What tools do you use to send out your email newsletter?

I've been thinking of signing up with
Mailchimp

They aren't free, but seem to be easy to use. Anyone have any experience or thoughts on them?

Just wanted to give a link back to our detailed article on email newsletter tools, if it's useful. It's on TechSoup or there's an updated version on the Idealware website

Just a word about looking for email newsletter solutions, particularly when looking at free options: you need to be careful that you don't get yourself blacklisted as a spammer. If you're sending lots of emails from your own servers, using something like a PHP script, you run the risk of having all your email addresses flagged as a spammer. This would mean that every email sent from your organization email addresses - not just your newsletter, but everything - would be trapped, and not make it through to the intended recipient. It's not very likely, but really bad if it happens - it can take weeks or months to get off the blacklists.

Unless you're quite familiar with what you're doing, it's likely best to go with a hosted option for that reason (ConstantContact, Intellicontact, GraphicMail which have been listed are all hosted, or see the article for more). In addition to the few free hosted options (GraphicMail, for instance), there are tons of options for $20 a month or so. $20 isn't much of an investment compared to jumping through a lot of hoops every time you need to send out an email newsletter....

Laura
www.idealware.org

Our web host, Dreamhost, offers free hosting to nonprofits and includes a basic email list feature. They have an announcement list feature that lets you send plaintext or HTML emails, and you can format it to include the recipients' names.

The software includes opt-in verification (in fact, Dreamhost requires it), which is great.

What it doesn't offer is:
--clickthrough and open tracking
--multiple list management (you can have multiple lists, but you can't more people from one list to another).

As an I.T. guy I too prefer plain text over HTML newsletters in every respect, but my mgmt like shiny, pretty things, so...

We went with Constant Contact as well and in general have been pleased with their performance. We've been especially fond of their open/click-through reports. We are seeking a new provider however because CC lacks any sort of "archive" function; their FAQs basically tell the customer "Do it yourself" and offer the suggestion to "View Source" and cut and paste. Helpful. Unfortunately it doesn't work, though, requiring us to manually re-code the entire newsletter. For us that has become a headache and a deal breaker, so off we go.

Help! I need to find a newsletter template that will allow others in my agency to open. My IT Specialist put windows 97 on my computer but the problem is that everyone else has windows 2003 and cannot open the newsletter document. What is a good program that I can purchase that will allow them to open the document? I need a program that is easy to follow because I am not a computer expert. Please let me know which one is the best program. Thanks!!!!!

I am actually the editor of our Head Start program's monthly newsletter. I am currently using the templates from microsoft online which are free, but the only problem is that there are not that many to choose from. The newsletter is sent electronically to all staff, policy council and to our board of directors. The information is also printed out and given to all of the families in our Head Start program. It has benefited our organization tremendously because it helps get important information out to everyone. The only challenges that I have experienced is getting information from all of the centers so that there is enough information to create a newsletter. As far as spending time on the newsletter, it has been at times, time consuming and at other times, I haven't had to spend much time completing the newsletter. It all depends on what template you use and what articles you receive for your newsletter. But in the end, it will be worth it.

We use GetActive or should I say Convio, because GetActive was just bought by them. It's simple to use and send mail in both html and text. We also use them to process our online donations.