The term Listserv (styled by the registered trademark licensee, L-Soft International, Inc., as LISTSERV) has been used to refer to electronic mailing list software applications in general, but is more properly applied to a few early instances of such software, which allows a sender to send one email to a list, which then transparently sends it on to the addresses of the subscribers to the list.

The original Listserv software, the Bitnic Listserv (also known