Doing “send-outs” or “mailings” should be simple, flexible, and manageable. There are a lot of tools for handling this seemingly straightforward task. Some of them suck, some of them do the job, and some of them does a great job. PHPlist falls into the third category. PHPlist is an open source package, written in PHP, and powered by a database back-end like MySQL.
PHPlist is a little rough around the edges and feels “unfinished” or “unpolished” in some areas, but I suspect it will be a matter of time before it gets polished in those areas too. On the functional side, it’s fairly simple to use. It features plain text and HTML messages, subscriptions with or without verification, customization of just about every aspect of what users see, proper bounce handling, and importing/exporting of users. For a full list of features and the current version, check out the PHPlist web site: www.phplist.com.
I quickly ran through 10-15 “products” and “packages” (some of which shouldn’t be called either) and discarded them before I ran into PHPlist. If you’re looking for a “customer campaign” or “mail marketing” tool, have a look at PHPlist. If it’s good enough for the Nobel Committee and the Nobel Prize, maybe it’ll do for you.