List Size:
1K to 5K

Empl:
100 to 500

Training:
hr

Cust Serv: 3

Qual: 4

Ease:

Country:

Strengths: It is very simple to manage the lists within Group Mail. I can create new groups merge groups and single addresses or lists to the groups at a time. It also has the ability to subscribe and unsubscribe recipients automatically.

Weaknesses:

Missing?

List Size:
1K to 5K

Empl:
7 to 25

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: 3

Qual: 3

Ease: 4

Country:
AU

Strengths: Fast transmission Ease of use

Weaknesses: No direct interface with independant databases.

Missing? Patch software for standard database(s) interfacing. Calendar/Scheduler/Prompter for campaigning

List Size:
5K to 25K

Empl:
26 to 100

Training:
2 hr

Cust Serv: 5

Qual: 5

Ease: 4

Country:
UK

Strengths: Simple to use and very robust

Weaknesses: setting up can take a while

Missing?

List Size:
1K to 5K

Empl:
one

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: NA

Qual: 3

Ease: 5

Country:
US

Strengths: Easy to use

Weaknesses: The free version has a sending limit of 100 emails at a time. This option is removed if you upgrade to the pro version.

Missing? I feel the program is fine the way it is.

List Size:
100 to 1K

Empl:
2 to 6

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: NA

Qual: 3

Ease: 4

Country:
NZ

Strengths: This program enables you to send HTML email foramts to your database which many other programs do not offer. I feel this has been invaluable to me as wwwe switced form a text format ezine to an HTML format. ANd this let me send it without any hassels.

Weaknesses: If you have the free version and you do not upgrade you can only send a maixum of 100 emails at a time However you can do a partial send ing form 1 to 100 and then so on till your ezine goes out to your hwole database. But this can be frustrating when you are first gettting your ezine off the ground so to speak.

Missing? I have not really come across any other features that i feel would be a benefit to this program.

List Size:
1K to 5K

Empl:
2 to 6

Training:
3 hr

Cust Serv: 5

Qual: 5

Ease: 5

Country:
NAm

Strengths: Runs on MY PC

Weaknesses: none

Missing?

List Size:
100 to 1K

Empl:
one

Training:
2 hr

Cust Serv: NA

Qual: 2

Ease: 2

Country:
US

Strengths: It's desktop based and I don't have to trust my databases to the web (no idea how to protect the data so I keep it all in my system as the lists I use GroupMail for are all paying clients). I use this for groups I manage that I don't have web sites for so I like that it's all contained on my computer as well. Those are it's only benefit over others that I can see.

Weaknesses: It hangs during sending far too often in my opinion. I've tested lists as large as 1000 names and it reliably and consistenly makes it through about 150 names then needs to be rebatched.

Missing? Reliability ability to send it into a MySQL db

List Size:
1K to 5K

Empl:
one

Training:
hr

Cust Serv: 4

Qual: 4

Ease:

Country:

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Missing?

List Size:
100 to 1K

Empl:
one

Training:
2 hr

Cust Serv: 5

Qual: 4

Ease: 4

Country:
AU

Strengths: Easy to prepare HTML email from a template Automataic Plain Text generator which is then easy to edit Auto list handling Merged fields i.e. personalisation Easy editing of lists Logging of events Very low price

Weaknesses: Bounced messages could be better handled Some computig aptitude required Documentation fair

Missing?

List Size:
< 100

Empl:
one

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: 4

Qual: 4

Ease: 4

Country:
US

Strengths: I easily can send HTML or text and there is no Infacta logo obscuring my message. though upgrades are available the basic version of this program is free - that means I can improve the quality of my mailings without expense I can't afford right now.

Weaknesses: In order to easily manage my database I will have to upgrade. There are some database features with the free version but not the ones I will need as my list grows.

Missing? none

List Size:
25K to 100K

Empl:
2 to 6

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: 4

Qual: 5

Ease: 4

Country:
W Eur

Strengths: Its really easy to use - yet powerful.

Weaknesses: Filters are tricky to use

Missing? Scheduling - infacta say they will have that shortly though.

List Size:
5K to 25K

Empl:
> 5K

Training:
5 hr

Cust Serv: NA

Qual: 4

Ease: 4

Country:
Canada

Strengths: Metrics are key to our success most of the desktop software do not provde any. We rely on our sophisticated tool for metrics capture a BEA (Broadbase) web metrics tool which provides good information but only after the fact don't know how many customers opened the email how many viewed it. We also have another tool which our commercial application for email but since your selection criteria did not cover it I thought I'd talk about the desktop software first. The commercial software we use for large email push ( 50K + ) it handles email formatting but provides poor interface for anything other then text email. We've been at it for 2 years 1/2 so lots of things to talk about in terms of email marketing. Having a tool that provides good results is critical for any company who wishes to to build onto an email marketing strategy so I suggest people take a good look at this aspect when talking with vendors. Everyone seems very interested in talking about enterprise wide campaign management but many fail to talk about basic email 101 which is understanding what they can do with the succes level from the email campaigns.

Weaknesses: Already explained that in Q 8

Missing? Same thing really it's the metrics but also in the case of Aureate the handling of large volume email db.

List Size:
1K to 5K

Empl:
one

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: 4

Qual: 5

Ease: 4

Country:
US

Strengths: easy to setup multiple lists with different return address and contact details. offers plug-ins to streamline the handling of unsubscribes and bounced emails. offers fast bulk-sending mode that I've found faster than programs that cost 5 times as much. can send html or text based email easy to use and configure. allows personalization features like Dear Your Name etc. I use this feature to tell each subscriber the address they are subscribed under to make unsubscribing easier for them.

Weaknesses: Will not use bulk send (fast) mode to send messages that have been personalized. They do have a professional version that does this however. I've just chosen not to upgrade at this time.

Missing? a more automated way for users to unsubscribe. I wish the program had a snippet of HTML code or a special link that it would put in each email to allow one-click unsubscribing.

List Size:
100 to 1K

Empl:
2 to 6

Training:
10 hr

Cust Serv: NA

Qual: 3

Ease: 3

Country:
Other

Strengths: Allows to break up 'Full Names' into 'First' and 'Last' name entries while importing.

Weaknesses: Add on plugins are not standard part of the software.

Missing? Many. Can't list completely

List Size:
5K to 25K

Empl:
2 to 6

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: 5

Qual: 5

Ease: 5

Country:
US

Strengths: Very Easy to use ... and not expensive

Weaknesses: None

Missing? for a price of under $50.00 it is VERY USEFUL

List Size:
5K to 25K

Empl:
7 to 25

Training:
5 hr

Cust Serv: NA

Qual: 5

Ease: 4

Country:
W Eur

Strengths: #NAME?

Weaknesses: none

Missing?

List Size:
1K to 5K

Empl:
7 to 25

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: 3

Qual: 5

Ease: 5

Country:
India

Strengths: Personalise Email speed database ease of use

Weaknesses: Nothing as such

Missing? Serial Number of email or record

List Size:
1K to 5K

Empl:
one

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: 3

Qual: 3

Ease: 3

Country:
US

Strengths: 1. multiple addressbooks 2. searchable by any field 3. simple import of addresses 4. simple to use the mailing feature 5. each email can be configured to have different details such as signature files and info 6. you can either bulk send or individual send

Weaknesses: sometimes when you try to purge a batch of addresses it won't purge them all. Also after you have set a 'signature file' or the equivalent for one address book you can't change it permanently again though you can do for each mailing.

Missing? Corrections of the above mentioned negative traits.

List Size:
5K to 25K

Empl:
100 to 500

Training:
5 hr

Cust Serv: 5

Qual: 5

Ease: 5

Country:
W Eur

Strengths: Ease of use Speed Reliability HTML & Text in same mailing

Weaknesses: Nothing dramatic

Missing? Ability to merge larger user defined fields currently limited to 40-50 characters

List Size:
500K to 2 mil

Empl:
2 to 6

Training:
hr

Cust Serv: 2

Qual: 3

Ease:

Country:

Strengths: nothing

Weaknesses:

Missing?

List Size:
5K to 25K

Empl:
2 to 6

Training:
2 hr

Cust Serv: 4

Qual: 4

Ease: 2

Country:
US

Strengths: I like that I can manage it myself and that I can specify what e-mail box the errors are sent to what mail box replies go to and what mailbox I am sending from. This last option may (possibly) be a coup for spammers but it is also useful for honest newsletter publishers. I use an outside server and e-mail account for most of the newsletter business. It is however easier to send the e-mail from my internal server. So I send the bulk e-mail from my internal server and fill it out so it appears it's coming from the same server as the rest of my newsletter related mail. I set my errors/bounces to go to the subscription mail box so I can use my subscriber plug in to take care of the soft and hard bounces and basic subscribe/unsubscribe for me. The plug-in has to be initiated manually but with a list of around 8 500 this isn't really an inconvenience. The program also allows you to do a partial send which is nice if your connection times out or something else occurs to stop your transmition. The mail also has a feature that allows you to personalize the e-mail by having it put someone's name in the header and by creating up to seven different customized e-mails that can be disstributed to your group. I haven't utilized these features for my newsletter but I am sure they will be particularly useful for my regular marketing newsletters.

Weaknesses: The subscriber plug-in cannot detect forwarded e-mail addresses. Our original mailing list was purchased from another company that distributed a similar newsletter but is no longer in business. Some of the addresses on the mailing list were generic addresses(like sales@companyxyz.com) that were forwarded to other people. When people want to unsubscribe from the newsletter they usually e-mail me from their personal account(jsmith@companyxyz.com) and the subscriber plug in can't find the person in our database.

Missing? I'm still new with the program and bulk mailings in general so I don't feel qualified to answer this question.

List Size:
1K to 5K

Empl:
one

Training:
hr

Cust Serv: NA

Qual: 4

Ease:

Country:

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Missing?

List Size:
100 to 1K

Empl:
one

Training:
2 hr

Cust Serv: NA

Qual: 4

Ease: 4

Country:
NZ

Strengths: It has a personalisation feature so if I'd had the foresight to collect first names I could personalise by first name. The free version only allows for lists of up to 100 so I have three groups of less than 100 sending the same message. Produced by Infacta group (www.infacta.com/gm It sends mails individually to each address so opt-in email is less likely to be identified as spam. (Although the full version gives you the option of bulk sending using BCC). List management is nice and simple UI is intuitive exporting and importing is relatively uncomplicated (to and from tab delimited txts or csv files). Overall pretty good and worth much more than I spent on it!

Weaknesses: Free version only lets you send to 100 recipients at a time. (Although $$ will solve that) Hmmm.. nothing else much.

Missing? The ability to segment by interest area.

List Size:
100 to 1K

Empl:
2 to 6

Training:
2 hr

Cust Serv: 4

Qual: 5

Ease: 5

Country:
UK

Strengths: It is very easy to use. I am not a techie and I don't like to have to spend lot of time to learn a software. It is very easy to import a list of email with first name and surmane from Excel. I can easy classify different groups of people. Send email to each of these group very easy. I can also send HTML newsletter very easy.

Weaknesses: I don't know. This one answer the need I have right now. I can have all my translators in different categories: French german etc. send an offer to all of them in one click.

Missing? ? Sorry I am not able to help you much on this.

List Size:
5K to 25K

Empl:
one

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: 4

Qual: 4

Ease: 5

Country:
US

Strengths: Ease of use and dependability

Weaknesses: Not anything frustrating

Missing? An email extractor (would like to use it on one of my own websites that doesn't give me an easy way to get the email addresses of my members)

List Size:
100 to 1K

Empl:
2 to 6

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: 1

Qual: 3

Ease: 3

Country:
US

Strengths: The only feature I like is that there is no per month fee as there is with hosted solutions. Otherwise I think it could have been written much better.

Weaknesses: It is written dumb. I can't describe it - but it's like it was set up by someone who never ever tried to run an email list so they never thought about what steps you'd need to take and what order you'd need to take them.

Missing? See #9 answer. Really they could just take some of the functionality they have and format it so that the user could use it effectively.

List Size:
25K to 100K

Empl:
26 to 100

Training:
hr

Cust Serv: 4

Qual: 4

Ease:

Country:

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Missing?

List Size:
100 to 1K

Empl:
one

Training:
5 hr

Cust Serv: NA

Qual: 5

Ease: 4

Country:
US

Strengths: Separate tabs for MESSAGE GROUP and SENT MESSGAES. This just happens to be easy for me to comprehend. What have I sent? Who are my groups? And I want to create a message. This faciltates ease of use and easy list management.

Weaknesses: A little weak on subscribes/unsubscribes. I would like to have a form on my website created by the software as well as the usual e-mail subscribe/unsubscribe. This feature is not terrible by any means and it may be that I have just not gotten used to it yet.

Missing? I have not found any reports yet. ie who unsubscribed and when. Again this may be me just not having found thta feature yet. web site Form changes as above.

List Size:
5K to 25K

Empl:
2 to 6

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: 4

Qual: 5

Ease: 4

Country:
AU

Strengths: Flexible easy to integrate with our existing databases multiple lists and Mailaing ID's for each list.

Weaknesses: requires a separate pass to process subsriptions with its add-ins

Missing? separate out the list processing functions into a standalone app that could run full-time and in conjunction with the main program.

List Size:
5K to 25K

Empl:
26 to 100

Training:
1 hr

Cust Serv: 3

Qual: 3

Ease: 5

Country:
Other

Strengths: HTML Support Able to send without SMTP Bad emails are coming back and with a description why when clients email doesn't support html the program automatically send it in a normal format.

Weaknesses: The company didn't finish( are working on it) their support or tutorials on Unsubscribers

Missing?