GetResponse Servers Down Again?

22 replies
Hey, guys,

Is it just me or do you also think that the people at Getresponse.com are REALLY dropping the ball on all of us. Maybe they're just sick of this internet marketing thing - maybe they're looking to sell the company.

Their servers are now down. app.getresponse.com

Add to that their sh*tty user interface (and user experience), add to it the fact their whole support staff is OFFICIALLY useless (chat people are clueless, email people take months to answer questions).

It's a mess.

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if they sell the company in a year or so.
#getresponse #servers
  • Profile picture of the author colorado1850
    I was just about to write the same question. Looks like they are down to me. No news yet on Twitter etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Tai
    What's more, they NEVER report any problems in their "status" page... they just play dumb as if nothing is happening.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeff Baxter
    Yes it's pretty sad. I think it's about to time I give aweber another chance...
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    • Profile picture of the author cotum
      You beat me to it - I was going to set up three newsletters and a new autoresponder - but can't do that now because they won't run their business correctly.

      I also suspect their delivery rate is way down the past year or two. I have had regular customers not ordering anything. When I ask where they've been they tell me that haven't been receiving any messages.

      Any suggestions for a new place? I have a list around 17,000 to import, it's all double opt-in.
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      • Profile picture of the author Paul Tai
        Originally Posted by cotum View Post

        I also suspect their delivery rate is way down the past year or two. I have had regular customers not ordering anything. When I ask where they've been they tell me that haven't been receiving any messages.

        Any suggestions for a new place? I have a list around 17,000 to import, it's all double opt-in.
        When it comes to the delivery... they've been marked as spam so many times. They got black-listed many times at the URIBL list; now, they're marked as "grey."

        I think Aweber is an obvious choice. Mailchimp is also an option.

        Before you sign up, tell them that you need that list uploaded without the double-optin message... if they apply double-optin again on that list, you'll probably lose half of it. The subscribers already confirmed, so don't ask them to confirm again.
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        • Profile picture of the author cotum
          Originally Posted by Paul Tai View Post

          When it comes to the delivery... they've been marked as spam so many times. They got black-listed many times at the URIBL list; now, they're marked as "grey."

          I think Aweber is an obvious choice. Mailchimp is also an option.

          Before you sign up, tell them that you need that list uploaded without the double-optin message... if they apply double-optin again on that list, you'll probably lose half of it. The subscribers already confirmed, so don't ask them to confirm again.
          Thanks, but I'd never ask them to confirm again!
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  • Profile picture of the author Javisito
    It's down for me as well. However I do not think going ahead and complain about it is the way to go. Last time it was down there was a DDOS attack.

    However I noticed a lower deliverability as well.

    Has anyone split tested Aweber and Getresponse about this?

    Considering moving as well.
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Tai
      Originally Posted by Javisito View Post

      It's down for me as well. However I do not think going ahead and complain about it is the way to go. Last time it was down there was a DDOS attack.

      However I noticed a lower deliverability as well.

      Has anyone split tested Aweber and Getresponse about this?

      Considering moving as well.
      I also think that staying silent isn't the way to go either. This is what forums are for.

      I didn't split test it yet.
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      • Profile picture of the author Javisito
        Originally Posted by Paul Tai View Post

        I also think that staying silent isn't the way to go either. This is what forums are for.

        I didn't split test it yet.
        Of course not we're all loosing money but we don't need to turn the Warrior Forum into the Whiney Forum less then an hour after it goes down ;-)

        It's seems to work now at least I can log in again. Let's just hope it lasts :-)
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        • Profile picture of the author Paul Tai
          Originally Posted by Javisito View Post

          Of course not we're all loosing money but we don't need to turn the Warrior Forum into the Whiney Forum less then an hour after it goes down ;-)

          It's seems to work now at least I can log in again. Let's just hope it lasts :-)
          I respectfully disagree. It seems to me that they're playing the "shut up" game whenever they have problems; they never send emails, never update their status.getresponse.com page, nor facebook, nor twitter.

          What about those of us who have advertising campaigns burning money to send people to unavailable web forms? It would be great if we hear about the problems so we can at least pause our advertising campaigns... so it can be useful to communicate about these server downs in the warrior forum.

          The more you keep it to yourself, the more they get away with screwing you over.
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      • Profile picture of the author Enfusia
        I was just coming here to see if anyone had challenges as well.

        Other than Aweber, what are the other absolute best options.

        I have considered;

        Imnica mail - I'd like to know more about their deliverablity.

        Sendy.co - I loooked at their demo and their system made no sense to me. Anyone have any feedback on them?

        Traffic Wave - They seem to have high deliverability. However, they are double opt in only. The reason this is a concern is that many confirmations end up in spam on Gmail. Any feedback on this?

        Thanks, Patrick
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        • Profile picture of the author The Niche Man
          I'll give them one more month to get it together.

          I've been thinking about giving Vertical Response a shot. It seems like they're hungrier than Get Response is now.


          You see it all the time from companies who think they're the Sh*t.
          • They get lackadaisial,
          • They start letting things slip or slide by - while focusing most of their juice on getting new customers.
          • Finally, they start taking "paying customers" for granted or putting their satisfaction on the back-burner. They've already got us....Right? So, they focus on getting new customers.
          30 Days to convince me or I'm testing other companies.
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  • Profile picture of the author David Keith
    an hour into an unexpected outage i want my service providers totally focused on whats going on and assessing the problem.

    its quit possibly all they could say via twitter is "we are down". they very well may not yet know what is going on totally.

    is this a DDOS attack, is it a datacenter thing, is it a pipeline provider thing, is it their actual website and DB specifically?.....it could be so many things and to expect them to instantly know what and why is a bit crazy.

    i am not making excuses for them, simply saying that many things out of their control could have caused an outage and their first priority is figuring out what is going on themselves and what needs to be done about it.

    if this was day 2 and you had no updates, that would be one thing....but as far as i can tell its barely into hour 2.

    realistically, if it was your site and membership that was down, in 60 minutes or less would your first priority be figuring out what is going on or hitting up twitter stating the only thing you probably know at that point which is "my site is down".

    and i know most of you have probably lost 6 figures of income during this hour, but lets be a little more realist about things like this.
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    • Profile picture of the author Kay King
      . It seems to me that they're playing the "shut up" game
      You certainly can't be accused of that...

      It can be frustrating but David's right - it's much more important to be working to solve the problem than to route your employees to answering "what's up" emails and posting about the problem.

      Sites go down - sites are hacked and attacked. It's a reality online and I doubt anyone lost a huge fortune in the past hour.

      If you are dissatisfied with a service you pay for - move to another service. That's the beauty of competition in business. AW has also been down on occasion - Mailchimp reputedly doesn't like MMO IMers and Inmica has had its own delivery problems.
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Tai
      Originally Posted by David Keith View Post

      an hour into an unexpected outage i want my service providers totally focused on whats going on and assessing the problem.

      its quit possibly all they could say via twitter is "we are down". they very well may not yet know what is going on totally.

      is this a DDOS attack, is it a datacenter thing, is it a pipeline provider thing, is it their actual website and DB specifically?.....it could be so many things and to expect them to instantly know what and why is a bit crazy.

      i am not making excuses for them, simply saying that many things out of their control could have caused an outage and their first priority is figuring out what is going on themselves and what needs to be done about it.

      if this was day 2 and you had no updates, that would be one thing....but as far as i can tell its barely into hour 2.

      realistically, if it was your site and membership that was down, in 60 minutes or less would your first priority be figuring out what is going on or hitting up twitter stating the only thing you probably know at that point which is "my site is down".

      and i know most of you have probably lost 6 figures of income during this hour, but lets be a little more realist about things like this.
      Again, I respectfully disagree.

      An hour into the problem... yes, they're technical staff is on it, I understand. But, these guys have dozens and dozens of support and social media staff doing NOTHING (other than aggravating people over the chat box). These guys can't do anything abut the technical problem anyway, they could inform us.

      Example: one time, Mandrill had a problem... they emailed ON THE SPOT. Then five minutes later, they emailed to say that it was all fixed. I appreciate being informed.

      And no, I didn't lose 6 figures over this - but if you ask me, I couldn't tell you when the problem started, again, how could I know?

      Sometimes, as soon as they see that they have a problem, they deactivate their chat support. Sometimes, they keep telling you that everything is OKAY, and that they're not experiencing any difficulties... yada, yada, yada.

      This is not the first time. One time, their service was down the whole night... half a day of wasted advertising dollars; not a single sign from them to alert us.

      I get your point - you don't want to be a whiny person - but if a company is trying to get away with being SLOPPY by HIDING IT over and over... I want to call them out on it.
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  • Profile picture of the author David Keith
    constantcontact is the big dog autoresponder by a long shot. many times the email volume of either aweber or getrsponse.

    they are the hosted autoresponder for the bigger companies. They have much more leverage with the providers than aweber or getresponse.

    that being said, you wont get away with the stuff you get away with on getresponse and aweber either. They are not nearly as restrictive as mailchimp, but they wont play games with IMers for a few bucks a month.
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  • Profile picture of the author discrat
    Originally Posted by Paul Tai View Post

    Hey, guys,

    Is it just me or do you also think that the people at Getresponse.com are REALLY dropping the ball on all of us. Maybe they're just sick of this internet marketing thing - maybe they're looking to sell the company.

    Their servers are now down. app.getresponse.com

    Add to that their sh*tty user interface (and user experience), add to it the fact their whole support staff is OFFICIALLY useless (chat people are clueless, email people take months to answer questions).

    It's a mess.

    Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if they sell the company in a year or so.
    I know Aweber has had thier issues but overall it seems GR has had way more in the last few years


    - Robert Andrew
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  • Profile picture of the author David Keith
    Nor will it be the last if this old world keeps spinning long enough.

    as someone who has lots of active autoresponder accounts with lots of companies and who also uses a couple of self hosted solutions.... not a single one of them is without problems. amazons SES was down for over 7 hours not that long ago.

    getresponse is actually usually better about keeping customers informed than aweber is. You can find several threads about aweber over the years too.

    i understand your frustration and you feel they owe you an answer. but its quite possible they just dont have a great answer as of yet about what happened and when it will all be fixed.

    sometimes it takes a little while to get all that figured out. would a tweet that says "our site is down and we are working on it" make you feel much better really? do you actually think they dont know its down and that they are all just out too lunch and margaritas and will get to figuring out tomorrow sometime?

    i guess i have just been at this so long that you realize things like this happen. it will happen to your sites at some point to if you play in this game long enough.
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    • Profile picture of the author Enfusia
      I would be interested in anyone who finds out what REALLY happened coming back here and letting us know.

      Whomever does that, thank you in advance!

      Patrick
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  • Profile picture of the author Brent Stangel
    They all have their problems.

    I recently left Aweber because their site had become unusable for me.

    I have self-hosted and opened a MC account, though I haven't done anything with it but import subs.

    I used TrafficWave years ago but their system was totally unreliable. In fairness they may have improved by now but the third or fourth time they screwed up my account and all my forms and trackers were down for days, I said goodbye.
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    • Profile picture of the author nicheblogger75
      Originally Posted by Brent Stangel View Post

      They all have their problems.

      I recently left Aweber because their site had become unusable for me.

      I have self-hosted and opened a MC account, though I haven't done anything with it but import subs.

      I used TrafficWave years ago but their system was totally unreliable. In fairness they may have improved by now but the third or fourth time they screwed up my account and all my forms and trackers were down for days, I said goodbye.
      I decided to try TrafficWave because I had heard that they also had a great affiliate model which could be very profitable.

      While their affiliate model is attractive, their site and services are not very impressive.

      First, there is no single opt-in option available and they claim that will probably never happen. They say it is to keep their deliverability up, but I found their deliverability to be very poor.

      Only around 20% of those that opted in bothered to confirm their email. I thought this was strange so I tried opting in with a Gmail address. Sure enough, the confirmation email went straight to spam. I had a friend try to opt in with their Gmail address. Same thing- confirmation email straight to spam.

      I tried with Yahoo. Confirmation email did end up in the inbox. Lastly, I tried with one of my hosting email accounts and it also did end up in the inbox. However, I find most of the people that opt-in to my lists use Gmail, so if their confirmation email does not get inboxed for Gmail users, I would say that makes them pretty much useless to me.

      Also, their opt-in forms leave a lot to be desired. There is no option to ask for only email. You must ask for both name and email. Hardly anyone asks for name anymore, and that's because conversions are much better if you don't. This is not an option with TrafficWave unless you can figure out a way to code your own opt-in forms I guess.

      The site itself looks like it hasn't been updated or improved for at least 10 years. Sure, the price is great. It's only $17.95 up to 10,000 subscribers, but in this case, unfortunately, you are going to get what you pay for. Since it's only $17.95, I'm going to keep my account as a back up and also I have a few referrals so basically I'm getting the account for free.

      Also, for those worried about Aweber wanting them to make all of their subscribers "re-confirm," they have relaxed that policy and now made it much easier to import your existing lists. So if you are thinking of making the switch to Aweber, now may be the time.

      See their blog post here:

      Importing Your Email List Just Got Easier | Email Marketing Tips


      I have been with Aweber since 2010 and I absolutely love their service. IMO, they are the leaders in their industry and I wouldn't want to be with anyone else.
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  • Profile picture of the author marax
    After going through the merry-go-round of autoresponder services through the years, I have settled on GR for my most high valued lists. Sure they have their shortcomings. But so does every other service provider. My impression of them is that they are doing more to improve their stuff compared to their competitors. It's just the impression I get.
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