ActiveCampaign email marketing software. Don't waste your money!
Okay people, if you're thinking or planning to switch over to hosted email marketing solution, then please don't buy ActiveCampaign. Had nothing but trouble over the past year. An software is suppose to solve a problem, not create one.
I switched over from using shared ESPs like aweber and getreponse sometime ago. I now host my list. There are three steps involved hosting your own list:
1. You need an smtp relay service for sending emails. If your email send is getting big (100k emails a month or more), then you should looking into getting a dedicate IP with a reputable smtp service. Sendgrid and Smtp.com are the two best. I have been with sendgrid for 2 years. No issues.
2. You need a email marketing/management software.
3. You need a good server to host the software and list. These software are resource intensive so, at minimum you need a VPS server.
I have activecampaing hosted on my VPS and a list of 40k subscribers. I can't send an email campaign to my entire list at once. I have to split my sends into four campaigns of 10k each and I'm able send all four campaigns at once. Very weird.
I spent an hour with my hosting provider to see if I need more memory or need to upgrade to dedicated server all together to handle the request. But we found that on my VPS when I'm sending multiple (4) campaigns to 10k subscribers each at the same time, I don't even use half of the resources on my VPS. But for some reason, I can't send a campaign to all 40k subscribers at once. The activecampaing log says I have mysql time out error. However, we saw, there were no mysql, apache or PHP errors on the server. The software just halts. This is a case of poorly written software.
When I explained activecampaign about the this issue they say to resolve the issue with your host. They can't do anything.
I'm now in the market for an alternative. I'm looking into Interspire and Autoreponder Plus. I don't want to rush into buying either of those before I know which software is efficiently written and comes with good support.
Anyone with experience with either software, please comment.
I switched over from using shared ESPs like aweber and getreponse sometime ago. I now host my list. There are three steps involved hosting your own list:
1. You need an smtp relay service for sending emails. If your email send is getting big (100k emails a month or more), then you should looking into getting a dedicate IP with a reputable smtp service. Sendgrid and Smtp.com are the two best. I have been with sendgrid for 2 years. No issues.
2. You need a email marketing/management software.
3. You need a good server to host the software and list. These software are resource intensive so, at minimum you need a VPS server.
I have activecampaing hosted on my VPS and a list of 40k subscribers. I can't send an email campaign to my entire list at once. I have to split my sends into four campaigns of 10k each and I'm able send all four campaigns at once. Very weird.
I spent an hour with my hosting provider to see if I need more memory or need to upgrade to dedicated server all together to handle the request. But we found that on my VPS when I'm sending multiple (4) campaigns to 10k subscribers each at the same time, I don't even use half of the resources on my VPS. But for some reason, I can't send a campaign to all 40k subscribers at once. The activecampaing log says I have mysql time out error. However, we saw, there were no mysql, apache or PHP errors on the server. The software just halts. This is a case of poorly written software.
When I explained activecampaign about the this issue they say to resolve the issue with your host. They can't do anything.
I'm now in the market for an alternative. I'm looking into Interspire and Autoreponder Plus. I don't want to rush into buying either of those before I know which software is efficiently written and comes with good support.
Anyone with experience with either software, please comment.
[WSO] Stop Wasting Your Time In Email! How I went from 297 to 7 Emails per day
I suppose you could call it the honest john of review sites!