LISTSERV Feature Checklist

Web Interface: LISTSERV's Web interface greatly simplifies email list management, allowing list owners to control and administer their lists from anywhere on the Internet.

Support for All List Types: LISTSERV supports all types of mailing lists, including email newsletters, announcement lists and both moderated and unmoderated discussion groups.

Flexible List Security Options: LISTSERV includes comprehensive and flexible list security options. Email lists can be completely open to the public or closed so that only the list owner can add subscribers.

Automatic Subscription Handling: LISTSERV allows people to automatically subscribe, unsubscribe and maintain their subscription settings using the Web interface.

Automatic Bounce Handling: LISTSERV automatically takes care of email delivery errors or bounces, which saves time and eliminates the need for manual processing.

Double Opt-In Support: LISTSERV supports the double opt-in subscription procedure. Once a person requests to subscribe to a list, a confirmation email is automatically sent to the supplied email address asking the person to verify the request.

Message Posting Interface: The message posting interface allows senders to easily create plain text, HTML and multi-part messages. The interface also carries an integrated WYSIWYG HTML editor for fine-tuning.

Newsletter Template Gallery: LISTSERV comes with a gallery of pre-designed and tested HTML newsletter templates that customers can use as-is or modify as needed. Newsletters can be created by simply clicking on placeholders and filling in the content.

Message Scheduling: The message scheduling option allows senders to schedule the delivery of their newsletters and announcements at a specific time and date, without having to be present at the time of delivery.

Content Analysis: The content analysis feature, available for customers with maintenance, runs email messages through SpamAssassin, highlighting potential problem areas and evaluating the likelihood that the message will be viewed as spam by receiving mail systems.

Searchable List Archives: LISTSERV automatically maintains searchable message archives that fully support HTML and multi-part messages as well as attachments. These archives can be made available to subscribers over the Internet.

Full RSS Support: LISTSERV supports RSS feeds, allowing subscribers to view list messages using an RSS reader. RSS abstracts are generated automatically from the text of the message, or they may be specified explicitly.

List Owner Dashboard: The List Owner Dashboard provides at-a-glance information about lists, including a customizable list report and information about messages awaiting moderation.

List Administration Wizard: The list administration wizard provides list owners with a user-friendly interface for modifying list configuration settings.

List Reports: List owners and site administrators can generate reports and manage the configuration of all lists and subscribers on a single screen.

Subscriber's Corner: The Subscriber's Corner provides a Web-based interface for subscribers to manage all of their list subscriptions and settings on a single screen.

Multiple Subscription Modes: Subscribers can select how they prefer to receive messages: as individual messages, periodical digests or as indexes. List postings can also be made available as RSS feeds.

Subscriber Activity Reports: LISTSERV can create subscriber activity reports that tabulate the number of posted messages, subscriptions and signoffs as well as other subscriber activities.

CSV Reports: List, subscriber and server usage reports can be downloaded as CSV files and exported to Excel or other external applications.

Customizable Mail Templates: Mail templates, including subscription confirmations, welcome and good-bye messages and other administrative messages can be fully customized or translated.

Mail Template Styles: List owners can choose to have confirmation and informational messages sent out in HTML. A number of pre-designed HTML mail template styles are available. List owners can also create their own HTML mail template styles.

Attachment Filter: The attachment filter allows list owners to determine which types of attachments are permissible and which types should be filtered and denied.

Content Filter: The content filter can be configured by the list owner to automatically reject messages with unwanted or inappropriate content from getting posted to a list.

Personal Preferences: Users can set persistent personal preferences to control the appearance and default settings of the Web interface, including experience level, preferred start page and archive preferences.

Topics: Topics allow list owners to establish sublists based on a narrower aspect of the subject matter. Subscribers can then subscribe to the topics in which they are interested and only receive messages related to that topic.

Moderation Sharing: LISTSERV allows for moderation sharing, which means that moderation duties can be shared among multiple designated moderators.

Multiple License Sizes: LISTSERV comes in multiple license sizes, making the software ideally suited for small and large customers alike. Upgrading to a bigger license is always easy.

Technical Support: LISTSERV customers can sign up for technical support, which provides speedy, personal assistance from L-Soft's support staff. LISTSERV Classic and HPO customers also have free access to upgrades.

UTF-8 Support: LISTSERV now supports UTF-8 for subscriber names, list titles and list descriptions, facilitating lists and sites that operate in non-English languages and rely on charsets other than ISO-8859-1.

Customizable Web Interface: LISTSERV's password-protected Web interface can be completely customized, allowing organizations to maintain a uniform look and feel for their entire Web presence.

Server Administrator Dashboard: The Server Administrator Dashboard displays status information about the site, including availability of upgrades, technical support as well as license and maintenance expiration alerts.

Site Configuration Wizard: The site configuration wizard allows administrators to make site configuration changes on the fly directly through the Web interface.

List Creation Wizard: The list creation wizard enables quick and easy creation of email lists without the need to learn complicated list configuration keywords.

Server Activity Reports: Administrators can generate reports about server activity, including number of messages sent, number of bounces, bandwidth usage and number of virus-infected messages stopped.

Deliverability Assessment: LISTSERV offers a deliverability assessment, which analyzes LISTSERV and DNS configurations, including DomainKeys, SPF and Sender ID, giving site administrators concrete suggestions on improving deliverability.

DomainKeys Support: LISTSERV supports DomainKeys, which is a cryptographic authentication solution that adds signatures to email messages, allowing recipient sites to verify that the message was sent by an authorized sender.

Integrated Virus Protection: LISTSERV is the only software of its kind with built-in virus protection (for Windows and Linux). The system scans all messages for viruses before delivery, keeping lists safe and secure from harmful viruses.

Built-In Blacklist/Whitelist: LISTSERV offers an integrated blacklist/whitelist system, which can be used to cut down on the amount of spam reaching a LISTSERV site.

Third-Party Spam Filter Compatibility: In addition to the built-in spam filters, LISTSERV also offers a mechanism to connect to third-party spam filters, such as SpamAssassin, which can scan all messages processed by LISTSERV.

Spam Feedback Loops: LISTSERV can automatically process Spam Feedback Loop reports. Once configured, LISTSERV automatically parses the reports and implements the actions required by the whitelist agreement of the recipient site.

Database Connectivity: LISTSERV can connect with most ODBC-compliant (Windows and Unix) databases; Microsoft SQL Server; IBM DB2; ORACLE; and MySQL.

Multiple Database Support: LISTSERV can be integrated with multiple databases. The maximum number of databases to which LISTSERV can connect is limited only by the capability of the hardware in use.

LDAP Support: LISTSERV can connect to LDAP servers to authenticate user logins, to insert LDAP attributes in mail-merge distributions and to implement dynamic queries.

Dynamic Queries: LISTSERV can execute on-demand dynamic queries against either LDAP or traditional DBMS servers and use the results for access control and mail delivery.

Mail-Merge Support: LISTSERV enables personalized email messaging, or mail-merge, when used in conjunction with a database. Any SMTP server can be used to conduct mail-merge.

Access Restriction by IP Address: List owners can limit access to a list's Web archives to a local domain area or to a specifically defined range of IP addresses.

LISTSERV Backbone Distribution: The LISTSERV Backbone Distribution mechanism conserves connection bandwidth and improves email delivery efficiency worldwide by connecting to other machines running LISTSERV.

Peered Lists: The site administrator can peer lists between countries to optimize local email delivery efficiency.