What is stopping you from going for a self hosted auto responder?

For me the main issues are:
3. Low delivery rates
5. Self hosted responder means I worry more about the tech compared to marketing.

I agree with Alexa that i too am more than happy to pay to avoid the technical problems that would come up otherwise. I also want a company that has a really high deliverability rate which Aweber and Get Response are both very reliable for.
Joel

This post is so dumb that it hurts.

I go self hosted because of the crazy level of automation and personalization my API Programmer has coded into my autoresponder campaigns. Good luck achieving any of that with Aweber.

I tried arp for many years it ended up being a nightmare. Building a list comes with headaches many people are doing it.

Take a deep breath and find a email provider and just go for it there are no magic carpet rides in this area of marketing.

But you can bring in some big pay days. Thats just the honest truth about it. If you know how to save your list you are in a fine position. You might find you need to do that quite often.

But don't self host. IMHO especially on a shared server.

I've been self-hosted for years with an excellent deliverability rate. I have to say I am a techie and learned about serious email nuances over the past 6 years working for a major list builder.

Hosting your own list is awesome for the level of control you have over how the software works, what gets tracked and how, and for getting rid of stupid rules used by typical giants of the Email Service Provider field. Cost is another major issue, I was paying aWeber a fortune for my own list each month and it went away when I switched to my own solution.

aWeber is awesome, but they do have one really frustrating rule... if someone subscribes and does not receive the confirmation email, aWeber will NOT send it again. Even if the person wanting it has told me they want the confirmation message. With aWeber, they need to re-sign up using a different email address. On my own system, I hit a button and it re-sends the link.

Of course, I am a techie and understand that if I just re-sent confirmations to everyone who failed to confirm, I'd get myself into trouble with the ISPs.

If you have the knowledge to go with a self-hosted solution, it's the only way to go.

I'll freely admit that the reason I started down the self-hosting route was money. I had a problem paying a monthly fee for a service when I could pay once and own the software.

As I tweaked and twisted the system, I found I could do things that aweber and others could not, would not and probably should not offer to the public at large. As Shaun said, it's about control.

I have enough years and sweat into making my system work that switching to a service would be a major pain in the tuchis. Of course, the same could be said of switching to another self-hosted solution.

It had nothing to do with 'being able to tell people I used a self-hosted AR'. This forum is the only place the question has ever been put to me.

Think again...

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...mpromised.html (no affil.)

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...sed-again.html (no affil.)

Any e-mail server is vulnerable to hacking whether it
belongs to a third-party provider or is self-hosted.

Dedicated to mutual success,

Shaun

Simply security for me and my business...consider the following 2 headlines

"Aweber hacked, several thousand emails stolen...."
"igor Griffiths autoresponder service hacked and personal details stolen...'

Which scenario do you think is more manageable, if your service is hacked then your email marketing business could be dead in the water, with Aweber you can deflect the blame as you and your subscribers are in this together.

As the Internet matures the need to be mindful of risk limitation will increasing become something we all need to consider.

I would certainly hope so...

They must do - I wonder if there's any Aweber clones out there

Ive been a Aweber user for a few years now and have just started to use a self hosted script.Ive still got my Aweber account and cant see me letting go of it anytime soon.

The Self hosted Auto responder I went for was ArpReach. I purchased it when it was firstly introduced last year sometime but haven't got round to using it until only recently.

I've taken my time to get ArpReach installed because I had no clue about how emails were actually delivered so it made sense to do my research on email delivery before I attempted to work with it.

I learned how its important to setup DKIM, SPF and SenderID and a whole load of things along the way - Its actually been a very educating experience and even though its taken a while, its certainly been worth it.

I use Amazon SES as my SMTP provider, they have excellent reviews and so far everything is working perfectly with them.

And because I'm using a self hosted script I'm able to test delivery rates using different SMTP relay service providers such as Sendgrid and SMTP.com - something that you cant do with service providers such as Aweber.

Just do your proper research before you try going self hosted and you should be fine.

And how many self-hosted autoresponders have you
actually USED yourself and set-up correctly?

Are you talking from real experience or just repeating
what you've heard others say about the deliverability
rates of self-hosted autoresponders?

Another ill-informed person posting ignorant comments
about self-hosted autoresponders.

If you set-up your self-hosted solution properly and use
good list management practices, you can get excellent
deliverability.

Here's something to think about...

With a self-hosted autoresponder, you have more control
over your list and e-mail server reputation.

With a third-party autoresponder service, you're dependent
on the behavior and list building practices of other people
using the same e-mail server.

Dedicated to mutual success,

Shaun

why not use self-hosted to manage list and then send emails with mandrill?
Im looking to doing something like that.