Why MailChimp Sucks.
Using an Autoresponder is vital in this situation, as it allows you to schedule and auto post emails over a length of time, and when a new person joins your list, it send them all to them, one at a time, invaluable!
So of course when I started out, I had zero cash to outlay on an autoresponder, as it simply wasnt worth my money when I had 3 people on the list and 2 of those were me testing the list...
So I used MailChimp, its free for up to 2000 list members, though without the auto responder feature, which is a bit sucky, but at least helped me start my list.
Or so I thought...
I am now ready to start using the auto responder feature to send out useful emails to my followers over at www.apinapress.com. So I looked into the prices and the terms and conditions a bit more closely at MailChimp and also Aweber.
I was really surprised.
Mailchimp is generally slightly cheaper than Aweber, but and this is a big but, the terms and conditions over at MailChimp state:
No offense intended, but because we must ensure the highest delivery rates possible for all our customers, we do not allow businesses that offer these types of services, products, or content:
- Illegal goods or services
- Escort and dating services
- Pharmaceutical products
- Work from home, Internet Lead-gen, Make money on online opportunities, etc.
- Online trading, day trading tips, or stock market related content
- Gambling services, products or gambling education
- Multi-level marketing
- Affiliate marketers
- Credit repair, get-out-of-debt content
- Mortgages and/or Loans
- Nutritional Supplements, Herbal Supplements or Vitamin Supplements
- Pornography or nudity in content
- Adult novelty items or references in content
- List brokers or List rental services
- Marketing or sending commercial email without proper permission
Whilst some are valid, the ones I'm worried about are:
- Work from home, Internet Lead-gen, Make money on online opportunities, etc.
- Affiliate marketers
So, putting it politely, THAT SUCKS!
After doing some more searches, it is noted that MailChimp has and will ban accounts that break its TOS (understandable) but you can and often will not be able to get your list...
I cannot risk that.
No sane marketer should risk that.
I checked Awebers Terms (which are quite limited in length) and they make no mention of not being allowed to market, their key concern is that you don't SPAM. Which is cool, I won't be spamming.
So now what am I going to do?
Well I am going to use Aweber, this will mean a few issues for me, I will have to change some of the code on my site, but more importantly I will have to transfer my list over. This will mean that everyone on the list will have to re-sign up, which inevitably means that they will not all re-sign up.
Unfortunate, but necessary, I am just glad my list is still relatively small.
Recent Comments
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Thanks for the post! Great advice. Just started to look into mailing lists and thought of going for Mailchimp, but have second thoughts now. I think Aweber is a little expensive at the moment for starters without an empty list... Don't want to pay a monthly fee unnecessarily. But if that's what you professionals say I'll have to go for that eventually. :)
I was with MC for over 5 years. Using their forever free account. Sure I never paid them anything but they got to piggy back advertise on thousands of my emails over the years. I have a list of mainly offline Internet marketers and send emails for our products which deal with servicing offline marketers (legitimate business consultants). Anyway, I sent a test email for an affiliate product that generates leads for offline consultants. Instantly my account was flagged and noted "your account is suspended and awaiting human review,.. you can still access your account but can't send emails. I thought "bummer,.. but I'll probably hear back soon and get it sorted". 6 days later still no email. Checked my account and had access but "email sending disabled" and a link to a notice (that they said was a copy of email sent,.. yet I never received) which basically said "you're a bad boy and a spammer,.. you can access your lists and also deactivate it whenever you like". Interpretation of that is "Get lost we don't want you anymore.... you're screwed". I sent them an email (trying to find an "email" or "contact" on my account panel or their support page is non existent (crap support) and I told them that this was lame and disgusting. After all these years and a clean acount with ZERO complaints and yet BAM. I went on to say that this IMHO is their way of eliminating Free accounts that haven't yet converted to paying. So much for "Forever Free". Now I am going with elastic email as costs are low and they have a good API and SMTP I can plugin to my own email sending software into. Note to all readers,.. if you're into any kind of I.M.... STAY AWAY FROM MAILCHIMP.
We have recently started mygroupid dot com which is an insanely simple email marketing solution for small businesses. with MyGroupId, you don't need to mess around with templates. Just type the email, attach images / youtube link and send from your email program. We will automatically create the branded email from it. We are also putting together a resource pack of email content and stock images that can be used by our customers for free.
Our only restriction is no more than 4000 emails in a month to keep out spammers who usually use much larger email lists.
It will be great if you guys can try it out. Send an email to signup at mygroupid dot com to create a free account. You never need to visit our site or install any software - everything is done through email from setting up the mailing list to sending the email. Thanks for trying!
I just had a friend contact me to ask me to help her with Mailchimp, even though I recommended Aweber :-). I've never actually used Mailchimp before, so I signed up to have a look... seriously complicated stuff! It seems relatively powerful if I could only figure out how to use it! Not sure how I'm going to teach it to a complete beginner... perhaps I've just been spoilt by the relative ease of Aweber.
I do recommend you consider aweber, they have recently updated their interface which is conducive to some awesome looking HTML emails. I would consider them before any other service out there.
I'm sure I'll end up with Aweber again soon, I was a customer of theirs a long time ago (but didn't know what I was doing), I know a lot more now and will definitely go back.
Apina, you can giveaway something to the your list and encourage them to re-sign up as a part of site modification. I think, it makes sense.Thanks.
This^^^ One list I was on went through a 'consolidation' phase. He said he was combining several related lists or whatever and offered a free report (I forget exactly what it was) to re-sign under the new list name.
Exactly Dean! No sane marketer should work hard to get a lead only to find out that the service that is managing their leads is preventing them from succeeding!
If you are going to manage email properly, get your hands on a quality autoresponder service like that of Aweber. Although there are some drawbacks with it as well, it is about the best in the field when it comes to email management. They also have a new editor for your messages that allows you to beautify your email content.
I'm looking forward to the move. I fully understand why I and many others chose to go with Mailchimp, its free for the first 2000 users! That is mighty tempting to a new marketer with little or no spare cash to throw at a service which will take weeks or months to become useful to you. In the long run though it will simply cause issues and problems like it has to me now.
You can import your old leads into Aweber as well, so they are not lost. I would import them when you get your aweber account so you can still benefit from this list. :)
That DOES suck! But at least you found it relatively early in the process and before you unknowingly broke their TOS and lost your list completely. Since almost every IM related list I am on uses Aweber, I would guess they are perfectly fine with affiliate marketing emails.
As far as the cost, if your list generates any sales then it should pay for itself pretty quickly.
I would hope so, but I know my list is going to be a lot more informative than sales, but in time. I have at least some funds put aside for it, though neither Mailchimp or Aweber will let you use Paypal...
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was considering on choosing Mailchimp but after reading this, I'm glad I found your article Dean! You just helped me dodge a bullet :D