Free mailing list and newsletter hosts
As I mentioned in the How to start your own newsletter or ezine article, starting your own newsletter is another good way to help boost your website. Rather than dealing with the mailing list software, using CGI scripts, or managing the mailing list yourself, I feel that using a third party mailing list is the best option. Here is a list of some of the free mailing list and newsletter hosts you can use.
List of free mailing list and newsletter hosts
This is a free host who does not place advertisements in the newsletter other than an ad on the web page your visitors go to when they subscribe. They provide you with an HTML code that you plug into your web page in order for your subscribers to sign up through your site. Unlike many other hosts, they do not give you the option of having people sign up through email and you cannot send the newsletters using your own email client. You can also download your subscriber and import existing mailing lists into their system.
Zinester has a paid service, but they also have a free service you can use. You can have people sign up directly through your site simply by adding the code they provide onto your website, or they can subscribe through email. They allow you to created HTML and plain text newsletters that you can post through email or through their web interface. You won’t be able to customize your subscription confirmation messages with the free version and you are limited to messages of 300k or less in size. The free version also places advertisements in the newsletter.
Yahoo! Groups Free Hosted Mailing List
Yahoo! has a free mailing list hosting service that lets people read your newsletter through email messages or on the web. Unlike the previous hosts, Yahoo! allows you to use discussion groups where you interact with the subscribers and the list can be moderated or unmoderated. You can poll your group members and they give you disk space to place files for your subscribers to download. You are able to import your existing mailing list into your new list without requiring your visitors to confirm their subscription again.
As with the previous host, Topica allows you to create discussion lists. You can also archive old messages and import email addresses easily.
