Newsletter software: the best tools

Newsletter software can help you address personal concerns or business messages to a wide audience. As a CHIP survey showed, newsletters are by no means out of date even in times of Facebook and Twitter. We therefore present you with the best tools for simple and professional newsletters.

Send simple newsletters with Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is available on many computers and is often used as a standard program for email and address management. To a certain extent, it is also suitable for sending serial emails.

• If you create a distribution list in your address book and put these addresses in the BCC of a mail, you can send a serial mail.
• With the help of the "Mail Merge" function, Outlook creates a Word document in which the title is replaced by address book entries. To do this, go to "Shipments" in Word and select "Start mail merge". You can now select your Outlook contacts under "Select recipient". This is how you can send a personalized newsletter, but a Word document is only suitable for emails to a limited extent.

Many webmail providers only allow simultaneous sending to 100 people to prevent misuse by spam. This also applies when using Outlook. Professional newsletter software circumvents this limitation by sending several times to smaller numbers of recipients.

Send professional newsletters with MailList Controller

If you want to design a professional newsletter, MailList Controller is the right one for you.

• MailList Controller can be tested as a demo version free of charge. If you are satisfied you can purchase the software from 99 euros.
• After installation, you can enter your email account data and then test it for functionality.
• The software offers an automated subscribe and unscribe service, contains many templates and is easy to use.
• You can freely define fields that are personalized in each email. For example, if you enter [first name] and [last name] in your template, it will become "Peter Winter" in the written email.
• If mails do not arrive at your recipient, you will be informed by "MailList Controller".

Send newsletters with Newsletter Pro

A little less professional, but at a significantly lower price, you can purchase the simple mass mailing program Newsletter Pro.

• Newsletter Pro is available as a free trial for 30 days.
• The software starts with useful "tips and tricks" and offers a "first steps" wizard.
• The fields "First name", "Last name", "E-mail address" and "Salutation" can be specified individually for each recipient. You can also use other fields such as "Date" or "Time".
• If you pay 20 euros for "Newsletter Pro", the number of mail recipients is limited to 200. For 30 euros, the number increases to 600 emails.

Xiopo for newsletters from your homepage

The web-based tool Xiopo is free of charge. However, the software requires that you upload it to your own website including the MySQL database. However, MySQL is not included in the standard package of most web hosts, but must be retrofitted for a fee. If you meet these conditions and are familiar with databases, "Xiopo" can convince you with its extensive functions.

• You can set as many senders, recipients, groups and mail templates as you like. These can be easily edited, moved or deleted entirely.
• The software independently checks the successful sending of the emails and can independently create an unsubscribe link. With this link, uninterested newsletter recipients can easily unsubscribe from their mail.
• You can preview HTML emails in real time.

Further tips and software tests can be found here. You can find out how to prevent your newsletter from ending up in the spam folder in the CHIP-Business News.