I'm contemplating a newsletter, and I need your personal experiences on which mailers are better. I've looked for about 2 hours now at several different options, and have yet to be very impressed. If at all possible, I'd like to avoid spending money on this, since I'm going into it as a learning experience more than something I know will produce results.

I have at my disposal mySQL/PHP, and I've messed with one newsletter lists that was setup that way, all contained on my site. That would be nice, as I wouldn't want to use a "free" one and find out they were farming out my subscribers addresses to whoever wanted to buy them. I can't imagine places don't do that.

Anyone have a suggestion of one in particular?

EDIT:

Things I'm looking for in the program would include:

*HTML or Text option for subscribers
*Ability to backup the emails database outside of the program
*Some type of easy subscription interface for subscribers, one that other webmasters could also promote on their sites
*No advertisement or added headers/footers to the newsletter when I send it out

You can check out PHPlist, it has all the features you're looking for:

http://tincan.co.uk/?lid=306

It uses PHP and MySQL, and you can install it fairly easily.

Check if your host has a built-in installer for it, it helps you get setup quicker.

thanks, i'll be sure to check it out tonight!