[NewMusic] Mailing lists without ads

[Sarah - 21 Grand]

I'd be surprised if there were free mailing list services/sites that don't
have ads at this point.

>From my nowhere-near-exhaustive survey of the field there are 4 main
categories:

1. free mailing list sites hosted by other companies that put ads in your
messages.

2. paid mailing list sites - often a "premium" product of the free services
- more likely to not have ads because you are paying for  it

3. free mailing list software that runs on your own website that you have to
install and maintain (some is easier than others to administer) - we use a
program called dadamail. There's a link at the bottom of messages to the
software site, as in "powered by dadamail." Some webhosts offer free mailing
list software that's even more plug-and-play - dreamhost does this.

4. software that runs on your own website that costs money - a lot of this
comes with more bells and whistles - you can have multiple lists, it can
manage bounces and address changes, it often has more database-like
features, probably templates - many arts non-profits use stuff like this.
Same as w/#3 - no ads, but an acknowledgement/link to the software site.

Personally, if I had a fairly small list and/or sent out infrequent
announcements, I would do it all manually in ye olde cut and paste method.

Caveat: a number of  mailing list services & software don't let you just
import addresses from previous lists - you have to send out announcements
and have everybody sign up on the new list. It's an anti-spam measure, but
it can be annoying because you often lose a bunch of people in the
transition.

sl

Matt mulled:
A new person who joined my events mailing list has brought to my
attention that Topica forces new people to wade through pages and
pages of ads before they can sign up for a mailing list. Does anyone
know of a good mailing list site that doesn't do this?

(The sad thing is that I migrated from yahoo groups a while ago since
someone was paranoid they'd do the same thing.)