We have hosted mail lists since 1995. At one time we had a server dedicated to just mail lists. But that was in the days of 486s and pentiums. At that time we hosted one mail list with over 17000 subscribers and the owner of that list sent out two 10k messages per week. With the computer power available today, we currently do not use a dedicated server for mail lists. But we could easily change to a dedicated server if we had the need for it.
At this time all lists must be double opt-in. That is the only way we are not going to get blocked by the spam black lists. If you move a list here we would prefer that you have all the participants resubscribe. However, depending upon your situation, we may waive that.
Also, all lists must be configured so that only list subscribers can post. This prevents most spammers from using your list to distribute their grunge.We run the majordomo list processing program. It's reliable and simple for anyone to administer as a list manager. We offer a special front end program to majordomo that removes all attachments. As a side effect of doing that, it catches all the virii. It also converts all the HTML to plain text. This makes reading the list a more pleasant experience for those subscribers with older mail readers or reading the list from a unix machine. (We can also configure the list so the list owner(s) can send attachments and HTML text, but no one else can.) We typically also configure a digest version of each list by default.
We still have one list operating that we started in 1996. See lowcarb-l. At times over the years, this list has had almost 800 subscribers but most of the time it has had between 400 and 600. This list has almost 42000 records in its archives (May 2003). We have implemented a search engine so people can easily search by author, subject, key words, etc. This search engine also makes it difficult for spammers to harvest email addresses from the list postings. They can do it, but there are more effective ways to get a lot of addresses.
We have three demo lists set up for potential list owners to experiment with. They are
We would prefer to host your list on a machine that blocks incoming mail from systems that are known spam sites by using the spam blacklists. This is good because it provides yet one more obstacle to the spammers. But it also inhibits innocent users of those systems from subscribing from your list. If you desire it, we could host it on a machine that does not use the blacklists. However, this does not remove your responsibility to do everything you can so that your list does not appear to be spamming uninterest people.
Special types of mail lists:
If you have other special needs we can probably accommodate them.
If you would like additional information send an email message to newservice@solid.net with a note about what services you need.
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last changed 20-May-03