I've been fortunate enough to be able to build all sorts of community-building systems on my own website -- chat rooms, bulletin boards, mailing lists, and newsletters.. But after surveying four of the top free online mailing list tools, I'm eager to switch from Majordomo (see my article on Majordomo, http://wilsonweb.com/articles/majordomo.htm) to something easier to manage. The technology is maturing, the services are broad, and for price-conscious small businesses the "free" price tag is attractive. I examined four online mailing list programs, set up a practice list, and put them through their paces. -- eGroups (http://www.egroups.com/), ONEList.com (http://onelist.com/), Topica (http://topica.com/), and ListBot (http://listbot.com). You'll find a feature comparison in a sidebar to this article (http://www.wilsonweb.com/reviews/list-compare.htm).
What is a mailing list?
We ought to start at the beginning. A mailing list program allows you to send out messages to everyone on the list of e-mail addresses. You send one copy of the newsletter (with a password) to the mailing list, and it takes care of distributing copies to each address on the list. Another form is a discussion list, which allows members to send messages to each other. When a member sends an e-mail message to the mailing list program, it echoes that message with in a few minutes to every member on the list. When lists get large, usually a moderator selected by the list owner screens messages before they are sent out, to cut down on clutter and keep the quality of content high.
Businesses depend upon keeping in touch with customers, informing them of sales and new products, as well as providing ongoing customer support after the sale. Discussion lists can focus on bug fixes, user groups, technical support, current issues, hobbyist interests, etc. Some businesses host discussion lists that provide information about whole industries, putting their business the "expert" role, and winning lots of publicity and business as a result. Newsletters and discussion lists are the life-blood of Internet businesses. The free mailing list programs bring this capability within the range of any size business.
Typical features
All the lists we looked at included good tools to manage three types of mailing lists: (1) newsletter or announcement, (2) open discussion lists, and (3) moderated discussions. The latter allows a moderator to screen messages from members before they are sent to the lists.
They also provide important features to make the listowner's life easier. If you've had a mailing list, you know that subscribe and unsubscribe requests combined with bounced messages sent to obsolete addresses can eat up a lot of time. Using several sophisticated techniques, these programs automatically inactivate members whose messages bounce. Depending upon the type of bounce, they'll wait a few days or weeks before inactivating. When you consider that this saves many human hours of thankless list pruning, this is a great feature.
How expensive is free?
I suppose I need to pause at the word "free" to observe that nothing is completely free or these systems would soon collapse from economic starvation. Each of the sites I studied was advertising supported. They typically offer three types of ads:
Brief e-mail ads at the end of messages
. Every message that goes out on the list may contain a brief 3-line ad from an advertiser, as well as a one-liner such as "This list is powered by ....". For about $60 to $100 per year they'll skip the advertising messages in the e-mails. Topica.com has a completely opt-in approach to these e-mail ads, and don't charge if the list owner opts-out. They figure they can make a profit if only 10% of the lists include advertising. Consider that the largest of these sites have 150,000 to 200,000 lists and millions of users, that's a lot of messages and advertising potential.
Banner ads at the Member and List home pages
. Since most of these sites offer online archives and messaging and other features, many of the members will be visiting the site online.
Opt-in E-mail Lists
. Some of these sites, such as Topica.com, anticipate advertising also from future opt-in e-mail lists that compiled from among willing members, though this channel isn't well developed as yet.
You're exchanging "discrete" advertising for the opportunity to share some tremendous services. No, it's not free, but it seems like a fair trade.
If the services are so good, why would any business want to develop their own listservers and bulletin boards? Three reasons come to mind: (1) freedom from any advertising whatsoever, (2) the desire to sell ad space themselves, and (3) an unwillingness to "share" clients with the free sites who may distract customers with other discussion and newsletter lists. Building your own keeps the gate on the corral. Only larger companies can afford to build or buy programs that can match these free services, though many smaller businesses can purchase adequate programs if they need to.
eGroups (http://www.egroups.com)
My favorite of the free lists I reviewed is eGroups. They've designed a list interface that is quite easy to understand and navigate through, with a multitude of features to accommodate various kinds of communication within the group. The mailing list features work well, with both regular e-mail and digest options. In addition, archives can be viewed at the group website -- helpful if a member goes on vacation or just wants to avoid e-mail overload. When the moderator checks in, he or she is presented with a list of people who have applied to be members (unless you select open membership), and a list of messages to either approve and send to the group or reject (unless you allow free posting). It's an intuitive, well-designed system.
The extra features are attractive, too. The moderator can turn on or off a list of member profiles, a member's chatroom, a group calendar, a survey feature, and an area where members can post files and photos for others to see. There's also a rather flexible flat-file database that can be configured to contain a searchable FAQ, a list of parts, a list of companies and contacts, an annotated list of movies or books, etc. The only weakness I see is the inability of the moderator to prevent members from posting files to the 20 MB shared area, in case this space needs to be dedicated to business information, software patches, instructional course information, etc.
eGroups is alone at present in allowing the user to select between ASCII and HTML e-mail preferences. While this allows the user some choice in e-mail, eGroups gets the ability to charge its advertisers to send banner ads at the bottom of HTML e-mail.
But in spite of all its attractive features, eGroups has a serious flaw: businesses can't subscribe members using the business's own HTML form; subscribers must either send their own e-mail message or subscribe at the website. I had set up a list designed to carefully screen members in order to conduct a high level discussion, and had designed a 15-field form on my site to obtain that information. But eGroups misread the headers on e-mail from this form and subscribed my e-mail server to the list rather than the person who filled out the form. Oops. eGroups explain the program's failure to accept standard e-mail messages as an attempt to prevent people from spamming the list with unwilling subscribers. I think this severely limits serious business use of eGroups, and I hope they'll change their mind. But for many purposes, however, eGroups will work quite well by placing the eGroups supplied form on your site. It's my personal favorite of those I reviewed -- even though I won't be able to use it because of this flaw.
ONEList (http://www.onelist.com)
ONEList is the leader in free mailing list field, with the longest track record, the highest Web traffic, and claims of 165,000 lists. Media Metrix recently ranked ONEList as the 22nd largest Web Service, and number 230 of the Top 500 most-visited Web sites in April 1999, with a reach more than twice that of its closest competitor. They have worked hard to develop a sturdy infrastructure that is able to deliver e-mail to list members within seconds, and handle very large lists, numbering in the tens of thousands of members.
From a functional standpoint, ONEList excels in welcoming Web communities. Potential community members can subscribe at the ONEList site as well as via e-mail message from the user. Businesses can visitors using their own subscription forms. Within the list space, members can read posts online, view other members' profiles, and share documents with each other in a 5 MB shared file space. In contrast to eGroups, this space can be restricted from members if the moderator chooses. Multiple moderators can be selected, and given various privileges. Users that post from two e-mail addresses can set up a second alias so the list can accept messages from both. In addition to a survey that shows both a graph and text report of results, ONEList includes a unique calendar system that can automatically e-mail reminders to list members on specific dates.
I didn't like ONEList's interface as well as some others. And ONEList's in-your-face blue and orange color clash made me feel somewhat uncomfortable at the site. From a functional standpoint, though, ONEList is a top notch program that can serve business purposes well.
Topica (http://www.topica.com)
Topica is the newcomer among free e-mail lists. Their philosophy is "opt-in". If you don't want ads on your e-mail messages, there is no charge to opt-out. Nor are there any restrictions at all on maximum message size; eGroups and ONEList allow up to 500K, and ListBot Gold up to 250K in size. Topica offers an attractive and easy-to-use interface for users and moderators with one drawback. Since the interface requires frames, WebTV members won't be able to use it easily. Both ONEList and Topica allow the moderator to ban members so they cannot resubscribe, a handy feature to rid yourself of obnoxious members -- until you realize how easy it is to obtain one more free e-mail address.
At present Topica is concentrating on its e-mail features, and does not offer shared space, calendars, and the like. It does, however, allow businesses to subscribe people from their own forms, and provides an abundance of features for managing e-mail lists. PC Magazine selected Topica among its list of "100 Top Websites."
ListBot (http://www.listbot.com)
ListBot, owned by MSN LinkShare, is one of the oldest free e-mail lists, designed especially for businesses. It offers many list management features common to the other lists, except that members are not able to select a digest feature. The major difference between ListBot and the rest is the form that it requires prospective list members to fill out. Listowners can decide which fields to place on the form and require of members, and includes a number of choices of demographic and interests data. If you need an easy way to collect data as people subscribe, here's the tool. But there's a downside. The data collection form includes no privacy policy link or statement, de rigueur in these days when both the EU and the FTC are concerned about data collection policies. ListBot is designed to administer a single list and does not allow multiple moderators, customizable message trailers, etc.
As one who has used Majordomo as my list manager for about four years too long, these feature-rich free mailing list programs are like a breath of fresh air, and offer features to both the moderator and participants will appreciate.
My favorite of the free lists I reviewed is eGroups. They've designed a list interface that is quite easy to understand and navigate through, with a multitude of features to accommodate various kinds of communication within the group. The mailing list features work well, with both regular e-mail and digest options. In addition, archives can be viewed at the group website -- helpful if a member goes on vacation or just wants to avoid e-mail overload. When the moderator checks in, he or she is presented with a list of people who have applied to be members (unless you select open membership), and a list of messages to either approve and send to the group or reject (unless you allow free posting). It's an intuitive, well-designed system.
ONEList is the leader in free mailing list field, with the longest track record, the highest Web traffic, and claims of 165,000 lists. Media Metrix recently ranked ONEList as the 22nd largest Web Service, and number 230 of the Top 500 most-visited Web sites in April 1999, with a reach more than twice that of its closest competitor. They have worked hard to develop a sturdy infrastructure that is able to deliver e-mail to list members within seconds, and handle very large lists, numbering in the tens of thousands of members.
Topica is the newcomer among free e-mail lists. Their philosophy is "opt-in". If you don't want ads on your e-mail messages, there is no charge to opt-out. Nor are there any restrictions at all on maximum message size; eGroups and ONEList allow up to 500K, and ListBot Gold up to 250K in size. Topica offers an attractive and easy-to-use interface for users and moderators with one drawback. Since the interface requires frames, WebTV members won't be able to use it easily. Both ONEList and Topica allow the moderator to ban members so they cannot resubscribe, a handy feature to rid yourself of obnoxious members -- until you realize how easy it is to obtain one more free e-mail address.
ListBot, owned by MSN LinkShare, is one of the oldest free e-mail lists, designed especially for businesses. It offers many list management features common to the other lists, except that members are not able to select a digest feature. The major difference between ListBot and the rest is the form that it requires prospective list members to fill out. Listowners can decide which fields to place on the form and require of members, and includes a number of choices of demographic and interests data. If you need an easy way to collect data as people subscribe, here's the tool. But there's a downside. The data collection form includes no privacy policy link or statement, de rigueur in these days when both the EU and the FTC are concerned about data collection policies. ListBot is designed to administer a single list and does not allow multiple moderators, customizable message trailers, etc.
