What Would Be the Best Free Alternative To Aweber

[Mike Williams]

It's a weird question I know. But some of my customers are flat broke. So I've been thinking about what someone could use to build their list that's free.

Any suggestions? Maybe some fancy use of Twitter?

[Rick67]

I have a wierd question in return. If your clients are flat broke, then they can't pay you either! Why are you working with them?

I think iContact is $9.95/mo.

Rick

[e-mail2u]

I have a couple of scripts that i use for mailing lists but this one stand above the rest infinite autoresponder a complete free autoresponder. It does require cronjobs and virtual crontab a free script works well.

Autoresponder details.
Infinite Responder - Free Autoresponder Script

Virtual cron details.
Virtual Crontab - World Wide Creations Scripts -

[Richard Tunnah]

Hey Mike,
Most of the paid autoresponders have a free ad supported version as well. However It'd be the last thing I'd recommend to anyone as they could lose the new opt-ins to whatever ad is being carried. Surely they could afford a few bucks for a paid autoresponder for the first month? I know many discount for 30 days like emailaces.


Rich

[mymarketingsecret]

Free AutoBot Free Autoresponders, No advertising from others on your follow up email autoresponder 100% free

[LB]

Getresponse has a free version: AutoResponder from GetResponse! - Free edition!!

Send them there and they may upgrade later via your affiliate link.

[MeTellYou]

They might loose their list if they don't use a reliable autoresponder, but I am sure you all know that. If I was to use any free ones I would see if a weber or get response are good enough for me

[shekhar]

Let me tell you about a star performer who for some mysterious reason seldom or never got mention in List building discussion.

They are 'Your Mailing List Providers.Com'

Yourmailinglistprovider.com

a.k.a. Ymlp.com

I know they are star. In one of my sites, they help me build a list of 3000 subscriber within 3 month (for free of course

You can trust them. It is a highly respectable company based in Belgium. There Page Rank of 7 only points to their credibility. Even their paid service is very economical.

Highly recommended.

[Mike Williams]

Thank you all! The typical high quality responses I've come to expect at here at the WF!

[girliemarketing]

I've never heard of ymlp. Do they offer unlimited campaigns?

[menkaur]

i recommend you try lists.iathao.com.

it's an unlimited campaigns unlimited emails unlimited subscribeer unlimited everything free service. as far as i'm concerned, that's as good as it gets

[theIMgeek]

Email Marketing and Email List Manager | MailChimp

They have a free account that lets you have 500 subscribers and send out 3000 messages per month.

If a person gets that far and still can't cover the $15 to upgrade, wellllllll....

-Ryan

[Nigel Greaves]

Originally Posted by RJP

Email Marketing and Email List Manager | MailChimp

They have a free account that lets you have 500 subscribers and send out 3000 messages per month.

If a person gets that far and still can't cover the $15 to upgrade, wellllllll....

-Ryan

MailChimp don't allow internet marketing via their system. Check out this response to being asked if they do:
Important Information About MailChimp

[hamlak]

Originally Posted by Mike Williams

It's a weird question I know. But some of my customers are flat broke. So I've been thinking about what someone could use to build their list that's free.

Any suggestions? Maybe some fancy use of Twitter?

This should be it.

The Best free Autoresponder.

FreeFollowup.com - Free Autoresponder Free Automatic Responders

This one is completely FREE.

Everything you need - No limit.

No Ads.

Check it our guys. I have used this for 3 years.

[Karen Blundell]

Originally Posted by Mike Williams

It's a weird question I know. But some of my customers are flat broke. So I've been thinking about what someone could use to build their list that's free.

Any suggestions? Maybe some fancy use of Twitter?

if they're using WordPress, I wrote a post about a great plugin I found:
This Free WordPress Plugin For Budget-Conscious Marketers

[MAV923]

I heard mailchimp was decent. Are you working for free? If they are flat broke how are they going to pay you?

[BH_Winchester]

I have to admit, I was skeptical about paying for Aweber - however after trying the $1 trial month; I've got to say I'm already amazed and normally I don't even do list email marketing. Yet I was able to create grand email lists and newsletters and rake in a fortune of it. After switching to Aweber it very quickly became one of my top profiting web tools

[LilBlackDress]

I used Mailchimp and while the chimp is cute and free is awesome, I found the interface bulky. I believe they don't allow affiliate links either.

Mailchimp vs. Aweber

[Underground SEO]

Don't go for a free one - they have many problems especially in terms of delivery rates.

[BingeSite]

Serious business should not use Free service for email marketing unless they have the expertise to set one up themselves. I can list 100 reasons for this but I'll give you some obvious ones.

1. Free lists are most likely massively abused and therefore blacklisted by email delivery servers more often
2. Even cheap email systems are very attractive to spambots. a spammer these days will not mind paying even 100$ a month to get a system and the cheap hosts will most likely be too late to detect their activity or even fail to ban them for the risk of loosing business. Short sighted of them but happens very often.

3. Aweber is established. they are taking care of everything. Like someone mentioned , the biggest bargain is probably their professional tools. "ability to create..."

4. Aweber is proven tool, oother may be good but obviously they are not able to beat aweber despite the pricing.

5. Even if you were able to setup a free script for ALL your customers (I am guessing they all dont know what MX record is). the onus of maintenance is on you. Do you get blacklisted means the list stops working all together and drops to 10% deliverablity if at all.? Aweber is doing it for you. I get 1000 of email in spam even from some CB AMs but Aweber NEVER hits the spam.

6. Dont take this wrong way, i am just a noob learner, but if your customers are flat broke you should email them to get a 2-3 hours job once a month to pay for Aweber as that is the only way they can get started.

Heck thats what I did :/ today I run my own servers and hire my own people.

however when I am experimenting with a new idea creation and want to save money, I use this twitter idea you mentioned but its a stop gap and I hate to use it in the interim .

setup a twitter. Make at least 1 tweet. Then goto feedburner and add an rss. to it you give the URL to your own twitter.

Then go to publicise tab in feedburner and activate email subscription. Now you can tweet your mailing list .

hope it helps.

Edit: I know this post is old, but I want to add so it might someone else searching.

[Ashley Wright]

Personally a free autoresponder means your always at risk, ie losing your contacts, its like having a facebook fanpage with x amount of "likes" you can't actually control what happens and facebook could one day turn around and block your facebook account and you have no say about it! This I think is the same with a free autoresponder account, obviously if you are paying for a service you are always going to have say "unless you are like a spammer of course!"

[sal64]

Some nice resources, Warriors. Good work.

Every dollar a marketer saves is a dollar that can be better used on promotion.

[fbdevil]

Mailchimp definitely gets my vote as there the only one that I have found that can work with an api for more custom list building through software/websites etc. This way your have a little more freedom. The prices are just about identical, but imo MailChimp has way more features. I actually like the interface better as well.

[GaryBurke]

Getresponse is free for the first 100 subscribers then you pay more as your list expands

[BingeSite]

Originally Posted by darylimjz

Wow, I'm surprised nobody brought ListWire up yet!

Its a great, free autoresponder that has almost all the features a paid one has.

ListWire

Are you using this yourself? Do they include their own links and ads?

I mean whats the catch, nothing is free really.

Edit: I checked it out a bit more. When I go to sign up it seems the autoresponder will use their domain name? This looks good for training purposes.

[entrepreneurjay]

I would give your customers a not so weird answer. If their interested in building a viable online business, you should never cut corners. Aweber is one tool I would never be without. If your not willing to invest a small amount of money into your business, tell them to get a 9 to 5 they are probably better suited for that.

An email list is the best investment you can make for your business by far. This is where the main majority of your money will be made. If you cannot spend a small amount of money, to make a large amount of money.

You have no business being an Internet marketer, or a small business owner for that matter.

Be honest if they do not like your answer oh well. At least you were telling the truth. That is how I strongly feel, and I feel a lot of other marketers feel the same way.

[rts2271]

So wait, you want a free service for broke clients?
Are you missing a key point about business? You are there to make money. If they do not have the money to start a business in the first place then perhaps you are doing them a disservice.

[plainwords]

I have to endorse the comments of those who question why you would be looking for a free autoresponder service for your clients who are broke. Certainly, it's a great thing to have kind and generous heart.

But presumably you are doing this as a business? If so, there are two vital things to bear in mind. First, don't waste you time with clients who can't really afford your services. They will suck you dry, for no return, and you will never get anywhere with your own business.

Second, start out with the best service that you can afford - whether it be autoresponders or anything else. People who start out cheap don't have any vision - they are dominated by fear and they are not likely to succeed. People with a big vision will be willing to pay a fair price for quality services.

Sorry for the rant. If you really MUST have a freeautoresponder, go with Mailchimp until the list gets above 500. It's horribly unfriendly to use, though. The time you'll waste trying to figure out Mailchimp would be better spent with Aweber's beautiful, user-friendly interface.

[muftdagyan]

is there any way so that i can use autoresponder script for my blog on bloggers

[nakmuay7]

Originally Posted by shekhar

Let me tell you about a star performer who for some mysterious reason seldom or never got mention in List building discussion.

They are 'Your Mailing List Providers.Com'

Yourmailinglistprovider.com

a.k.a. Ymlp.com

I know they are star. In one of my sites, they help me build a list of 3000 subscriber within 3 month (for free of course

You can trust them. It is a highly respectable company based in Belgium. There Page Rank of 7 only points to their credibility. Even their paid service is very economical.

Highly recommended.

by far the best provider at the best value. totally kicks aweber in every aspect and its about a tenth of the price per month

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Originally Posted by Mike Williams

It's a weird question I know. But some of my customers are flat broke. So I've been thinking about what someone could use to build their list that's free.

Do they have a website with PHP? If so, perhaps phplist may be worth a go.

It's free. It keeps the list under their control too.

[grumpyjacksa]

1. constant contact offers a 60 day free trial

time2respond allows you to have up to 50 subscribers for free - unlimited time period

trafficwave.net has a 30 day free trial - no limits

but the totally free ones add their own ads to your emails....

so it distracts from your offer.

just my 0.02c

peter

[mcmahanusa]

Perhaps the poster, when he said his clients were broke, simply meant that they were operating on a tight budget. As are we all, right?

For free, Listwire seems very good. Don't know about ymlp.com - yet.

Profollow, the private label version of Aweber, for much less money per month than Aweber, offers a 30-day free trial. My suggestion would be that the OPs clients try the free trial, and at least one month of the paid subscription. At the end of that time, they certainly should be getting enough income to cover the cost. And they would have in place one of the most vital tools of marketing, without incurring the hassles that accompany changing from a free autoresponder to a paid one (i.e., having customers opt-in again).

That's my .02. Now I'm going to take a look at ymlp.com

[anions]

1. Try aweber $1 subscription

2. Mailchimp

3. This guy shows how you can use feedburner and a wordpress blog to combine as a free autoresponder Link: Free Wordpress Autoresponder | Best of Blogger

Another link: How to Use Feedburner as Autoresponder for Email Subscriptions ~ Make Money Faster! Online Blogging Tips, Articles,Essays, Tools, Advice, Coaching,Guide - Internet How to, What is, Why is that (site has a dhtml popup)

[Josh Anderson]

If a client does not have that much money...

Start them in the best of the best free options so that later they don't find they have built a list in a untrusted, blacklisted, free, nightmare that they cannot get out of.

Then once they get their list built up to the point that they exceed the free trial limits or the cheap plans at wherever they are just make sure that they are actually using their list to market and if they are then they would have easily added enough monthly revenue to cover the $10-$20 cost of going to the next level.

As has been mentioned MailChimp is one of the best of the best for certain markets and you can have up to 500 subscribers for free...

But there are also many top notch services with affordable starting points.

For example iContact is just $10 per month for a small list. Analytic Approach is just $6 a month for up to 1000 emails sent. Getresponse is free for up to 100 subscribers.

So often people get so confused trying to save $10 or $20 bucks that the end up loosing thousands in lost opportunity or bad decisions. So make sure they start where they most likely will want to stay.

Focus on the marketing and everything else will fall in place.

[Cash37]

For free? I'd say host on your own server. Listwire seems good as well. I have an account with them but never did anything with it. I don't like Mailchimp though they are known to delete people for sending salesletters (how ironic)

[macchiavelli]

I would only reccomend paid email services because they are reliable.
Lord forbid someone tries to sue the heck out of you due to spam.

[redicelander]

This site was made by a warrior and is free for at least up to 500 subscribers, as I read it. If you are getting more subscribers than that, shouldn't you be making enough money from the list to start paying a bit?

Vertuso.com - Your Internet Marketing Solution

[Trieu]

If you want to take your business seriously, dont go free. If you want a chepaer alternative to Aweber or getresponse go for profollow which is basically the same as aweber

[shern20]

you can try out simplycast.com i believe they allow up to 750 subscribers for free and anything above that is very affordable.

[nelsencaleb]

I am interested in a free email alternative that works with wordpress. Any recommendations? Sorry if you call this thread pirating.

[DeLighter]

Originally Posted by nakmuay7

by far the best provider at the best value. totally kicks aweber in every aspect and its about a tenth of the price per month

Well it`s hard figure out what you mean by cheaper then Aweber. It depends on various factors. I suggest to take a closer look at the prices to realize that Ymlp.com costs a lot more than Aweber.com in a wider range. Just compare the amount of monthly emails you are able to send:

comparison:
Aweber : unlimited emails to up to 500 subscribers -
19$ monthly (after trial period)

Ymlp: limited emails every month
from 3.75 € (500 emails) to 100 € (100000 emails)

Conclusion:
Aweber lands not just one but two winning reasons to be far superior than Ymlp. But judge for yourself. Best example: now calculate 3 mailings a day to 20000 subscribers and you will see the difference

[nelsencaleb]

Hey everyone, I just signed up for the $1 trial for aweber, I'm probably going to keep it if I make some good money soon or cancel it at the end of the month. It's unbelievably user-friendly and I had it set up in less than 8 minutes, after that I just experimented with stuff so I could master the interface. Highly recommended.

[xploit]

Not sure if this is helpful to anyone...

Free mailing list providers, newsletter services for Webmasters - FreebieList.com

[eleary]

I would say that usually you get what you pay for. I haven't tried the free versions. But from everything I have heard/read, you will get sent to the spam box a lot more often; which in effect makes it useless! I use AYL (Automate your List) I think they are a very good alternative to Aweber and cheaper, especially in the long run.

If they are looking for totally free, I would suggest they work on Facebook. Eventually the FB email will be the way we all do it - but for now, you can advise them to get a following that they can "sell" to
.

[kyraward]

Aweber is by far the best autoresponder out there. SPAM is nothing to play around with for legal/ethical reasons. Aweber is a trusted name.

[dutchguy]

A big customer of my previous company was using ymlp.com (paid version). This was working correctly . So it would also be my first choice for small or medium sized e-mail list because it does the job and it's much cheaper then aweber.

[cb1803]

Generally free services are not reliable. iContact provides awesome service at a reasonable cost.

[BabyMama]

iContact is free up to 500 subscribers. I think they are great!
I would highly recommend them. Very easy to use and easy to export and import contacts.

[joekoffi]

Originally Posted by cb1803

Generally free services are not reliable. iContact provides awesome service at a reasonable cost.

You are right. Their mails often get trapped by most spam filters