For the past six years or so, we’ve used Google Feedburner as an email distribution system on the SWLing Post. Feedburner is a bare-bones RSS-based system, but it’s worked quite well–allowing readers to sign up for individual Post emails or daily digests. It’s also free for both readers and for me.
However, in the past two months, I’ve received numerous comments from readers and contributors describing very flaky and unreliable behavior from Feedburner.
Truth is, even when I signed up to use Feedburner, Google had all but abandoned the project support-wise. Many bloggers feel that Google could simply pull the plug on Feedburner with little notice, so I’ve been looking into other options.
When I update SWLing Post functionality, I also upgrade functionality.
Over the past few months, I’ve been looking into alternate email distribution systems. Almost all of these are paid systems, and I’m only considering those that are reliable and have been in business for a long time. These systems typically charge based on the number of emails delivered per month and the total number of subscribers.
In the next couple of weeks, I hope to start trial subscriptions to these services and see which one I like best. I’m especially interested in a system that has better formatting than Feedburner (which, essentially, has no formatting–!). 🙂 Once I commit to a system, I’ll import all of the current subscribers into the system and you’ll have an option to adopt it as your new platform. I’ll also post a new sign-up sheet.
Please be patient as I go through this process–my schedule is jam-packed at the moment, so I’ll be exploring all of this in my spare time.
If you have any email delivery systems recommendations, please feel free to comment or contact me directly! Thank you!
