Which do you prefer - Software or Service

[kfegarty]

I would like to know what people prefer and why.

An email software product that you download, pay once and manage and send your own campaigns or

An email marketing service where you pay on a per-email basis to have the service send your message.

[Maxlamenace]

Originally Posted by kfegarty

An email software product

Any of these have a smell of SPAM in my eyes. But if you want to make sure you don't spam I would recommend a product you use yourself, because you would have more control over your excludes list.

[davebarnes]

Software.

I have used both.

I have used a service from http://www.yunau.com and found it to be cumbersome to use and the costs got out of hand as the mailing list grew past 5000.
They were charging 3 cents per message which is very reasonable for low volumes, but not for high.

I have used a service from http://www.blacktie-colorado.com/ and found it to very poor. Editing recipients was difficult and it changed my HTML code in the newsletter!
This service is free (included in membership cost) but the homegrown code is poor.

I use a software product called Broadcast from Aestiva ( http://www.aestiva.com ). I use it to send out a monthly newsletter for one of my clients to 15000 recipients.
Broadcast is a server-based, browser-controlled product.
Pricing for Aestiva's Broadcast is:
Bronze Gold Platinum Titanium
2,500 10,000 50,000 Unlimited
$599 $1,499 $2,495 $4,999

I also use a software product called Group Mail from Infacta ( http://www.infacta.com ). Group Mail runs on my Windows PC.
Costs are very reasonable at:
Group Mail Plus, unlimited, $179.95
Group Mail Pro, unlimited, $99.95
Group Mail Free, limited, $0.00

My preference is for software and not a service. Primarily because service costs can explode.

I can't comment on Karen's product's features, but it does seem reasonably priced.

Broadc@st Business Edition $249 Send unlimited campaigns to lists of up to 1000 email addresses
Broadc@st Commerce Edition $795 Send unlimited campaigns to lists of up to 10000 email addresses
Broadc@st Marketing Edition $2495 Send unlimited campaigns to lists of unlimited size

,dave

[aaronmp2003]

Yep, I'll have to go with software on this one. I've used 2 online services for this, and found both to be problematic at best, leaving way to many variables open for confusion and/or error.

Now, I manage my Newsletter list, keep my handy "unsubscribe" text at the ready, and manage the whole process the old-fashioned way - by hand. Granted, I have a small list (for now), but I don't really foresee any marked increase in the amount of time that I would spend managing the list itself - even when it grows to thousands.

[DrTandem1]

Personally, any e-mail campaign in which I'm involved must be opt-in by the recipients. In other words, I won't be involved with spam. That being said, I would prefer a software product over paying for the service.

There are many free e-mail programs already available, but yours may have more features.

[Michel]

I use Groupmail Pro for over two years now to send out a monthly newsletter in the Benelux (Europe).
Works well.

[jg33]

I prefer software...Groupmail is one of my favorite too.

Joseph

[EcommerceDealers]

I prefere a desktop application like Group Mail.
Since spammers use such desktop softwares often, many Spam Filters like SpamAssassin can identify such email from the email header and may be penalized from 2.0 to 3.0.

I heard that Group Mail 3.x does not use such headers. Your comments please..

Ali
FREE Keyword Suggestion Tool
http://keyword-suggestion-tool.epubl...eywordTool.zip

[TrafficProducer]

Software I use Traffic Seeker, (ref: http://www.zip.ip3.com), to submit to Search Engines.

I also use other software.

[Biffy]

My company uses Gammadyne Mailer (www.gammadyne.com) for sending blasts.

It has useful features such as handling opt-outs. We generally send to our members or people who have opted-in to our mailings. And you can add headers.

I have tried many freeware programs but they didn't have all the features I required, or didn't work very well. That's not to say that they might not be right for you (and there's lots of them out there).

Because we send a large number of mailings, such as a monthly newsletter, the cost of the software pays for itself many times over.

It really depends how many mailings you are sending to how many recipients as to costs. If you only want to send one or two mailings a year then pay for an online service or use free software. If you're only sending to a few people, then use an email client like Pegasus or Outlook (one in which you can set up groups). To send regular mailings to lots of people, then you should have your own mailing software.

[deltatrend]

I just use the email component (JMail) of my hosting provider to send emails by connecting to an Access DB. Naturally, you have to know a bit of coding, but not much.
The problem I am facing, and which I suspect is a problem with all of these solutions, are the Blacklists. My last batch had a 5% return rate to to ISPs using the SpamCop blacklist. This is a very non-selective blacklist, but many ISPs are using it.

[alsoran]

Software, of course, but with a difference. I believe the web has many wonderful things to offer FREE, so I look around for free resources. I've used WorldMerge free evaluation, which is quite good.

Other great free resources my colleagues/friends frequently use are Dada Mail, WorldCast free evaluation, MailMan, PhpList, PHPMailList, etc., The last 2 need some knowledge about php programming. For free email service, FreeAutoBot is a good one, though VerticalResponse's iBuilder is a popular email solution provider.

[encomgroup]

I prefer a software product. I am currently using Broadc@st http://www.mailworkz.com and I find that it gives me all the features and control that I need to send out my email campaigns. I like that I only had to pay a one-time cost rather than the service I used before which I had to pay per-email for.

[APM500]

I also am very interested in the pro's and con's of software vs. web-based solutions. In fact I posted a topic and I was directed to this topic.

Anyway, I am now leaning towards software for a few reasons: It ends up cheaper, you have exclusive access to your subscriber list, and it just allows a greater amount of control over what you are doing.

I've been looking at Arclab MailList Controller (price range: free - $199) which hasn't been mentioned yet in this topic. I recommend that you try the demo version. It's very clean and easy to use.

The only solid con with software (in my opinion) is the lack of an instant opt-in opt-out feature. With the Arclab software, you have to do a send/receive command (which can be automated to check every xx minutes) to check for new opt-in opt-out requests.

Personally, this con doesn't bother me too much, because the pro is: you can still allow web-form-based sign-up's which is a major plus. And, I almost forgot, you have the option of using its local database or you can connect to a remote database...so if you had some automated script on your website to add users to a database, you could connect to it and use that.

I prefer this particular software over everything else.