And there are a *lot* of things you need to check with the content of the emails specifically to make sure they won't trigger anti-spam measures on various clients. There are a *lot* of things you need to do in order to set things up on your server properly so that other people don't think you're sending spam. The problem with running your own email service isn't so much a technical one as it is a getting-around-spam-prevention one. If that's not worth $75/mo., then your client should seriously reconsider their priorities. Email lists are probably the most valuable online marketing tool available (because supposedly they have all voluntarily signed up to receive info from your client - hopefully :). I would *strongly* encourage your client to spend the $75/month with Mailchimp or one of the other services out there (Constant Contact, MyEmma, etc.) - especially for a list size of 5,000 subscribers. hope that helps! moosh replied on at 1:04 pm Reply Some of the individual features probably differ between the two as well, with the Mailing List package offering tighter integration with the rest of concrete (like sending to users of a particular group or those with a given user attribute), and the MailChimp package probably does a good job of leveraging of some of the robust functionality of that system (like bounce tracking). If this is for small to mid sized companies sending out 100s-1,000s of mailings at a time, or if you want to avoid that recurring monthly fee, then the mailing list package may be better suited. I'm may be a little biased on this since I developed the Mailing List package, but my recommendation is that if this is for a big company with tens to hundreds of thousands of mailings, or if you don't mind the recurring monthly fee, then go with the mail chimp add-on. That said these problems do seem to be a minority of users, and I'm happy to offer refunds to those who run into these problems. however there is an auto-restart option for this, and turning on concrete's SMTP option normally fixes this issue. Another potential problem that some users run into is that their server can only send out so many mailings at a time. Occasionally a server's DNS records aren't set up correctly or their IP address is blacklisted, and in these instances mail can be treated as spam. I do somewhat agree with nteaviation, there are potential issues with people running this kind of package from their own servers. Yes, it does offer a block for subscriptions, and can subscribe both registered and unregistered users, optionally capture their user attributes (I believe these are something that two mailchimp alternatives lack), and it also has all the other necessary sending/subscription/management functionality. Seanom: There is only a paid version for the 'Mailing List' package.

Mailist chimp