

Ask HN: What newsletter software do you use? - dawie

I looked into Campaign monitor and Newsberry, but both seem a bit steep. $10 per campaign is not cheap.<p>What services could you recommend?
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imp
I use Mailchimp and I like it a lot. It has a lot of features and different
price plans. See if it might work for you.

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dawie
I just checked out Mailchimp and they seem way more reasonable than the
others. Thanks for you suggestion.

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zacharydanger
Their API's not half bad either. Was also pretty well documented the last time
I used it.

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ratsbane
I use sendmail, mysql, and handful of perl programs. We considered using some
outside service a year or two ago but we were doing some targeted campaigns
based upon purchase histories, geographic region, etc. and the trouble to pull
out lists like that and then sync them with an outside service becomes a
problem. Also our lists are large enough that the expense of paying someone to
send them starts to add up.

Also, we tag each email sent with a synthetic key to a table that stores the
specific email address and time it was sent. This way we can do stats on
effects of time-of-day of sending on conversion rates, etc. Not that we're
actually doing those stats.

Also, it's surprisingly easy to do mass emails and campaigns with a little
perl or python and {sendmail || your_favorite_MTA}

Some of the services are really good and easy to use if you are only sending a
few, though. I've heard good things about Constant Contact.

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mahmud
Good idea, but please please be careful and take the necessary precautions
before you send your IP/domain name to the abyss of spam trapping blackholes.

If you're sending more than 200 messages to the big 4 (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail
and AOL) take the time to REGISTER with them first and tell them about your
messaging habits. Do not change the from FROM field ever! Try to minimize
content changes between messages; rewrite the URLs in message bodies for
tracking purposes. Don't send a message to an unverified mailbox. Make sure
your users consent to receiving your message and you have a way to prove this
(a check box on the post sign up screen.) Do not use a misbehaving SMTP server
that doesn't accept returned messages and other housekeeping communication;
gmail will say "message undeliverable" the first time around and look back at
you to see if you acknowledge this, or it might not confirm delivery for a
while, to see if you're a phantom smtpd who would disappear after an hour. Get
DomainKeys, SPF and other credentials you need. Do all your mailing from ONE
domain name, mail.example.com and make sure you have backup servers as well.

Good luck.

P.S. Postfix has various mailing list and newsletter management addons. Qmail
was written JUST for that purpose.

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brm
I used to use dada mail and now I use oempro

If you're looking for a hosted solution that isnt too expensive Aweber is
nice.

<http://octeth.com/products/oempro/>

<http://dadamailproject.com/>

<http://www.aweber.com/>

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babyboy808
PHP List, It's free and works great! - <http://www.phplist.com/>

