Is there such a thing as a free Auto Responder?

I agree, most of the "free" auto responders will pound your list with adds in your mailings, and that's something you don't want.

I don't know about that. I mean are any of us taking business seriously given that most of us are running websites off a free server called Apache? Or using the open source MySQL database which doesn't cost us a penny?

Though of course hosting companies charge us for use of these free programs on their servers.

Or phpMyAdmin, Linux (in my case), the GIMP, the Chromium browser, Firefox, and I could name another 100 free programs that glue the internet together and allow people like me to not pay a penny for a wonderful operating system running on my local computer instead of Windows?

I mean if free is an indication of not taking business seriously then I definitely am not taking business seriously though I know without a doubt that this is not true.

I think it has everything to do with our mental attitude and very little to do with how much or how little money we pay for things.

Oh I know the oft cited proverb that if one does not pay for something they don't value it. Well I don't buy it.

Carlos

Free can be tempting when your first starting off, but i wouldn't recommend using a free autoresponder. Most of them will be submerged with advertising to make up for the free costs, and the quality/support will be light years away from paid services.

Make sure to actively test and track all of your marketing campaigns to optimize expenses. With that being said, phplist is an opensource email broadcaster that i can recommend. I don't think that an autoresponder feature was ever added to it. Lastly, aweber is what i would recommend for a paid autoresponder service.

Mailchimp's free service allows up to 500 subscribers and 3000 mailings per month, so it's a good way to start, and they do offer several paid plans that you can grow into once your business starts to take off.

I use parabots enterprise version and it works well . The stand alone version is available free now Parabots Autoresponder System

Yes, there is no free autoresponder wthout limitations. Usually these limitations allow you to start a small business online, sometimes not.

You need to pay to get a professional autoresponder without limitations. WRONG.

I found an autoresponder offering a free account and a free upgrade to the paid service. By registering a free account to one of their partner services and using it actively, I got all the free account limitations removed.
This way I'm using the full upgraded version of the autoresponder without paying any monthly fee.

Is there a thing such as a free autoresponder? Yes, there is.

Sounds logical but the truth is that most people don't care what autoresponder is used. The only one's that pay attention to that are internet marketers I think.

I don't give a hoot as to which autoresponder is used by any subscription I have ever signed up for. All I care about is getting my newsletters on time and having them be interesting and value filled.

Who cares what autoresponder they use.

Carlos

Too true.

And more importantly i always seem to continually comply and answer it! doh

Going for something that's free is false economy! In the long run you are better off investing money and getting a paid service. Especially if you are serious about making money and building your list! XMail Pro gets my thumbs up!

I've been doing a lot of reading and looking around and believe I have found one that will suit me just fine. It's called Infinite Responder (Google it if you are interested).

It's a self-hosted sequential autoresponder written in PHP.

Incidentally AWeber is no more reliable than the SMTP they use. As far as I know the SMTP used by my shared server is just as reliable. And given that Infinite Responder is free (GPL open source) it makes absolutely no sense for me to go with AWeber.

Hostgator...my host also does not allow more than 500 emails to be sent out per hour so for really huge lists it might not be a good solution.

I had thought of rolling my own autoresponder in PHP but the nice thing about Infinite Responder is that it is written for me already and open source. So I can change the code to more adequately suit my needs IF I feel a need to do that.

The other quirky thing about it is that it requires a confirmation link to be clicked on when a subscriber is unsubscribing. I suppose that's a good thing (to keep anyone from unsubscribing anyone else without their consent) but still...something I don't usually see with newsletters I subscribe to from AWeber.

Carlos

1merchantcart does not appear to be very capable, very easy to use, or very good.

While I have not actually used it I did sign up for it and I did start clicking around their menus. It is confusing to use and does not appear to be very capable of being used as a sequential autoresponder for any serious list.

I still recommend using Infinite Response or rolling your own PHP autoresponder.

Carlos

That's like saying that one shouldn't use a hard disk because there is a risk of it crashing. Or not using your monitor too much because it might burn out.

A free autoresponder is no worse than aweber just because it's free than the Apache server is no worse for being free than Microsoft's IIS server. Free has little of anything to do with it.

The real question is the backbone supporting the SMTP email capabilities of an autoresponder and the features that it provides.

AWeber has no better email server backbone than that of many web hosting companies. A free autoresponder that has the capabilities you need, making use of an SMTP server running on a good hosting backend is just as reliable as AWeber.

No more and no less chance of losing your list to malfunction or otherwise.

If the features are there, if one is inclined to save the $20 a month paid to AWeber, and if one has the know how and inclination to install their own autoresponder under their own domain...well...there is no reason to not go with a free one or to roll your own.

Mind you...I said installing their own. I don't think any of the free one's that are made available through a web interface are any good. Stay away from those. But there are free one's that can be installed under a domain and are thus under one's control that are capable enough, albeit with some code modifications, of doing the job.

Carlos