Mailing lists

A mailing list is one address that fans mail out to several recipients. Mail sent to it is delivered to everyone on the list, and each recipient can be a mailbox in this mailspace or an address somewhere else entirely — a colleague's personal address, a supplier, a shared inbox on another provider.

That last part is the practical difference between a mailing list and a group. A group's members must be mailboxes hosted in this mailspace; a mailing list's members can be any address, inside or out. If you try to put an outside address in a group, the save is refused and tells you to use a mailing list instead. See Aliases, groups and masked emails for the other kinds of shared address a mailspace holds.

Create a mailing list

1. Open the mailspace. Choose Mailspace in the workspace sidebar, then open the mailspace you want. Its Overview page opens first.

2. Go to Mailing Lists. Choose Mailing Lists in the mailspace's own sidebar. The Overview page also carries a Mailing Lists figure in its stat row with a Manage link to the same place.

3. Start a new list. Click New Mailing List in the page header. While the mailspace has no lists yet, the page shows No mailing lists configured — Mailing lists distribute email to multiple recipients from a single address. — with a New Mailing List button of its own.

4. Name the list. Name is required, and its hint reads Shown wherever this mailing list appears. (the placeholder suggests e.g. Support Team). The name also stands in for the description: leave Description empty and the name is saved as the description instead.

5. Choose the address. Under Email address, type the part before the @ — The address mail is sent to. If the mailspace has a single domain, that domain is shown beside the field; if it has several, pick one from the Domain selector.

   Addresses are shared across the whole mailspace: a mailbox, an alias, a group and a mailing list all draw from the same pool, aliases included, so no address can serve two purposes. If the address is already taken, the list isn't created and the form comes back with the reason shown at the top. The same pool is why a name you've used for a list, or for one of its aliases, later reads as unavailable on the new-mailbox form, which says the address is already used by a mailing list.

6. Describe it, if you want. Description is optional — a note about what this list is for. It's the text shown in the Description column on the list page.

7. Add aliases, if you want. Aliases are additional addresses that also deliver to this list. Type the part before the @ and click Add; with more than one domain in the mailspace, an Alias domain picker sits beside the field. Entries stack up as rows with a Remove alias control, and the count sits beside the field's title. A refused entry says why under the field — Enter a valid email address., or that the address is already in the list.

8. Add the members. Members is who receives mail sent to this list — a mailbox here, or any outside address. The picker offers the mailspace's own mailboxes by name (Select a mailbox, or type any address…), and because outside addresses are allowed here you can type one in directly rather than choosing from the menu. Members stack up the same way, with Remove member on each row.

9. Create it. Click Create mailing list. You're returned to the list page with Mailing list created successfully. Cancel leaves without saving. If the save is refused, the form comes back with the reason shown at the top — check the fields before submitting again.

Change a mailing list

1. Open the list page. Choose Mailing Lists in the mailspace sidebar. The card is headed All mailing lists — Managed distribution lists where members subscribe to receive messages. — with a count badge, a filter box (Filter mailing lists by name or address…) and a row per list showing Name, Email and Members.

   In that table, Name shows the list's description — the label you set when you created it — falling back to the part of the address before the @ when the description is empty. Members is a badge counting the current recipients. The filter matches on the address and the description; with nothing matching you get No mailing lists match "…" and Try a different search term.

2. Open the list. Open the row's actions menu (the ⋮ button at the end of the row) and choose Edit mailing list.

3. Make your changes. The form is the new-list form, minus two of its rows. The Email address is shown as plain text rather than a field: The address mail is sent to. It can't be changed after the list is created. And there is no Name field: a list's name is the part of its address before the @, so it's fixed once the list exists. Everything else — the description, the aliases and the members — is editable, and the aliases and members fields arrive pre-filled with what the list currently has.

   Removing every member is allowed: an empty Members field saves as an empty list, so the address stays but delivers to nobody.

4. Save. Click Save changes. You're returned to the list page with Mailing list updated. If the save is refused, the form comes back with the reason shown at the top; re-open the list to see what it currently holds before trying again.

What a mailing list does, and what it doesn't

A mailing list here is a distribution address, not a discussion forum. What it gives you is the fan-out and the recipient list; the machinery you may remember from list servers isn't part of it.

• Membership is administrative. You add and remove recipients yourself, from the list's Members field or from a mailbox's own Mailing lists field. There's no self-service sign-up, no confirmation step, and nothing for a recipient to accept.
• There are no posting or moderation controls. A list's whole configuration is its name, its address, a description, its aliases and its members. There is no setting for who may send to the list, no moderation queue, and no message archive.
• Members are addresses, not accounts. A recipient doesn't need to be a mailbox you host, and nothing about the list gives a recipient access to anything. Removing a mailbox from a list doesn't touch the mailbox, and deleting a list doesn't touch its members.

If you need a shared address that only your own mailboxes read, a group is the closer fit — see Aliases, groups and masked emails.

Delete a mailing list

1. Choose Delete mailing list. Open the row's actions menu on the list page and choose Delete mailing list.

2. Confirm. The dialog is headed Delete {name}? — naming the list the same way the table does — and says This cannot be undone. Confirm deletes the list; Cancel backs out. You're returned to the list page with Mailing list deleted.

Next steps

• Tell people the new address, and check what the list actually delivers — the mailspace's Logs page shows mail as it's sent and received. See Mail logs.
• Point extra addresses at the same list with its Aliases field, rather than creating a second list with the same members.
• Decide list by list whether a group would serve better — see Aliases, groups and masked emails.
• Keep an eye on the Mailing Lists figure on the mailspace Overview page; its Manage link is the shortest route back here.