Please see our About page for details on how to contact us with any support questions
In order to use your list you must first add your members. Log in to your account using the account name and password that you selected and click the List members menu. There are a number of ways to add members, including uploading a file. The easiest method to add a single member is to click "Add member". Enter the user's details and click the Add button.
Before members become active on your list they must confirm their email address. They do this by clicking a link in a confirmation email that must be sent to them from your account. The confirmation email contains a link for them to click on (the contents can be customised using General Settings). Once they have clicked the link, their email address is confirmed and they become an active member of your list. This is shown by a green tick next to their name in the address book.
Please note that in order to combat spam, there is a daily limit of 200 confirmation requests for unverified accounts. Please contact support to remove this limit.
To send confirmation requests when adding a new member, select the tick box entitled "send email confirmation request to address". Confirmation requests can be sent (or resent) to existing members using the main address book page.
If you are transferring over from another provider or system then please contact us about avoiding the need for people to re-confirm their email address.
Once members are added and confirmed you can send them all a message directly from your own email account. Simply send an email to your list email address. An email sent to this email address will be distributed straight to all members of your list who are confirmed. For a single list your list email address is your account name as shown at the top of the Members Home page. For a multiple list the list email address is shown in the List Members menu for each list.
Please note: the default setting is to allow any list member to send a message. Therefore any confirmed member of your list can distribute a posting straight to the list, but any others are held for your approval. This behaviour can be configured using List Settings.
Before you can use your Multiple List you must first create a list within your account. To do this, go to the Manage Lists menu and use the "Create a list" function.
The list name that you choose will form the email address that you will use for the list. For example if you chose "mylist" then your list email address will be mylist@yourdomain.com, where yourdomain.com is your account name.
Once you have created a list you will need to add some members to it using the List Members menu.
Sign up for a trial today - it's free for a month, and you don't need to enter any payment details in order to register for listserv hosting.
Once the free trial is finished, you are under no obligation to continue the service.
By default you will need to invite members to confirm their email address, before Simplelists will send them list emails. These will show in your account as confirmed and unconfirmed email addresses.
However, if you would like to avoid this step and add members directly, then you can request your account be verified. This means that members will show as “Unconfirmed (delivered to)” and that all members will receive list emails regardless. You can request verification of your account from the form on the dashboard or by contacting Support.
As with all things in life you get what you pay for:
There are several reasons that make our service an advantage over an Outlook distribution list:
Yes. Signup up for a free trial, let us know your listname and current email list members, and we will arrange for them to be transferred to your email list directly, without users needing to re-confirm their addresses.
Renewals made with manual one-off payments (using the shopping basket) are processed immediately and are visible in accounts straightaway. Arrangements that have been set up to make payments automatically can only be processed the day after they have been set up. If you have an urgent payment, please make a manual one-off payment.
Yes, any sort of emails that you normally send can be sent through Simplelists - Simplelists just forwards them on as they are received to all your email list members.
We accept the following credit and debit cards: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Switch, Visa Delta, Visa Electron, Solo and JCB. We also accept Paypal as well as cheques from the UK and US, and international payments via wire transfer. If you wish to send a cheque for payment, please send it (payable to Simplelists.com), along with details of what your payment is for and your username, to the following address: Simplelists Ltd, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AX, England
Renewals made with manual one-off payments (using the shopping basket) are processed immediately and are visible in accounts straightaway. Arrangements that have been set up to make payments automatically can only be processed the day after they have been set up. If you have an urgent payment, please make a manual one-off payment.
Simply login to your account and purchase some more. We will allow a 7 day grace period to do so, after which your account will be disabled, although we always send a warning before doing so. If you are frequently needing to purchase additional data allowance then you might want to consider our Unlimited price plan instead.
Our Pay As You Go pricing plan measures list use by the amount of data sent. Unlike other email list providers that measure your list use by the number of emails sent, this provides a much fairer pricing mechanism: the more emails you send and the larger the emails the more data allowance you use.
There is a minimum purchase level that applies to Pay As You Go accounts, as defined on our pricing pages. If data is not purchased at this frequency then an account will be temporarily disabled until more is bought.
If for any reason a list exceeds its credited amount of data, then a warning is emailed to the list manager and 7 days allowed to purchase more.
Full details of the amount of data that your account has used can be displayed by clicking the current totals; full details will be displayed in a pop-up window.
If you wish to upgrade your Single List account to a Multiple List account, or change your Multiple List account to a Single List account, then please contact support who will do this for you.
If you wish to add another Single List to your account, then simply register for a new Single List using the Products page on our website. If you enter the same administrator email address when registering, then this new account will be added to your existing login. You can switch between different accounts using the drop-down menu in the top-right corner of your login.
Please contact support if you wish to change your price plan, who will transfer your account for you.
If you have a credit card that has been saved for automatic payments, you can update or change the card by going to the "Manage Payments" button on your account dashboard. You will need to cancel the existing arrangement first (by clicking "Cancel automatic payments") and then set up your new card by clicking "Set up automatic payments".
Yes. Signup up for a free trial, let us know your listname and current email list members, and we will arrange for them to be transferred to your email list directly, without users needing to re-confirm their addresses.
It is very unlikely. We use regularly updated anti-virus software to scan all messages, and should you choose to do so then you can configure your list to hold messages for approval.
This is how some email clients choose to display the messages. We distribute messages with the same From address that they are received with, but we have to add sender information to sign the messages with our DKIM signature (this proves they came from us and improves deliverability) and we also have to add a return address so that bounces are handled automatically. It is these addresses that some email clients display. The only way to stop the above being displayed would be to remove the extra sender information, which would break our automatic bounce handling and also reduce the chance of your message getting delivered.
We use a number of security measures. All management of your email list through the web interface, and the login itself, is performed over an SSL encrypted connection. Any credit or debit card payments you make are also all performed over an encrypted link. The password on your account is stored encrypted on our servers, and all your email addresses are not available to anyone except in the course of system maintenance.
The Member's Homepage contains details of your account including your Data Transfer allowance and the expiry date of your list.
Making Purchases
Additional data transfer can be bought (for PAYG pricing plans) or the expiry of your account extended (for Unlimited pricing plans) by selecting an amount and adding it to your shopping basket using the relevant 'Add to basket' button. Once you have the items required in your basket use the 'Pay' button to purchase them. You may buy items as many times as you want and they will be added to the current value. Any unwanted items can be removed by clicking the red cross next to the item.
In order to combat spam, there is a daily limit of 200 confirmation requests for unverified accounts. Please contact support to have this limit removed.
For Multiple List accounts, aliases provide a facility to forward email addresses at your domain to other email accounts. They can also be used to group several lists into one list or to create a list of moderators as described in Moderating your Email List.
Aliases are managed using the Aliases section of an account. To add an alias click on 'Add alias' after clicking on the Alias menu. You will be presented with a dialogue to enter an alias name and a number of addresses. The alias name becomes an email address at the domain, for example alias@yourdomain.com, and is forwarded to all the addresses listed below it.
Email addresses can either be normal email addresses or other lists and aliases at your domain. In either case, the full email address should be entered (such as listname@domain.com for a list).
Aliases can be edited by clicking on the alias name in the main aliases page. To remove an email address, delete it from the list and click 'Update'. To delete the entire alias click 'Delete'.
Settings applicable to your account (or that apply to all lists in the case of a Multiple List) can be viewed by clicking General Settings in the account menu. Available settings are:
Your email address: This address is the email address that we will use if we need to contact you. Please ensure that you keep this address up to date. Multiple addresses can be entered by separating them by commas.
Password change: If you wish to change your password click on 'change'. To change your password you must first enter your old password, and then enter a new password twice.
List manager address: This address will be used for any automated emails to do with lists, such as subscription requests, bounce notifications, auto-removal and approval notification.
Approval notifications: Select how messages held for approval should be managed. The following self-explanatory options are available: Do not notify me of messages held for approval; Email me when any messages are held for approval; Delete all messages held for approval; Delete messages held for approval if not from list member.
Web subscriptions: See Web Subscriptions
List description: Confirmation and Daily Digest emails will appear to come from this name. The actual email address will always be list-manager@yourdomain.com for a Multiple List and listname-manager@simplelists.com for a Single List.
Confirmation subject: This is the subject of the confirmation email message sent from the address book for members to confirm their address with.
Confirmation message: This text will form the body of the confirmation email. By default the link to click on will be appended to the end of the message, although this can be changed by inserting the text $LINK somewhere within the text.
Custom message: This message, if configured, will be displayed to the user when they confirm their email address, and will also be emailed to them if the checkbox below is ticked.
Yes, any sort of emails that you normally send can be sent through Simplelists - Simplelists just forwards them on as they are received to all your email list members.
Yes, please contact support.
Attachments can be removed using the relevant setting in List Settings. If you would also like all messages to be converted to plain text, then please contact Support.
All list messages must have a "from" email address, but we can set this to be an email address of your choice for all list messages. We can also change only the email address or the name/description of the email address, in order to hide only the sender's email address or name. Please contact Support with your request.
Use the List Settings page to customise your list messages:
Subject Prefix: Text entered here will be inserted before the subject of all emails sent to the list.
Message Footer: Text entered here will be added to the bottom of all emails sent to the list in plain or HTML format.
HTML Message Footer: Optionally enter HTML text in this box. Any emails sent in HTML will use this footer instead of the footer above. If this box is left blank the footer above will be used for HTML emails.
Attachments: Tick the Attachments box to strip all attachments from list emails.
For busy lists, members can receive list messages in digest format. Instead of receiving list messages as soon as they are posted, members using the digest format will receive one email every 24 hours containing all the previous 24 hours' messages.
If your members sign up using Web Subscriptions then they can opt to receive the digest format at the same time as subscribing. Alternatively, members can be configured to receive digest emails by selecting the appropriate option when adding or editing emails in the address book.
Yes, it's possible to use variables in your list emails, which will be replaced with the recipient's name. In order to have this feature activated for your account, please contact Support. You will need to specify text that is used if the recipient's name is missing (e.g. "Member", so that the email becomes "Dear Member" instead of Dear John Smith
We provide the facility for people to add and remove themselves from your email list via a web form, should you wish to enable the facility. The webform can be either a small form on your own website (details under "General Settings"->"Web Subscription Settings" in your account), or can be hosted by Simplelists.com. See this support topic for more information.
Yes, you can use server side scripts on your website. For example, using PHP (and cURL), you can contact the Simplelists subscriptions server and process the subscription in the background. Sample PHP code is shown below, but this could equally well be done using ASP or other server side scripts.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,"http://www.simplelists.com/subscribe.php");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,"name=$Name&email=$Email&list=$List&action=$Subscribe");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
Users can add and remove themselves to your lists using a subscription page on a website. The website can either be your own, in which case the form will be fully integrated, or if required can be hosted by Simplelists. All Single Lists have a default web subscriptions page (which we will customise on your request). For all Multiple Lists we will create a web subscriptions page on request. Web subscriptions are enabled and disabled using the 'web subscriptions settings' link under General Settings.
Web subscription forms are fully customisable. By default the form contains fields for the member's name and email address, a checkbox for the format of the messages (digest or normal) and an option to subscribe or unsubscribe. However, the form can contain as few or many of these as required; for example, it is possible to set up a form with just an email address field in order to allow members to unsubscribe only. In this case a hidden form field must be used to designate the action required. Available form fields are as follows:
| name | The member's full name. This will be split into first name and surname by Simplelists |
| The member's email address | |
| digest | If checked the user will receive list emails in Digest Format |
| notes | Optional. Any text that you want in the 'notes' area of the member's details |
| action | Should be either 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' as applicable |
| list | The full list email address such as listname@simplelists.com or list@domain.com
Multiple lists can also use an asterisk (*@domain.com) to make the request apply to all lists |
All forms should be submitted using a POST request to http://www.simplelists.com/subscribe.php using a form such as the one in the example below. If you want to further integrate your website with Simplelists you can use server side scripts. For example, using PHP (and cURL), you can contact the Simplelists subscriptions server and process the subscription in the background. Sample PHP code is shown at the end of the examples below, but this could equally well be done using ASP or other server side scripts. Please note: If your hosting company uses a proxy server for cURL communication then you may have to reference that in fsockopen.
Example forms
Specific example forms are contained within each account's Member Subscription self-management section. A generic example is also shown below:
<form method="POST" action="http://www.simplelists.com/subscribe.php">
<table>
<tr><td>Full Name:</td><td><input type="text" name="name"></td></tr>
<tr><td>Email:</td><td><input type="text" name="email"></td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td><input type="checkbox" name="digest" value="digest">Daily digest summary format</td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td><input type="radio" name="action" value="subscribe" checked>Subscribe</td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td><input type="radio" name="action" value="unsubscribe">Unsubscribe</td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td><input type="submit" class="input" name="submit" value="Submit"></td></tr>
</table>
<input type="hidden" name="list" value="test@simplelists.com">
</form>
Example server-side subscription using PHP and cURL
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,'http://www.simplelists.com/subscribe.php');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,"name=$Name&email=$Email&list=$List&action=$Subscribe");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
There are a number of methods that List Members can be removed from a list:
A web subscriptions form: See Web subscriptions
List-Unsubscribe header: All our lists now feature the List-Unsubscribe Header which is hidden in all list messages. Some email clients display this as a one-click link for members to click on and unsubscribe.
Spam reports: Many email providers now offer an option for users to report emails as spam. If a user reports Simplelists email as spam we will receive notification from the email provider. If we receive one of these notifications we will automatically remove the list member. Both the List Manager and the member will receive notification that this has happened; the list member will be provided with a one-click link in order to resubscribe to the list should they have inadvertently reported the list emails as spam.
If you would like any messages deleted from your list archives, then please contact us. Please provide either a link to the messages in question, or the ID numbers of the messages (this is the last few digits at the end of the URL of the message in the archives
Searchable web archives are available for all lists at no extra cost. By default, archives are not enabled but they can be turned on through the Archives menu of an account. The Archives menu also provides the ability to customise the archive web pages. Archives can be password protected and if desired all email addresses within the archives can be hidden.
There is no limit on the size of archives.
Restricting access to archives is done within the Archives tab of the "list settings" menu. Access can be restricted either by a single password (shared amongst those that need it), or by allowing any list member access. In the case of the latter, a member simply enters their email address when requiring access, and the user then receives an email with a link in, in order to prove that they are actually a list member. The link in the email can only be used once, but as long as the member does not log out of the archives, then they can continue to view them for 3 months. The default setting is to allow list member access only.
You can do this by selecting aliases from the web management interface. Here you specify email addresses at your account that you want forwarded to other email addresses. For example you could specify sales@yourlist.com to be redirected to sales@yourcompany.com.
You can do so by setting a forward on your domain to forward all mail for the email address you want to use (e.g. list@yourdomain.com) to your Simplelists email address. Your list emails can then be sent to your domain address. Full domain integration is only possible with a Multiple List account.
The primary mail server needs to be set to mx1.simplelists.com and the secondary mail server needs to mx2.simplelists.com. It should be ensured that both mail servers are not set at the same priority - if they are then some messages will send to the email list but some will be rejected.
Create and delete lists in your Multiple List account using the 'Manage Lists' menu. Lists are created by entering a name into the text box and clicking 'create'. Lists are removed by selecting the name from the drop down box and clicking 'Delete'. List names can consist of the characters a-z, 0-9, hyphen (-), period (.) and underscore (_).
You can also use Manage Lists to move or copy members between lists.
If you simply want to group a few lists together, then the easiest thing to do is to create an alias using the "aliases" menu. However, it is possible to make lists members of other lists, if you want to have normal members in the list as well or if you want the moderation features of a list. To do this you will need to create the list as a member of the address book, and then add it to the list as a normal member. If your account is not verified, then you will need to ask us to manually confirm the list that is a member so that it receives emails from the parent list.
The address book gives full control over your members and is opened by clicking 'Address book' from the menu of a multiple list or 'List Members' of a Single List.
There are several ways of adding and editing members as detailed below, although before members become active on your list they must first confirm their address.
To add a single member Click 'Add member' and enter the member's details. At the same time you can choose to send them an email in order to confirm their address and elect to send them list messages in digest format. Notes can be added to each member if required. Multiple list account holders can also choose the lists that a user should be a member of.
To add a large number of email addresses it is possible to upload a CSV (Comma Separated Variable) file. This file can be produced from most database and spreadsheet applications, as well as email clients such as Microsoft Outlook. Use the Save As or Export functions of the program to do so. The file at a minimum must contain the full name and email address of each member but can also detail the notes for each entry. The entries can be in any order and be comma or tab separated.
A large number of email addresses can also be added by copying and pasting them into the 'Add Many' box. In this case the name of each member is optional. For a multiple list a list can be selected to add them to in addition to the main address book.
Simplelists will automatically handle any messages from your list that cannot be delivered to members. Details of any undeliverable emails are displayed by selecting the 'Bounces' menu once logged in to your account.
In order to keep high deliverability rates to ISPs and to make it easier for you to manage your list, we automatically delete any members from your list if within any month either of the following happen:
The List Manager will be notified of any members that have been deleted and will also receive a warning towards the end of each month if any members are over the 75% bounce rate. Using the same Bounces page it is also possible to configure accounts to send a daily message detailing all bounces.
Addresses on low volume lists (less than 4 postings a month) will have their bounces averaged over more than 1 month.
Yes, you can have as many administrators for your Simplelists account as you want. The permissions of administrators can be restricted as required, including what they can do and on what lists. Administrators can be added using the "manage users" drop-down menu, shown by clicking on your email address in the top-right corner of your account.
Before members can be added to lists, they must confirm their email address to show that they want to receive list emails. This is achieved by the sending of a confirmation email; the user receives the email which contains a link for them to click on. Once they select the link, their email address is confirmed, and they become an active member of your address book. This is shown by a green tick next to their name in the address book.
Confirmation requests can be sent in one of two ways: either by selecting the tick box entitled 'send email confirmation request to address' when adding a member, or once the member has been added to the address book a confirmation can be sent (or indeed resent) by selecting the address in the address book and clicking on 'send confirmation' at the bottom of the page.
If you are transferring email addresses from another provider or if you have other proof that your members wish to receive emails from your list, then you can request to have your account verified. Once an account is verified, then whatever the confirmation status of a list member, that member will receive list emails regardless.
To add and remove list members in a Multiple List use the List Members menu. Select the required list from the drop down box and then add and remove its members by selecting the appropriate people and clicking '>>' to add them and '<<' to remove them. Multiple members can be selected using the ctrl and shift keys of your keyboard. Use ctrl to select multiple names individually and use shift to select two names and all those names in between.
Any members can be added and removed to lists, but they will only receive list emails once their address is confirmed (shown by the red and green highlighting of each member).
If preferred, members can be added and removed using email addresses instead of names; just click the 'View by email' link.
Other advanced features in List Members allow list members to be viewed in a printable format or downloaded.
Any poster to a list will receive a copy of their own message if they are also a list member. Please note that some email systems (in particular Google Mail) have a feature whereby the message will not be displayed in the email account's inbox even though we send a copy. This is because the email is already in the Sent Items of the account, and it will not be shown in the account more than once.
Yes. Simplelists will check a sender's email address when a list message is received. If the sender's domain has a DMARC record with a policy of "reject" or "quarantine", then Simpelists will automatically change the email address of the sender to be the list email address. When this happens, we will add a description of the original sender to "from" email address, and will add the sender's email address as the reply-to email address. If the list is set for replies to go to the list, then we will add the sender's email address to the description of the "from" email address. We can also optionally add a header to emails with the original sender's details - let us know if you would like to do this.
Please check the "email delivery" menu in your account. Locate the relevant list message, and check the delivery status to the recipient in question. If it shows "sent" then Simplelists has successfully delivered the list email to the list member's email server. If they have not received it, then you can give the delivery receipt information shown to the list member, for them to raise the issue with their email administrator
Any list can be configured (using the List Settings page) to define which messages will be distributed straight to the list and which will be held for approval. The following options are available:
No moderation - all messages will be distributed to your list regardless who sent them.
Moderate all messages - all messages will be held for approval regardless.
Allow specific members - in a Single List select either the whole list or detail specific email addresses. In a Multiple List you also have the option to define lists whose members can post.
Max message size - this value defines the maximum message size in kilobytes before a message is held for approval.
The List Code detailed on the same page can be used as a prefix to any list messages to override any moderation settings.
Any emails that are held for approval are viewed and approved in the approval page. Emails will need approving due to the list settings. Messages waiting to be approved can be viewed by clicking on the sender's name. The reason that a message has been held will be annotated within the list of messages waiting for approval.
If an email is sent to a list that has attachments or is in multiple formats then the email will be presented as a number of 'parts'. Each part can be viewed by clicking on it. If the part is text or an image then it will be displayed in the web browser. If the part is an attachment then you will be prompted to download it by your web browser. Although it is not possible to catch a virus by viewing text or images of a message, it may be possible to catch a virus when downloading and opening attachments. For this reason we do not recommend downloading any attachments, or approving any emails with attachments, unless you are 100% certain what the attachment is.
Minor changes can be made to messages before they are distributed using the 'Edit Message Source' link. A preview of a message can also be sent to from this link.
