Is Icontact VERY expensive or is it just me???

Have you discussed this with Aweber, Lee? Many of us here use single opt-in with Aweber (and it's something they still offer now to new customers). :confused:

I don't blame you. I've never looked at their pricing but that sounds pretty horrendous? Is that the only sort of pricing package they offer?

I use I-contact, but I've never exceeded the message limit with my account. I see your limited to 30,000 messages in your current plan. I mainly use it for autoresponder emails and don't do broadcast emails all that often.

iContact let you send 6x the maximum number of subs on your current plan per month. So if you're on the 2,500 - 5,000 plan then you can send 30,000 emails a month. After that you have to upgrade or pay per send.

I'm not sure where you got the idea from that email on that scale is free, presumably just because Aweber don't charge incrementally for it. Make no mistake, it costs money to send each email. There's the servers to send it, the bandwidth, the electricity bill, relationships with ISPs (and the damage caused by bad emails) etc.

The 5,000 sub plan is $47 (including 30,000 emails) and even if you spend another $100 on per to send charges, which would be a LOT of email to your subs, if you can't make far more than $150 off the list in a month (when you're contacting each subscriber several times a week) then it's not the incremental cost of the list that's killing you, it's that the list is rubbish and you may as well start over.

Moral of the story, you don't get rich by cutting costs.

That reason would be to prevent getting your arse, along with the arse of aWeber, smacked by the courts over suits related to unsolicited commercial spam. Now, keep in mind, someone bringing a suit doesn't even have to win to put a financial hurt on you. They just have to sue you.

I know some on here, like Alexa, advocates using a single opt-in, but IMHO if you are in the US or in any country on friendly terms with the US, using a single opt-in is just not worth it.

First, those who don't do the 2nd part of the opt-in process probably aren't that serious about the service, or product, or info. Second, all it takes is one pissed off email subscriber and you will regret that you ever got into IM.

It just isn't worth it.


As for iContact being expensive, note that they received a huge venture capital infusion either last year or the year before. Venture Capital firms expect large returns, and thus price gauging.

You will often see internet sites that are free or barely monetized get VC funded, and then bam, you have to pay up the nose.

Hi Lee

I almost went with iContact. I didn't see the tiny note stating "Please note: Basic plans include sending up to six times your subscriber limit." near the bottom of the pricing page (and the smallest text on the page). They have a a Full iContact Pricing List page also which doesn't mention the sending limit or the price for additional mailings. The way I found out was I was watching the videos and on one of the control panel views I saw something like - You have sent x number of emails and you have x number left. I also noticed they had an upgrade your account link right there on the panel. While they were showing how to use that panel I saw that they conveniently didn't mention anything about sending limits or additional costs. I found the note on the pricing page after the video. I doubt many people watch all the videos first.

The Full iContact Pricing List page shows up in the Google search in the main search result where you have the organic listing with multiple page selection clustered right below it. But if you go to the site they don't have a tab or link to access that page as far as I can see.

They also have iContactPlus and on that site you won't find any prices. They want you to Call, Use Live Chat or Fill Out a Web Form For Details.

They might be fine for some people but the way I see it they make only one mention in text about the limited emails you can send at the bottom of the page. Using the smallest text on the page. If they wanted to see it they wouldn't do that and they lost my business because of it.

I use iContact for a few offilne businesses specifically for the lack of double opt in. They can collect customer info via sign up forms at their store and just enter it in later directly into iContact. All of them send at most 1x a week anyway so its n ever been a problem but I did see the 6x mailing limitation before I signed up.

did they make this change recently?

I've only seen these type of limitations on big lists of like 200k-300k+ because of the volume.

It's not a matter of money, because on a 5k list the last thing that you should be worrying about is $150/mo...just weird that they would put that at such a low sub count.