I currently have over 80,000 subscribers and growing, so there's a desperate need to send out attractive newsletters. I've been looking at hosted mail list solutions, and I've found that pricing in the 75,000-100,000 range is anywhere from $1400/mo. (SubscriberMail) to $89.60/mo. (Aweber). Does anyone have experience with any of the following hosted solutions? -Aweber -Ezine Director -MailerMailer -Streamsend -Bighip -Mymailgenie -mUrgent -eROI -ExactTarget -Email Labs -SubscriberMail -Biglist -Constant Contact -Inbox Interactive -iPost I'd really like to use someone with a high deliverablity rate, web tracking and dynamic list filters. Other than reviewing quotes and slick websites I can't find any help on finding solutions that are well worth the price! Which is the best bang for the buck?
Aweber are awesome. The delivery rates are second to none and the best in the industry. Plus they give you direct protection against spam complaints (presuming you are using double opt-in) which is awesome considering the ammount of aol users that just hit their spam button. I get about 3 spam complaints per week because aol users forget they are subscribed. annoying but part of internet life. I havent used anyone else because I havent needed to. Brad
Frankly - I would just bring the whole thing in-house. I have a dedicated server costing US$130 per month. I paid a server firm (about) $400 to optimise it for sending emails (www.rackaid.com). I use an email management program that cost $200 to handle the email sending and database management (www.activecampaign.com/12all/). Our platform sends some 30,000 emails each morning in about 90 minutes which is fast enough for us.
We've thought about doing it in-house, but there are some problems with that. We don't really have the time or personnel to manage and track our own campaigns. We sell retail merch for big name beer brands. We'd prefer that the subscribers safelisted for alcohol-related products be receiving our emails, so there's some concern with that as well. If it's coming directly from the beer company (where the server is housed) the emails may be considered SPAM in most cases. Seems like most of Aweber's clients are satisfied with them. Their pricing is stellar and the fact that you can have unlimited capaigns, follow-ups and newsletters is huge. I didn't find a strong retail presence with their current client listing. I'm curious if they are able to do any tracking. Their site doesn't mention a unique domain name either. I'd like to see some samples of the HTML newsletters that people have done through them. Does anyone know about whitelisted "bonded sender" compliant solutions?