why aweber instead of my own double opt in (like G-Lock)?

Everybody is saying that the main issue is the deliverability - dealing with ISPs and major email providers...

Besides aweber there are other service providers, too.

The main benefit of using services like Aweber is deliverability.

Sending bulk email from your own server is frought with problems, as the server can easily be flagged as a "spam" server. Once that happens, you would find that most, if not all of your email would simply not get delivered to its destination.

Companies like Aweber have "seasoned" servers which are "known", and are therefore trusted, which helps to ensure that any email generated from them gets delivered in a timely fashion.

They also enforce very strict anti-spam policies which ensure that the reputation of their servers is not tarnished.

Hope that helps!

Ah. My hosting is, um, one of the big 3. I'm sure my emails will be delivered.

And knowing that I have THEIR reputation in my hands, you can bet I won't be spamming!!!

Absolute double opt-in and unsubscribe link front and center in every email.

Any other reasons I shouldn't just manage my own lists?

I've already talked to them. I'm not about to jeopardize my entire hosting account just to send some emails.

Let's just say that they already handle big corporate clients that do large email sends. The question is one of transparency and legitimacy. If I work WITH them and not against them, they not only ALLOW my emails, but they SUPPORT them as part of the services and infrastructure they provide.

So which are you trying to say:

That any email list is by definition spam?

Or that it's impossible to manage a list within the TOS of a large data center services provider?

Hostgator is a great hosting company, but they limit you to sending 500 emails per hour: Our mail policy and limits HostGator.com Support Portal

One reason to use aweber is if you plan to have a list of thousands of subscribers. Aweber can send all the email in a matter of minutes but it will take you hours.

Another issue (especially with shared hosting accounts) is that as soon as someone else from your server (IP address) sends a bunch of spam, it doesn't matter how 'clean' you are or whether you're sending spam. You get grouped in with the other spammer on your server.

I've personally had issues with Aweber deliverability, but I'm still happy to pay for their service rather than manage my own and deal with all the details and sharing issues.

Hope that helps.

Paul, dwatrous, thanks for your answers.

I was trying to point out that I don't have a hosting account, I have a data center. IE, not hostgator, or another top tier hosting provider.

Rather, imagine SunGard or IBM "hosting" and DELL or Victoria's Secret's "email delivery" volume. It's not one of those, but that's the kind of place that I'm at. I got lucky and my little hosting account got slipped into a much larger place because i was beta testing a new service, and now I'm grandfathered in ;-)

So to summarize:

aweber is valuable if I'm on my own hosting and grow a large list.

It's not so important if I have BOTH:

a good data center
AND a GOOD relationship with them wrt handling complaints etc.

Thanks guys. I'll double and triple check with (and make sure I have a first name relationship with the right people) them before sending any emails.

agc,
having ran several datacenters I can say its a good thing you're on great terms with them - it will definitely help. But its no guarantee of deliverability. There are ways receiving ISPs can blacklist you and you would never know it unless your checking your delivery rates yourself. You can do this, and there are services to do this, but its time consuming and can be expensive.

there are lots of ways out there for you're ip list to be black listed without ever knowing it unless you check. Then you have to work with those people to try and get your ip white listed.

This happens to everyone from time to time- even aWeber, Constant Contact, and iContact and other large enterprises - even IBM and Victoria Secretes. These folks have dedicated people interacting with the black list services - and also with the large ISPs themselves (hotmail, AOL, yahoo etc) . If you are planning on running such large lists, especially in the IM area, then part of your daily duties needs to be checking and trying to get off those lists.

And if spam complaints get so large that they go from just blacklisting your ips to actually complaining to your host - then that's where your relationship will help - maybe they contact you before yanking your site - because believe me - if it ever came between keeping my BGP routes with various networks and keeping your server up an running - you're going down.

That's way so many folks have problems, hosting providers can't risk losing their connectivity upstream due to spammers - even if the accusation is wrong.

Finally - watch your registrar too. Some of them have reputations of being quick to take you out of the root name servers if you're thought to be a spammer - think GoDaddy. And to get back up and running can cost some serious money. Which is why you should never register your domain name and host with the same company. Too much risk in one location.

Having said this - if you have a well targeted list that knows who you are, then self hosting an autoresponder is fine - its just a bit more maintenance. Which is why many folks outsource this service to companies like aWeber and GetResponse.

good luck,
--Jack

Aweber has the highest delivery rate so people use them mostly for that purpose. But I think their new pricing rates is crazy (not $9.95 per 10,000 subscribers). Luckily I am an very old customer so I'm on an old pricing. I also use Interspire Email Marketer with external SMTP service like SMTP.com for some of my sites and it's working great too. SO I would definitely recommend everyone to go get third party autoresponder service or if you want more control then use Interspire script with external SMTP for deliverability.