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Which Mailing List Manager Do You Recommmend?
bobdinkel writes "While I know it isn't the most glamorous thing, mailing lists are a fact of life. And they gotta be managed by someone. In my organization, that someone is me. For whatever reason (they won't exactly say) the powers that be do not want to use majordomo and sendmail. So I pose this question to you, dear reader: What is the best MLM - MTA combo in the Unix world?" One only needs to shake a stick to see the amount of software available that handles mailing lists. Which ones have suited your needs?
Mailman works for me. It doesn't have as many features as listserv, but it's easy to set up, easy to customize, and easy to administer. It is so easy that people can manage their own lists, which is a good thing for those of us who dislike being interrupted for simple adds/changes. Of course, GNU Mailman is free software. I think it's a no brainer for most small-midsized lists.
If you can live without a digest format, Mojo Mail works great for me. The web interface makes it a snap. We use it because you can give more control to list owners with little experience.
As far as a MTA, I'm partial to qail.
It really is good software -- easy to administer, and easy for users. I wouldn't bother with Majordomo anymore...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
The list manager would have to handle bounced email, subscribe/unsubsribe requests, etc. Bonus if it could handle mailmerge type functionality (templates), html/text multipart mime, or more advanced features such as cross-list digest. Does anybody know of such a product?
If I don't find such a beast, I will probably have to write one.
One point is that Qmail's author issued a Cash Reward for the first person to find a security hole in qmail- That was in march 1997 and it still has not been claimed.
compare this to sendmail, where there's a security hole fix in EVERY release.
Qmail is also AWESOME at handling high amounts of email sanely, is absolutely simple to configure, has a large and very supportive user base, and again, it was designed with security in mind.
Apart from that, ezmlm is EASY to configure, and if you get the "qmailadmin" program, you also have an easy web-based configuration interface, if you prefer that. (though, I myself prefer the commandline tools.)
The one thing you'll have to get used to is the 'Maildir' format, which applies to anyone using a shell on the qmail server to check / receive email- mutt has builtin maildir support, there's a patch available for pine.
qmail's home location is http://cr.yp.to/qmail.html and it's supporting community is at http://www.qmail.org
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
Some smartass somewhere has to mention that qmail and it's impossible-to-manage ezmlm program is a superior solution.
I don't seem to be having any trouble at all adminning small (150 user, 3GB/mo) and mid-size (800-user, ~25GB/mo) qmail installations. This is with Vpopmail too; the mid-size email system is for one domain; there are 36 others on that system too but they're all fairly small. Ezmlm isn't simple, no, but it's no pain in the ass to manage, either. I use QmailAdmin to do most of the dirty work. I set up the new domain, give the owner the postmaster password and point them to the qmailadmin setup. Piece of cake.
And while we're at it, djbdns rocks the house!
qmail is a very good MTA; I wouldn't trade it for anything else. That doesn't mean I think that djb is a god; I can't stand his daemontools, nor do I like djbdns. Go figure.
Firstly, I'm NOT the most gifted sys admin out there, I'm mainly focussed on PHP development. However, even with my basic sysadmin skills I've successfully setup both postfix and mailman.
Postfix is a great MTA, its so much faster than Sendmail, and has a very good support group. It also has native support for LDAP, which makes it great for virtual hosting and using for large organisations.
Mailman is a doddle to setup, and if you can be bothered to change the templates can be seamlessly integrated into your web site. Its also incredibly easy to administer.
The combination of the two is complimentary, and I beleive its the preferred setup of the creators of mailman. nuff said.
From their website: Take a look at Listar's feature list, and see the advantages it has over other similar Listserver packages. (anti-spam hooks, ability to strip down MIME messages and remove their attachments, virtual hosts, just to name a few).
-> Capt Cosmic <-
You should really check the Sympa MLM. It has a web interface and unlike Mailman, it's really i18n friendly. It can also use a database or LDAP for list of emails.
I use SmartList, which comes with Procmail. It's kind of a hassle to initially install (there's no smurfy GUI) but it's basic, poweful, and works without any stupidity getting in the way. User subscriptions and unsubscriptions are handled via the time-honored mechanism of mailing to list-request addresses.
The last time this came up, lots of people recommended MailMan. As a user, I hate Mailman. So as a mailing list admin, I won't inflict it on people. Here's why:
Compare and contrast this sequence of actions:
With sane mailing list software:
With Mailman:
Now which was easier?
So I use Smartlist for all my mailing lists. Though it is a pain in the ass to configure, it does the "reply to this to confirm" trick completely painlessly from the end user's point of view, and not having that is a deal breaker for me.
I understand that Mailman is trying to provide some measure of security by mailing passwords around, but mailed passwords don't work. By which I mean, they provide no more protection than the "reply to this message to be subscribed" mechanism does. So long as you can tell the web page to mail you your password, the only real validation that is going on is that the person issueing the subscribe request is a person capable of reading mail sent to the address they are subscribing.
It's important that mailing list software do this check, to avoid prank subscriptions. But the "reply to this" method is N less steps than the password-I-don't-know-I-have method, while being absolutely equivalent from a security point of view.
So the password thing is merely irritating and a waste of time: it has no benefits.
Mailman has a number of weaknesses / missing features which make unsuitable for some uses. Here are a few.
* No direct support for announce-only lists.
* It insists on having users use a password to unsubscribe / etc. I've found that most people don't want another password, and they don't need one with other mailing list systems.
* It has no ability to email out a "click here to unsubcribe" link, but rather a link to the above mentioned password system.
Of course it's probably idea for some uses, and I don't mean to disparage it in general, just to say that it's no the ultimate mailing list manager.
I agree completely, and touched on this in an earlier post. I believe a better solution is to customize each message with a URL that is specific to the recipient, which lets them adjust or unsubscribe themeselves *without* any further steps. Of course the usual reply-with-'unsubscribe' should also work.
Mailman has already been mentioned, but there is more to say.
First, the fact that SF.net uses Mailman says a lot for how powerful it is. It does virtual hosting in a very simple yet effective way.
Setting it up can be a little bit of a drag, getting the right UID for the right wrapper do-dad, but once you overcome that it is SUPER easy to use. I does everything "right," but lets you do it wrong if you choose (for instance, reply-to munging (not trolling here, I don't care what you think on the topic)).
I run a couple of lists, and used to manage several SF.net lists and Mailman really did make it as painless as possible.
Oh, as a bonus it is the GNU mailing list manager! (Not just a GPL one.)
I use Sendmail with it. I don't see that it much matters as long as your MTA meets the requirements of 1. having an "alias" functionality (that can pipe to a script) and 2. has a secure(able) "restricted shell" capibility (i.e. smrsh).
-Peter
Others have mentioned it, but I'll offer my opinion as well. Unless you're doing something fairly bizarre, Sendmail might be overkill for you as an MTA. QMail is a breeze to set up and config, it's as secure as can be, and it handles heavy loads of mail with ease.
Additionally, QMail and ezmlm were written together, with similar design principles, and they complement each other perfectly. They provide and extremely powerful, stable, secure, and featureful mailing solution.
Two notes I do want to point out, however. First of all, while Dan Bernstein is a brilliant coder, he's also a difficult man. His license for QMail is almost non-existent, but it it doesn't allow for modified redistribution. This means that QMail may need to be patched for certain special features.
Additionally, though following in the same vein, the stock version of ezmlm is missing some key features. I would strongly encourage the use of the ezmlm-idx patch, available at ezmlm.org. With this applied, ezmlm becomes one of the most powerful, featureful, and impressive mailing list management programs available.
Topher
Qmail is great... but not as great as it easily could be. There are too many pieces which need to be downloaded, compiled, and installed separately. It would be much nicer if all of the commmonly needed pieces were "in the box", including ezmlm, virtual domain support (vpopmail), that relay patch, the autoresponder, etc.
Blame the author and his license. If it was one of the common open source licenses, someone would put together all the pieces and made an RPM available.
Given what we all know about the /. audience, and given the fact that everyone here seems to be busy bashing mailman, it must be either (a) very easy to use and/or (b) well-suited to many people's needs.
;)
-Tongue firmly in cheek,
Snafoo
- undoware.ca