# Using Discourse instead of an email mailing list
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298
**Category:** Site Management
**Tags:** explanation
**Created:** [12월 15, 2016, 1:52오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298 "2016-12-15T13:52:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Discourse)
#### Post date: [12월 15, 2016, 1:52오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/1 "2016-12-15T13:52:00Z")
> 🔖 This topic explains the advantages of using Discourse over traditional email mailing lists for group conversations and community management.
>
> 🙋 Required user level: All users
Discourse is a modern platform designed for group conversations that offers significant advantages over traditional email mailing lists. While email remains effective for one-on-one or small group communications, Discourse excels at handling larger, ongoing discussions. Here’s why you should consider using Discourse for your community:
## Improved navigation and organization
### Linking and cross-referencing
Discourse makes it easy to link between different topics, creating a web of interconnected discussions. This feature allows for:
- Easy navigation between related conversations
- Automatic notifications when a topic is referenced elsewhere
- A clear list of incoming links for each topic
### Categorization and tracking
Unlike the challenge of managing multiple mailing lists, Discourse offers:
- Categories with granular tracking controls
- A dedicated “Unread” page for topics you’re following
- A “New” page for brand new topics
- A “Top” page to highlight popular discussions
## Enhanced user experience
### Lower barrier to entry
Discourse offers flexible onboarding options:
- Social logins (Google, Facebook, GitHub, Discord, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Single Sign-On with custom login providers
- Invitation links
- Allowlisting of company email domains
### Moderation controls
Prevent spam and manage user behavior with:
- Crowd-powered [moderation flags](https://meta.discourse.org/t/flagging-a-post-for-moderator-attention/32783)
- Customizable trust levels
- Automated spam detection
### Reduced noise
Discourse encourages meaningful interactions by:
- Using “[Likes](https://meta.discourse.org/t/understanding-likes-in-discourse/30803)” to acknowledge agreement without unnecessary comments
- Allowing users to edit their posts, reducing follow-up corrections
## Improved searchability and archiving
### On-site search
Discourse offers powerful search capabilities:
- Full-text search across all content
- Advanced search options to filter by user, date, category, and more
- Similar topic suggestions to prevent duplicate discussions
### SEO-friendly content
For public forums, Discourse enhances discoverability:
- Search engine-friendly format
- Internal and external linking improves SEO
## Flexibility and integration
### Email integration
Discourse can still cater to email-centric users:
- Configure incoming email to allow email-based interactions
- Optional “Mailing list mode” for users who prefer email-only engagement
### Mobile and PWA support
Access your Discourse forums on-the-go:
- Discourse can be installed as a Progressive Web App (PWA) on mobile devices
- Receive push notifications on all instances, including self-hosted
- Use the DiscourseHub app to view new and unread counts across multiple Discourse instances
### RSS feeds
Discourse provides RSS feeds for various pages:
- Append “.rss” to topic URLs for individual topic feeds
- Category-specific RSS feeds available
- See [this guide](https://meta.discourse.org/t/finding-discourse-rss-feeds/264134) for a complete overview of the available RSS feeds
## Considerations when switching from mailing lists
While Discourse offers numerous advantages, consider the following when transitioning:
- Discourse requires more substantial hosting resources compared to simple mailing lists
- Some users may need time to adapt to the new interface and workflow
- For very small or early-stage projects, a full Discourse instance might be excessive
## Importing mailing list content
If you decide to switch to Discourse, you can import your existing mailing list content. For guidance on importing mailing lists, visit our [mailing list import guide](https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-mailing-lists-mbox-listserv-google-groups-emails/79773).
## Additional resources
- [Foreman :: Discourse, 6 months on: Impact Assessment](https://theforeman.org/2018/07/discourse-6-months-on-impact-assesment.html)
- [Discourse vs. email -- Pros & Cons](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-vs-email-pros-cons/54232)
- [Finding Discourse RSS feeds](https://meta.discourse.org/t/finding-discourse-rss-feeds/264134)
> Last edited by @hugh 2024-08-02T04:38:09Z
>
> Last checked by @hugh 2024-08-02T04:38:15Z
>
> > **Check document**
> >
> > Perform check on document:
---
### Author:  [@pne](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pne)
#### Post date: [12월 17, 2016, 11:26오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/2 "2016-12-17T11:26:26Z")
Another mailing list pro is: all mailing lists end up in one mailbox.
Depending on the user’s workflow, they may read them all in one place or filter them out to various labels or folders.
Discourse may have several _related_ mailing-list equivalents in one place, but that’s generally just from one company.
If I’m interested in horse-riding **and** leap seconds **and** 13th-century Dutch art history, I’d probably rather fire up one email client in the morning (which I do anyway) than have to visit umpteen separate Discourse instances hosted on various websites.
I think what might be useful would be something like Usenet: a decentralised one-stop shop for all sorts of content, so the horse riders, leap-second buffs, and art history lovers could all be at the same place – they would then simply choose which categories to watch and which ones to ignore.
---
### Author:  [@Rob\_Nicholson](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Rob_Nicholson)
#### Post date: [12월 17, 2016, 11:37오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/3 "2016-12-17T11:37:42Z")
The new app for mobile does something similar to this in that all it really does is show the new/unread counts for each of your Discourse forums. Not sure if there is a web portal that does something similar? The stack exchange group of sites ended up having one notification box didn’t they which helped me picking up on posts across multiple system but I don’t think it had a shared front end portal.
Does Discourse have an RSS feed? I use Inoreader these days and it would be handy to have my various Discourse feeds in there as well.
---
### Author:  [@pne](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pne)
#### Post date: [12월 17, 2016, 12:02오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/4 "2016-12-17T12:02:48Z")
> [@Rob\_Nicholson](#):
>
> all it really does is shown the new/unread counts for each of your Discourse forums
This just works for hosted forums, right? So that would only partially help if one is also interested in Discourse forums that are self-hosted by other users/companies/groups/etc.
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [12월 17, 2016, 12:57오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/5 "2016-12-17T12:57:17Z")
Counts and basic functionality is fine, push notifications are omitted
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [12월 17, 2016, 3:35오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/6 "2016-12-17T15:35:57Z")
Indeed, but discourse will email you posts if you want it to.
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### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [12월 17, 2016, 8:52오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/7 "2016-12-17T20:52:29Z")
> [@Rob\_Nicholson](#):
>
> Does Discourse have an RSS feed?
Many pages do. Try appending “.rss” to a URL eg.
[Using Discourse instead of an email mailing list](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-vs-email-mailing-lists/54298.rss)
[Discourse Meta - Latest topics](https://meta.discourse.org/latest.rss)
---
### Author:  [@pne](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pne)
#### Post date: [12월 18, 2016, 6:02오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/8 "2016-12-18T06:02:01Z")
Also things such as categories, e.g. [https://meta.discourse.org/c/faq.rss](https://meta.discourse.org/c/faq.rss)
---
### Author:  [@xiasummer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/xiasummer)
#### Post date: [2월 10, 2017, 7:51오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/9 "2017-02-10T19:51:14Z")
A mailing list like google group has many good propertities.
If you want to make discourse compete the Mail list. You need at least these propertities:
### For open groups:
- The group can be managed by many people. Like anyone can add or delete themselves all by themselves.
- So The group names must be presented somewhere.
- The discussion should be emailed to the email box, at least optional. **And, I believe the mail should be from the sender, not from [noreply.discourse.org](http://noreply.discourse.org) or other public mail box.**
- People can choose to post to someone in the list, or post to the group.
- Some of the good topics should be presented to Discourse, while some should just be a notification or other short messages that should **NOT** be presented to the discourse.
###For private Groups, there should be one or a few managers.
- How should we present there private groups? How should the Manager manage the groups? All big problems.
# Discourse is not so mature to replace mail-lists.
I think we should devote great effort to solves all these problems first. Now is not the time for marketing.
---
### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [2월 10, 2017, 10:06오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/10 "2017-02-10T22:06:09Z")
> [@xiasummer](#):
>
> The group can be managed by many people. Like anyone can add or delete themselves all by themselves.
Doesn’t Discourse allow that too, but with even greater granularity?
> [@xiasummer](#):
>
> So The group names must be presented somewhere.
I don’t understand what you mean by this.
> [@xiasummer](#):
>
> The discussion should be emailed to the email box, at least optional.
Like we do?
> [@xiasummer](#):
>
> And, I believe the mail should be from the sender, not from [noreply.discourse.org](http://noreply.discourse.org) or other public mail box.
I can’t say I agree with that one. This is how broken, messy email chains happen.
> [@xiasummer](#):
>
> People can choose to post to someone in the list, or post to the group.
Could you explain further? What is “the group” in this case?
> [@xiasummer](#):
>
> Some of the good topics should be presented to Discourse, while some should just be a notification or other short messages that should NOT be presented to the discourse.
Also don’t understand this one.
> [@xiasummer](#):
>
> How should we present there private groups? How should the Manager manage the groups? All big problems.
Just require logins? What’s the big problem?
---
### Author:  [@pacharanero](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pacharanero)
#### Post date: [3월 29, 2017, 3:54오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/11 "2017-03-29T15:54:29Z")
@erlend_sh this is a really good article and covers some of the points I often have to make to people when I’m explaining why they need a forum as opposed to several mailing lists. I work primarily in the National Health Service in the UK, where email is used for everything (unless a fax machine can be used), and therefore people are literally _drowning_ in emails, when there are so much better ways of handling and sharing information such as (but not limited to) Discourse forums. Most of the user-land resistance comes from a primal fear that you will increase that email volume. My contention is that if you know everything is archived on the forum you can simply delete the notifications or switch them off.
One killer feature of fora over mailing lists that you missed out is the **access to ALL of the messaging history** that you get when you join a forum. With older style ‘listserver’ mailing lists you only have whatever history you’ve saved in your email client.
This messaging history may well contain the answer to your question, so you can search, find your answer, and you don’t even need to post your n00b question. (If you had posted that n00b question on the mailing list, people would bark back at you ‘THAT question again? Wasn’t that answered just a few weeks ago?’ anyway, so if you can find the existing post it’s an advantage)
Admittedly, with some ‘mailing lists’ such as Google Groups you can search the messaging history to a degree, but this isn’t they way most people normally interact with the forum, so I think fewer people than you think would know/bother to do this.
Marcus
---
### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [3월 29, 2017, 4:15오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/12 "2017-03-29T16:15:47Z")
Thanks for pointing that out. I added a paragraph under “Search friendly archive that prevents repetition” including a showcase of our “Similar topic” JIT notification. Let me know if you have something to add to that.
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### Author:  [@tophee](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tophee)
#### Post date: [3월 29, 2017, 7:27오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/13 "2017-03-29T19:27:37Z")
> [@pacharanero](#):
>
> If you had posted that n00b question on the mailing list, people would bark back at you ‘THAT question again? Wasn’t that answered just a few weeks ago?’
Though on certain discourse forums this will still happen to you 😉 The difference is, of course, that on discourse you have a chance of avoiding it, provided you know the right search terms.
---
### Author:  [@Rob\_Nicholson](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Rob_Nicholson)
#### Post date: [3월 30, 2017, 11:44오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/14 "2017-03-30T23:44:19Z")
Over on the CAMRA Discourse forums, an attempt has been made to placate those very familiar and happy with mailing lists by saying you can make Discourse work like a mailing list.
Personally I feel this is a mistake as said members will never learn about the advantages of working in the much richer web interface.
For me the _biggest_ plus of a forum is that I can edit my reply after posting. I’m crap at proof-reading before hand so often spot a typo.
And isn’t the story from Colin in the (UK) national health service a common one?
---
### Author:  [@downey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/downey)
#### Post date: [4월 17, 2017, 10:34오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/15 "2017-04-17T22:34:46Z")
> [@Rob\_Nicholson](#):
>
> you can make Discourse work like a mailing list
Sure, but there’s always the “extra features” of the web interface that will always be there, drawing people back and tempting them to check out the web UI. I’ve seen many people, originally “stubborn” and refusing to use the web, eventually switch over because the overall UX was so much better. Maybe not everyone, but it definitely happens. (Plus, I’m a big believer in the “meet people where they are” philosophy of building community.)
---
### Author:  [@fedorov](https://meta.discourse.org/u/fedorov)
#### Post date: [10월 26, 2019, 1:35오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/16 "2019-10-26T01:35:24Z")
Discourse의 몇 가지 추가 장점도 언급하고 싶습니다. 이전에는 언급되지 않았던 것들이에요:
- 매우 포괄적인 사용 통계 보고 인터페이스
- "좋아요"와 “해결” 기능을 통해 더 많은 참여를 유도하는 직관적이고 몰입감 있는 사용자 피드백 시스템
- YouTube, GitHub 등 외부 제품과의 통합을 돕고 커뮤니티 연결 및 사용자 참여를 강화하는 플러그인
- 효과적인 모더레이션/스팸 필터링 엔진
---
### Author:  [@hellekin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hellekin)
#### Post date: [12월 5, 2021, 7:48오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/17 "2021-12-05T19:48:02Z")
LibreHosters에서 이메일을 통해 Discourse를 사용하는 방법에 대한 짧은 가이드를 작성했습니다. 빠진 부분이 있을까요?
[https://talk.libreho.st/t/how-to-use-discourse-for-mailing-list-dwellers/519](https://talk.libreho.st/t/how-to-use-discourse-for-mailing-list-dwellers/519)
---
### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [12월 5, 2021, 9:35오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/18 "2021-12-05T21:35:16Z")
이것은 실제로 작동하는 메일링 리스트와 실제로 작동하는 포럼 간의 차이보다는, 공유 서버에서 메일링 리스트의 이메일 전송 성공률을 보장하는 것이 얼마나 어려운지 실무적으로 체득한 경험에 가깝습니다. Discourse를 Mailgun과 함께 사용하면 이메일 알림의 전송 성공률을 높이는 것이 훨씬 쉬워 보이며, 어쨌든 사용자가 이메일 수신에만 전적으로 의존하지 않고 온라인으로 포럼을 방문하기 때문에 그다지 큰 문제가 되지도 않습니다. 이것은 제 개인적인 경험입니다.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [1월 13, 2022, 8:08오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/19 "2022-01-13T20:08:27Z")
> [@Jonathan5](#):
>
> 실제로 공유 서버에서 메일링 리스트 이메일의 도달률을 확보하는 것은 쉽지 않은 일이라는 것을 경험적으로 알게 되었습니다.
그렇죠, @tshenry @simon 이메일 도달률 문제는 _극도로_ 어려운 문제입니다.
---
### Author:  [@MikeNolan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/MikeNolan)
#### Post date: [6월 15, 2023, 4:05오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-instead-of-an-email-mailing-list/54298/21 "2023-06-15T04:05:42Z")
일부 콘텐츠에 접근하거나 게시물을 작성하거나 특정 기능을 사용하려면 사용자에게 로그인을 요구하는 경우, Discourse는 이메일 전달성 문제를 근본적으로 해결하지는 않습니다. 단순히 문제 발생 빈도를 줄일 뿐입니다. 사용자의 초기 설정이나 비밀번호 업데이트를 위해 여전히 일부 이메일을 전달할 수 있어야 하기 때문입니다.
제 경험(30년 이상의 이메일 관리자 경력)에 따르면, 이메일 전달 문제를 자주 다루지 않아도 되는 경우, 상황이 변하는 것을 알아차리지 못할 수도 있습니다. (그리고 상황은 자주 변합니다. 예를 들어 ISP가 운영 규칙을 변경하는 경우 등입니다.)
대량 메일링 리스트는 다른 유형의 문제를 발생시키며, 이메일을 통한 답변이나 주제 생성을 허용하는 것도 마찬가지입니다.
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