ConstantContact vs Vertical response

The brief story:

My ISP sold their dial-up division to another entity that limits outgoing e-mails to 20 recipients. I discovered this when trying to do a press release (33 recipients). I also send out e-alerts to a much larger group.

My website is hosted locally but my e-mail now goes through another company. I have the choice of changing my e-mail back to my local ISP which will involve alerting everyone who is not using my URL. 

I could leave everything as is and try CC or VR for my high volume e-mails.

BTW, My e-mail is free as a NP regardless of what I do. Technically my free account is still handles locally but since I am on dial-up it does go through the other company that is operating the dial-up side.

We are looking to switch to DSL but the wbehosting will probably stay local since they only charge us $4/mo.

Suggestions.

I would consider using a mailing list application like Mailman or PHPList. Both are free and most (Linux/UNIX) hosting accounts include them. If not, they can be downloaded and installed if your hosting offers PHP. There are other applications out there as well, but I have installed and used both of these in the past.

This gives you several advantages of sending to your list from your hosting account and not having to worry about any silly limits with sending mail. And it also gives you a system where people can subscribe or unsubscribe as they wish. I do recommend that if you decide to try this that you send out emails first and inform people that they need to subscribe to your new lists. This way you avoid any possible problems in the future with being reported for sending spam, since the people have to sign up to be on the list(s).

I am familiar with mailman as I use it for acouplepersonal; clubs I am involved in. Yes my ISP has it on their server.  Doesn't resolve my e-mailing press releases though. Limited to 20 e-mails, I guess I could split the e-mails into two bulk releases.

Gunpowder,

I'm a long time user of Constant Contact, but have never used Vertical Response.

I found Constant Contact intuitive to use from the beginning. They have a very responsive support department as well. Overall, I like CCt well, with a few exceptions. Perhaps most pertinent to you from your comments, is that it is increasingly sluggish when I access it over a dial-up connection. It is the slowest site that I deal with on a regular basis. I have called their tech about it, and haven't been able to resolve the issue. This is a change over time. It used to be better.

It is possible that the problem has to do with new interactions with my firewall, so you may not find it to be an issue yourself.  I don't know that Vertical Response is any different, but I'd suggest you be sure to check that out for both.

Best wishes,

Sasha

I guess I don't have a clear picture of your situation. If your web host does not allow the sending of more than 20 emails at a time, then you are facing an unusual limitation. You can get around this by changing your hosting or just getting another account for the purpose of sending email. You can get a cheap hosting account with a company like www.Lacehost.com and for $2 a month send out all the mail you need with 20GB of bandwidth.

You can also go with one of those fancy email providers like Exact Target, but from what you said I don't think you can do it for nearly the same cost.

I could be wrong though. Some providers may be NP-friendly and give you a good price break, especailly if you offer to include a footer message about their company in the emails you send. :-)

To followup on my situation, The new ISP has had my e-mails blocked as spam from three ISP's (Hotmail, Comcast, Mchsi) in the last three weeks.  Never had that with the original ISP.

After some problem solving, I was able to send my outgoing mail through the local ISP server while still keeping my old e-mail address so e-mail comes in from the other ISP who has the dial-up accounts. Now I have no limits to the number of recipients I can send an e-mail to and will hopefully keep of the spam lists.

I also opened an account with Vertical Response. As a NP their services will be free since my volume is below their charging tier. I eventually plan to send my e-news through VR to keep me off  spam as well.

I ran into this problem several years ago with another group and decided to subscribe to Constant Contact. I am now with a new NP group, and have used CC for them for over two years. Two more of our member neighborhood associations also use CC. Since we are all NP, we get a sizable discount.

Using a service like CC has given all of us a more "professional" image and has enabled us to grow our mailing lists, thus reaching more people. We have eliminated the costs of a printed newsletter, which was running into the thousands each year. We would never have been able to print and mail to the now 500+ subscribers to our mailing list for the meager $12 per month from CC. With this kind of savings you can afford to upgrade to DSL or cable.

I agree and use Vertical Response.  My wife uses CC for a commercial business.  I use VR for a non-profit.  The setup is very similar.  But, as was mentioned above, VR has a free account available for up to 10,000 (I think) sends per month for any 501(c)3 corporation.  I used the PHP options for a while and got tired of the process I had to go through to update the list and, once I got Outlook 2007, to format the email itself.  For some reason Outlook 07 took away the source view which made it much more difficult for me to make a high-quality, professional looking email that matched the scheme that I use on the webpage.  With VP, I design the email just like a web page then copy and paste the HTML directly into the email body on the site.  Then I choose my list(s) and I'm ready to go.  The will automatically include (and report on) Forward to a Friend Links and provide good reports on what other links were clicked.  They will also create an online version of the email for people to link to if desired.  All-in-all, I've been very happy with the service.