PIM Database?

February 5, 2007 8:20 PM

My boss wants me to gather 5,000 or so business contacts into a searchable database, which will then be used to create email distribution lists according to particular queries. Preferably Open Source, but proprietary is also OK. Any recommendations?
posted by limon to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Sounds like what access is actually good for. It even integrates w/ word for mail merge features.
posted by cschneid at 8:28 PM on February 5, 2007

I think with this limited amount of requirements, any of the "office" targeted database packages would probably meet your needs. In addition to Access, there is FileMaker and OpenOffice's Base and a whole slew of other ones.

Perhaps some more requirements would help narrow down the choices. What kind of user interface do you wnat? traditonal or web based? Do you need multiple people accessing the database at the same time or is ok if everyone bothers you to do the queries?
posted by mmascolino at 8:49 PM on February 5, 2007

Do you mean just produce a list of email addresses according to certain criteria, or both produce the list and send the emails?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 8:53 PM on February 5, 2007

Seconding what people above said.
posted by rbs at 8:54 PM on February 5, 2007

Web-based and ability to actually send the emails would be nice, but not necessary. I completely forgot about OpenOffice's base, and Access looks reasonable too. These are both strong candidates, thanks. I am more in my element using LAMPs, though, so if someone knows of anything like that, that would be the best.
posted by limon at 9:02 PM on February 5, 2007

I've liked 12all from ActiveCampaign -- which is nice piece of LAMP software that costs $97 bucks for a "lite" license.

http://www.activecampaign.com/12all/

Always worked well for smaller lists (less then 20,000) -- I've installed it for a couple clients and they are happy with it.
posted by dawiz at 10:18 PM on February 5, 2007

I'd recommend SugarCRM (http://www.sugarcrm.com) - the OpenSource version would do you fine. It's probably overkill for what you've described (in that it's a fully functional CRM), but the added contact management would probably be a plus, not a minus. If you go that route, look at the Marketing pane for what you're describing.
posted by Vantech at 12:48 AM on February 6, 2007