Email Marketing

I would recommend Omnistar Mailer at http://www.omnistarmailer.com it is similar to Interspire but it is easier to use and priced a lot better. I am pretty sure it can do what you are looking for it to do.

 

Okay, that sounds professional too.

Anyone would like to recommend webhosts who allow 750+ emails per hour to be sent?

 

PHPList is a good email solution. The free version adds a tiny little 'Message Powered by PHPList', the paid version chops it out. It accepts csv uploads to generate your lists.

However if you really want a top program go with Interspire Email Marketer. It's what we use and we've got close to 1 million double-opt in subscribers across our lists. It handles them perfectly, does auto responder sequences, and has a ton of cool features. Only costs a few hundred bucks for a single user license which is all you need.


As for the hosting question, no shared web host will allow 750/hour. Are you absolutely sure you need to send that many? How many people are on your list right now? 750 sends/hour is 18,000/day, or 126,000 sends/week. Do you have 100,000+ members on your list?

What you need to look at for that size is one of these options:

Dedicated Server - you get your own private server with your hosting company. You can do pretty much anything you want to it. Typical dedicated boxes will run you $200-$400/month depending on the company and quality of the server.

Third Party Emailer - use a 3rd party email service provider. The really big one is Exact Target, they had an amazing platform that can do anything you can think of with email. It's quite expensive though (min $5,000/year). Another good one is InfusionSoft, but that's more of a CRM than just an email platform. I've had limited experience with it so far, but it's very flexible and robust and has some really cool stuff, but again it's more of a CRM than a dedicated email platform.

I do NOT recommend AWeber. For one - they will not let you import your list. It's against their terms of service and they won't let you do it (I hated this...I had an AWeber account but refused to use it after I signed up because of this - they don't tell you anywhere in there sales pitches that you can't import lists at all, even if they are valid double opt-in).

 

@Christian Little - Thanks, your response is pretty complete and very targeted towards the solution

Well, yes the list opt-in as my friend says and this is all priorly to help him out while I also learn the steps.

I've used PHPlist too, but it looked a bit complicated to me at first so I decided to use other solutions such as Atomic Sender. However, that doesn't work in Windows 7.

 

I used phpList as well. While the software is good, I wouldn't recommend it for the non-techie. Once you get past the installation, then you have to deal with delivery issues which will require you access to your SMTP server. For example, if you want any chance of delivering to @yahoo.com (which is about 65% of my subscribers), you better know how to set up DKIM and SPF and make the appropriate entries in your DNS records. I know that Microsoft requires SPF for their mail as well. Then you'll have to work with the big boys to get past their bulk mail filters. I know yahoo and AOL both have application forms you must fill out. I don't know about Gmail or some of the others. I applied with Yahoo and never got any response, confirmation, or anything. And I really had no idea if my mails were being delivered. I made several @yahoo.com test accounts and sometimes they would be delivered and sometimes not.

Anyway, it really doesn't matter how many emails you send. It's how many are delivered. And unless you have a full time IT staff to work out all the issues, you're better off buying a service in my opinion.

Good luck,

Drew

 

Thanks for that info... i'll look into it first.