I been using Aweber for years, and I never really liked it's pricing system "paying per users and not emails sent", but i really had no options. Until this http://www.squidoo.com/amazon-simple-email-service Amazon "i use for S3 and CloudFront" Announced a new Simple Email Service and are entering the email marketing arena. But unlike Aweber and Constant Contact they are charging per email $.10 per thousand "plus bandwidth $.10 per GB" What's your opinion? Could this change the game of email marketing??
Competition can only be good for us as consumers of the product. But as an email marketer the most important facet of a service has to be deliverability. If people don't receive your emails, they obviously can't buy what you are selling. Aweber is at the top of the deliverability list, but as you said the price gets steep quite quickly. I will be anxious to see how amazon handles the deliverability issue.
dyorn you're absolutely right, competition is a great thing. Most of the email marketing provider use the same system "pay per emails". I always wondered about this. Just didn't seem fair when you factor in usages vs just hosting a list. I doubt Amazon will have any problem insuring deliverability, They are Amazon! Also i personally feel deliverability is more of a marketing term used by email marketing companies. I love Aweber for it's easy opt froms, tracking, and easy email opt-out, but i never had a problem sending emails straight through smtp "on domains name less then 1 month old". Matter of fact i had a forum i created and user would receive alert through emails "just like DigitalPoint.com", and all of the emails went through, and i even had to increase my stmp relay amount. At that time i was sending way more email from the forum then through Aweber. Also spam filters have gotten very smart, so they no longer flag mail that isn't spam. Aweber is great, but i have also been doing regular email captures "not through Aweber" and send emailing using stmp with no problem "also Wordpress has two plugin that accomplish what Aweber and Constant Contact" I mean honestly, you email has to really smell of spam to be flag, and i have received more spam through Aweber opt-in through most over email subscriptions "I am a affiliate marketer looking for info LOL". I'm really look forward to a change. Pay per email, and not a monthly email list rental fee. Also some of my niche sites are seasonal, and it sucks paying for the list during month i don't sent any emails, and list creep "increasing by 500-1000 really ads up".
Any competition to ConstantContact is welcomed by me! I can't tell you how many times I've had to do the famous: "LIST REVIEW" with them. I am almost completely moved over to aweber now and then i'll say....GOOD RIDDINS!