We are happy to announce that phpList is now available on the Bitnami library!
phpList is a one-way email announcement delivery system, and is a great tool for managing and sending e-mail messages to a large numbers of subscribers.
phpList is now ready to install in a few clicks with the Bitnami phpList installers (available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X), Virtual Machine images (VMs), and cloud images for the Amazon EC2, Azure and Google cloud platforms.
If you want to quickly check out phpList, you can launch a free cloud demo server. By clicking the button below, you will have your own phpList instance running for 1 hour, for free!
Or, learn more about phpList in our interview with Michiel Dethmers, Designer/Developer of phpList, as he explains the history and goals behind the project:
How was the phpList project started? What are the origins of this project?
I started phpList in the days when Majordomo was the leading Open Source mailing list system and CMSes did not exist. I was asked by a large theatre in London if there was anything that allowed them to send a email to their subscribers, but to split them occasionally into a group in London only, the UK or the Rest of the world. For example, it would not make sense to send "return tickets for tonight available" to subscribers who live abroad.
I looked around and apart from having three lists on Majordomo, I couldn't find anything. So, I decided to write something myself.
I had already been using Open Source technologies for some time, like Linux, Apache, Perl, Php, MySQL etc. I decided it would be interesting to see what happened if I contributed this system back to the world. Inspired by phpBB, I called it PHPlist, although later on I changed that to phpList. I kept fiddling with it in my spare time, adding bits and pieces, as a little side project.
What is the main goal for phpList?
Our community recently stated the main goal as "Together, we are creating a powerful, reliable and flexible mass-email marketing tool called phpList. We use open source methods and technology and aim to contribute to the wider Open Source community."
I think as well as the mass mail aspect, phpList can also be a nice personal contact database.
Which projects or organizations are using phpList currently? What kind of projects do they use it for?
A whole range of people and organisations use phpList. In a recent survey we found that the majority are small businesses, but we have large corporations, community groups, government institutions, schools and individuals. Our new manual will have case studies ranging from a list of 35 to 500k. It provides something for everybody.
Anyone with a list of contacts can use phpList to reach out to them. phpList will enable them to be efficient in handling subscribers, unsubscribes and bounces, making sure that the mailings are delivered without problems to those who want to receive it.
What do you expect will be the main benefits of having Bitnami packages available for phpList?
I've made it as easy as possible to install phpList, but with a Bitnami package it will be even easier. That will allow for a very quick evaluation of the way phpList works. Once the hurdle of installing has disappeared, I think more people will move to phpList, because it allows them to be in control of where their contacts' information is kept. And the low cost is attractive as well of course. You can follow the phpList project on Twitter and participate in discussions on phplist.com.
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