Autoresponders: Aweber vs. cronjob?

I use both actually..
I use DAP membership plugin and it has built-in mailer/autoresponder and I also use Aweber as my backup just in case my built-in autoresponder doesn't deliver. So, yeah I use commercial autoresponder for deliverability reason.

Gama

WIthout any doubt, Aweber is the famous and outstanding email gathering service evar...

Long term you should be paying for aweber as you don't want to be spending your time worrying about changes to blacklisting IP addresses and all sorts of other technical stuff that will stop your e-mails getting out.

Also if you want to integrate with a membership script then all developers add support for aweber as this is what many people call the gold standard.

If you're using it to send out emails and not making the monthly fee then you're not building your list correctly.

Although I also use aweber, there are other solutions such as icontact, getresponse, mailchimp, infusionsoft (certainly not for newbies) and many others.
Using a local php mailer can be OK for a small list, but as the list grows, you will start having issues with deliverability and spam complaints - that is when you'll start needing the professional platforms. They make sure that their deliverability rates are high (although I have been reading here in the forum all kinds of complaints about deteriorating rates lately)

We've just gone through an analysis for use with OutsourceFactor.com ... and we should have done this more carefully before launch, but we didn't. We were planning to build our own in-house email service and use official signing servers, route through Amazon SES or equivalent. It's not as feasible as we hoped (for now).

There are two types of emails you can send.

1) Transactional - for example someone buys your product and you send them a receipt, or a login link, or whatever. These are NOT marketing emails.

2) Bulk email - these are promotional in nature, not sparked by an action on the part of the receiver.

It is these bulk emails that are the most difficult to deal with. You really don't want to run them through your cPanel / cron job. Too risky to get your IP address and domain blocked for spamming (even if you have confirmed optin).

So, we're using Postmark to send out signup notifications for our site, and then we'll automatically add you to an Aweber list (using confirmed optin). This is the most effective way to leverage Aweber, but not be tied to them for a critical part of our site's functionality (signup).

Aweber's white list status makes it the hands down favorite. Also, its template-based system offers a lot of value.

Aweber has always been reliable for me, although I have a MailChimp account for a couple of my lists because how can you turn down a free plan with Up to 2,000 subscribers and the ability to send 12,000 emails per month?

Aweber has never let me down I love everything about it

and the price is great in my book

I think it's much safer and more effective to use a service like Aweber (or GetResponse, which I use). It's more secure and I'm pretty sure your delivery rates are going to be higher.

I agree with what most of the ppl in the thread said... spend a couple bucks and let an ESP deal with spam filtering/black lists etc -- it's a full time job in and of itself.

Yes. And the interface is easy to navigate too.

> deliverability issue, you don't want to deal with running your own mailing servers.

GetResponse! 30 Day absolute FREE! Hurray!!!