PHPList Mini-Review

PHPList is a free mailing list/newsletter software written (not surprisingly) in PHP. I set it up for a company that has not yet launched--I wanted people to be able to sign up for a notification of the launch.

• Installation - It wasn't too bad. PHPList assumes that you'll be installing it in the root directory of your site which I thought was a bit odd, but it wasn't too hard to get it to install elsewhere. The trick is to remember that the only folder that really matters is the "lists" folder, the rest don't necessarily have to be below your site root (although once you get it working, you should move them there, or remove them altogether).

• Setup - Getting PHPList to recognize the Database and getting the first user entered was painless.

• Configuration - Configuration wasn't as easy. Some of the config is done through the file inc/config.inc, some was done through a rather long configure page in the web interface. Most of the options were understandable, but I did find myself going back to that page to change things fairly often. I think the configuration could be greatly simplified by splitting up these screens into several pages with related options.

• List creation - Creating and configuring mailing lists was fairly painless as well. The feeling I got was that the software lets you do the same thing in multiple places and that the workflow was difficult to follow. After doing it a couple times I began to get the feel for it.

• Customization - Making HTML emails and text emails is no problem, nor is changing the look of the subscribe pages.

Looking over the above, I think that what isn't conveyed is that this software isn't something that you'll have set up and running in an hour. Expect to spend about 3-4 hours minimum the first time around. From there, creating lists, email and managing users is a breeze.

Downsides - I realize this is free, open source software released under the GPL. No one is making money off it. That having been said, my biggest problem with PHPList is that there are "Powered by" notices everywhere. They appear on subscribe/unsubscribe pages, in the meta tags and essentially every place the user could possibly view. I've got no problem with giving some credit, but this time I found it a little overwhelming. I spent quite a bit of time toning down the "Powered by" notices. I'd suggest making them a little less obvious and ubiquitous by default and if people choose to do so, let them remove them. Most people will probably choose to leave the credits.

Upsides - It's free. It's fully featured--I didn't find any feature that I saw in other mailing lists/newsletter software missing here. Kudos to the author - Michiel Dethmers for doing such a great job and releasing it as open source.

I'd recommend PHPList if you've got some time to spare to learn the interface and experience in setting up PHP scripts on the server. It's not simple, but it's the most powerful open source/free newsletter management software available (that I know of), matching (and often exceeding) many of the features of commercial mailing list solutions I investigated.