Newsletter Service

[Valen]

I found an old thread by Mike Boeh over at Dexterity forums, where he recommended http://www.ezinemanager.com for sending out newsletters. That site seems to be gone, or did it move somewhere Mike?

[Mike Boeh]

It's now ezinedirector.com :)

There are others now too:
yourmailinglistprovider.com now has a premium service.
topica.com is a lot less expensive...
zinester.com is good as well.

If you want to roll your own, Dada mail (formerly mojo) is great.

[Quest Engine]

I don't understand the purpose of these services. Isn't it just as easy to do some mysql and php and do this all from scratch? I guess signing up for a service takes 10 minutes where coding the whole thing takes a few hours.. is that worth having your signees see an ad whenever they add their name to your list,or else paying for a premium service?

Is there some advantage to these services that I'm not seeing? Has anyone else programmed this functionality, or does everyone use a service?

[Mike Boeh]

I don't understand the purpose of these services. Isn't it just as easy to do some mysql and php and do this all from scratch? I guess signing up for a service takes 10 minutes where coding the whole thing takes a few hours.. is that worth having your signees see an ad whenever they add their name to your list,or else paying for a premium service?

Is there some advantage to these services that I'm not seeing? Has anyone else programmed this functionality, or does everyone use a service?
There are quite a few advantages to a service actually. How will you handle bounces with php? Or delivering to a list of 80,000 subscribers over a period of time? There is also less risk with a service- all it takes is a few cranky users who forgot they signed up to report you to spamcop, and your ISP can give you the boot.

[GBGames]

When you use someone to do something that would take hours of work on your end, you get:
- your time savings
- their already made services

If they already have the service available, and they have the experience and infrastructure from doing it for others, then you also get the knowledge that their system works. Yours still has to be debugged, as it is a custom job.

It is just like going through RegNow or plimus. You COULD get your own merchant's account and setup your own payment site, dealing with all the different issues, but the time savings you get might outweigh the costs of paying for the service.

[Valen]

It's now ezinedirector.com :)

There are others now too:
yourmailinglistprovider.com now has a premium service.
topica.com is a lot less expensive...
zinester.com is good as well.

If you want to roll your own, Dada mail (formerly mojo) is great.

Cool, thanks!

[Quest Engine]

There are quite a few advantages to a service actually. How will you handle bounces with php? Or delivering to a list of 80,000 subscribers over a period of time? There is also less risk with a service- all it takes is a few cranky users who forgot they signed up to report you to spamcop, and your ISP can give you the boot.

Ah yes.. now I see! I knew there had to be some advantages that I was just unfamiliar with. I'm still glad I did it as I'm just learning and it was a fun exercise, but a proffessional service might be the best way to go.

[arcadetown]

I'm not sure a mailing service makes a difference for possible false abuse reports. Wouldn't the false reports likely be registered under the advertised site anyhow. Anyone have a differing experience?

We use a program such as gamadyne mmail. It works pretty well and integrates nicely with our db plus can track bad emails. We have seen recent peculiar sporadic problems mailing to hotmail and yahoo due to recent anti spam measures, haven't isolated exact issues yet.