like listbot. I am all for open source
and free software! I use it all the time, and I will probably develop and release some in the not so distant future...

My apologies :)

Accepted :)

You had us worried there for a minute :o

We use the email clients feature in Ubersmith, works great.

i'm testing out www.phplist.com :)

i'm testing out www.phplist.com

Please post about how this went. I'm sure we'd all like to know :)

Thanks for your opinions everyone. I'll look into some mailing list scripts...

I actually use the script for my order forms, and when that information is submitted, the e-mail address is pulled and written to a text file on the server. I then just import the contents of the text file into my address book.

How come I didn't see any message by anyone simply using majordomo or mailman?
We use mailman for our monthly newsletter and it's a treat. You can parameter your list so that you're the only one who can write on it and it maintains archives, etc.

Presently I send all updates to customers via email (semi-automated thing I made).

It's ok but not as proficient or professional as I would like. I'm presently working on a new support / knowledge base system for my customers and have started writing a newsletter / updates / bulletins feature into it (they can opt in or out).
Haven't quite finished yet - nearly there.

Eladesor.

Originally posted by cyansmoker
How come I didn't see any message by anyone simply using majordomo or mailman?
We use mailman for our monthly newsletter and it's a treat. You can parameter your list so that you're the only one who can write on it and it maintains archives, etc.

Good question :)

We've never used mailman, but if it handles large mailing lists, then that solution should be perfect for most people.

We wrote our own "billing/customer management system" that keeps all of the e-mails in there. From a web interface we can email all customers or by account type, it is really very easy to write something like that, that way you h ave it all in a very nice and neat database to use for other things, promotions, etc.

Ya, that's kind of how we set ours up too.. Except that we got the free mailing system, modified it to fit our needs, and then it's just a matter of telling our billing system to send the mails to it. Our main problem with using our billing system by itself to send out mails is that it takes a really long time to send out thousands of e-mails, and the browser will usually time out waiting for it to finish. With our modified mailing system, our billing system can just gather up the information, and it writes everything to a file so that the mailing system can grab it and send out all the e-mails in the background. When it's done, it e-mails us a report. Doing it this way makes everything work pretty smoothly, since the browser doesn't have to wait for mails to be sent.

Also, the mailing system handles unsubscribes and all of that, so it saved us alot of programming work in the billing system.

I went with MojoMail http://mojo.skazat.com and have been really happy with it. Installation was a snap and it handles the whole works.

I used to use Mailman but if you use Mailman with CPanel, BE CAREFUL! It would not work properly for me and I put in a ticket to support, they told me they fixed it, so I sent out a mailing. (This was for my gift shop, not for web hosting biz) Well, some of my customers rec'd over 700 copies of the same message. These were not computer people and a few were absolutely irate! It was a PR nightmare. I lost a lot of online business.

So if Mailman starts to act flaky, be careful. It is capable of royally puking.

That's why I went to MojoMail. Much more stable. :) My customers love it.



:D Bailey