best/easiest commandline email program for mass-email

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

On 01/28/2010 05:23 PM, Alex Janssen wrote:
> Well, that's real good idea.  Sort of what I was thinking of doing.
> I've written plenty scripts, so no problem there.  Which is
> better/easier, sendmail, mailx or mailutils?
>
> I am sending a news letter.
>
> I could use OpenOffice.org Writer like noop suggested, but I can't
> figure out how to get a database field into a mailto hyperlink.  If they
> want to opt out of the list, I'd like it to email me back the address I
> sent to.  I did get it to email to the list, though.
>
> I like the shell script method.  Seems to give me more control over the
> content and I can build the aforementioned hyperlink.

If your emails need to be personalized, i.e. "Dear Alex" as opposed to 
the spammy "Dear Friend" or just "Hello", the best way I've found to do 
is to use some sort of templating, e.g. Django page templates which can 
be used without having to use all of Django, and Python. Python has 
excellent mail handling libraries and with not many lines of 
easy-to-understand, you can do some amazing things with it. If you don't 
need personalized emails, a Mailman list server will do the job very 
well. Setting up an announcement-only mailing list with MM is very easy 
and it'll handle bounces for you and give your audience a convenient way 
of opting out, if they should wish to do so.

There is also PHPList, which has all the usual intrusive ways of 
detecting things like open rates, etc. but I've never used it.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis
1419-3266 Yonge St.
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

<http://dinamis.com>
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