Open Source Newsletter and Email Marketing

phpList is used for sending newsletters, marketing campaigns and announcements by email. You can send to large numbers of subscribers.

 

phpList

Overview

GitHub
 

phpList is free and open source software which is used for sending campaigns, newsletters and notifications. You can send email to hundreds/millions of subscribers.

It has beautiful web interface with wizard for composing campaign/newsletter and it can be personalized for each subscriber. Also, you can use plain text, HTML and templates for your newsletter. phpList provides features for scheduling and auto-mate campaigns.

phpList is written in PHP and uses MySQL database to store information.

System Requirements

In order to install phpList, you must have the following softwares:

  • PHP 5.3+
  • MySQL 5.0 +
  • Apache / Nginx

Features

phpList has number of features and some of them are:

Open Source

phpList is open source app which have a large users community which participate in development, bug fixing and plugins. You can have full control over your data by using phpList as open source software.

Designing and Sending

Campaigns can be created in web interface and you can use HTML templates for it. You can schedule your campaigns at any time or send it instantly to subscribers.

Secure

You can have full control on your data and subscribers information by installing phpList at your own server.

Other Features

Some of other important features are:

  • Manage Campaigns.
  • Statistics.
  • Bounce Handling.
  • User, Role, and Access Management.
  • Internationalization.
  • Performance and Reliability.
  • Opensource.
  • Easy Feature enhancement.
  • Data Import & Export Tools.
  • Manage Email Lists.
  • High-Volume Sending.
  • Building and Personalizing Emails.
  • WYSIWYG editor.

Installation Instructions

Install phpList on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with Nginx

Nginx is the most popular and secure web server. In order to install Nginx, use the following command

 sudo apt install nginx

Once the Nginx is install, configure the domain and restart the Nginx by using the following command

 sudo service nginx restart

Next, need to install database Server, use the following command to install MySql server

 sudo apt-get update;  sudo apt-get install mysql-server; mysql_secure_installation

Once, the database server is installed, use the following command to restart MySql server

 sudo service mysql restart

Install PHP for processing

 sudo apt-get install php-fpm php-mysql

Now, you have installed all the required software and the next step is to login to mysql server and create phplist database. Use following command to create database. Change with your database name.

 CREATE DATABASE

Create a database user called "" with new password. and granted user full access to the database by running the following commands. Change with your desired database user and with your desired password.

 CREATE USER ''@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY ''; 
 GRANT ALL ON .* TO ''@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '' WITH GRANT OPTION;
 FLUSH PRIVILEGES; EXIT;

Next, run the commands below to download and extract the downloaded file and move it into a new phplist root directory.

 
 wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/phplist/phplist-3.5.5.zip 
 unzip phplist-3.5.5.zip
 mv phplist-3.5.5/public_html/lists/ /var/www/html/phplist

Edit phplist config.php file. Adjust database and SMTP settings to reflect with your own values.

 
nano /var/www/html/phplist/config/config.php

Now, Lets configure phpList. Open your browser navigate to your domain name to start configuration of phpList. You should see phpList installation wizard

  • Click on the Initialise Database button.
  • Enter the your name, organization name, email address, and administrative login user name. The initial login name will be “admin”.
  • Once, the initialization is completed, click on the phpList Setup button to start phpList further configuration.

Congrats! You have successfully installed phpList on NGINX