Kampar, Perak, Malaysia,
Yesterday I had an unforeseen task that popped up and took away all my day.
I had to change mailing service platform for my mailing list.
I thus had to compare all available solutions available, and try them out.
Many are expensive but it all depends on the number of contacts.
Indeed I was using Mailchimp until now, but for 2 main reasons I decided it is time to change. I have been thinking about it for a long time, but Yesterday happened my second big reason to move on.
The Mailchimp service/platform used to be much cheaper in the past, they increased the price over time, but also because they based pricing on number of contacts. It has arrived to a point I had a bill of 100$ per month for a service I use once or twice a month, sometimes I don’t for 2 months but still have to pay. I feel this price is insane, it is about 1200$ per year for just sending mail. While I can virtually send mail by myself for free, I really feel the pricing scheme is very dubious. Yes they provide a little more than just mailing, with marketing tools, segmentation, … but I didn’t ask that in the first place.
Anyway, few days ago while looking at those features I had decided that I would try to use their additional advantage and thus try the advanced functions, after all I already pay for that.
And here comes my big second reason that triggered my decision to change platform:
they have bugs, and they know about it, but they don’t warn about it. It seems they don’t care about it. I was trying to make segments, but the items selected in the segment were wrong, so I contacted a representative on chat, and this is where he told me that they know about the issue, and they did not gave me any other alternatives, I feel this is very disrespectful to their customers. Why adding so many features and functions if they don’t work? Why not warn user, or get a function disabled while they try to resolve the issue? They just gave me no choice but change platform. After years of spending thousands of dollars to this company, I am very disappointed how they handle their business.
So I selected 5 various competitors that do similar or better service, sometimes for a 5th of the price:
Mailerlite, Omnisend, Sender, Send Pulse, Aweber.
I am still trying them out, but it seems Omnisend is powerful, while Mailerlite is promising.
Then once I will secure my selection, I need more work to modify the code and functions on the Articulated website.
While I do that, I would also take this opportunity to update and improve the website with many small tweaks that needs to be done. This will take up a lot of my time too, but I haven’t find anyone else that can do it correctly.
Anyway, it’s a long time due process.