The 10 Best Mailing List Managers for Linux System in 2020

If you were looking for mailing list managers for Linux, then
you are in the right place. Email list managers are handy tools in
the world of business and marketing. Not only that, but these tools
are also great for email discussions and knowledge sharing. Email
marketing is always considered one of the most effective ways to
communicate with customers.

If you are an internet user, then you might have subscribed to
many services for their regular newsletter. This thing is done by
using mailing list managers. When there were not many convenient
services like Facebook groups or Quora, people used to have email
discussions on certain topics. Nowadays, these are not very common.
But you should know that the mailing list management tools are
keeping that services running.

Most of the email list managers are subscription-based, and you
can use those services by using their web dashboard. But if you are
someone who wants to have your personalized email listings for your
enterprise right onto your Linux desktop or dedicated server, then
you can consider using the Linux mailing list managers. These tools
will provide you more flexibility than other web-based email
listing services. Besides, most of them are free to use, and the
source code is open.

Best Mailing List Managers for
Linux

---

For running user or data management services, Linux is a great
choice. Hence no exception with the email marketing and mail
listings. In any Linux distro, you are getting a good number of
mailing list managers to work with. Each of these tools has some
pros and cons of their own.

But the confusing part is that you can’t say which is the best
one. You have to choose one based on your requirements. We can just
guide you through it. So, in this article, we have enlisted the
best 10 Linux mailing list managers with their key features. Go
through all of these, and we hope that you will be able to find one
that meets your company’s sweet spot.

1. Mailman

---

Mailman is a mailing list manager for Linux. This software is
written in the Python programming language^[1]. Mailman is released
under GNU public license. Developers from all over the world are
constantly contributing to improving the project.

The source code of the project is available to download on their
website. The developers have provided detailed documentation on
this software. Hence the non-technical persons of a company won’t
find any difficulties using this email listing tool.

Key Features of Mailman

• The language support for this tool is great. You can create
  email notices with more than twenty popular languages from all over
  the world.
• All the tasks and properties can be managed by using the
  web-based dashboard.
• You can integrate this tool with any of your business or
  marketing site at ease.
• This tool has integrated features like spam filtering and
  bounce detection.
• The newer version supports the virtual hosting feature with no
  restrictions in naming the email listings.

Download^[2]

2. Sympa

---

Sympa is a mailing list manager for Linux that is completely
free and open source. The main aspect of this tool is the secure
web environment it provides. Sympa stands for Systeme de
Multi-Postage Automatique. As the name suggests, it is a 
completely automated system for sending multiple electronic
messages at a time.

Sympa is meant for professional use. This scalable system is
capable of handling a large number of email subscribers. This
software features an intuitive dashboard that is capable of
managing all administrative powers and moderation of listings. It
supports many relational database management systems for creating
mailing lists.

Key Features of Sympa

• The advanced mail composer can create a beautifully formatted
  email message from an external HTML based webpage.
• It has a bounce analysis algorithm that can create detailed
  reports based on the bounce rate. Even this intelligent algorithm
  makes it to optimize the delivery time.
• This tool has the scalability to adapt it with large systems.
  It can manage almost a million subscribers without any hassle.
• You can even integrate it with third-party antivirus tools like
  McAfee to get extra protection against attacks.
• The system admin can customize this tool to a great extent by
  editing the CSS and other components.

Download ^[3]

3. Discourse

---

Well, Discourse is a forum or discussion platform. But it has a
great additional capability of managing mailing lists. The project
is completely free and open-source. So you can clone the project
sources from their Github repository and install it on your very
own Linux server.

They have even detailed documentation on their Github page about
how you can set up the development environment on your Linux
desktop. If you don’t want to mess up with all these, then you can
try out their managed and hosted Discourse service for your
organization.

Key Features of Discourse

• It has theming capabilities to add up your very own look and
  feel on the overall system
• Though this is mainly a forum space, your mail subscribers can
  be added to a separate forum for their discussions.
• It has advanced spam blocking feature for making it more secure
  against attacks.
• This tool supports additional plugins to extend
  functionalities.
• The intuitive admin dashboard has a very beautiful layout for
  high-resolution devices.

Download^[4]

4. Dada Mail

---

Dada Mail is yet another mailing list manager for Linux. Just
like most other mailing list managers, you can install it on your
Linux based servers or website. It has a web-based control panel
for the administrators. The basic version of Dada Mail is
completely free though it has some limitations with the number of
mailing lists and subscribers.

On the other hand, you can go for Dada Pro plan by paying money.
You can either get a one-year subscription or a lifetime
subscription. With the pro plan, you don’t have to mess with your
Linux server system. Instead the developers will install it for
you. Besides, you will get constant developer support if
needed.

Key Features of Dada Mail

• The web-based control panel will provide you an individual
  dashboard for each of the mailing lists.
• You can create customized emails based on the interests of your
  subscribers by using the custom mail template.
• This tool will provide you additional analytics like click
  rate, bounce rate, etc. for speeding up your marketing game.
• Dada Mail has complete documentation for all of its versions.
  Besides, you will get access to their support forum.
• You will get complete control over managing your subscriber
  profiles with custom properties.

Download^[5]

5. Schleuder

---

Schleuder is a simple yet powerful list manager for emails. It
runs on Linux-based server^[6]
setups for managing email listings. This tool is completely free to
install. There is detailed documentation on the website for
subscribers, email list administrators, and server
administrators.

End to end encryption is an iconic feature of this tool. This
tool uses OpenPGP for highly secure encryption. It even supports
mail resending. There are several plugins and modules like command
line console for managing lists and a web interface for use it with
graphical UI.

Key Features of Schleuder

• It can be used as an email hub. That means you can use
  Schleuder to send and receive messages from non-subscribed
  persons.
• It theoretically works as a mailing bot. You can give
  administrative commands through email messages.
• Schleuder Web, the optional web interface, can run
  independently using the APIs from the original Schleuder
  system.
• The command-line tool named Schleuder CLI is based on Ruby
  programming language, and this is why you can manage mail listings
  with this in any Ruby installed system.
• If you are a developer, then you can improve this system by
  reporting issues and contributing to the Git.

Download^[7]

6. ezmlm-idx

---

ezmlm-idx is a Linux mailing list manager. This tool can
efficiently and quickly send numerous electronic messages to a
large number of subscribers. This tool is highly automated. It can
automatically add or subtract subscribers from a specific list
based on the criteria you set up earlier.

It has a great role management system that can apply
restrictions on messages and subscribers. The subscribing and
unsubscribing option is very fast and responsive. Users don’t need
to wait for processing the request.

Key Features of ezmlm-idx

• It has a message archiving feature that can save the old
  messages in the database without using high system resources.
• This tool has an integrated bounce management algorithm to give
  you detailed analytics on effective subscribers.
• ezmlm-idx, which is an addon to the original software, has more
  features than ezmlm.
• You can add the remote administration functionality to this
  tool by typing a simple command and manage the listings
  remotely.
• Additionally, it has multiple language support that is very
  helpful for the Unicode encoded languages.

Download^[8]

7. Majordomo

---

Majordomo is an automated Linux mailing list manager for
handling a large audience. This tool was written in the Perl
programming language. Now it is maintained by a large volunteer
community, and it is free to use.

This tool is built with a modular design that is easily scalable
and efficient. The system administrator can control the dashboard
and mail listings by sending commands through email. It supports
many types of email listings, and thus it gained much popularity
over time.

Key Features of Majordomo

• Remote list management allows the admin to manage it without
  accessing the server, which reduces vulnerability.
• It supports FTPmail that enables the users to connect to an FTP
  server for getting their desired files as email attachments.
• This tool has built-in protection against most of the spam
  attacks and fake subscription requests.
• Majordomo can send mail digests in a bulk form, and it can
  automatically filter out lists based on expressions.

Download^[9]

8. phpList

---

phpList is one of the most popular mailing list managers for
Linux. It is completely free and open source software. You can
either host it on the developer’s managed hosting platform or
deploy it directly on your Linux based SMTP server.

It can send bulk emails, newsletters, and even handle your
company’s email marketing campaign at ease. This tool is almost two
decades old, and you can fully rely on their service. This tool is
used in almost a hundred countries all over the world. It is
available in all the major languages.

Key Features of phpList

• The package includes a web-based user interface for the amateur
  system admins to manage their email campaigns.
• The duplicate resistant system won’t let a subscriber get
  duplicate messages even if he subscribed to the listing twice.
• The analytics feature will give you details about the bounce
  rate and click-through rate.
• Importing and exporting subscribers list in CSV format is a
  great feature to securely back up your data to external
  storage.
• phpList supports scanning RSS feed and sends the extracted
  information through emails.

Download^[10]

9. OpenEMM

---

OpenEMM is a great mailing list manager for Linux that is used
as an email marketing tool for small and large enterprises. You can
install it on Linux server distros like Redhat or CentOS. You can
even install this on other Linux distros^[11] as well as Windows and
Mac through VirtualBox.

You have to have installed Java JDK, Apache Tomcat, MariaDB,
etc. to run this software. It has a web-based front end that helps
to manage this tool, and it displays dynamic graphical analytics.
You can even use a scripting feature to trigger your customized
actions.

Key Features of OpenEMM

• It has an HTML based template feature to compose emails and
  newsletters conveniently.
• You can build your variant of OpenEMM from the sources on
  Github.
• It features automatic bounce management with email open rate
  analysis.
• You will see several real-time statistics displayed with
  beautiful infographics.
• System administrators can extend the functionalities of this
  tool by using the in-built plugin interface.

Download^[12]

10. tellmatic

---

tellmatic is not a very popular tool. It is a simple open source
project used in email marketing that is archived in SourceForge. It
is a PHP and MySQL based system that is used with email listing
tools for running marketing campaigns.

Though this is a very simple and straightforward script, the
features are abundant. You will find all the common features that a
mailing manager should provide with. Additionally, it can perform
some quality checks for reducing spams and duplicates.

Key Features of tellmatic

• This tool supports importing and exporting email listings in
  various file formats.
• You will get detailed analytics on location, bounce rate, click
  rate, and open rate to boost your marketing campaign.
• It features an integrated form editor that can create
  subscription forms for the different userbase.
• The blacklist and email address verifications are two great
  additions in the feature list to prevent forged subscriptions.

Download ^[13]

Final Thoughts

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Mailing list managers for Linux won’t run on your stand-alone
desktop. Rather they are installed on Linux-based server computers
because they are intended to serve other client computers. Most of
the above software is open source, and you can build and deploy a
customized version on the SMTP server of your organization.

All of the above tools have similar functionalities. They all
provide a good value, just what a mailing list manager should
provide. If you are running an email marketing campaign for your
company or you have a news digest service, then these tools are
capable of handling that job. Yet most of the people prefer hosted
third party email listing services over these self-installation
methods. What do you prefer most? You can comment below to let
others know.