phpList
Newsletter and email marketing with advanced management of subscribers, bounces, and plugins.
Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Still maintained? Yes: 12 commits in the last 90 days, latest release v3.6.17 (Aug 2026).
Also an alternative to Mailchimp.
At a glance
phpList quick facts
- Health score
- 61/100 SLOWING
- Stars
- 878
- Last commit
- 11 days ago (Oct 2026)
- Latest release
- v3.6.17, Aug 2026
- Licence
- AGPL-3.0
Top alternatives to phpList
Full rankings: Mailchimp alternatives
In its own words
The project's README opens: "Fully functional Open Source email marketing manager for creating, sending, integrating, and analysing email campaigns and newsletters: https://www.phplist.org."
Why it ranks here
Health score explained
phpList scores 61/100, #6 of 12 in Communication - Email - Mailing Lists and Newsletters: 12 commits in the last 90 days earn 14.0 of 35 points, the latest release (v3.6.17, 3 months ago) earns 25.0 of 25, 878 stars add 11.8 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and no advertised Docker image leaves the final 10 unclaimed. That places it in the slowing band (40 to 69). The biggest shortfall is commit activity, worth 21.0 more points.
Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.
- Commit activity biggest shortfall 14.0 / 35
12 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
- Release recency 25.0 / 25
v3.6.17 released 3 months ago
- Stars 11.8 / 20
878 stars on GitHub (logarithmic)
- Not archived 10.0 / 10
Repository is active
- Docker support 0.0 / 10
No Docker support advertised
Commit activity
- 12
- Last 90 days
- 19
- Last 12 months
- 11 days ago
- Last push
Ranked #6 of 12 tools in Communication - Email - Mailing Lists and Newsletters by health , between Sympa (#5) and Dittofeed (#7) .
Details
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 |
| Platforms | PHP |
| Latest release | v3.6.17 · 3 months ago |
| Stars | 878 |
| Open issues | 85 |
| Docker | Not advertised |
| Repository | phpList/phplist3 ↗ |
phpList vs its top 5 alternatives
Active tools that share a comparison page or a category with phpList (Communication - Email - Mailing Lists and Newsletters), scored on the same five terms.
phpList: common questions
What does phpList replace?
Repoly lists phpList as an open-source alternative to Mailchimp. Each comparison page ranks every alternative by the same health score, so you can see where phpList stands against the others.
Is phpList still maintained?
phpList had 12 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was 11 days ago; the latest tagged release, v3.6.17, is from 3 months ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.