Angela Smith, FreeFuelNationwide.com
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Keith,
If you are still around and have not made a decision yet, let me through in my 3-cents for Aweber. No affiliate links or anything like that. Just the thoughts of one happy customer to someone that sounds like they are in the same boat I was.
I've used MANY different companies and softwares to host my lists over the past 9 years and honestly Aweber is probably the easiest to use AND the most consistent to get my message through.
With:
- the onset of world wide blacklists
- ISP's adding spam killer software to their servers so a business email with your free offer in it may never get to your prospect or customer because you use the word “free” in the subject line
- AOL coming up with their wonderful AOL 8 SPAM button and
- individuals using Spam Arrest, Spam Assassin, Spam Cop and masses of other software to keep out unwanted junk mail
it's a wonder that any email flows down the long tube of the Internet pipe line at all.
With Aweber you get a liaison between you and all the major (and I would expect minor) ISP's to keep their name off of the blacklists which gives you a fighting chance of getting your email through. This is SO IMPORTANT, especially when it comes to AOL, Earthlink, Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN and other major companies like that.
I used to believe that hosting the list on my own server was the best idea, not to mention, least expensive choice. That was until I almost had my domain shut down because one PAYING member of one of my sites forgot they were a PAYING member and complained to their host, who in-turn complained to MY host. Luckily, for me, I had been a customer for many years and my host contacted me to get my side of the story BEFORE they turned off my domain.
Unfortunately, for many people, that is not the case. When it comes to spam complaints you are usually guilty and are NEVER given the chance to prove your innocence.
So, from that day on I decided to host my list elsewhere. Yes, the possibility does exist that I could still be shut down, but it's a whole lot slimmer now than it was.
The second reason I love this company is that everything is so darned easy to do. I didn't have to install anything, I don't have to worry about hiring anyone to fix it if a problem arises and I don't have to worry about upgrading to add more features. When they added the RSS Broadcast capability and all the new HTML templates recently, those were free for me to start using right away.
Yes, they do charge per subscriber. (I'd never pay per email sent or by Kb used per month again.) But I think it's affordable, even when you have 100,000 subscribers it's just $120 per month - $29.95 for the first 10,000 and $9.95 for each additional 10,000 subscribers.) To me that is affordable. I was paying nearly $500 a month when I was with another company.
Anyway, you know where I stand. As I said, I am just one happy customer and don't mind speaking up for a wonderful company... something that is a pretty hard to find now a days.
Good luck in your autoresponder quest.
If you have any questions that I can answer, please feel free to contact me via Ryze Private Message. I'll be very happy to help you any way I can.
To your success,
Angela
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