Facebook Pixel
Join our Facebook Community

Comparing Email Service Providers for Bloggers

Posted By Darren Rowse 13th of September 2017 Blogging Tools and Services 0 Comments

Email Service Providers for Bloggers

This is the third post in our Email Newsletter Series.

One major sticking point for most bloggers who are setting up a newsletter is deciding what email service to use. There are lots of different, competing, options out there, and there’s no one perfect solution.

Just in case you were thinking about it … don’t try to run a newsletter by emailing everyone through your regular email client, using the “BCC” field. If you email subscribers from your own gmail, yahoo, even @yourdomain.com email account, you put your own IP address at risk for being blacklisted by Internet Service Providers if you get flagged as spam.

That means all your emails – not just bulk emails sent to your subscribers but regular everyday communications – could have a hard time getting to anyone. Definitely not a situation you want to find yourself in. You also want to make sure you don’t unintentionally break any privacy or anti-spam laws or you could find yourself in even more trouble.

Why Use an Email Service Provider?

Most email services have quite similar features, including these basics which really do take away the headache of sending bulk emails by:

  • Sending out emails. Obviously you’ll want to be able to email your list whenever you like! Most services allow you to send unlimited emails – however, if you’re on a free or cheap plan, check the small print.
  • Complying with regulations by allowing email recipients to “unsubscribe” from your list and helping you avoid being reported as spam by automatically stop sending emails to bounces, blocked mailboxes, spam reporters or mis-spelled emails. This actually gives you better a better chance of getting to your subscribers’ inboxes through the email service’s established reputation as a sender
  • Reporting on email deliverability, open-rates and click-throughs to see what messages work and even enabling split-testing of one message versus another
  • Offering a load of advanced features including sign-up forms, scheduled sending, automated message sequences, tagging and segmenting your audience to target with different messages and fancy templates to help your emails look great

How to Choose an Email Service?

What email service is going to work for you depends on what you want out of a service and often what stage of blogging you are at. For instance, having a free or low monthly rate may be more important when you’re just starting out. Whereas a complex array of trigger-based autoresponders based on subscriber activity will be useful to convert your subscribers to become paying customers via an email sales funnel.

An easy trap to fall into is to start looking at email service providers before analysing your own needs and priorities. You can very quickly become overwhelmed by the array of choice and distracted by features that may not be necessary or even useful for you.

A few questions to ask yourself are:

  • In what direction do you think your blog will develop? Are you planning to monetize and in what ways?
  • How many subscribers do you have? What goals/objectives do you have for subscriber growth and over what time period?
  • What’s your budget? If you’re planning to monetize your blog, it’s easier to offset the cost of email against sales revenue.
  • Are you technically-minded? For example do you know how to use HTML code?
  • Is graphic design and using images important for your emails? If you’re a fashion, food or lifestyle blogger, this may be much more important than if you are writing about less visual subjects.
  • How much time do you have to set things up and devote ongoing to your email system?

Once you have a framework of your own requirements, it becomes much easier to sort through the different features and options to assess what email systems will work for you and whether there is one that suits you best.

The good news is that even if you change your mind at a later stage, it’s possible to switch from one service to another. Most will make it quite straightforward to export your subscriber database to move to a new supplier.

At ProBlogger, we have just finished the process of changing our email service provider. We have used AWeber for approximately 12 years, alongside Mailchimp on occasion and we continue to do so for my other blog Digital Photography School. We took our time to investigate other email options, trialling a couple of alternatives and working out what will also work best with other systems we’re using. You don’t need to spend as long as we did in this process, but do enough homework to work out what suits you best. I’m an affiliate for the programs we use and the following recommendations include our affiliate links.

Which Email Service Should You Use?

The following list is an overview of popular email service providers that we have personally trialled over a long time. Each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses and are suitable for bloggers with different priorities and at different stages. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but hopefully it’ll give you an idea of some of the key options for running an email list. We’ve also compiled a comparison table of key features you can use to benchmark other solutions.

MailChimp

This is free up to 2,000 subscribers, and used by a lot of newer bloggers to get up and running. Mailchimp offers a really friendly interface, making it easy to create good-looking emails using their nice templates with a drag and drop editor. The Basic version isn’t so feature-rich as other options, but does offer some neat integration with Facebook and Instagram. Mailchimp charges an extra $199/month for their Pro add-ons which give you more advanced tracking, targeting and automation.

RECOMMENDED FOR: MailChimp could be a good option if you’re (a) just starting out with email and have under 1,000 subscribers (b) visual presentation and images are important (c) not yet ready to use lots of detailed features like tagging.

ALTERNATIVE: You may also want to consider the newer MailerLite which is quite a bit cheaper (once you get past 1,000 subscribers) and offers a few extra features.

AWeber

This well-established service costs from $19/month for up to 500 subscribers, and has slightly different strengths and features from MailChimp. You can refer to our comparison table below for details. While AWeber’s user interface is a bit dated, it represents increasingly good value for money as your list grows and has useful functionality to take your email marketing up a notch. You can apply tags to your subscribers to segment them, trigger email campaigns and autoresponder sequences. AWeber also offers split-testing allowing you to test different subject line text or message content, even different sign-up forms to increase response rates. Otherwise, the AWeber reporting is a bit clunky to use and doesn’t measure much beyond open and click rates. AWeber do provide good customer service via phone, email and live chat which is above and beyond most providers who just give you an online library of resources.

RECOMMENDED: AWeber is a solid, no-frills option that has worked for many (ProBlogger included) for a long-time. It’s particularly cost-effective as you develop a large list to market to.

ConvertKit

“Built by bloggers for bloggers” is the tagline of this new kid on the email block. We trialled Convertkit early on and were impressed with the system’s simplicity and recently added functionality which suits ‘professional’ bloggers. If you want to segment your list in several different ways (e.g. based on what links an individual subscriber has clicked), Convertkit has hosted, customizable landing pages and opt-in forms that allow you a lot of tagging options along with easy to use trigger-based email automations and sequences. However, Convertkit only does text based email. There are no beautifully designed templates here (unless you code it yourself): the focus is on sending simple, straightforward content.

RECOMMENDED: If you can budget for it, ConvertKit allows a lot of power and flexibility, and works very well to deliver a sign-up incentive (e.g. a free .pdf) – this is integrated with the “confirmation” email, so when your subscriber clicks to get their freebie, they automatically confirm their email address too. It’s simplicity allows you to get up and running quickly and if you are switching to Convertkit with over 5,000 subscribers, they offer a complimentary migration service.

ALTERNATIVE: GetResponse offers similar features to Convertkit but with more of a visual focus giving you designed email templates and a stock image library.

Drip

Drip is a bit pricier than the other options we’ve covered so far ($83/month for 5,000+ subscribers) but it has more features and comes with a money-back guarantee. You can compare it with other options here – though note this is Drip’s own comparison tool. Ultimately ProBlogger decided on Drip as it gave us the best insights into our readers, beyond email activity. Drip enables us to identify how valuable subscribers are, scoring each individual as a lead and also tracking their activity over on the blog. We can follow up on these interests with very personalized automated email workflows. Many similarly powerful systems require you to hire a consultant to navigate their complexities, whereas Drip is straightforward enough to tackle yourself with great learning resources including a Facebook Group and a supportive customer service team to assist.

RECOMMENDED: If you have an established blogging business and are looking for a powerful but easy to use CRM-type system check out Drip.

ALTERNATIVE: There are quite a few solutions in this top-end category, but none of them are cheap. Leading options include ActiveCampaign, Ontraport and Infusionsoft.

Want a handy comparison of the options we’ve used and trialled? Download the ProBlogger Email Service Provider Comparison for Bloggers, based on most of the the same criteria we used to choose our email service provider.

Whichever service you pick, the important thing is that you choose something and get started on building your list. Hopefully, the options above have given you some ideas of what might suit you best.

Got your list set up but still feeling stuck? Don’t worry. Next week, I’ll be taking a look at seven common newsletter problems … and solving them for you.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Hi there,
    I am using Mailchimp for my business. Since my business is growing up, I am going to analyze all the mail service provider enlisted in your post. Thanks for this article.

  2. Carpet Cleaner says: 09/13/2017 at 5:00 am

    We use MailChimp and it is fantastic. We have automated emails that are sent out regularly as scheduled, as well as the occasional postcard mailer. I’m going to check out Drip and ConvertKit to see what they have to offer. Thanks as always for the info!

  3. James says: 09/13/2017 at 5:11 am

    Great info and comparison of providers.

  4. Hi Darren,

    Excellent breakdown here.

    Love Mailchimp because it is simple. I dig no frills when it comes to email because I am so busy guest posting and blog commenting that I have little time to fancy things up. A few lines and a link to my latest post, with perhaps a link to one of my 1080 HD videos from paradise in the email too, here and there.

    Aweber and Get Response were excellent providers too. Thumbs up on both. I just figured, since I was doing little thru my list at the time and spend like 3 minutes setting up emails for subscribers, I should go simple because simple is powerful.

    If you love a snazzy presentation and rich tools for doing analytics, Aweber or GetResponse may float your boat. I just love an easy, quick, intuitive campaign manager. MC has that covered for me. For now at least. Going forward, if sprucing things up vibes with me on the email front, I will certainly give another provider a look-see.

    Ryan

  5. Hi great post! Is it hard to transfer from one provider to another as you grow? Just curious about that!

    • Just to jump in here. I’ve switched twice. Mailchimp to ConvertKit and now Mailerlite. The first time was tedious but the second time I had set up a spreadsheet for different lists/content upgrades with the title and the url. After I created the new optin forms it was easy to just do a site search for the old url and replace. it will still take a few hours (depending on the number of forms/lists you have) but if you have a system it goes rather fast. My main concern was pinterest pins that went directly to a optin. I had to go into my personal board and edit those. Hope this helps. :)

  6. I’ve heard great things about Mailchimp. I’ll have to check out the alternatives soon.

  7. GailBP says: 09/14/2017 at 4:36 am

    I was wondering why you didn’t mention Feedburner in your options. I know it has a lack of customer service, but it’s free and I have been using it for 6 years now. I have 20,000 subscribers on one blog and 2500 on another. For the most part it does okay.

    • Feedburner is a tool we’ve used for years to run our RSS feeds and I have used the service they offer to email people daily updates but as a service that allows you to send newsletters or specific emails to subscribers I’m not sure it’s in the class of these.

      Feedburner only sends emails when you have a new item in your RSS feed and as a result you have to publish it on your blog. Each of the above services are more about you writing something specifically as an email to your subscribers.

      The other factor about Feedburner is that it’s a service Google is now no longer supporting actively. While it still works as an RSS feed tool (at least it works some of the time for us – we have have had issues) it’s future is unknown as it’s not actively being developed any more.

      Lastly I’ve also heard people report that the emails that it sends often end up in spam filters as it’s a service that is used by so many people in spammy ways. Not saying most of us are using it in that way but because so many bloggers use it and there’s no real restrictions on how it is used services like Gmail might be seeing it as something that is dubious – as a result open rates and deliverability may not be too high.

  8. Hello Darren,

    Mailchimp is really a good email marketing site and have good pricing option. Aweber is quite expensive and if you are completely new to this field than as you have said that Mailchimp is a great option to go with. I also using Mailchimp for my blog and its works great to me. Thanks for providing this informative comparison.

  9. husbanddaddude says: 09/14/2017 at 8:41 pm

    Has anyone here used Mailerlite? Seems like they have great built-in popups, etc

  10. Dan Park says: 09/14/2017 at 8:45 pm

    Hi Darren,
    Love your work. Just a correction. I checked mailchimp one minute ago and Mailchimp allows up to 2000 subscribers at no charge and 12 000 emails per month on their free program. Not 1 000 as you mentioned in the article.
    Best

  11. Darren, this is a great article and any thoughts on ActiveCampaign?

  12. Hi Darren,

    I’ve heard so many great things about ConvertKit. I just haven’t made the switch yet.

    When I started my blog, I was using MailChimp. Then GetResponse had a huge Black Friday deal and I pre-paid for 2 years.

    So far, no complaints. As I am still new to building my email list, I am staying with GetResponse. As my list continues to grow I may find myself needing more features.

    Thanks for taking the time to break down all the different features of the email service providers. Most of us who are new to email marketing don’t really understand which one to get started with.

    I totally agree, choose one and just start building your list. We can always migrate to another one later once we find ourselves needing more features.

    Have a great day :)

    Susan

  13. Thanks Darren, very useful article.

    I’ve used Mailchimp for years but that double opt-in on sign-up forms is a frustration because you’re relying on people to take another action before you get to communicate with them.

    I’m about to take the plunge and use ConvertKit. I’ll let you guys know how I get on.

    Cheers

    Matt

  14. Komposed says: 09/14/2017 at 10:10 pm

    I use Mailerlite. I think it’s a good option for beginners as it’s free until 1000 subscribers and the pricing is very reasonable after that ($10 a month I believe). It’s also very easy to learn how to navigate and they have awesome learning materials in case you aren’t sure how to do something. This isn’t sponsored haha :P

  15. Auburn Meadow Farm says: 09/15/2017 at 12:11 am

    Why is Emma never included in these discussions? Am I missing something?

  16. Constant Contact didn’t even make the list!!??

  17. Astrorushi says: 09/19/2017 at 7:25 pm

    Hi
    Its great post. Thanks for sharing this.

  18. I am using mailchimp for now. I like their platform although am using the free plan.

    I will migrate to Aweber or Convertkit soon

  19. Dave McCaslin says: 09/26/2017 at 8:59 pm

    Thanks for the great advise! I’m new and would have probably just used my yahoo mail to channel any future email ideas…

  20. 3D Interior Rendering Services says: 09/29/2017 at 3:43 pm

    Hello Sir,

    Great most and powerful blogger to services provider compare to with user and people are very important ideas search and with blogger to post blog and any information posted on website to create traffic.

    Thank You.

  21. Techno World Group says: 09/29/2017 at 10:10 pm

    “Very enjoyable and packed with good information.Having a byline is essential.”

  22. Angela says: 10/04/2017 at 3:23 am

    Hi. If you are just starting out, Mailchimp offers free service up to 2000 subscribers BUT they do not offer tech support AT ALL.

    • Stanford says: 11/05/2017 at 1:47 pm

      Has that changed recently? They used to offer amazing tech support to all users, including on free plans.

  23. Angela says: 10/04/2017 at 3:28 am

    Did you say that you just finished changing email services? Where did you go?

  24. DrollFeed says: 10/15/2017 at 9:01 pm

    “Very interesting and packed with good

    information about “Compare Blogger email Service Providers” Thank you.”

  25. sterlingsolns says: 11/27/2017 at 11:52 pm

    Email Marketing is very effective if you have updated email list.
    Cheers

  26. nice one

A Practical Podcast… to Help You Build a Better Blog

The ProBlogger Podcast

A Practical Podcast…

Close
Open