Aweber vs iContact Autoresponders

So what do you really want from an autoresponder?

Wiki Definition:
An autoresponder is a computer program that automatically answers e-mail sent to it. They can be very simple or quite complex.

The main purpose of using an autoresponder is to keep in contact with your List. Your list consists of people who trust and follow you and respect you as a leader.

As they say "The money is in the List".

So it is vital that your autoresponder can do a couple of things very well.

1. Gets the e-mails to your List (spam filters are an issue and might prevent some messages to getting to their destination)
2. Manage the List (being able to filter who is on your list and the health of the List)
3. Easy of Use
4. Cost as List grows
   
5. Tracking
6. Affiliate program
   

I have moved to Aweber and the main reason was because it is tightly integrated into my marketing page http://www.teachingmlm.com

I wasn't sure how I would like it since I first started with iContact which was recommended by the Magnetic Sponsoring group (Mike Dillard). I thought iContact was pretty powerful and was really low cost to use.

Comparison between Aweber vs iContact

1. Cost - $20/month (0-500 subscribers) vs $10/month (0-250 subscribers), $14 (500 subscribers) = Price is close but iContact barely wins
2. Popularity Alexa - 256 vs 3,197 = Aweber for sure
   
3. Ease of Use - Both are similar as both allow both HTML and TXT messages but converting a HTML to a TXT in iContact sometimes requires additional editing as words get merged. Very annoying. Also Aweber shows you the standard width so you can sentance wrap lines for smaller screens which most people have.
   
4. Tracking - I like iContacts method of tracking as it breakes it down per message sent and you can see the sent, opens, bounces, spams. Aweber also does it but take a bit longer to adjust to. Aweber seems to have more information and seems to focus more on a larger audience as each subscriber has more unique information tied to them. I also really enjoy how the autoresponder list is managed in Aweber. In iContact you specify how many days after a subscriber joins to send the message. Aweber has how many days AFTER the message before. This makes total sense. If you have 100 autoresponder emails then you don't want to have to edit each iContact email and have to adjust how many dates from entry to send the email. The drag and drop order and how many days the next email shoudl be released after the previous one is Aweber is much easier to handle.
5. Affiliate - 20% personal and 10% from 2nd level vs 25% on all sales. Aweber raising commissions from 20% to 30%, take effect today, April 8th, 2009.

In terms of which to chose, it really depends on your personal needs. I had to use Aweber with my marketing system as it integrates an autoresponder series into it.

Both are great programs and if your list is small the only difference would be price until you go over 250 subscribers. If your goal is 250 subscribers then your thinking too small. Personally, I was fed up with iContacts HTML email copy to TEXT and having to correct the mistakes of that conversion.


MLM Lead System Pro uses Aweber and that is more than enough reason for me to use it too.

So Aweber by a small margin.