I’ve temporarily put my haiku site, tinywords, on hold. (Apology here.) During the break, I’d like to fix some nagging technical issues with the site. Top of the list: Find a mailing list manager to replace Mailman. I’m looking for suggestions.
Mailman’s good points: Free.
Mailman’s bad points: Excessively complex. Not suited to one-way “announce” type lists where many users are on cell phones. Poor tracking of subscribes and unsubscribes. Allows you to turn off confirmations for subscriptions (OK) but requires confirmations to unsubscribe, which is retarded.
I need a mailing list manager that can either run in no-confirm mode (for subs and unsubs) — or, even better, has a confirmation system that is friendly to users on mobile phones. That rules out subscription confirmations via return email, since many SMS users can receive email messages but cannot reply to them.
Click-to-confirm URLs might work, if the URLs or tokens are short enough. Since cell users might have to retype the URL into a browser on their desktop PCs, something like this just isn’t going to cut it:
http://tincan.co.uk/lists/?p=confirm&uid=f80abc415c6100a456d577538168d45f
(That’s a sample confirmation URL generated by phplist, which might have been a candidate except for that fact.)
Also, I need total control over the messages that the list manager sends out. Many SMS subscribers are limited to just 135 characters. In order to make sure tinywords messages fit within that limit, I have to be able to control the subject line, the From: header, and every single character of the email message.
I used to use Mojo Mail, before it turned into Dada Mail, and that still looks promising — but I can’t tell if it requires confirmations or not.
Any ideas?
