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Frequently asked questions about our email list hostingGeneral questionsWhy should I use Simplelists instead of one of the free email list providers? Why should I use Simplelists instead of an Outlook distribution list? Can I transfer from another email list provider without members needing to reconfirm their addresses? Is there a method I can contact you other than email? Is it possible to get a virus through Simplelists? Simplelists purchases How secure are your systems? What methods of payment do you accept? How long does it take for email list renewals to be processed? Simplelists email list features Do you offer any sort of moderation on emails sent to my email list? What happens if a message is sent to my email list that exceeds the limit I've set? What happens if someone posts to my email list who isn't allowed to do so? Can an email list have more than 1000 members? Can I add a subject prefix or footer to my email list? Can people add themselves to my email list? Is there a daily digest option available for list members? Can I send HTML formatted emails or attachments using Simplelists? Can I set my email list so that users' replies are sent to the list, rather than the individual who posted the message? Can I upload a list of email addresses in one go? I have a multiple list, and want to redirect certain addresses to myself. Can I group different email lists into one big list? Can the 'Held for approval' message that someone receives after they have posted to a list be disabled? Can I have list email replies go to a different address than the original sender or the list itself? Can I have an HTML footer? How do I enable subscriptions and unsubscriptions via a website? Can I integrate subscriptions fully into my website without users seeing the final Simplelists landing page? Can I have attachments and other graphics stripped from my list emails? Explain more to me about how and why you automatically remove members Data transfer and bandwidth charges for accounts How many emails can I send within my data transfer limit? What happens if I exceed my data transfer limit? How can the amount of data transfer used be reduced? Simplelists archives How do I enable archives for a multiple list How do I restrict the viewing of archives to just my members? Can I provide a one-click link to the archives from my own members pages without users having to enter another password? Simplelists and domains I already own a domain name. How can I use it with a simplelists.com single list? I already own a domain name. How can I use it with a simplelists.com multiple list? What MX settings do I need for my domain to work with a multiple list account? General questionsWhy should I use Simplelists instead of one of the free email list providers? First of all we consider Simplelists to be more reliable and easier to use than the free providers. Secondly, all list emails are free from any adverts. Also, you can directly add people to email lists without users needing to do any signing up. Finally, we guarantee that the email addresses you add to your email list will not be used for any other purpose. Why should I use Simplelists instead of an Outlook distribution list? There are several reasons that make our service an advantage over an Outlook dist list:
Can I transfer from another email list provider without members needing to reconfirm their addresses? 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. Is there a method I can contact you other than email? Yes, we have an alternative contact method located at www.simplelists.com/blocked.php that can be used if your emails are being blocked as spam or for any other reason. Is it possible to get a virus through Simplelists? It is very unlikely. We use regularly updated anti-virus software to scan all messages, and depending on the size of virus it is likely to be held for approval anyway. Simplelists purchasesHow secure are your systems? 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 maintanance. What methods of payment do you accept? 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 SWIFT. Please see about for further details. How long does it take for email list renewals to be processed? Renewals are processed immediately and are visible in accounts straight away. If your renewal has not been processed within a few minutes then please contact support. Simplelists email list featuresDo you offer any sort of moderation on emails sent to my email list? Moderation levels can be set by yourself to different levels. These can be total moderation, where all messages sent are subject to approval, list moderation, where only emails originating from members of the list are allowed directly onto the list, or no moderation, where all emails are allowed to pass freely onto the list. Single lists also offer the ability to restrict message sending to certain people. Any message not allowed directly onto the list is kept for approval by the list owner. What happens if a message is sent to my email list that exceeds the limit I've set? If an email is sent that exceeds your size limit, then the email will be held for approval. When you login, it is possible to view the message, and if desired the email can be approved and sent to the email list. What happens if someone posts to my email list who isn't allowed to do so? As with an email that is sent exceeding the size limit, the email is held in the web management interface for later approval by the list owner. Can an email list have more than 1000 members? Yes, please contact support to have your limit increased. There is no direct additional charge for this, although naturally your email list will use more data transfer which may require more to be purchased. Can I add a subject prefix or footer to my email list? Yes. This facility can be enabled in the web management interface of your email list. Can people add themselves to my email list? 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. Is there a daily digest option available for list members? Yes, this is a standard feature of all our email lists. Can I send HTML formatted emails or attachments using Simplelists? 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. Can I set my email list so that users' replies are sent to the list, rather than the individual who posted the message? Yes, this can be set under 'list settings'. Can I upload a list of email addresses in one go? Lists of email addresses can be added in two ways. You can either 'Add many' through the address book whereby you can copy and paste a list of email addresses into a text box, or you can upload a file containing email addresses and names. Files of email addresses can be uploaded by selecting 'Upload' in the address book. The addresses must be in a CSV (comma seperated variable) file, which can be produced by most applications. If this format is not suitable for you however, then please contact us and we may be able to help. I have a multiple list, and want to redirect certain addresses to myself. 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. Can I group different email lists into one big list? As above, you can use the aliases option when you login to accomplish this. Select 'Add alias', enter a name, and enter the lists that you wish to group. You do not have to also enter the domains of the email lists. Can the 'Held for approval' message that someone receives after they have posted to a list be disabled? Yes, please contact support. Can I have list email replies go to a different address than the original sender or the list itself? Yes, please contact support. Can I have an HTML footer? Yes, please contact support. How do I enable subscriptions and unsubscriptions via a website? If you have a single list then there will already be a page for your email list created at http://www.simplelists.com/subscribe/YOUR-LIST-NAME.php (this page can be customised by contacting support). Alternatively, or if you have a multiple list, you can host your own customised form on your website using HTML code specific to your account. Please look at 'web subscription settings' under 'general settings' of your account for full details. Can I integrate subscriptions fully into my website without users seeing the final Simplelists landing page? 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. $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($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); Please note: If your hosting company uses a proxy server for cURL communication then you may have to reference that in fsockopen. Can I have attachments and other graphics stripped from my list emails? Yes, we can convert all your list emails to plain text. This will strip all attachments from them, but will also remove any HTML formatting. Please contact Support to enable this. Explain more to me about how and why you automatically remove members In practice with good email list management and to keep inline with agreements we have with ISPs, we automatically remove any consistently bouncing email addresses. We use an intelligent algorithm to decide what members to remove and will only delete consistently bouncing addresses. There needs to be either at least 75% (3 out of 4 emails or more) bounces or 30 continuous bounces for them to be deleted. The list manager will receive notifications of any members removed. Further information on those members currently bouncing are contained under the 'bounces' menu of the members' area. Data transfer and bandwidth charges for accountsHow many emails can I send within my data transfer limit? Your account will be disabled if no additional allowance is bought within 7 days (or if your monthly allowance is not credited within 7 days). Extra data transfer allowance can be bought when you login to your account. Prices are detailed in Products. What happens if I exceed my data transfer limit? It all depends on the size of emails passing onto your list. If the average email size is 5 Kb, you could send 20,000 emails a month on a single list, and 40,000 a month on a multiple list. However, if an email with an attachment is sent, email sizes will be larger. You can limit the size of emails sent on your email list through the web management interface. How can the amount of data transfer used be reduced? Firstly try to avoid sending large attachments out on your email list. It is much more efficient to upload the attachment to a webpage and then send a link out. An upper limit can be set for the size of emails under 'List Settings' in the members' area. If you want to reduce your use even further, then we can strip all the HTML formatting from your list messages, which will reduce the size by several fold. Please contact support to have this enabled. Simplelists archivesHow do I enable archives for a multiple list Ask your DNS host to set the 'A' record of your multiple list domain name to 89.16.176.81, then contact Simplelists support in order for your account to be enabled. How do I restrict the viewing of archives to just my members? This can be done in the archives settings page. Select the tick box to password protect the archives, and then set a password using the option at the end of the archives settings page. Can I provide a one-click link to the archives from my own members pages without users having to enter another password? Yes. You can encode the archive username and password in the link to the archives. Use a link like the following, replacing LISTNAME with your list name, and PASSWORD with the password you have set: http://LISTNAME:PASSWORD@archives.simplelists.com/LISTNAME/ Simplelists and domainsI already own a domain name. How can I use it with a simplelists.com single list? You can do so by setting a forward on your domain to forward all mail for the 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. I already own a domain name. How can I use it with a simplelists.com multiple list? If you already own your own domain, you can use it with simplelists.com multiple account in one of two ways. You can either use our own DNS servers, and configure your domain to use them, or you can configure your existing DNS servers to use our servers as their mail exchange (MX). For either method we will provide assistance for the configuration. If you opt to use our DNS servers, then we can still configure your domain to point to your own web server. Our DNS servers are ns1.simplelists.com, and ns2.simplelists.com. More information is provided at www.simplelists.com/domains.php What MX settings do I need for my domain to work with a multiple list account? The primary mail server needs to be set to mx1.simplelists.com and the secondary mail server needs to be 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. |  |