Mailing Lists

A mailing list is a single address at your domain that delivers a copy to everyone in the group, and unlike the other fan-out features it can be made public so people subscribe and unsubscribe themselves through a link.

Mail sent to the list address is copied to every current member, including members at other providers. That makes lists the right tool for a newsletter to a small audience, a members' announcement address, or any group whose membership changes without you being asked.

Lists Compared With the Alternatives

Feature	External members	Self-service subscribe	Shared read state
Mailing list	Yes	Yes, when public	No
Distribution group	Yes	No	No
Forwarder	Yes	No	No
Shared inbox	No, members must be mailboxes	No	Yes

Both lists and distribution groups deliver to addresses outside your account. If the membership is fixed and you want to manage it yourself, a distribution group is simpler. If you need people to be able to join and leave on their own, only a mailing list does that.

Creating a List

Sign in to KPanel and click Email in the left sidebar.
Open the Mailing Lists tab.
Click Create list.
In List address, enter the full address, for example team@yourdomain.com.
Optionally add a Description, for example "All staff emails". This is what the list is called in the panel.
Optionally add Initial members. Press Enter or comma after each address to turn it into a chip.
Click to create.

Mailing Lists page in KPanel

You need at least one mailbox on the domain you are creating the list at. If you have none, creation is refused with "You don't have any mailboxes on that domain."

Creating, deleting and changing a list requires the Owner or Admin role on the account.

Managing Members

Click Manage on a list card to open the list detail page. The members table shows the address, a role pill and the date each member joined. Every member has the same standing: the role column is informational, and there is no moderator or owner tier inside a list.

To add someone, type their address into Add member email and click Add.
To remove someone, use Remove on their row.

Members can be at any domain. An external address on a mailing list receives mail normally, which is the main functional difference from a distribution group.

Public Lists and the Subscribe Link

A list is private by default. On the list detail page there is a Public/Private pill and a toggle button reading Make public or Make private.

When a list is private, the panel tells you "Enable public access to generate a shareable subscribe link."

When you make it public, the panel shows a link and the note "Share this link so anyone can subscribe:". Put that link on your site, in a footer, or at the bottom of the mail you send. Anyone who opens it can subscribe to the list without you doing anything.

Every member also gets their own unsubscribe link, which is unique to them. Removing themselves through that link takes effect immediately: the very next message to the list skips them. The panel shows them as having left rather than deleting the record outright, so you keep an accurate history of who was on the list and when.

That link is delivered when somebody joins, not in every message. Whoever subscribes sees it on the subscribe page as soon as they submit, and it is emailed to them at the same time. Somebody you add yourself gets the same email. The link never expires, which is why both places tell the member to keep it.

The reason it is not repeated at the bottom of each message is worth knowing, because it decides what you should put in the mail you send. A list message is passed on exactly as it was written, so the member sees your original sender name, subject and body untouched. Nothing is rewritten per recipient, and a per-recipient unsubscribe footer would have to be. If you want an unsubscribe link in the body of a campaign, put one there yourself: you can see every member's personal link on the list detail page.

Subscribe and unsubscribe are rate limited per visitor to keep a public form from being used as a nuisance. If somebody reports "too many requests, please wait a minute" while trying to subscribe, they have simply hit that limit and can try again shortly.

A public list is genuinely public: anyone with the link can add an address. Do not make a list public if the membership itself is sensitive, and never make an internal everyone@ list public. Publishing a subscribe link for a list whose address is also used for internal announcements is the fastest way to leak internal mail to strangers.

Posting to a List

Mail sent to the list address is delivered to every current member, normally within a couple of minutes. There is no moderation queue, no held-message review, and no restriction on who is allowed to post, so anyone who knows the address can mail the list.

One thing does get filtered: a message our spam filter classifies as junk is not passed on to members. It stays in the list's own store so nothing is lost, and you can see it there. That is spam filtering, not a posting rule, and it is the only case where a message to the list address is not fanned out.

That is fine for a small internal list and a real risk for a published one. If your list address is public, keep it a broadcast address that only you write to and tell members to reply to a person rather than the list, or move the discussion somewhere purpose-built.

Keep genuine marketing campaigns off mailing lists and mailboxes alike. A Kapsule mailbox is built for correspondence, and bulk campaigns need proper list hygiene, bounce processing and unsubscribe handling that a dedicated bulk sending service provides. See Email Sending Limits for the caps that apply and why campaign traffic trips them.

Deleting a List

From the list card, use the delete control. The confirmation is explicit:

"Mail sent to the list address will bounce. Members are detached. This cannot be undone." If people rely on the address, put a forwarder on it before you delete the list so incoming mail still reaches somebody.

Troubleshooting

Members stopped receiving mail after I removed one address. Removing one member does not touch the others: the member list is read fresh for every message, so a change affects exactly the address you changed and takes effect on the next message. If a list drops to zero members, the address stops accepting mail altogether rather than collecting it where nobody will read it, so add a member back before you expect mail to arrive again.

A message to the list never reached anyone. Open the list and check for a banner saying the list is not receiving mail. That means the address was not accepted, which almost always means it is already in use as a mailbox, a shared inbox or a distribution group. An address can only be one of those things.

Subscribers are not getting the confirmation they expect. There is no double opt-in confirmation step: subscribing through the public link adds the address straight away. If you need confirmed opt-in for compliance reasons, collect addresses through your own form and add them to the list yourself.

List mail is landing in spam. Mail from a list carries your domain's authentication, so this is a domain deliverability question. Run the Deliverability check on a mailbox at that domain and work through Why Are My Emails Going to Spam?. Lists make this worse than one-to-one mail does, because a single send to many recipients at the same provider is exactly the pattern filters look at hardest.

Somebody is mailing the list who should not be. There is no sender restriction available. Change the list address, tell your members the new one, and do not publish it.

Can I add somebody who has a Kapsule mailbox on a different account? No. Any other address is fine, on your own domains or anywhere else, but we will not add an address that belongs to another Kapsule customer, because mail to it is delivered straight into their mailbox. Ask them to subscribe themselves through your public link, or to forward their mail to an address you control and add that.

A member says they unsubscribed but is still getting mail. Check whether they are on the list twice under two addresses, and check whether they are also a member of a distribution group or a destination on a forwarder that points at the same content.

I want replies to stay in one place. A list fans out copies, so replies scatter. Use a shared inbox for anything that needs a single conversation thread the team works together.