CommunityLists is operated as a service to member organisations of Computing Assistance Support & Education Inc.

Currently there are no charges for using the service. The establishment of the service and the first year of operational costs have been met with the generous support of the auDA Foundation.

The service operates from our own equipment which allows us to maintain high standards of service at low costs. We believe this will allow the project to remain free of additional costs well in to the future.

CommunityLists uses the very popular and feature rich Mailman open-source software to operate mailing lists. Some of the features this software provides to list owners and subscribers are:

• Web based list administration for nearly all tasks, including list configuration, moderation (post approvals), management of user accounts.
• Web based subscribing and unsubscribing, and user configuration management. Users can temporarily disable their accounts, select digest modes, hide their email addresses from other members, etc.
• A customizable home page for each mailing list
• Per list privacy features, such as closed-subscriptions, private archives
• Configurable (per list and per-user) delivery mode
  • Regular (immediate) delivery
  • MIME digest
  • Plain text format digests
• Integrated bounce detection within an extensible framework. Automatic disposition of bouncing addresses (disable, unsubscribe).
• Integrated spam filters
• Built in web based archiving
• Integrated auto replies
• Majordomo style email based commands
• Multiple list owners and moderators are possible
• Compatible with most web servers and browsers
• High performance mail delivery, with a scalable architecture.