DAP vs Aweber

(Or… “DAP vs MailChimp”, “DAP vs. GetResponse”, …. “DAP vs 3rd-Party-List-Service”)

We often get asked why use Aweber (or other third-party list service) when DAP itself is an autoresponder. So here’s a brief overview of when and why it makes sense to use DAP or Aweber.

Why Aweber

DAP is not an email service like Aweber.

DAP is just a tool – like Outlook or Thunderbird – that simply sends out email using your web host’s email server.

If your inexpensive shared web host is hosting a large number of sites on one server, and one of them sends out spam (or mistakenly gets flagged for spam), that will put the email deliverability of every web site on that server, in jeopardy, because your site now shares the same IP address as that of an “alleged” spammer.

So your emails could get sent to junk/spam folder by Gmail and Yahoo. Or worse, they just totally disappear into the ether. Some customers won’t get your emails. This won’t happen with Aweber (for the most part).

Aweber (and other premier email service providers) have staff on hand just for this purpose. Their core business is about email deliverability. They spend a lot of time, money and resources dealing with regular ISP’s (like AOL and SBC) to make sure their lists – and their reputation – remain clean. Which is also probably why they shut down large lists without much of a warning to you, and do other similar crazy stuff.

I guess it works for them – and the other Aweber users, because when you send out an email through your Aweber list, it almost always gets there in your recipient’s inbox. Which is very cool. And which is why they also charge so much for their service.

But if you can’t afford their high fees, then you can of course use DAP’s built-in email autoresponder, whose deliverability is only as good as your host’s deliverability.

Of course, you could use DAP and external SMTP service provider like Fusemail.com or AuthSMTP.com (which we use ourselves) to send out bulk mail through DAP while totally bypassing your web host’s email system.

And if you can’t afford even that, then simply use DAP on a decent web host. We ourselves use just DAP and AuthSMTP.com to send out emails to all of our users. DAP also has built-in job queues to schedule outgoing emails while also making sure that you don’t exceed your web host’s hourly email sending limits (most web hosts limit you to 300 outgoing emails/hour). We also use multiple SMTP servers from our own other lesser-used web sites, all combined to be able to send thousands of emails an hour.

When it comes to features, here’s what DAP does *not* have that more expensive services like Aweber and GetResponse provide.

Advantage: DAP

• It’s FREE! You don’t pay anything to send out thousands of emails and have a list with tens of thousands of members. The Autoresponder & Broadcast features are built right into the core DAP software.
• Unlimited Autoresponders
• Unlimited emails for free (no limit on how large your list can grow – so practically free, since you’ve already paid for DAP)
• Add same email to multiple Autoresponders (DAP special)
• Email throttling included, so as to not exceed your web host’s hourly email sending limits
• Ability to merge member data – like password – into emails (DAP only – you can’t do this if you use a 3rd party list service)
• DAP has a stunning-looking “Lightbox” plugin with several built-in templates, to show your DAP signup form as a popup. See List Builder Popup for DAP

Advantage: Aweber and the others

• Costs several hundred dollars a year (see Aweber.com – it could cost you about $794 a year – based on an annual fee of $194/year + another $600/year for maintaining a list size of just 5,000 subscribers)
• Ability to track open rates and click-through rates (coming in a future version in DAP)
• Ability to automatically send out your newly published blog posts as a broadcast (coming in a future version in DAP)

So given a choice, here’s what we recommend, in the order listed below:

1) DAP + 3rd Party List Service like AuthSMTP.com: Best option that we use ourselves

2) DAP + Aweber: If you already have an Aweber account, then this is a great option, especially if you want advanced email analytics that DAP itself doesn’t offer (yet).

3) DAP + Your Web Host: Very usable and workable option as long as you are hosting with a decent web host.

Feel free to comment below if you have any questions.