16

I'm looking for a dead simple mailing list (unix friendly). Robustness, fine-grained configurability, "enterprise-readiness" (whatever that means) are not requirements. I just need to set up a tiny mailing list for a few friends. Rather than hack something up myself, I was wondering if anybody knows of anything already out there with a similar goal?

I should note right now that I don't want an externally hosted mailing list -- it needs to be software I can install and run on my server. I know of many places I can host a mailing list at (Google/Yahoo groups), but it would be nice to keep the data local.

dreeves
  • 26,430
  • 45
  • 154
  • 229
Loren Segal
  • 3,251
  • 1
  • 28
  • 29

3 Answers3

6

Mailman is one of the simplest mailing list packages I've come across, so if Mailman is more than you want to deal with I'd suggest just adding an entry into /etc/aliases for your mailing list.

Of course you have to manage it by hand, but you said it's only for a few friends so that may not be a problem. Just create an entry in /etc/aliases such as:

mylist: me@somedomain.com, myfriend@somedomain.com, \
  myotherfriend@differentdomain.com

and then run newaliases. It doesn't get much simpler than that. If you want an archive you can create a dummy account on your mail server and add them to the list.

It's not as user friendly as Mailman but it's simple and you can be up and running in 5 minutes.

Michael Ridley
  • 10,378
  • 3
  • 22
  • 16
  • That's *almost* a perfect idea but it would be nice (though not required) to at least have some web-accessible archiving of threads at some location. I'll consider that one though, thanks for reminding me about aliases. – Loren Segal Sep 15 '08 at 21:09
  • Actually... I'm going to go with a two part solution here involving your idea. I'll add another dummy user and make a simple PHP script to display its mailbox contents. That should be suitable enough. – Loren Segal Sep 15 '08 at 21:36
  • How far can you push this before it's not a good idea? A dozen recipients? A hundred? – dreeves Dec 03 '10 at 03:31
  • 1
    Wow, Mailman and simple? Have you *looked* at the UI? It’s a horror. I hope that’s not the easiest possibility to get a mailinglist up and running. – Profpatsch Oct 13 '13 at 12:56
1

If you're not afraid of perl, give Minimalist a try.

rami
  • 1,586
  • 12
  • 13
0

If you want something easy to setup, with a user interface on top then I would recommend to check out WP Mailster (WordPress plugin) or Mailster (Joomla plugin).

No matter which of the two CMS you prefer, you will only need 5 minutes to have a "naked" WordPress or Joomla and the plugin installed.

It really works well and is easy to use. I have used Mailster for years and recently, with my site's move to WordPress have switched wo WP Mailster.

hbit
  • 959
  • 2
  • 13
  • 33