What is the best mailing list server software out there?

November 26, 2007 3:14 PM

Recommendations needed for mailing list software

I'm looking for advice and recommendations on mailing list software.

I need some kind of discussion thread-slash-mailing list listserv. Some of the members of a professional organization I help run are Blackberry-fiends. That is, they want to be able to carry on discussions by firing off a quick e-mail. Other members are very Web-friendly and less mobile, so they want to be able to have discussions via the Web.

I know that what I'm really trying to do is replicate Yahoo! Groups. At its heart, it's a listserv, but it also mirrors everything on the Web in threaded discussion forums. Individuals have the option of participating in either venue (or both).

Believe it or not, I've looked and it appears Yahoo! doesn't offer a private-label version of their Groups package. So I'm turning to all of you. I've been given a recommendation of Net Atlantic, but have not looked into them quite yet.

Any recommendations for a private-label (i.e. no branded version by Yahoo!, Facebook, Google, etc.) discussion listserv that also mirrors itself on the Web?

posted by zooropa to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Mailman will automatically put messages on the web if you want. I think it's the best mailing list manager there is. But there's no capability for sending messages from the web. Do you have to have that?
posted by grouse at 3:25 PM on November 26, 2007

Following up with what grouse said, Mailman is over at this site.

Mail archives are viewed on the web, with a variety of sorting options, including threads.

Actually, come to think of it, I have Mailman call an external archiver (MHonarc) for web archive display. I don't remember the reasoning for this (this was some years ago), but it was probably because MHonarc did a better/nicer view of archives. In any case, it's easy to integrate everything. IIRC, Mailman is written in Python.

Sending messages by web isn't part of Mailman, but you can set up a little web-based email thing to go along with Mailman. Possibly, the archive templates are malleable enough to automatically send naive users to your webmail thing, but it's not something I've played with.
posted by chengjih at 4:12 PM on November 26, 2007

Try Tangler.Com, I've seen great reviews of it. It's like a bulletin board meet a chat room. Not completely sure if they have email integration, but might be worth checking out.
posted by perpetualstroll at 11:46 PM on November 26, 2007

Yep, mailman will do what you want and is free. It's usually included in cheap ($5/mo) hosting packages too, you just configure it over the web and it works. I run three separate lists on mailman.
posted by polyglot at 2:12 AM on November 27, 2007