Review: Lyris E-Mail List Server 3.5

Lyris E-Mail List Server 3.5
Recommended Vendor: SparkList
http://www.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/af/b.cgi/104/

I've been using e-mail listservers for more than four years now, hosting newsletters and e-mail discussion lists that have contributed greatly to my company's success. The worst part of hosting a list, however, is the manual maintenance. To keep a list clean I must tend to the numerous bounced e-mails and "unsubscribe me" requests that test my patience and character. Lyris cut my maintenance time from 3 to 4 hours an issue to about 15 minutes. In reviewing Lyris, my main focus is on newsletter lists hosted by a commercial hosting service. I haven't installed Lyris on my own server, nor used it for e-mail discussion lists, though it works well in those areas.

Handling Bounces

Until Lyris came along, the usual choice for businesses e-mail newsletter was the freeware program Majordomo or the higher end L-Soft Listserv. A problem with both listserver programs is that the subscriber doesn't know what e-mail address he is subscribed under. Since people commonly have several e-mail addresses (or spammers have sucked up different e-mail addresses from a website), the subscriber can't easily unsubscribe without time-consuming intervention from the listowner. Lyris uses a FoxPro/dBase database as the backbone for its operations, and assigns each member a unique subscriber number (such as 1399405). Since the listowner can include the unique unsubscribe address (such as leave-listname-1399405T@lists.lyris.com), it is extremely easy for members to unsubscribe, resulting in a minimum amount of maintenance from the listowner.

Another issue is bounces. Newsletter subscribers are constantly changing their e-mail addresses, at the rate of up to 5% per month, I've found. But only a fraction of these are likely to inform the listowner of the change. The rest bounce with a "user not found" message. With Majordomo, the listowner may have to spend hours wading through bounced e-mails to make those deletions manually. Then there are the "soft" bounces that occur if a mailserver can't be reached temporarily. In November, just before I switched from a juiced-up Majordomo listserver to Lyris, I received in my e-mail box 6,000 hard and soft bounces from just a single mailing to 75,000 subscribers. When I sent out the next issue via Lyris I received only 125 bounces -- Lyris received and handled all the rest. You can imagine my joy at not having to download thousands and thousands of bounced e-mails! Lyris also keeps careful track of how many e-mails are sent successfully and how many are to wrong e-mail addresses. I found, for example, that my list had indeed pretty clean; many of the bounces had temporary. After a set number of retries, Lyris automatically suspends bad e-mail address from future mailings.

List Configuration

Lyris offers a great deal of flexibility in the way it is configured. Of course, Lyris allows both newsletter (announcement, one-way) and discussion (two-way lists where subscribers can share their responses) lists, either moderated or not. Listowners may specify documents to be sent upon certain subscription actions: a welcome message, a good-bye message, and many others. Listowners can also select privileges granted to list members, the number of bounces before an e-mail address is dropped, whether to receive full or partial reports on subscribers and e-mails sent, and dozens of other parameters.

Web Interface

The list can be administered from a web interface by entering a password. Members may be added or deleted, messages approved for sending, and outgoing messages can be tracked from start to finish. List members can view message archives via the web interface, too, and can access to a rather complete, if not always crystal clear, set of online help screens explaining all Lyris features (http://www.lyris.com/help/).

Limited E-Mail Merge

Lyris allows a very limited sort of e-mail merging. The subscriber database stores the following fields among others: e-mail address, fullname, password (if any), member status, member ID, date subscribed, etc. Lyris does allow you to address list members by "Dear FirstName" or "Dear FullName," but that's about it. If you control the Lyris Server, all this information is both readable and writable through an optional Lyris ODBC driver, so you can relate your list information to other information you have on your customers. Even so, e-mail merge is not Lyris's real strength.

Subscribing via E-Mail

I've set up my site to automatically subscribe visitors via forms that send e-mail to the Lyris server. It is also possible to set up a page to allow members to direct interaction with Lyris, in order to change an e-mail address, for example. The ability to use both e-mail and web interfaces makes Lyris extremely flexible.

Weaknesses

Despite all its strengths, I see two weaknesses in Lyris.

1. You can't unsubscribe a long list of people from the web interface. You may have had 20 people tell you to change their e-mail address. This requires unsubscribing the 20 old addresses and then subscribing the 20 new addresses. The web interface allows you to insert a list of e-mail addresses to subscribe, but NOT to delete. The only way is to search for the 20 old e-mail addresses one-by-one and delete them individually, or send an e-mail with delete commands for each of the 20 old e-mail addresses.
2. The web interface is klutzy. "Klutzy," of course, isn't a very precise word. Perhaps "awkward" or "non-intuitive" or "ugly" might explain it better. The Lyris web interface is constructed almost entirely of HTML-created "submit" buttons. Compare that to the carefully designed web interfaces for the free e-mail list programs -- eGroups.com, ONElist.com, and Topica.com -- and you'll see a big difference. Not in functionality, so much -- Lyris is VERY capable and much more flexible -- but in the carefully designed web interfaces these free service offer.

Using Lyris

If you want to use Lyris, you have two options:

1. In-House Server. Purchase a permanent, lifetime license for Lyris, download it from the Lyris site, and install it on your own server. If none of your lists have more than 200 participants, Lyris is free. Above that, the price varies with the maximum list size: up to 500, $495; up to 2,000, $1,495; no maximum, $2,995; enhanced for high volume sites, $4,995. Lyris runs on Windows 95/98/NT, Sun Solaris/Sparc, and Sun Solaris/Intel. A beta version for Linux is also available. The advantages, of course, are that you are free to do whatever you like, and can run hundreds of lists. The downside is that high volume lists, especially, need heavy-duty hardware and connections to the Internet. You'll also need a server administrator qualified to troubleshoot problems.
2. Lease a List. Several commercial list hosting companies now use Lyris. The one I use is SparkList (http://www.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/af/b.cgi/193/) founded by Chris Knight. I've had several offers to move my 82,000 member Web Marketing Today list to obtain free service on a Lyris server elsewhere. But have kept it at SparkList because of the superior customer service I have received there for the past two years -- even though I have to pay to host my list there. I currently have four Lyris newsletter lists at SparkList. With a small list of a few hundred, any hosting service will probably do. But when you get into the ten thousands of subscribers, then you need an excellent service. List hosting prices at SparkList are $1 per 1,000 e-mails sent out, with a $50 per month minimum. http://www.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/af/b.cgi/104/

Lyris has done a lot of things right, and deserves the great reputation it is earning on the Internet as a premier listserver program.