Tag Archives: Feedburner

Important: Upcoming changes to SWLing Post email newsletters

If you’re one of the 1,700 people who have an email subscription to the SWLing Post via Feedburner, please take note:

No more Feedburner

In July 2021, the email delivery system we’ve used for daily email newsletters, Feedburner, is scaling back their operations and will discontinue email delivery. This means, if you subscribe to the SWLing Post via Feedburner, email newsletters will soon stop.

Feedburner is owned by Google and has been a free email subscription service. While it has had issues in the past (Google actually dropped almost all support for it a decade ago!) many website owners like me continued to use it because it “just works” and has a very simple interface.

Are you subscribed to the SWLing Post via Feedburner?

If you receive a daily email digest from the SWLing Post and, at the bottom of the email, you find the following footer, then you are subscribed via Feedburner:

If you don’t see this footer, then you may be subscribed via WordPress and, most likely, don’t receive a daily digest, but an email with each post as they are published.

A new email subscription system

I am looking into a new system for email newsletters that should pair very nicely with the SWLing Post.

My policy with any changes on the SWLing Post is that they will always be meaningful upgrades.

There are no free email subscriptions services that can handle the number of subscribers we have and that meet my requirements for being simple to use, containing no annoying non-relevant ads and pop-ups, and respecting subscriber privacy.

I’ve been looking into the best paid services in the business: companies that insure subscriber privacy and have a reliable track record. I’m in the process of finalizing purchase now. This will cost at least $30/month, but I’m happy to pay that knowing that the service is benchmark.

Next step!

In the next few days, I’ll post details with a subscription link to the new service.

While I have a spreadsheet with all 1,700+ email subscribers, I’d rather you sign up for the service directly if you decide to use it. This will cut down on any bounce-back emails and set it up initially with a clean list.

Spread the radio love

SWLing Post email digest via Feedburner

EmailDigest

I’ve received messages from several SWLing Post email subscribers stating that they haven’t received email digests or announcements lately.

Our email subscription has been powered by the Google company Feedburner. Feedburner used to be the best RSS-to-email subscription service out there, but over the years, Google has all but dropped the service completely.  It appears their service is either not working right now, or is working inconsistently.

I’ve stuck with Feedburner over the years because:

  1. It’s free
  2. It’s simple to use (both for me and for readers)
  3. It offers options to have either an email sent for each post or a daily digest with all posts from the day

Most daily SWLing Post readers (we’re averaging almost 6,000 on average) visit the site directly; a large number also use RSS services to follow our feed.

I’ve been searching for alternatives to Feedburner. There are quite a few out there, but most have a complicated pricing structures based on both the number of subscribers and the total amount of emails sent. We currently send at least 35,000 emails per month via Feedburner.

I will choose a paid rss service, because I don’t want emails littered with ads from the service provider.

I have a personal goal to make any change like this to the SWLing Post an upgrade in user experience, so it may take some time to find the right solution. If you’re familiar with rss-to-email services, your suggestions are most welcome!

Anyway, thanks for your patience while I explore email subscription services!

Spread the radio love