Email newsletter service versus an in-house newsletter
Friday, March 23rd, 2012Often when people talk of email promoting, you find that attention is targeted completely on hosted services. Even though it is really a way more standard approach to email list management, many people are not even aware that they’ve an option of using a self-hosted software package instead.
Let us explore the good points and bad points of an in-house self-hosted newsletter vs an email newsletter service provider so you can choose which system will be more applicable for your needs.
Understanding the basics
First, it is really important to understand precisely what we are talking about when we are saying hosted vs self-hosted.
A hosted solution is a service that you join up to and pay a repeating fee. The software that runs the service is invisible to you, and you will usually just go to the provider’s web site and log on to manage your mailing lists.
A self-hosted mailing list manager works the same way, except that the software is installed on your own web site. You basically are providing the service to oneself.
Benefits of using a hosted email marketing software / e-mail newsletter service provider
The obvious advantage to employing a hosted package is that it does not require any kind of technical knowledge or maintenance. You won?t have to install any software or worry about upgrades and patches.
All you ever have to do is to log in, create your email lists, and send your mailings. This can be really captivating to people who are threatened by the concept of having to set things up with their website host, upload files, and take backups.
Why a hosted service may not be suitable for you
The major disadvantage to this approach is that you have got to repeatedly pay to use the system. Most email selling services charge a once a month charge, and that charge has a tendency to scale up with your number of customers.
The basic plans have a tendency to begin at around $20 a month, and that sometimes permits you up to 500 subscribers. While that may appear like a lot when you are first starting, you may be stunned at how fast your list will grow if you are actively promoting it to your clients and web visitors.
Some of the major services also charge you additional monthly fees for the types of features you may expect to see for free in a stand-alone software package. So if you would like to be able to have a repository of your past mails viewable on the internet and to keep a library of pictures to be used in your messages, it may cost an additional $120 every year.
There’s also the problem of seller lock-in. If you begin using a hosted e-mail marketing service with the idea that you may switch to a stand-alone email marketing software solution once your customer base has grown, you could be surprised to learn that there is typically no way to transfer all your past messages from the hosted account to your own software!
At WordPress WP How To Blog, Raag Vamdatt writes about blogging basics and tools, getting more traffic to your blog, and making money on the web.