Aweber New Pricing And New Features
Aweber is one of the email autoresponder service provider that many Internet Marketers used (including myself). I love this service and have been with them for years.
However recently there has been many debates in forums and mailing groups on the new pricing structure of Aweber (which you can read at http://www.aweber.com/pricing.htm)
In summary, the pricing differences was:
- In old pricing, we paid $19.95/mth for up to 10,000 contacts
. - In new pricing (with new features), we paid $19.95/mth for up to 500 contacts and $69/mth for up to 10,000 contacts
Now before you jump (which is what many people did this past few days), look at the details closely.
I summarized this as follow:
- If you are an existing customer, you can continue to pay $19.95/mth for up to 10,000 contacts. You only need to pay the new price if you upgrade to their new services.
. 
In the new pricing structure, you get many new killer features which you can read at http://www.aweber.com/blog/new-features/email-analytics-overview.htm. One quick use I can think is I can easily now separate out who are active in my list. With this information, I can then either move those inactive members out of Aweber or completely remove them. In another case, I can also separate who are my buyers from my prospect list. Currently, I’m doing this manually and it is a real pain.
.- Aweber is running like a business entity (which is what it is supposed to do). Having this new structures and new features, it is obviously adding more values to its shareholders and also increasing its revenue. It is similar to a case where your phone company change their billing plan in a bid to get more business. The old customers can remain on the old plan or upgrade to the new plan with more features. This is what Aweber is doing now.
So as to reassure you of the above, below is a reply from Tom Kulzer, CEO & Founder of Aweber
Appreciate everyones concerns in the thread. Please keep in mind that our new prices are for substantially increased levels of service as detailed in our blog post about our updates today.
http://www.aweber.com/blog/new-features/email-analytics-overview.htm
Current customers on existing plans don’t change prices unless they want access to the new analytics features. These features go far beyond what Google Analytics offers if you review the blog post.
Here’s a stat that most of the gurus won’t tell you. 99.88% of businesses do not have lists greater than 100,000 subscribers. That’s not me making up a 99.88% number, that’s the actual number. Less than 50 of Aweber ~42,000 customers have lists greater than 100,000 subscribers.
The crazy list sizes being quoted by posters here don’t exist and many of the customers that do have big lists like that have been itching for features like these and paying tens of thousands of dollars at enterprise level ESP’s to get them. They’ve been beta testing the software we just released for months.
These new features bring enterprise class features to small businesses at extremely affordable rates. Look around, compare prices, they are very competitive. When was the last time GR invested anything into doing something new for their customers?
Been a long time from what we’ve seen. Their service doesn’t even begin to offer what our new analytics features just enabled for customers. Read the blog post and talk to our solutions team, you’ll see the huge differences.
The vast majority of our customer base would actually see their price fall from $19.95/mo to a flat $19/mo by upgrading. Yes, I said the vast majority. For others it’s only a $10-20/mo difference if they *choose* to upgrade.
I hope this helps shed a little light on our changes. Enabling small businesses to have the same tools big companies have to engage their site visitors is an extremely powerful thing.
Email marketing in 2008 is all about relevance.
What’s more relevant?
* Sending that “oops” email that we all hate
or
* Sending a broadcast to only subscribers who didn’t open or click on your previous broadcast?
* Sending a broadcast to only subscribers who *did* click on your order page but didn’t order?
Tom Kulzer
CEO & Founder
AWeber Communications, Inc.
So where does this leave you?
You have the following options:
- If you are a current customer of Aweber, you can choose to stay with them and continue to pay the old price. There will be no change.
. - If you are a current customer of Aweber and you want the new feature, then upgrade to the new pricing. For this, you can contact their online support. They are fast and friendly (in my experience with them).
, - If you are a current customer of Aweber and wanted to switch, read further below.
. - If you are not a current customer of Aweber and wanted other options, read further below
If you are going in Option 3 or 4 above, you can either run your own autoresponder on your own server (which comes with its own problems) or using another autoresponder service provider.
If you want to run your own autoresponder,
- I strongly recommend Autoresponder Plus which I used for my buyer list. Do note this comes with its own pros and cons.
If you want to use another autoresponder service provider,
- I recommend GetResponse
How about me? You might ask …
Well, I’m staying with Aweber and Autoresponder Plus. It has worked for me, so I’m not switching yet. I used GetResponse before and I recommend their service too.
So the bottom line is …
You have a choice. This is a free market. Just look at the details closely before you decide on which one to choose.
Hope this blog post has helped you. I love to hear your views on this as well.
To Your Success,
Keith Choy
The Regular Internet Guy
Related Resources:
- Aweber - recommend autoresponder service provider
- GetResponse - my 2nd choice autoresponder service provider
- Autoresponder Plus - recommended self hosted autoresponder script
Related Topics
- 15 Creative And Profitable Ways To Use Autoresponders (Part 1)
- 15 Creative And Profitable Ways To Use Autoresponders (Part 2)
- Introduction To Autoresponders (part 2)
- Introduction To Autoresponders (part 1)
- Autoresponder comparison chart
- Can you use PO Box in your autoresponder?
- Why Email is still the preferred online promotional tool?
Tag: aweber, new pricing, autoresponder
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