phpList

What phpList is

phpList is open-source software for sending email newsletters, marketing campaigns and announcements, and it comes in two forms. The free version is downloaded from phpList.org and installed on your own server; the community site says "phpList is Open Source newsletter and email marketing software: it is free to download" and describes it as software "for sending email newsletters, marketing campaigns and announcements: you can send to millions or just to a few hundred". The second form is phpList.com, which "offers phpList as a service" and adds managed deliverability, support and pricing plans on top. phpList.com says "75,000 organisations in 35 countries trust phpList". The company describes itself as "an Open Source, UK registered, self-funded and owner-managed company, with 20 years of history", and adds: "We are accountable to you: our customers and community, and nobody else." The phpList.org footer gives the UK company number and the copyright line "© phpList 2001 - 2026".

Building and sending campaigns

phpList.com's homepage says you can "Send a webpage, a blog feed, or a campaign designed from scratch, and test it an unlimited number of times before sending." That covers three common ways of working: mailing an existing web page, turning a blog feed into a newsletter, or designing a campaign from scratch. Campaigns are managed from a web interface that the site says works on all devices.

Targeting runs on subscriber attributes. The segmentation feature lets you "Use subscriber attributes to target customised content to the right audience at the right time", so the fields you collect at signup become the basis for who gets which message. Drip campaigns and autoresponders let you "Onboard new users and customers, and automatically respond to their behaviour", which is where welcome series and onboarding sequences live.

Reporting and subscriber insight

Two reporting features are named on phpList.com. Real-time data lets you "Track campaign and audience activity in real-time and adjust message content mid-stream". Subscriber insights bring "Subscriber history, demographics, engagement and more all in one overview", so you can see one person's record and activity together. Bounce handling is part of the deliverability service below, with digest reports on bounces.

Deliverability on phpList.com

Deliverability is the section phpList.com leads with, under the heading "Superior deliverability". It lists six services:

• DKIM, SPF and SSL: "Technical configuration for secure authentication and delivery managed by default".
• IP pool management: "Shared and dedicated sending IP addresses spread accross a global datacenter network".
• Bounce automation and digest reports: detailed bounce analytics and automatic flagging and removal of problematic addresses.
• Automatic throttle calibration: sending is spread over multiple IPs with throttles adapted for deliverability.
• Abuse complaint management: "Human account managers manage and negotiate complaints on your behalf".
• Blacklist and sender score monitoring: daily checking and mitigation of third-party blacklisting and sender ratings.

These are presented as part of the hosted phpList.com service. If you self-host the free software, authentication, IP reputation and bounce processing are set up on your own server and sending infrastructure.

Data protection

phpList.com says it is "GDPR Ready", with "All the features and guidance you need to communicate with European Citizens at scale in compliance with data protection law and best practices". That is the company's own statement about the hosted service. For the self-hosted version, the data sits wherever you install it.

Pricing on phpList.com

The hosted service offers three pricing models:

• Pay per message: "The cheapest monthly plans, top up any time, with rewards for performance".
• Pay per subscriber: "Prioritise engagement with an all you can eat plans (up to 1 million per month)".
• Dedicated networks: "Dedicated networks deliver supreme value and performance, adjustable any time", arranged through a free consultation.

The entry point is "Start from $1 and grow with us, all features included", and the homepage advertises "Get 9000 messages for $1". A full price comparison sits on the phpList.com pricing page. The footer also links to a page called "Free for Open Source". The self-hosted software itself has no license fee; you provide the server and the mail sending.

Support and training

phpList.com offers "A support team which provides answers when you need them", with specialist support, training and consulting. The user manual on phpList.org runs from installation ("Installing: first things first") through basic use to advanced topics, and phpList.org promises that with the hosted service you can "Get set up and sending within minutes!" The community site sets out the free route: read the phpList manual, search the forums, then ask a question there. For paid help it says to "Get professional assistance from phpList.com or an approved third party." A live demo of the software is available on phpList.org, and a knowledge base is linked from phpList.com. The homepage says its customers come from government, education, business and NGOs.

The open-source project

phpList.org is the home of the community, the documentation and the forums. Its counters say phpList is used in 63 countries, that 12,690,959 mails have been sent since January, and that 28,296,039 were sent in the past 12 months. The translation section says that thanks to volunteer translators "phpList is used in nearly 100 countries", and translations are managed in an online translation system. The latest news item announces "phpList 3.7.0 released: Security hardening, SAML & API support", and recent blog posts cover moving issues from Mantis to GitHub and revamping the community forum. The recent commit log shows active work on the phpList 3 code base.

Contributors can document, translate, report and fix bugs, or write plugins: the site says "If you want to tweak phpList to make it suit your needs more perfectly, then a plugin is a great way to do that". Bug fixes follow a fork and pull-request workflow on the phpList 3 git repository.

Who phpList suits

The free version suits an organization with a server and someone to run it that wants a mature, open-source newsletter tool with no license fee, such as a school, a club or a nonprofit with technical volunteers. The hosted phpList.com service suits a sender who wants the same software without running mail infrastructure, and who values managed authentication, IP pools, complaint handling and blacklist monitoring. Pay-per-message plans fit occasional senders, and per-subscriber plans fit organizations that mail a stable list often.

It is less suited to a store that needs ecommerce automations or named shop integrations, since the pages focus on newsletters, segmentation by attributes and autoresponders rather than those tools.