Today at breakfast I read my tea leaves and they told me to write about the best ways to handle your emailing needs. Some of you have been writing to me asking for that too so I thought, why not. If it’s written in the leaves, it shall be done. So here it is. Here are my top 5 apps for managing mail lists.
1. SendGrid
SendGrid lets you focus on your business without having to worry about the cost and complexity of managing your own email infrastructure. The awesome SendGrid manage every single little technical aspect from scaling to whitelisting to analytics. You can sign up for a free account and send up to 12,000 emails a month without even giving your credit card details. How great is that! Plans then start at just $9 bucks a month. Winner winner.
2. Campaigner
Campaigner is another great tool that lets you easily create and send highly customised emails to your subscribers and customers. There is no free trial available, with the cheapest package starting at $19 for up to 1,000 subscribers. One difference though between this and SendGrid, for example, is Campaigner allows A/B testing which is quite handy (if you even know that is.)
3. AWeber
By this point, it’s a bit boring to read how all these services are the same. Because they are. I’m bored of writing about them. Let’s just focus on price from here on. That’s all you really care about anyway. AWeber starts with a 30-day free trial that lets you have from 0 -500 subscribers. After that it ranges from $10 for up to 2,500 and $130 for 25,000. Not bad.
4. Campaign Monitor
These guys have a bit of a confusing pricing pattern. You pay per subscriber AND per email. For example: Up to 500 subscribers and 2,500 emails will be $9, but if you want unlimited emails that’ll be $29. The higher up you go the cheaper that all is, but the unlimited accounts are effectively double the ‘basic’ plan. They have a free trial that allows you to have 5 subscribers (yay!).
5. MailChimp
MailChimp is awesome not just because of their cute monkey mascot but they’re just awesome in the way the sun is awesome for giving us that daylight every day. You can sign up for a free account and send up to 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers… for free. MailChimp also lets you easily design your messages so if you don’t have a graphical bone in your body – like my poor Mama Wing – then this is a great solution to try.
That was a fun run down wasn’t it. Reminds me of my time back in the province. Remember if a tea leaf is red. That isn’t a tea leaf I’d like to be drinking.
Hope you smash your emailing and let us know what you use or if there’s any other great solutions out there!
