 After months of research I’ve decided to move all my email lists and auto-responders from Autoresponse Plus over to Aweber. There are several reasons for the move, the main one being time. You see, Autoresponse Plus (ARP for short) is an auto responder script that is installed on your website and you manage it yourself, you have complete control over everything. On the other hand, Aweber is a hosted and managed service that you pay for monthly, no installation and no hosting required.
I love Autoresponse Plus, the flexibility it gave me was priceless, however the time I had to spend on upgrading it, writing custom scripts, and concerning myself with email deliverability was just too much for one guy to handle.
So if you are looking into an autoresponder or you’re unhappy with your current one here are some advantages and disadvantages of both ARP and Aweber.
Auto Response Plus Advantages:
- Complete control over your list and all aspects
- Ability to import and export unlimited subscribers without verified opt-in
- Beautiful easy-to-use interface
- One-time cost
- Flexible with ability to sort, change, and mass edit your subscriber data
- Unlimited autoresponders AND Email address
Aweber Advantages:
- 99% deliverability rate
- Flexible plug-in scripts for capturing ClickBank, Paypal, and other customer data
- Toll-free phone support
- Professional dedicated company handles everything for you
- Unlimited autoresponders
- Very easy to use, no installation required
- Reports and Graph Section
- Templates for HTML emails
- Built-in spam Analyzer for your messages
Autoresponse Plus Disadvantages:
- You are responsible for everything, if something goes wrong you have to fix it yourself or hire someone
- Pay to have custom scripts developed for things like ClickBank or Paypal automatic customer import, aka (parse emails)
- Limited and costly support, you’re mostly on your own
- You get any and all spam complaints directly
- Rarely updated with new features, no clear parent company supporting script
Aweber Disadvantages:
- Limitations for mass editing subscriber data
- Any imported subscribers must verify their subscription before being added to Aweber
Both Aweber and AutoResponsePlus have several great features in common such as personalization of messages, tracking, time-sensitive offer creation, unlimited autoresponders, built-in form generators for web page forms. etc. Both definitely have unique features I wish I could have in the other, however Aweber wins my vote. Having a dedicated company whose sole focus is email deliverability and autoresponder management just can’t be beat, especially when they have a long successful track record.
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Good post Miles.
I wonder, what was your delivery rate with ARP?
I’ve never tried Aweber, but if I’d had a list of at least 10.000 subscribers either they or getresponse would be my choice.
For anyone who is looking another good autoresponder script like ARP, I recommend follow-up mailing list processor pro (FMLP).
Do a search on hotscripts.com
-Joseph
Yeah, I have a lot more than 10,000 subscribers on all my lists so I will be cleaning them up quite a bit before transferring them all.
I don’t know what my delivery rate was with ARP, I assume it was pretty decent actually because my mails always seemed to get through on my several test accounts. My server was/is also not blacklisted anywhere.
Great insight on the two autoresponders. We too use Aweber and it works just fine and their
customer service is excellent just as you say it is.
You mentioned flexible plugin script for capturing Clickbank data. ??
we need to do this …
We have an old membership script that was less than $50 that allowed us to automate
the subscribe function with any autoresponder. even aweber. just by inserting our autoresponders
list name into the field.
Now, with our new amember membership script while far superior in features but it does not
have a place to add our autopresponder address that we can see.
We said all that to say… what do you mean by clickbank plug-ins ??
it sounds like this is exactly what we are looking for as we want all paid members to go into
our member list within Aweber.
===============
Also want to mention that we saw some time ago a website where you offer audio services for marketers.
And want to say your product cover is beautiful!
We have been researching the best option for this, but love the little bar code you have on yours. we are going to purchase photoshop to create our own. (as we think this is the best option) but also wondered if you had any advice for us.
Thank you Miles
P.J.
Hey P.J. Aweber has a section called List Settings, and then a button called Email Parser. You can use the existing ClickBank parser script or do what I did which is create my own which parses the ClickBank invoice email and captures the date of purchase and receipt. Then I just set up a filter that forwards my ClickBank invoice emails to my autoresponder and my normal email address.
I would hire out professional box graphics, creating them on your own can take a long time if you aren’t an expert and anything you can do to save time is worth 5 times the price you pay.
Regarding your comment on Aweber’s 99% deliverability. This is factually incorrect and just something they claim. No independant third-party has ever verified this, I have had clients who used aweber with very low deliverability, I can’t subscribe to any newsletter using aweber with my company domain due to blacklisting of aweber, and I have heard similar problems from others as well.
Email deliverability is a two-way street. A email service provider can not claim a 99% deliverability rate across the board with any integrity. It is more likely that 99% deliverability to people’s junk or spam folder.
Jason,
Deliverability is affected by many factors. Most of which is the reputation of the source of the email (AWeber) as well as the reputation of the content and domains that appear within the email.
You’re going to have delivery problems regardless of where you send from if you’re in the pharmaceutical or gambling industry even when using the strictest of opt-in policies.
Our deliverability metric’s are explained in our FAQ and can easily be verified by 3rd party services.
http://www.aweber.com/faq/search/email%20deliverability
One such tool, that we have developed is Delivery Monitor (http://www.deliverymonitor.com). There are also many other independent 3rd party tools such as ReturnPath, Pivotal Veracity, and others.
I have one for the dissadvantages of ARP…
It’s really hard to find a decent server that will support ARP install and full functionality. I had a great one with Frontier Power Hosting, but then Matt turned it all over to FatJack Hosting.
I’ve had nothing but trouble since the move starting with assigning me a new IP address that was blacklisted with every major eMail carrier out there. It took me weeks to get that fixed and I finally had to move to a new domain name as well to get my mails back in the 80% delivered range.
Then, last week, the entire domain went down including my ARP. It’s been 7 days and the system is still down. I got one contact email on the open “Critical” ticket on day 3 that said they lost a hard drive and were working to restore the domain. It’s now day 7, no response to daily ticket querries (the only way to contact them!) and no access to even the domain to reinstall the system from my own backups.
FatJack’s is the worst domain host on the planet today and I wouldn’t recomend them to my worst enemy. Tell all your readers to stay well clear of FatJack Hosting!
Wes Waddell
PrincessCrafts
P.S. If anyone has suggestions on a new host… I’m in desperate need!
Hi, Wes
Try eziwebsites.com (Cheap Website Hosting)
I’have a ARP running on there servers since v3.1 with no problem…
I have one list with over 10,000 subscribers and a 50-60% open rate, I’m wondering how many I might lose if I move, simply because they don’t confirm.
Hi,
About Aweber and the “Flexible plug-in scripts for capturing ClickBank, Paypal, and other customer data”
Will this or anything you know off would work for an affiliate, or do i have to be a vendor on cb to use this?
Thank you