Email marketing service vs self-hosted software?

No, in some instances self-hosted can be a better solution than a third party service.

However, every business is different and you will need to assess the pros and cons and weigh them against your own business model.

Cheers,
Coby

I'll second Coby's response: It depends.

I've done self-hosted autoresponder scripts with self-hosted SMTP, self-hosted script with outsourced SMTP, and fully outsourced. They all have their pros and cons.

The main benefit to using a 3rd party service has to do with email deliverability. Ensuring clear pathways for deliverability with major email providers (gmail, hotmail, yahoo, AOL, etc...) is a full time job for engineers at those companies, so I let them worry about it.

These days, I run a pretty simple model across all of my sites: I have a short autoresponder sequence, usually four or five emails sent anywhere from one to four days apart, and then I use blog broadcast to email out my new blog posts to the list.

I currently do this all via Aweber, whom I've been with for nearly a decade, and I'm on a grandfathered billing plan that's much cheaper than current plans.

If I was starting from scratch today, I would use MailChimp for a long, long list of reasons.

The reason I stay away from 3rd party and prefer self hosted is the control
aspect. I would rather have 100% control of what happens to my lists than
be dictated to by the likes of Aweber et al.

The 'technical' aspects aren't as scary as some would have others believe and
the statement about servers limiting sends is only true if you're sending via
your hosting companies smtp. Most would be using a 3rd party smtp service
for any decent volume so it's really not an issue.

The cost is also a fraction of what you're paying with the 'big boys' AND you
don't get charged based on the size of your list.

Hope that helps

Steve

Coby has it right. Every business is different and you can't always look for the cheapest way out if you are looking for a good return and some staying power. I like self hosted plans but that's just me and I like to be in charge of it. Sometimes it can become quite a hassle and almost not seem worth it.

If you are able to build a list of that size and gives values to them, you should be able to cover the cost of the autoresponder. Of course you will want to always thinks of ways to cut cost but I personally feel that paying a fee for a professional services is worth it.

There's definitely merit to having your own hosted solution.

The foremost variable of consideration is control.

You have much more control if you own and host your own.

The problematic nature can be the technical side of things.

It's much easier to register for some of the popular autoresponders.

Almost too easy.

You may well find that the overall costs of self-hosting a 100k list are far more than the subscription you pay by the time you pay for a decent dedicated server, the setup, ongoing updates, creating emails from scratch (rather than the online design systems), etc etc

Hi Max,

As Coby pointed out, you have to do your homework and decide what the most cost effective solution is for you. Time is money and so is effort. Decide how much of both you want to put into your email marketing platform/solution. Call, IM or email us and any other ESP you are thinking of. Take the time to ask some good questions and then decide on the best solution for your specific needs.

Regards,
jim

I think you first should check if your ISP has any issues with database like Spamhouse or Spamcop. I found out that my ISP was blacklisted. An ISP has a block of IP-addressess allocated to it. In my case there were probably some spammers in that block of IP addressess and the whole block was blacklisted. You can try to get your personal IP address whitelisted again but I found that this was pretty hard.

So, I would recommend an email marketing service because they work very hard in maintaining good relationships with all the spam detection systems out there.

That said, with the recent introduction of the different tabs in Gmail, some people argue that it is better to host your own autoresponder because the emails of the big companies like Aweber and Getresponse will go into the 'advertisement' tab straight away.

Anybody got any experience with this?

javari

Hi Javari,

Opinions abound on the issue of the Gmail changes. There has been much gnashing of teeth over this issue and knee-jerking. I shared this info in another post....

...a paragraph from a Return Path report on the new Gmail tabs:

"As many predicted, Gmail subscribers that didn’t read much marketing email before Tabs’ rollout read even less of it a week later. On the other hand, highly engaged users that historically read high percentages of marketing messages actually read more after Tabs’ rollout. The bulk of subscribers fall between these groups, but while read rates dipped slightly among users with medium levels of engagement, they didn’t plummet. The study found that these users read 10.55% of their marketing email before the launch of Tabs, and then 9.81% of their marketing mail after the rollout. This decline was partially offset because they received more of the mail sent to them: Inbox placement rates increased slightly after rollout."

Regards,
jim

I've debated this question as well. But I've opted away from the a self hosted solution because of the whole deliverability issue. We all know people are lazy or malicious and will mark your emails as spam in a heart beat. So your self hosted solution can end up being blacklisted very quickly. Whereas services as aweber, getresponse.com actively work to keep their "nose" clean.

How effective they are at doing that can be debated. It might be worth testing both solutions to see which works better for you.

I keep hearing good things about Amazon Simple Email Service.

No one has mentioned it as an option.

Any thoughts?

Thank's,
John

Lengthy post so get a nice cold glass of lemonade, put your feet up and enjoy.

People can scream, cry, yell that Self Hosted is no good. That the only one you should use is AW or GR.

I have been testing for over 1.5 months now. I will not harp on delivery rates since that doesn't really matter since there is no way to tell if they land in spam on inbox. Mine is over 99 percent though.

Open rates are a little better than I had with GR.

I also won't discuss click rates since that depends on your copy.

What I would like to point out is there are some good autoresponder plugins and scripts out there. Some pricey some not to bad.

wysija is one I tested and pretty good.

I actually had my own made and he is still in the process although I am using it now.

One thing though if you need a great assortment of email templates ect. Then look for that. I do not since I use plain text or html and if I do I will just make one.

I use a mail server and the first 12,000 mails are free each month
after that .20 cents per thousand. Compare that to the big boys.

I have total control.

Now remember this, you are actually putting yourself in a awkward situation if your not legit with your emails. For one the Mx record is still your hostings. The ip can be dedicated. Most mail servers will send very slowly at first while checking spam complaints, bounce rate and complaint rates, if alot come in there going to stop you.

I have sent approximately 50,000 emails now with one spam complaint so I have an excellent reputation with them and my mail goes through at a rate of 8,000 an hour now. It started in the low hundreds.

Things you need to remember.
Find one that is a one time price. No reason to pay yearly or monthly if you want to leave the big guys.
See if they have templates if you need them.
Most important don't forget your otpin webform maker. I make my own but alot of people will want to make sure that you can make one and it can be posted on any page, the widgets, the footer or the header and some will want alot of templates for it.

I do not suggest this for the new marketer but if you have enough experience, some html css and a small amount of coding knowledge you can make this work.

Other things to consider.
You can not sell or trade your aw account.
With a self hosted your members stay on your website.
If you sell the website you can sell the list and it makes that website so much more valuable expecially with a large responsive list.

If you have any questions and need honest answers message me. If you want to go for it but a little apprehensive email me. I WILL Help you and have helped several this month start there own.

Now remember if your nervous then go ahead and do it, keep your ar's like I did and start using the self hosted, Within a month you will dump your AR's I did and I save well over 200 a month now.

Good luck and I am here for you. I may not be able to get to you right away but I will not leave you hanging.

I recently went self hosted after the gmail update.

Gotta give props to Coby, I read a lot of his posts regarding this subject which helped me a ton.

I'm currently testing two services that I like best, SMTP.com and MailJet.
(In regards to MailJet, they seem to be very picky when it comes to "affiliate marketing" so I'd recommend you set yourself up a DECENT site first with a more commerce/corporate look to help the verification process)


As for deliverability, since swapping to self hosted open rates have doubled what I was getting on Aweber (before the update).

I'm also getting a lot more replies to my emails from people who thought I'd either stopped using email to market, died, quit or simply thought I had removed them.

Looks like an all around winner so far (a LOT cheaper, too!)

Yeah Amazon is not the same thing, Like Coby states Mailjet is a great provider, smtp or api ran. I use them on a couple of sites but not my main.

I do give recommendations here but I do not tell my best ones.

I will this time. Mandrill is the best in my opinion. They are a spin off from mail chimp and you get 12,000 free mails a month and then .20 cents a thousand thereafter.

I would do like me though if you have autoresponders on all sites and that is split it up.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket, This way if one goes out or down you can switch to the other one really quick and lose no reputation.

Yeah I think I was charge eight bucks and I usually do not mail that much, I was just doing a bunch of test mails to make sure that self hosted was better.

What I love to see is the people screaming do not do it, Ask them if they have tried it and they say no but so and so says don't do it.

I want you to go self hosted people. I have helped two people go self hosted already. I will help you also. Takes me ten minutes to set it up and import a list. Ten minutes big deal.

EDIT:
P.S.

If you want a self hosted AR. P.M. me I will walk you through it. Help you do it and walk with you as you get used to it.

Remember this though anyone with unethical motives about this will not get through. The mail server will shut it down. The hosting will be cancelled, the ip and the domain name will be blacklisted. If you have motives that are not ethical I suggest you go to bhf and find someone to mail for you cause you will just waste my time.

I should of said. The only thing with your hosting account you have to know if they allow port 587 to be open. That is the mail port most of the smtp mailers use.

The mail does not go through the hosting account. The Mx record is usually not changed so that belongs to the hosting company so you still want to be safe. Most hosting accounts won't let you change the MX.

Hostmantis won't let you have port 587, ipage and hostgator does. Those are the three accounts I have, others I do not know about.

I still set my ar not to send more than 400 mails an hour just in case something happens and it does go through my hosting company. 400 is usually close to the max most hosting companies let you send an hour.

hey

I noticed that no one here talked about the sign up form,
for instance, im currently using getresponse, Ive created 2 forms that currently using for my site, one is a popup and the other is static below the left menu..

when I installed interspire, i tried to create a sign up form, and the options are a joke, you cant edit, change add video or do any modification to the form.
which for me, is very bad, I think a form should be very attractive and appealing.

BUT, the price difference, in the long run, between GR to self hosted is a big factor.. so im looking a solution for the form creation. any ideas guys? - I need to be able to add videos, images, etc. make it nice

I thought about making some kind of a squeeze page and scale this squeeze page into a popup in the site... any recommendations for a nice squezze builder? im not using wordpress...

thanks
M.

Email marketing can be used by companies to enhance a connection with a current client.


These strategies are usually reliable of frequent updates or up-dates usually just maintaining current clients advised about what is going on or activities or possibilities that may be arriving up.


Actually the main thing is if you use email marketing in your company a self hosted solution would be the capability to large email from your own server instead of using third party services.


If your new to e-mail marketing then this may not be the best solution for you to begin with you may be better off using a third party support to begin with.

Something is not clear to me here. For instance if i sign up with any of these companies mailjet, mandrill, sendgrid e.t.c will i still need to buy VPS or hosting package, dedicated IPs to use them?

Or i just need to import my list into say mandrill.com, compose my messages and press send?

Please i need clarification. Thanks.

I would you paid for autoresponder all day long over self hosted, less hassle, they have good support teams at both aweber and GR, and should I have a list of 100K in the near future then the $5400k per year should be a drop in the ocean