iContact vs. AWeber

Aweber is the king of autoresponders by far! No-one compares a distant second would be Getresponse.

Yep, Aweber and Getresponse are the best. But aweber is much easier to use and has a LOT of customizable forms.
Aweber offers a $1 thirty day trial. It`s a no-brainer I think.

JP

I use both of these for my clients.

Both work well, but Aweber beats iContact hands down on Form Design. When you want a nice opt-in form with a cool look to it, Aweber does this very well. When I make forms in iContact, I need to take the code they provide and then do some work on it to make it look the way I want to.

If you are a code junkie, that is OK, but if you are knocking these things out and speed is important, then Aweber is best.

I use Aweber for all of my own List Building on 20 plus different websites.

Have a Great Day!

I'm going to add Infusionsoft to the conversation right now. I could write a novel on it's dynamic functionality that exceeds other autoresponders, simply because of it's unique automation engine, but I'll spare you all the reading time.

JP, let me know if you have any specific questions.

I would have to choose aweber, like their lead capture forms, very customizable.

The spam ratio is a must these days so your emails don't end up in the trash bin.

Here is one thing that nobody has brought up yet - which I think is very Important. (at least in my business)

iContact and Infusionsoft are the ONLY major companies that will allow you to import a list of clients without forcing them to double opt-in.

So for example we hold Webinars every week - and we import thousands of emails of people that have registered from our GoToWebinar account.

With Aweber and 1shoppingcart we would be forced to send a double opt-in email to all those people which would mean we would lose a substantial amount of those people because they would never open their email and opt-in - not matter how hard you try you'll still probably lose at least 30% of these people (usually more) if forced to double opt-in.

So if you need to import lists - like if you hold live events where people give you their email or if you hold webinars like us - then icontact or Infusionsoft may be best for you.

Infusionsoft is by far my favorite - but they are also by far the most expensive compared to Aweber, icontact, and 1shoppincart.

If you have an email list of more than 15,000 people - and you mail your list multiple times a week like we do - then you will go over your email limit and could end up spending close to $1,000 a month like we do... (ouch... but for our business we do very high volume so it's not really a big deal)

I must agree with a few people from this thread... Aweber's form creation tool is quite simply the best in the business.

But they better watch their back...mailchimp is coming on strong.

I was considering iContact also but saw something on one of it's videos I could not find elsewhere on the site. It showed the control panel and said something like you have x number of emails you can send this month and showed how many had been sent and what was left. In the same box it had an link to upgrade your account. If this is the case they should show that on their pricing page. I don't like limitation on how many emails I can send or paying for a service that bases it price on list size, later, after the fact, to find out I may need to pay more to send out additional emails.

Aweber is the way to go.

I currently signed up for both to test them out. Aweber has a good deal of existing custom forms you can adapt. Icontact does not. However, you can do manual coding with Icontact so it's great if you want a completely custom optin form. I'm not sure if you can do custom coding for aweber yet, haven't tested it enough to find that answer.

Overall they both have some good features. It just depends on your specific needs. Aweber was a little more per month than icontact but from what I have found so far they have better functionality with email responses and tracking.

iContact I believe has better allowance for lead importing, other than that it's a slim difference. I've been with Aweber since 2004 and don't see a big reason to switch. On the other hand, if I started today I might as well go with iContact.

Both have their own disadvantages and advantages. I were previously simply sending off emails written in plain HTML designed by myself. Later I moved on to Aweber. I dunno about iContact but aweber is just awesome.

Both o.k Aweber having better service.
I've just closed my aweber account and starting my own hosted autoresponder so it will be more unique
In the meantime i'm using a free trial of woofu which is really great and more interesting than aweber

Aweber is the highest technology, perfect for those who demand the best from their email marketing tool. iContact is definitely more accessible, while having a moderate set of features and tools.

I have both icontact and aweber, and here is my take on this:

Aweber is easier to use than icontact, however, list segmentation is much better IMHO in icontact.

Also, in icontact, you can import any list that you own without asking them to optin a second time (that's the only reason why I am still subscribed with icontact).

Plus as said above, Aweber has a lot of web forms, and pretty cool features. They keep improving all the time.

Anyway, you can't go wrong with either aweber or icontact. Just one thing, note that icontact has a limit on monthly broadcast.

Regards,
Franck

Above I mentioned I couldn't find mention of a set limit for the number of emails you can send to your list except seeing it in a video. Well, egg on my face again, I just found it on a page, was it there before, I don't know. It is the smallest text on the page.

"Please note: Basic plans include sending up to six times your subscriber limit."

Being able to easily import individuals or a list without a lot of BS is a nice feature. Great if you want to add people if you use stuff like GoToWebinar or from a Meetup group or etc.

I have used aweber in the past but took a break since I wasn't using it enough at the time. But I now started up testing out iContact and I feel lost every time I go into it and try to set anything up. Its like a freaking puzzle at times! I am going back to aweber.