The earliest email list management tools were primitive indeed. Many of them ran on the desktop, and the few server based apps were notoriously insecure. What’s more, their features were better suited to academic discussions than marketing. Some of them even allowed any subscriber to send messages to the entire list!
Aweber was one of the first true business-class email list managers. At the time, it was rare to find an application that put the needs of the business user first. Internet marketing was still in its infancy, and the details of successful email marketing were still being worked out. But thanks to Aweber and a few of its more “tuned in” competitors, business owners had access to the tools they needed.
Times change. While Aweber was once the undisputed king of the hill, there are many challengers today. The corporate world has woken up to the true potentials of Internet marketing, and demand for cutting-edge features is driving a new renaissance in the email space.
For an established product like Aweber, it can be hard to change with the times. Software products are more than a checklist of features; they are an intricately engineered system tightly bound to their features and requirements.
Making changes can mean overhauling many systems at once. With each change increasing the risk of developing a fault, software vendors tend to make small, conservative changes.
This is especially true for a large SAAS provider with thousands of active customers. There isn’t a moment of the day when Aweber’s servers aren’t busy processing thousands or even millions of emails. Changing the software at the heart of such a system is akin to replacing the engine on a speeding train.
There have been so many changes in the world of commercial email since Aweber first emerged. They include:
* Requirements for legal compliance, which are complicated and differ from country to country. This requires certain guidelines to be followed concerning the storage and processing of private data and requires an effective opt-out mechanism for all emails.
* Whitelisting and deliverability, which is enforced at several levels, from individual ISPs to Internet backbone providers.
* The need to register reverse PTR records, domain keys and other ISP level settings to ensure email is not automatically deleted.
* The demand for analytics and real-time data.
* Sophisticated user requirements, including market segregation and responsive campaigns.
* Complexities added through cross-channel promotions and integration with other platforms, such as social media.
* The emergence of cloud computing, which allows competitors to set up more quickly and scale effortlessly.
Simply getting an email into the hands of your customer is a much more challenging task than you may assume. If you want a technical overview of the subject, Jeff Atwood has written an excellent piece at http://blog.codinghorror.com/so-youd-like-to-send-some-email-through-code/.
All told, Aweber has done an admirable job to keep up with these shifting requirements as long as it has. But it is no longer the number one choice for email.
It has lost ground to a newer breed of strong competitors. Products which have emerged during and since these major changes are fundamentally more suited to these operating conditions.
And the nature of SAAS software development has changed, too. Today’s companies are based around agile ideologies and paradigms such as cloud computing and micro-service architectures, which allow them to develop and roll out new features faster than older organizations.
The important lesson here is that choosing an email service provider is not just about your current needs. You need a good SAAS provider who is able to adjust to emerging changes in the future, too. And there’s another benefit of agile SAAS software providers which is very important to mention.
SAAS providers are able to scale up their operations more cost effectively than their hidebound competitors, as their software is based on newer technology. Virtualization and cloud computing are more than buzzwords. They are tools that allow a company to squeeze more performance from every piece of hardware they own.
Cloud computing also allows service providers to bolt on more hardware resources from third parties, such as Amazon Cloud Computing, Google, and Microsoft Azure. This means that they can add resources at times of peak traffic (such as Christmas), and then scale down again when the demand is reduced.
New features can be added on separate server instances, and thoroughly field tested before they are painlessly rolled out to critical server instances with zero downtime.
SAAS products that were developed before the age of virtualization and cloud computing require fixed resources – batteries of servers that may spend most of the year running at a tenth of their capacity, or less. And that’s expensive – really expensive.
As SAAS companies have lower hardware expenses, they can offer their services at a very competitive price.
Older email service providers like Aweber charge punitively high fees for customers who consume more resources. This means customers who send more emails or who manage large lists.
The initial fees are very low, but as a business is successful, it builds a larger list. The increase in email processing fees is considerable and rises in steep gradients.
EasySendy Pro is one such new-wave email service provider with a host of features suitable for today’s email marketing requirements. It is best suited for businesses with large subscriber base. It makes it easy for users to integrate the service into their back office systems, exposing a rich API and RSS and JSON imports.
The price structure reflects EasySendy Pro’s ability to scale painlessly. The basic plan starts at a very reasonable $15 per month allowing 10,000 subscribers and be sent 25,000 emails; and so on. At the top of the range is the Platinum+ plan, which covers 1,00,000 subscribers delivering 2,00,000 emails per month.
Taking this a notch higher and apart from having more options like mysql database to import email lists, EasySendy Pro also has Email Addon Subscription facility for sending more emails to subscribers.
EasySendy Pro puts the use the latest Email Autoresend technology which improves the email open rate upto 150% hence ensuring reliable email deliveries.
Aritimail empowers its clients to customize the email pages as much and offers huge range of attractive templates – all leading to perfectly done and personalized emails for their prospects.
With the free plans having all features, it is very easy to see how the campaign goes before going for a priced plan with EasySendy Pro.
Support Email Marketing for large volume email subscribers is also ensured by EasySendy Pro.
Aweber had blazed a trail for email marketers worldwide, and they may have helped to shape an industry. However with advent of new players who settle for nothing but providing the best all round services, people are choosing others over Aweber.
So the emergence of such newer, leaner products like EasySendy Pro is good for the marketplace – competition drives innovation, and ultimately leads to a better service for customers across the entire industry.
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