Is there good software for magazine publishers to manage their mailing lists?

October 3, 2006 5:54 PM

Please help me find some good software - preferably open-source, preferably PHP - that helps magazine publishers manage their subscriber lists.

A buddy of mine publishes a boutique magazine. Since it's a one-man-show, he has too much to do, and his subscriber rolls are in disarray.

Is there a good solution for Web-based magazine subscriber management? Preferably with an e-commerce component, so people can subscribe/renew online. Bonus points if subscribers can log in and update their address/contact info.

posted by jbickers to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Will this have to somehow tie-in to the mailing operation? Are there technical aspects of that?
posted by bonaldi at 8:02 PM on October 3, 2006

Will this have to somehow tie-in to the mailing operation? Are there technical aspects of that?

Mailing is handled by the company that prints the magazine ... he just provides them with labels. In a perfect world, this application would be able to print USPS-compliant labels with zone codes and all that, but that's not essential.
posted by jbickers at 8:16 PM on October 3, 2006

It's not free or open source, but since nobody's offering any ideas on those,QuickFill would do the trick.
posted by one_bean at 7:59 AM on October 4, 2006

It's not free or open source, but since nobody's offering any ideas on those,QuickFill would do the trick.

Yup ... but man, it's pricey! I'm wondering if, since money might have to change hands anyway, this makes sense to find a PHP guru to do a custom hack of something like oscommerce or Zen Cart, to enable it to have more robust user profile features. That might do the trick ... maybe? Or am I missing a key element?
posted by jbickers at 8:06 AM on October 4, 2006