AWeber vs. Echobox Email

AWeber is an excellent email marketing solution for small to mid-sized businesses, especially those that are just starting with email marketing campaigns. AWeber is also good for bloggers. But it's not perfect for an affiliate marketer who wants to make a landing page on AWeber. Businesses that require advanced segmentation options may need to consider other email marketing platforms.

Echobox Email is great for news or article-based sites. It's the only platform we've used that allows editors to simply paste one link to include or override a story. The ability to automate fully or enable periodically is a time and money saver for us during holidays or employee vacations. The platform has been easy to learn and a great improvement over our workaround solutions in Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor. Besides the platform UI and optimizations for articles (which is worth switching for alone), the AI/ML built in to the platform has already started showing improvements to our open and click rates. The personalized send time is a game-changer and the personalized story selection is a promising feature– we look forward to seeing how it plays out over time.

• Aweber's email deliverability is among the best in the industry. I have used other email services and Aweber is superior in deliverability.
• It is easy to setup an autoresponder sequence, a series of time delayed emails delivered over a period of time. This makes it super easy to follow up with leads and customers.
• Aweber's blog broadcast features makes it easy to notify subscribers of new content on your blog. It can be setup to broadcast when ever you make a new post or summarize posts on a periodic basis.

Incentivized

• Easy interface for everyone to learn
• Personalized send times have led to increased open rates
• Ability to automate whole campaigns by theme or category
• Responsive support team that has already incorporated feedback

• Double opt-in requirements. While I understand the rationale for double opt-in, I wish Aweber did not require double opt-in when importing email addresses from the client's existing client database as I feel we end up losing a good number of people who are existing customers and have given the business permission to email them but who either don't notice or don't take the extra step to confirm their subscription to the Aweber list.
• The user interface when designing and setting up html newsletters is not as clearcut and obvious as Constant Contact; it takes more time to get the newsletters to "look right" using Aweber's existing templates.
• I wish Aweber made it easier to embed a video message simply by inserting the video link or embed code into the email body. The process it seems to require (the last time I tried) was to create a screenshot of the video or insert the video thumbnail image and then link to the video in the right column link section .. it's a 2 step process and would be nice if it were a one click process. Not a deal breaker but I just feel like it could be faster and more efficient to embed video messages in an email.

Incentivized

• Stories on Facebook
• More editing options for photos (e.x. layering, pixelating)
• Define also seconds when scheduling

AWeber is easy and intuitive for me use. I really like the simplicity and the structure of the work flow as it saves me time. AWeber also integrates with all the other programs, systems and gateways that I use on a daily basis (WordPress, Paypal, LeadPages, Facebook and more) and if I have any questions or have trouble the AWeber customer service technicians are very helpful.

It has helped increase traffic via social media, which was something crucial for us. This came without extra working time. On contrary, it saved us time.

See previous answers ... the design / customization interface could be more intuitive and elegant .. for example, for me it has been difficult to easily figure out how to place pictures / images to the right, left or center of text.

Incentivized

It has all the features we need and is performing better than what we used previously. The support/development team has been very open to feedback and is actively working on new features and improvements. Any shortcomings (which may not exist for long) are very minor compared to the benefits and features specifically built for news/articles.

I have always received prompt phone or live chat support that has resolved my issues on the first call in a competent, knowledgeable and friendly manner. By contrast MailChimp offers no live chat or phone support; they only offer email support and the response time for MailChimp is slow by comparison to AWeber.

Incentivized

MailChimp is a great "starter" email service, especially for consumer businesses. AWeber offers a bit more power and sophistication, especially for B2B companies, while still being easy to use and price competitive. Constant Contact had seemed to lag in features for a while though it has now largely caught up. However, it's got a more complex pricing model and is less attractive for users who send multiple messages per month to a smaller list.

Incentivized

Echobox Email is specifically built for article-based newsletters and pre-selects content based on your criteria so the editorial team is not starting from scratch. Article-based emails can also be fully automated which was not possible in Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor before. Our web development team no longer needs to build custom solutions to integrate with the ESP and instead can focus on other projects.

• Aweber has been a great way to introduce clients to the process of online marketing and publishing. Many of them have never used the web or email to truly nurture their customer relationships. The combination of dependable features and low price make Aweber a good "toe in the water" of internet marketing.
• Aweber has helped my clients raise awareness of their products and services through targeted email campaigns and regular publishing. It's a great way to deliver coupons and special offers directly to a customer's inbox.
• Awber has helped me teach my clients that a collection of names and email addresses is only worthwhile if you use it to communicate what matters to your customers. Many businesses collect contact information at live events or through other means, but rarely do they actually do anything with it. By using Aweber to reach out to their customer base, they are able to see through the analytics how valuable that conversation can be.

Incentivized

• Increased open rates 17%
• Higher click totals overall