Self-hosted ESP WP Plugins or 3rd Party EPSs like Aweber and GetResponse?

CityCowboy you are still ugly as hell, but your questions are always good

self-hosted has a huge disadvantage: one spam complaint, and you will be
on at least 3 blacklists, and your email deliverability immediately suffers .
Thats one way how to kill a list.

The outsourced solutions also get that, and yes, you co-suffer from others
that use the same server, BUT: these companies have staff that basically
does nothing all day except cleaning up ip blacklistings they receive all the time.

While you as a self-hoster usually do not know how to do that quickly, and also
your webhost sits in your neck, if you blacklist their ip's.

I use third party.. Aweber.. because.. well their business is dependent on making sure emails get to where they're supposed to.

Whereas I have no clue on how to do that.. I have almost zero knowledge of SMTP, or whatever.. making sure the server is set up right... and all that technical stuff.. Zzzz

Aweber and companies like that do nothing but that tech email stuff, so I leave it for them to worry about.

I agree with others warriors.

Aweber's , Getresponse and other known autoresponder services have their dedicated staff to maintain deliverability and IP reputation whenever there are any issues with any of their sending IP's.

However, It is difficult to do the same when we use Self-hosting solution.

My opinion is, Do what you can do best and let the other specialist do their jobs which they have already mastered.

Self Hosted Solutions are all tough to maintain.

There are several of these WP plugin autoresponders out there. I believe Sean Donahoe released one called Rapid Mailer about a year or so ago.

I also have a desktop software that was launched two years ago or so called Email Jeet. It can run through an SMTP service like Sendgrid or Amazon SES, or through your web hosting. The deliverability on it was very good, but I ran into a few problems. First, Sendgrid suspended my account even though my sending reputation was 98/100. They never gave me a reason, just said they didn't like the content of my emails. So, I bought some VPS hosting and tried running it through that. Again, great deliverability, but several issues, such as the fact that you have to manually scrub your list, set up your own unsubscribe forms,etc. That went OK for about two months, until the deliverability went into the toilet all of a sudden.

I contacted the hosting company and they said it wasn't my fault, that a spammer had used their network and got a lot of their IPs blacklisted. They said they were working on it and it would be fixed soon. Well, that never happened and then a month or so later they made a decision to shut down all emailing through their hosting while they "fixed" the problem.

So that's strike 2. Next, I tried Amazon SES. No problems there. Great deliverability and they never had a problem with what I was sending. However, after a month or so I got my first bill. Over $300! On top of this bear in mind that I had to code my own opt-in forms, unsubscribe forms,etc. Also, the software did not have an actual "autoresponder" feature, meaning that I could not set up follow up emails. Every time I wanted to send out an email I had to open the software and do it manually.

Bottom line IMO. Stick with the pros who know what they are doing, but having a backup solution is also smart business.

I'm sure this new plugin works great. I know the marketer who created it and he is super honest and a great guy.

It's reasonably priced, and looks like it has a lot of functionality that some desktop mailing software doesn't.

If you've got the money then give it a shot. I think it would be a great idea just to have around as a backup in case you lost your AR account for one reason or another.

As I said, the two marketers who launched it are truly great guys. It can't hurt to have a backup. Just understand that these type of self-hosted solutions have their drawbacks as well as their benefits.

Other than some basic groundwork research, no. It's definitely a possibility, though.

Wordpress uses PHPmailer. So all a plugin will do is use it.

https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer

The benefit of using a service, is that most use shared IPs. So they have reputation built up from all the users. So you get to piggyback off their IP reputation.

Where if you run your own server / IPs, it's going to be substantially more work and likely will have neutral IP reputation to start and not get the same deliverability. However, you can get higher complaints before it becoming an issue, as most services try to protect their IPs by only allowing 1 out of 1K to be a complaint. Where actual providers allow anywhere from 3-10, before it may become an issue. Also on a volume cost basis, it is drastically cheaper.

I actually do both. Fresh / targeted data and open / clicker data, I will send using autoresponders, because I will get better deliverability and it's cost effective. All other data I will use my own server / IPs and domain target the data, based on the IP / deliverabilitty that I can get. Which means there are domains that I won't mail to. Unless I can send volume at rock bottom pricing, so that even if I'm hitting the spam folder, I can turn a profit.

In the end, for the average person. I would say the smartest move is to go with a service. However, don't blindly think that just because your using a service all your mail is inboxing. The best advice I could give to anyone regarding inboxing, is to know the domain makeup of your list and have seed accounts for the largest domains and always test. If a service is delivery poorly to say yahoo, I will think nothing of pulling it and moving it to another service that is delivering it better. Most services have free trials and you can sign up and test them.

Anyway, I guess that's my 2 cents.

I would never use a wp plugin to send out email, research it,
it got many downsides.

I like companies that rotate multiple, shared, warmed up ips

has the advantage that your post will not get immediately blocked by
some large sites because of the "same message to many recipients" filter
that also can put you on black or isp=block lists, and nothing will get trough
after that one first email. They block some stuff immediately without completing
delivery. Really tuff these days.

I use Send Blaster with Turbo SMTP Server.

Works fine, every mail goes to the Primary tab in Gmail Accounts.

Is there any Web ESP that allows a thrid party SMTP Servers usage?

I know one, name Webgalamb, it's a Hungarian (Europe) Web ESP product but the features aren't the best in the market.

I would like to know is there any from the big Web ESPs that allows using a third party smtp server..

I really appreciate any help you can provide.

Well, any serious ESP offers a dedicated IP service that you can use to ensure that you are not affected by anyone else. There's an added cost issue but among options like GetResponse, Mailchimp or SendPulse anyone can find a suitable offer.

And I definitely wouldn't go the self hosted route just for this single reason.

From my own experience:

I had a Getresponse account and I was very happy customer for many years but one day I start getting 10-20% bounces for no reason at all!

I had a good open rate and click rate to all my lists (only buyer lists).
They told me that I have to clean my list but I told them that the list was fresh and new customers who purchased my products!

After a small research I found out that their IPs were blacklisted. I asked them to change my IPs but they didn't! Recently I decided to send again through them and again got 13% bounce rate!

At the same time I was facing issues with getresponse I was Beta Tester of a plugin called Mailit Plugin (also mentioned above!)

So while I couldn't do anything I decided to go on Self-hosted solution and start using Mailit plugin in order to send my emails!
I wasn't fan of self hosted autoresponsder and email softwares because I had bad experiences in the past...

But Now I use Mailit + SMTP in order to send emails to my lists and i'm very happy with the results!
I see score of 9.4/10 on Mail Tester, I have good reputation IPs, my opens, clicks have increased and my bounce rate now is 0% while the same lists get 13-20% bounce rate on my getresponce account!!!

I'm very happy with Mailit Plugin and the results I am getting right now and that's why I purchased the reseller rights of Mailit when it was officially launched 1 month ago.

Now I suggest it to my own customers and sell it with discounted price instead of the official price!

But my point here is that if you are still using Getresponse, Aweber etc...and you are seeing high bounce rates or your email goes to spam folder then don't be afraid to check for a self-hosted solution!

There are softwares and plugins like Mailit Plugin, Email Jeet, MailWizz etc... which make self-hosted very easy!

You may send quality emails and you may have a great list which opens and reads your emails but when you use Getresponse, Aweber etc.. you have shared IPs which means that only 1 spammer is enough to blacklist your sending IP and then it affects your business!

I said above that I had bad experience with self-hosted solutions in the past and couldn't understand how things work with smtp etc...

But now things are easier than used to be few years ago!
And now I use self-hosted solution + smtp without any problem and my results are great!
I believe that over the next few years more and more people will replace their 3rd Party autoresponders with self-hosted autoresponders!

Hope this helps!

Cheers