Email Group/List that multiple platforms can use

October 18, 2014 1:55 AM

We have a family email that goes out every week to people across many email platforms. Every time someone changes their address, someone new is added (or removed :/), the onus is on each person in the group to make those updates to their own personal list. Obviously, this rarely happens with 100% accuracy, so someone always slips through the cracks. Is there a way to have a group that can be administered to centrally in one single location, but utilized by people across multiple email platforms?

This would be easy if everyone was on Gmail, alas, that isn't the case. It would be awesome if I could set up one email address that would then forward the emails to our 30-something addresses, but I don't believe that is an option.

posted by JimBJ9 to Technology (10 answers total)

What you probably want is a good old-fashioned listserv (also spelled listserve) like "Mailman". If any of your family has web hosting set up with a company like Pair.com, or access to any public unix-based server (for example at a university or college), there are free packages to let you do exactly this: you send an e-mail message to [e-mail], and it automatically gets sent to everyone on the list. Membership is centrally managed, the whole thing is elegant, simple, light on its feet, and does exactly what you want.

These have fallen out of favor because there's just a touch more effort to set them up, and so they have become more difficult to find -- but please look around, because they shouldn't languish in obscurity! They're really easy to use after that first hour of setup.
posted by amtho at 2:01 AM on October 18, 2014

Response by poster: Ah yes, I thought about a listserv, but as far as I know, none of us have a server and (if I understand correctly) you have to pay for a license. I was thinking more of a free web-based solution. Good thinking, though!
posted by JimBJ9 at 2:07 AM on October 18, 2014

Best answer: Why not set up a Google group, or similar?

The person who sets it up needs a Google account, but others can sign up to it with any email address. Then any member can just send an email to yourgroup'[e-mail], and it'll automatically be forwarded to all members of the group.

You can also see an archive of previous emails sent via the group, in a format that looks like a forum: datestamps, threaded conversations, etc. There's no need to ever actually look at this though, if you prefer email. I completely ignore it on the groups that I use.

Presumably you don't want it open to the general public, so you (or whoever is admin) will need to approve your relatives' requests to add their new email addresses to the group. It only takes a few seconds though, and I find the web interface to be very friendly.
posted by metaBugs at 2:20 AM on October 18, 2014 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Hey, I wasn't actually aware of Google Groups... I'm going to explore this a bit more.
posted by JimBJ9 at 2:42 AM on October 18, 2014

Hey there, you don't have to pay for a license for the ones I'm aware of, and many servers have MailMan or the equivalent already set up.

Besides, wouldn't a small expense be worth it? Especially if you're talking about owning vs. not owning your family's information?
posted by amtho at 4:05 AM on October 18, 2014

You could also use Yahoo! Groups for this. I belong to several groups of people that just like to stay in touch, and it works pretty well. People can unsubscribe from the group as they wish and nobody else has to do anything.
posted by katyggls at 5:36 AM on October 18, 2014

Yeah, Google Groups would be the easiest thing. It would take you maybe five minutes to set it up. I'd be more skeptical of Yahoo Groups because Yahoo generally seems to have lousy security.

Many web-hosting services will let you run your own listserv (I'm on Dreamhost and run one). The administrative overhead with these is a little higher, the interface is a little uglier, but it's certainly doable.
posted by adamrice at 10:51 AM on October 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks everyone! It looks like Google Groups is exactly what I want. I feel kind of silly for not knowing of it until now. Alas, I'm getting it all set up now. Thanks everyone!
posted by JimBJ9 at 12:34 PM on October 18, 2014

eMailDodo might be a good option as well; it seems to be tailor-made for this kind of situation.
posted by cvp at 12:35 PM on October 18, 2014

If you or anyone in your family has google apps for their domain, this can be done within the domain. I have a single email address that goes to about 7 family members including my 79 year old mother so...anyone can handle it. Anyone who emails that group email address will get the entire group. There is no web page archive to worry about.
posted by 724A at 4:27 PM on October 18, 2014