AWeber vs. LoopFuse (discontinued)

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.

My advice in choosing software in general is to know what you want to get out of the software. Then start researching the software on your own to see what features and benefits each has that will help you accomplish what you need. Once you have a good idea of what sorts of features you're looking for, reach out to the vendors that have them to see demos. Get really in-depth with your demos and ask for practical use-cases for each feature. Free trials are pretty useless with this sort of technology because the initial set-up is so time-consuming that you would either not set it up properly, or you would not stop using the provider you chose after the set up because you don't want to do it again!

• List building: AWeber makes it easy to grow opt-in subscribers through customizable signup forms as well an integration with tools like Sumo and Hustle Pro.
• List segmentation: with a little more information about each subscriber, it's easy to create custom segmented lists based on different criteria.
• Deliverability: AWeber enforces opt-in rules to keep spammers out of its system and improve deliverability rates for reputable users. We rarely have issues with our messages from AWeber being routed to spam folders.
• Double opt-in: AWeber makes it easy to set up double opt-in to make extra certain you have a high-quality mailing list.

Incentivized

• It is easy to use without too much set-up.
• The e-mail engine is simple to use and straightforward, and e-mails seemed to get delivered for the most part.
• The reporting information is very in-depth and detailed.

• Aweber would be even better if it had the ability to host landing pages. I have to use a tool like landingpages.net to do this if I don't want to create the landing pages as part of my client's website. If I manage their site, it isn't a problem, but it keeps me from using Aweber for clients who manage their own sites or dont' have one.
• Aweber would greatly benefit from a more robust reseller program. Firms like mine have multiple clients and, with each client needing an individual Aweber account, it would be nice to have access to margin so that we could resell the services.
• Along the lines of a reseller program, it would be great of Aweber allowed resellers to white label the interface and administrate multiple accounts from one agency account.

Incentivized

• I think creating the HTML email campaigns could be made easier.
• I would like to have more HTML templates available.

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.

Loopfuse was great for a startup with a limited budget and limited technical resources, but it's not something I'd use for a larger company because the functionality can be fairly limited compared to other similar products. If I were in a startup again, I wouldn't hesitate to use them for a second. I would also note that, when I first started using them, they were great about answering questions via phone, email, web form, forum, etc - which is one of the reasons I went with them. When I used them at a later company, I found they were a little less receptive to 1x1 support with the cheaper plan I was using. I can't blame them for that, but it wasn't always intuitive to use their product (even after having used it for a year).

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's pretty easy to use without any technical abilities, but the email editor will require html skills (no drag and drop).

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

We often use Canva to design our content and then export it as an image to upload into Aweber, as Aweber designs and limitations are too much of a hindrance to our needs. Canva is a brilliant tool for marketing and saves you a lot of time being able to adapt or change an existing template you create.

At the time we had to choose between several versions of marketing products. We decided to choose LoopFuse since a few of our employees were quite amused with the ease of use of LoopFuse. Also when looking at cost-effectiveness LoopFuse is a great product for the smaller companies. Making the decision was not too hard.

• Aweber delivers my email fast and reliably, never had a problem tech support could not handle (by the way, their support is great!)
• Since I have been with Aweber for so many years, I have an unlimited plan for a very affordable rate
• Aweber may not be a sexy as some of the new kids on the block, but it is a solid offering you should consider when choosing an autoresponder

Incentivized

• I can't really quantify ROI from Loopfuse