Looking for a good Mailman mailing list host

January 11, 2008 6:21 PM

Looking for a good web host that supports Mailman mailing lists. Really supports it, not just has it installed. In my experience, at most places that have it installed (e.g. as part of cpanel), it works poorly and they don't know how to fix it. Ability to assist in transfer of mailing lists (e.g. use the config files fromt he old host) is also good.

The lists belong to two non-profit groups. One has a 750-member discussion list with 5 to 20 messages per day. The other has a 600-member newsletter list plus a number of small lists for its committees. These lists are all currently hosted under one of my domains, but ideally I'd like to move them to hostnames under each organizations domain name (e.g. lists.example.com) while leaving the organization's web sites hosted where they are (for now, at least).

The place they're currently hosted has been great but I think I'm the only Mailman customer left and it's not being maintained as well as it used to be.

posted by winston to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Are you proficient enough to set up the server yourself? Xen servers are super cheap, you can get the linux flavor of your choice and just install mailman and a mail transport agent yourself. I actually just did this myself for work, installing mailman and postfix for ~5oo mailing lists. Its really not all that hard if you read the documentation. You can get a virtualized server for ~$20 with 4 gigs of space and 128 megs of RAM (sounds low, but is sufficient). There's not much maintenance to be done, only clearing out bounced messages every now and then, and making sure the logs don't get full.
posted by Mach5 at 7:17 PM on January 11, 2008

I've said it before and I'll say it again - Tigertech is awesome. They support Mailman, they really know their stuff, and they get back with customers quickly on support issues.
posted by jbickers at 7:20 PM on January 11, 2008

Response by poster: I would prefer to have Mailman supported by the web host so that I am not a potential bottleneck between the organization and the host (e.g. figuring out a problem with the list when I'm not available).
posted by winston at 7:23 PM on January 11, 2008

I've been using pair.net for five years or so. They are very reasonable, but they don't do telephone support at the lower levels of account. The lists are two - free - to a customer.
It is mailman (thought actually I prefer Dada mail). Last I looked they did not have a list hosting fee and would not expand beyond two lists per hosting account.

Their tech support is excellent. Very impressed with support.

Rich
posted by geekP1ng at 7:32 PM on January 11, 2008

I manage 6 Mailman lists on a shared host operated by Textdrive. They don't stipulate it in their terms of service, but in fact I've had prompt and speedy help every time there has been an issue.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:00 PM on January 11, 2008

I can't speak to the quality of any of them, but here's a list on list.org (the Mailman site).
posted by fogster at 9:01 PM on January 11, 2008