It doesn’t need to be automated though. You can send email messages manually, on a specific time and date, or a pre-written series of messages. I believe that every Internet marketer, amateur or professional, needs an autoresponder. The people that don’t use one, will need one, sooner or later.

There are several professional autoresponders. A few of them are really good, like GetResponse, iContact and Constant Contact. I have tested many, and I have stayed with AWeber for a reason.

I heard a lot of good things about AWeber before I decided to test it. It seemed that many of the top marketers were using it, like Yaro Starak, Yanik Silver, Rosalind Gardner, Michael Rasmussen and Jonathan Mizel. I checked a few discussion forums to see what other people thought of it, and the testimonials were all really positive, it seemed to be the obvious choice.

Now, since I have been using it for several years, I have found three reasons why I think it’s the best email autoresponder service:

Customer service
I almost never use it, but during the past three years or so, I have had a few questions. The customer service is very professional, and all my questions were answered in a matter of a few hours, sometimes even minutes. This is awesome, if you consider the fact that I live in Norway, and AWeber is located in the USA. They were fast, professional and have solved any problem I have ever had.

Functions
I haven’t used all the power of AWeber yet, there are many functions that I probably will never use. But that’s ok. I really enjoy the fact that it’s a powerful service with more options than I really need. One of the options that I have never tried, is split testing. It’s a method to find out which one of your messages that actually gets read and which ones that makes your sales. It’s powerful and I might use it someday.

One option that I really enjoy is the one where I get feedback whenever people on my lists unsubscribes. It’s important to get feedback regarding why they decided to unsubscribe. From this feedback, I have created new more interesting emails for my list.

Email deliverability
I have read this at discussion forums, I have talked to many people about it, I have read it in testimonials; AWeber have the highest percentage of email deliverability of all the autoresponders.

This is important. It doesn’t matter how good you are at copywriting if your emails won’t be delivered to the people on your list. I am not saying that all the other email autoresponders are having problems related to email deliverability, all I am saying is that AWeber is the best one. 

How I use AWeber
I use AWeber to send out several pre-written messages and reports to people that subscribes at one of my websites. This is all 100% automated. I also use AWeber to send out one Internet marketing newsletter. I do this manually. I have tested their RSS service, a service where all the people on my list can get updates from my blog whenever I publish a new post, but I am currently not doing this. 

How much does AWeber cost?
The price to be a member of AWeber starts at $19 a month. I find this fairly cheap, at least when I consider all the features and the superb service. But there are way cheaper alternatives to AWeber.

The problem with the pricing of AWeber is what happens when your list grows. The more subscribers you have, the more you will have to pay. At the moment, you’ll have to pay $29 a month if you have between 501 to 2,500 subscribers, and $49 a month if you have between 2501 and 5000 subscribers. Some people find this expensive, and this is actually the only reason why I haven’t given five stars to AWeber for the monthly cost of their service.