phpList mailing list management software (Opens in a new tab) It is one of the most important and influential programs written in PHP. For over 22 years, programmers have used phpList as a library for sending emails, newsletters, and advertising to their subscribers.
phpList has been extended to support targeted emails, personalized messages, opt in and unsubscribe, intelligent email bounce handling, automatic handling of spam complaints, and analysis of email campaigns.
Commercial phpList hosting is available. However, you can save money and have better control over your email marketing if you install the open source phpList on your web hosting. (Opens in a new tab). To help you in this endeavor, we’ve partnered with Hostinger (Opens in a new tab) To offer a free hosting package to TechRadar readers.
Step 1: Set up an SMTP server to send emails
Hostinger shared hosting accounts must use an external SMTP mail server to send emails. In our example, we used a Google account (Opens in a new tab) Which allowed us to send emails through their servers from phpList. You can skip this step if you’re using Hostinger’s VPS plans, as Hostinger automatically includes SMTP email sending on these plans.
Sign up for a Google account or use your existing Gmail account. Once you’re signed in, click on your profile picture, and select Manage my Google Account. Click on Security and then App passwords.
Click Select Application and click Other. Enter phpList and click Create. Make a copy of the generated password, as it will be used again in Step 3.
Step two: Install phpList with Auto Installer
phpList files are easily installed on Hostinger using its automatic installer. Log in to the Hostinger site admin panel and choose the website from the list on the left. Find Auto Installer, select Other, and choose phpList from the drop down menu.
In the first step of the installer, set an administrator username and password. Optionally, you can set phpList to be located in a subdirectory on your hosting. You can also choose to use an existing MySQL database or create a new one exclusively for phpList.
The second step of the installer simply asks which version of phpList you want to install and how often you want the program to update automatically. Click Install.
Step 3: Set the SMTP settings in phpList
You will now set the SMTP settings that phpList will use to send emails. Again, this step is only required for shared hosting on Hostinger and can be skipped if you have a VPS plan.
In the Hostinger admin panel, choose File Manager from the list and browse to the folder where you installed phpList. Enter the folder named config, and double-click config.php to start editing it.
under line //select(‘PHPMAILER_SECURE’, false); The following is added:
define(“PHPMAILERHOST”, “smtp.gmail.com”); $phpmailer_smtpuser = “[email protected]”; $phpmailer_smtppassword = ‘your_app_password’;
Change [email protected] to your real Gmail address, and your_app_password to the password created in the first step.
Click the save icon at the top right to save the file.
Step 4: Log in to phpList
Return to the Auto Installer web page in the Hostinger admin panel. Right click on phpList in the list of installed applications and choose Manage. This will take you to the phpList admin login page.
Log in to phpList using the admin username and password you created earlier.
Step 5: Import your email subscribers
To get started with phpList, you will need a list of subscribers to send emails to. Click Subscribers in the main menu and choose Import Subscribers. You have several options for importing long lists of subscribers and their accompanying information.
The simplest way here is to choose Copy and Paste Email Address List. Select the lists you want to add these email addresses to and enter them all, one per line, in the box below.
Click Import Subscribers, and the email addresses will be added to the list.
Sixth Step: Send your first email newsletter
Click Campaigns and choose Submit Campaign. You will be presented with a five step wizard for creating and sending a meaningful email campaign.
First, set the content of the email and then choose whether to format it as HTML. Decide when to send the email and to whom. Finally, add optional special features like analytics code.
At any time, you can send out a test copy of the email to see how it will appear to your readers.
summary
phpList is a powerful email marketing tool. The easiest way to set it up is to use a hosting plan that supports email sending, such as the Hostinger VPS plan. However, you can use it on most shared hosting plans if you set it up to use external SMTP mail, as we did above.
Email marketing has been proven to offer an outstanding return on investment – $30 – $40 for every $1 spent (Opens in a new tab). phpList competes with the best email marketing software (Opens in a new tab) Available today, it could be just the ticket you need to send successful email campaigns (Opens in a new tab).
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