Self Hosted Autoresponder

You will not have any luck with self hosted.

If you send out a bunch of emails all will be dumped into the junk folder.

When you use aweber, your basically paying them to get your emails into the inboxes of all your subscribers.

Having a self hosted autoresponder will not have too much success but it is a great solution if you are not able to pay the ridiculous prices that autoresponders have.

Why don't you want to renew it? It will probably cost much less to renew your service, as apposed to, paying for a good self hosted email marketing management system.

If you just want a simple autoresponder you can use your web hosting account. Usually, your control panel has the option to setup autoresponders. I know cPanel does this. Check with you web hosting company.

cPanel Basics: How To Setup An Autoresponder

Not anymore...

MailLoop Website

LOL, that's priceless, nice catch Eddie! Look's like mcsemct's effort to violate the forums policy on posting affiliate links backfired in more ways than one!

To the OP, the subject of self-hosted autoresponders comes up periodically here and the general consensus is that they are more trouble than they are worth. If you plan on hosting the autoresponder on a shared server you run the risk that one of your "neighbors" will end up on a spam blacklist and take you along with them.

If you aren't planning on sending out affiliate offers then MailChimp is free for up to 2000 subscribers.

Email Marketing and Email List Manager | MailChimp

Otherwise a good Open Source (i.e. free) script is phpList, you will also find this included in most shared hosting installations that use Fantastico so you can try it out in about 30 seconds.

phplist.com : phpList : The world's most popular open source email campaign manager

Happy Holidays

Bill

Not sure what you want to send to your list, but if it's just info you could try this MailChimp Acquires TinyLetter | MailChimp Email Marketing Blog

I am using an In-house (self-hosted) autoresponder script which is very robust (it has all what aweber has and even more) but shared hosting restricts email sending to 250 per hour while VPS does not, I decided to upgrade to VPS only to discover that VPS does not have all the facilities I needed and my server does not have enough memory to install cPanel, I also later realized that my host don't provide technical assistance for VPS servers (they tried their best to help me though).

I'm afraid you'll have problems with a self-hosted autoresponder down the road. This is because a lot of hosting companies have restrictions regarding this. But, in order for you to not get into any trouble, best to ask them first about your plan.

Right now I'm using Parabots - Parabots Autoresponder System (not an affiliate link) - which is a free scipt, and I've been very happy with it.

I agree with abs007, 3rd party relay services are a must, especially if you're on shared hosting.

Although this is a prehistoric thread that has for some reason been resurrected, I am surprised that nobody has mentioned arpReach (the new updated version of ARP3). I moved my main lists over to it recently and have been very happy with both ease of use and deliverability. You do need hosting that is up to it though - a regular Hostgator account won't do the job well.

I use Sticky Worm, a great self hosted solution.
I'm not an affiliate or associated with the product just a satisfied user.

Amazon SES is fine. But you can also try iContact and Constant Contact.

Self-hosted wins anyday over 3rd party!

1) Get arpReach - autoresponder and email marketing software

2) Get smtp.com (which allows you to send thousands of emails via their reliable, high-delivery SMTP service. This way you don't have to send through your host. Hence never have to worry about being suspended.)

There!

Solution 100x better then all the Aweber, Mailchimp, iContact gramophones... yet noone knows about it. Simply because most are sheeps, repeating what they've heard from other sheeps.

I use GWA autoresponder Pro, its a plug for wordpress and it does a great job, never had any problems and i have been using this plugin for more them 6 years now....

You don't have to worry about sending to much mails to fast because it has a throttle function.

Whatever autorespounders you used be it self-hosted or professional hosted (aweber, etc), please make sure you archive your subscriber lists into your thumb-drive for back-up purposes.

If you'd choose to run your email marketing on a self hosted solution, you will need to observe a few things.

1.Host Mail Server IP Sending Reputation
2.Feedback Loop & Whitelisting
3.Mail Transport Gateway
4.A Reliable Auto Responder Script that Don't Screw you up on email delivery.

If you just want to send less than 50 emails per month or have only 50 subscribers, then you should have no problem at the beginning. But when your list grows, you need all the above.

If you really want to host your own autoresponder software, I suggest arpreach.com. However, please use at least a VPS to host your autoresponder software.

Do not use Share hosting because ALL shared hosting will limit your email sending. For example, hostgator only allows 500 emails per hour and cannot send more than 5000 emails per day.

Hope this helps.

Reading this brings back awful memories of a time pre-Aweber, maybe 1998 or so, when I bought a program that would host autoresponders on my site. What an effing nightmare that was!

Learning all the programming stuff, cron jobs, etc. It was horrible. I bought myself a $400 headache that lasted for about a year!

I love Aweber!!!!

Don't self host if your domain registrar is Go Daddy. If subscribers mark your mails as spam rather than unsubscribing, some email providers report this through their system, which goes to other spam reporting systems which find their way back to Go Daddy and they will lock your domain and slap you with a $200 unlock fee (not sure of exact amount), but it is in their terms of use.

Honestly use one of the credible mail providers such as aWebber, GetResponse or MailChimp. MailChimp is also free to join and you upgrade based on subscribers etc., I pay $10 a month and like their interface a lot.

Mailchimp is great but they have strict rules against internet marketing - they don't like it, unlike Aweber, which is way more tolerant.

It's not such a bad thing - it forces you to create emails that add real value and aren't just a bunch of spammy links.

Why not self-host at your home?

It's not that hard to set up a server at home. The level of control you'd have available...

I haven't tried it, but a person should be able to route everything through the latest high anon proxies too. You could even offer it as a service to a limited group of your closest buddies, for a nominal fee (electricity, ISP costs, etc.).

Hmmm....

You might as well renew your membership with Aweber... or even Getresponse. Self hosting will cost you more (including time) than a simple $19 a month from Aweber.

Good point to bring up. Can you import a list to Aweber, sure you can and then they have to double optin. How many do, I have tried it and you pretty much have to give your first born to get even half of them too.

Can you sell your aweber account. No you can not trade loan or sell system accounts. How many of you have all your lists on one AR company. I actually had three companies, now down to one only because it was a yearly subscription but don't really use it.

Now if you self host and you keep your list on the webpage you promote or website you can not only sell the webiste but you can sell the list.

As I have said in so many posts. How do I do it.
Install wordpress
Install AR
Set up ar with my mail servers settings
Set up my mail server with my ar
I import a list or lists
I make sure port 587 is open
I send a blast to test it.

Took me the first time about 30 minutes, Now I can do it in ten minutes or less.

Delivery rates now are above 99 percent. I quit looking at that though since those numbers have no relevance for me.

Open rates are a little better and I quit comparing click rates because that has nothing to do with it since it is just about open rates, the email is about click rates and the product.

Now even with a low producing website say 200.00 a month and with a list of a thousand, how much more would you expect that site to be worth?

My Answer
I heck of alot more?

Hey Michelle

Try Sendy.com. It is self-hosted and there are plenty of advantages. Just be carefully with short emails e.g blah, blah, blah here is the link...

Good luck

I say don't go for self hosted autoresponder and go for aweber or getresponse.

You can set up an email server on any Linux VPS, then plug in an autoresponder script. it works as good any commercial one. i used POSTFIX with this autoresponder http://www.nefaria.com/scriptz/autoresponse-1.6.2.tar.g

Amend Brother. Yet we have the power to change the thinking of the Internet Marketer.

Remember I am here to help anyone willing to break out of the grasps of those
Cash Sucking AR companies.

You don't have to totally switch over. Just do it and put maybe a 100 on the list, they can still be on aweber while your testing.

I will give you insight to everything to do for free just to test it.

My quest is to save people money. Call me The Assassin Saver Super Hero lol.

That makes me think, I wonder what the big companies use Like Warriorforum. Let me get my cape and fly over to my email and find out.
Umm from what I can tell, they have an inbuilt system.
Wonder what Microsoft uses oh there own system.
Wonder what? uses

You get my meaning.

hustlinsmoke I was reading the entire thread. What software do you use for email marketing? I got the impression it is a wordpress plugin?

I was thinking of getting interspire email marketing software and putting it in my host. I am also planning to move to an unmanaged host which charges me $20 a YEAR for VPS. Lol I never knew unmanaged hosting even existed, but there is a steep learning curve ahead for me and thought I would incorporate self hosted email marketing into my learning experience. Anyway I was under the impression you personally installed a script like interspire in your hosting account until I read your later thread which mentioned a plugin. I was unable to find anything for free which let me schedule emails to send to new subscribers in specific day intervals. Do let me know how you do your self hosted email marketing. A tutorial will help people like me save a lot of time.

Thanks a lot.

I did research in the past several months, here's my conclusion:
- use at least VPS hosting, although you still can use shared hosting for a small list.
- use STMP provider for email delivery: amazon ses, sendgrid, etc.
and here's my top list of self-hosted autoresponder apps:
1. octeth.com
2. arpreach.com
3. sendy.co
4. interspire.com

I got mine and I can say it's great to have self-hosted autoresponder
But I still use 3rd party autoresponder like Getresponse & Sendreach.

i guess that what you are looking for in something like interspire email marketer. i`ve been using it for a while and it works great. you can check it out here. sign up for a demo and see if you like it.
if you buy it from this link you will get $20 discount lol just kidding

Michelle,

I've been doing some in-depth research on the topic of self hosted autoresponders recently. Here is what I've found so far.

You basically need two things to make it work....

#1 - a script or some list management software to interface with #2 which is....
#2 - a 3rd party SMTP relay server such as Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailjet, etc.

Using your webhost server to send out your emails is not a great long-term solution as they will have a daily limit on how many messages you can send. The SMTP services I mention above are cheap.... $.10 (as in ten cents) per 1,000 emails.

As for free software, there are a couple of ways to go.... a WP plugin or a self hosted script.

The best free WP autoresponder plugin that I found that will interface with a 3rd party SMPT server (SendGrid) is Wysija AKA Mailpoet. I have a working system set-up with it right now. The drawback to Wysija is that the free version will only allow a list size of 2,000 subscribers. They do have a paid version but if you're going to pay, you might as well go for a one-time paid self hosted script such as arpReach or Sendy.

There are a couple of free self hosted autoresponder scripts available such as Infinite Responder and Parabots. The problem is that neither are currently supported and they can be a bitch to install (if you're not a techie). Most importantly though is that they do not integrate with a 3rd party SMTP server (although I'm sure a programmer could hack them to do so).

phpList is another option. It's a free, self hosted, open source mailing list management script that is pretty robust. It has an active support community and it interfaces nicely with any SMTP relay service. The only problem is that it doesn't come with a built-in sequential autoresponder. I have it up and running now and was able to find a free AR plugin for it that I'm trying to get it to work with. If I can get the AR plugin to work, phpList looks to be the ultimate free, self hosted autoresponder option currently available.... for me anyway.

Full disclosure; if you aren't willing or inclined to pop open the hood and get your hands a little dirty installing and configuring a self hosted script, then you're better off staying with a monthly paid, 3rd party service such as AW or GR.

That being said, phpList will install from cPanel on many webhosts and there is plenty of ongoing support that will enable a motivated newbie to get it set-up.

Also, the free Wysija WP plugin option works really well and the set-up is pretty straight forward. The support is awesome. None of the other free WP autoresponder plugins that I tested seem to come even close.

Hope that helps....

Just wanted to add my support for the MailPoet Wordpress plugin (formerly known as Wysija)

This is one of the most impressive solutions for running your own newsletter or autoresponder.

MailPoet: a Newsletter Plugin for WordPress

Check out their blog for some case studies of how people have saved hundreds of dollars by NOT using Aweber.

PS - you can use MailPoet and hook it up to something like SendGrid or Mandrill, and save a TON of money while having better deliverability than iContact or GetResponse.

I am running a self-hosted autoresponder in my special list of less than 1000 subscribers and I have no problem at all... But I think more than 1000 subscribers is not feasible to use self-hosted...

Whenever it comes to self-hosted vs. third party autoresponder services
I always ask "Do the third parties use a third party to do their email
marketing or do they use a self-hosted solution?"

In plain language, does aWeber use a third party ESP or self hosted?

-Ray Edwards

You pay email marketing services because you have templates there to use, the editor, easy to use software, uploading the contacts, creating groups, segment groups, get your campaign to the inbox. if all of that could be used by a self hosted campaign, then why there are so many email marketing companies out there? get once marked as a spammer in your self hosted auto responder and you are done, wave goodbye to the effort you have done so far

This subject comes up from time to time and it is comical to see some of the bogus replies but what if you could look between the lines of what is being said and figure out why people seem to be so biased?

The truth is that you could use Yahoo or Gmail and get as good a result as a paid service.

That is a fact and I know a lot of people that are doing just that thing.

They do not have this mysterious disease where somehow emails do not go where they should go, LOL on that but hey if your trying to sell a service that can be found for free I guess that would be something that you might think about doing.

When you consider that fact then the truth will in this case set you free from the muddy waters of biased posts.

I love to see someone post about how you cant get emails delivered, which is nothing but either ignorance or a lie, because lets face it if spammers can get hundreds of thousands of emails delivered for free, then there has to be something wrong with the idea that you have to pay in order to get your emails delivered.

That is also the truth.

But none of that matters, if you have a good quality product and your customers want to hear from you, you could use just about any service and have no problem...

So, if you want to pay for a service, Go for it no one is stopping you from doing that.

But to come in here and post hogwash, that I call BS on.

There are WP based autoresponder plugins that are free. I've used them for clients who had a limited budget and didn't want to fork out monthly fees for a few hundred subscribers or so. If you're not a BIG user of email lists, I'd advocate them - work fine without the bells n whistles and lets you allocate that spend on another part of your business...

I've always preferred the self-hosting myself, even when other options have been available, it somehow seems "neater" to have an autoresponder setup for each site that's accessible when you're working on that site instead of separately.

To this end, I've done an update and port of Infinity Responder into a Wordpress plugin, with many bugfixes, improvements and features added. Enjoy! :-)

WP Infinity Responder (still free!)