Searching for the perfect mailing list manager

Over the past 24 hours or so, I've gotten caught up in doing some research for the technical side of my web business.  While I expect that few of my reader really care about this, I felt that for the few who are, posting my findings would be a good thing.

As with most online businesses, the software that handles the mailing list is almost as important as the software that handles the sales.  Whether one purchases software to be installed on their website or hires a service to handle the tasks on another server is more a matter of preference than anything else.  On-site software requires a greater investment in time where a service requires a greater investment in money.

Being a technical person, I opt for doing it myself.

The software that currently runs my mailing lists (ListMailPro) has been good, but development stagnated a couple of years ago.  There are several limitations that just never got fixed (such as allowing subscribers to update their own details), and some new thing (like RSS feeds) never got implemented. 

At one point, I posted a message on the developer's forum asking if he could commit to a release date for the next version (which had been promised "real soon now" for the last couple of years), and that started a long series of posts from quite a few frustrated users.  One of those users emailed me yesterday asking if I had found a replacement, which is what got me started on the actual research.

Okay, enough background.  Here's what I found.

Quite a few systems are available that not only handle mailing lists, but also give the owner the ability to sell services to others.  What's amazing is that these systems don't cost much more than a professional single-user system.  ($275 as opposed to $200.)

When I research a topic, I don't stop at the first few Google listings.  I go for 20 pages on one keyword phrase, then another 20 pages on a different keyword phrase.  And with software, I also check out a few of the script sites (my favorite is HotScripts.com) to round out my investigation.

When purchasing web software, it's a good idea to get a system that uses a programming language you're familiar with (or one your webmaster is familiar with), and for me, that's PHP.  While I don't consider myself a programmer, I've delved into enough PHP scripts to know my way around if a problem comes up.  Needless to say, my research focused on PHP software.

After reading through many websites and feature lists, I pulled together my "short list" of mailing list managers to study further.  Luckily, all of them had a demo available, and I was able to test drive the systems to see how they fit my needs, both current and foreseen.

To cut this post shorter, the following "short list" is sorted according to the rankings I gave each one:

1. OemPro
2. Interspire's Email Marketer
3. OmniStarMailer
4. Elite Autoresponder
5. AdTrackResponderPRO

All 5 of these had good aspects and aspects that were less than perfect.

Okay, so how did I rate each system?

The first criteria was sending speed.  When you have a list of 6000 subscribers to mail out to, you don't want to have to wait 3 hours to get the messages out.  The top contenders could do the whole list in less than 10 minutes.

Next, I looked at how flexible the scheduling system was.  Could I set a mailing to go out at a specific time of day?  With some of them, yes.  The same is true with pre-programmed series, which is great.

Next most important was the ability to edit the sequence of emails in a pre-programmed series.  Could I insert a new message in the middle of a list, for example?

After that, it was more of a matter of what other features caught my eye and what I could recognize as a useful option.  The ability to sell services to others will be a major plus, as I have been quietly building a marketing-based website since last Fall.  (www.KeyWebTools.com)

Price was also a factor, and this helped to shift the list somewhat.  Elite Autoresponder would have been higher on the list had it not been for its higher price.  Interspire's product was virtually equal with OemPro, but the latter's lower price gave it the edge.

AdTrackResponderPRO combined ad tracking with mailing list management, which gave it a unique position.  Ad tracking is also important, and something I can no longer do as easily as before since the server was upgraded to PHP5.  This is because my trusty ad tracker (Dynatracker) doesn't work well with PHP5 and the developer has abandoned the product.  I haven't found ANYTHING as good as Dynatracker, with its multi-level campaign tracking.

So, over the next couple of months, unless any new information comes to light, I'll purchase OemPro and install it on the KeyWebTools.com site, from which I can use it for all my mailing lists and offer it as a service to others.  My wife and several friends will appreciate the HTML editor, even if they don't appreciate the many other improvements.

The really big advantage for me is that I can finally integrate the shopping cart's mailing list subscription feature with my external software, and it won't even require any code tweaking.  OemPro can read the shopping cart's database directly.