[Wylug-discuss] Mailing list software

[Chris Davies]

Christopher Brown wrote:
 > I'm looking at deploying a mailing list for $DAYJOB. I have narrowed
 > it down to:
 > GNU Mailman
 > phplist
 > sympa
 >
 > I was wondering if anyone had experience of the above and could
 > comment.

We use mailman at $DAYJOB, too, for both external customer lists and 
(low frequency) internal staff announcements.

We run it in moderated announcement mode (i.e. all messages are 
reviewed, for "safety"). It's fiddly to set up but it works pretty well. 
In terms of usability, think of an web application from about 8 years 
ago and you won't be far off the mark. FYI, it doesn't attempt to track 
delivery receipts, but it does do a good job handling bounces. It 
doesn't provide any features for customised (templated) messages.

I tried Sympa a year or so ago and never managed to get past the setup 
stage. Perhaps I need to try again, but the documentation threw me 
totally. (No, I can't recall why - it was too long ago.)

Hope that helps,
Chris