Sympa
Mailing list manager.
Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Still maintained? Yes: 18 commits in the last 90 days, latest release 6.2.80 (Aug 2026).
Comparisons in Communication - Email - Mailing Lists and Newsletters: Mailchimp alternatives.
At a glance
Sympa quick facts
- Health score
- 66/100 SLOWING
- Stars
- 316
- Last commit
- 3 months ago (Aug 2026)
- Latest release
- 6.2.80, Aug 2026
- Licence
- GPL-2.0
Top alternatives to Sympa
In its own words
The project's README opens: "Sympa is an electronic mailing list manager. It is used to automate list management functions such as subscription, moderation and management of archives. Sympa also manages sending of messages to the lists, and makes it possible to reduce the load on the system. Provided that you have enough memory on your system, Sympa is especially well adapted for big lists."
Why it ranks here
Health score explained
Sympa scores 66/100, #5 of 12 in Communication - Email - Mailing Lists and Newsletters: 18 commits in the last 90 days earn 21.0 of 35 points, the latest release (6.2.80, 3 months ago) earns 25.0 of 25, 316 stars add 10.0 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 14.0 more points.
Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.
- Commit activity biggest shortfall 21.0 / 35
18 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
- Release recency 25.0 / 25
6.2.80 released 3 months ago
- Stars 10.0 / 20
316 stars on GitHub (logarithmic)
- Not archived 10.0 / 10
Repository is active
- Docker support 0.0 / 10
No Docker support advertised
Commit activity
- 18
- Last 90 days
- 63
- Last 12 months
- 3 months ago
- Last push
Ranked #5 of 12 tools in Communication - Email - Mailing Lists and Newsletters by health , between mlmmj (#4) and phpList (#6) .
Details
| Licence | GPL-2.0 |
| Platforms | Perl |
| Latest release | 6.2.80 · 3 months ago |
| Stars | 316 |
| Open issues | 236 |
| Docker | Not advertised |
| Repository | sympa-community/sympa ↗ |
Sympa vs its top 5 alternatives
Active tools that share a category with Sympa (Communication - Email - Mailing Lists and Newsletters), scored on the same five terms.
Sympa: common questions
Is Sympa still maintained?
Sympa had 18 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was 3 months ago; the latest tagged release, 6.2.80, is from 3 months ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.