To continue our series of email marketing software reviews, we’re going to be diving deep into one of the more popular email marketing softwares – AWeber. In this AWeber review we’ll take a look at Aweber’s pricing, features, updates, pros and cons, and more.

You might be reading this AWeber review to see if it’s the right email marketing software for you. So, we’ll make sure that by the end of this Aweber review, you’ll have a clearer idea if Aweber is the right email marketing tool for your business.

What is AWeber? What is it used for?

Founded in 1998, AWeber is one of the pioneers in the email marketing industry today. Boasting 100,000 customers, the email marketing software performs well in its primary functions and provides strong integration features with a fair amount of other applications.

Tom Kulzer established AWeber with the intent of making an impact on small businesses. Today, the email marketing app allows users to:

• Create Mailing lists
• Capture data
• Design newsletters
• Automate email marketing campaigns
• Track and report campaign performance

With AWeber, you get access to unlimited email templates, a drag & drop builder, pre-stocked photos, and all the resources you need to expand your company. The platform is renowned for its autoresponders and various options for integration.

It contains the basic resources you need for working with template-created or HTML-loaded emails. Plus, it provides subscribers with excellent options of sign-up forms. It is, in general, one of the best software applications for email marketing.

It’s pretty easy to use, and encountering advanced features is never a problem because they provide a series of tutorials you can watch.

Who Should Use AWeber?

Small companies, entrepreneurs, non-profits, writers, podcasters and other producers of online content can use AWeber. We also recommend AWeber to large enterprises and businesses with affiliate marketing in their marketing strategy.

AWeber Review – Benefits

AWeber is a solid choice for an email marketing solution because it has all the features you need to create revenue-generating campaigns and the ease of use you need to start delivering enticing emails that interest consumers fast.

The functionality of subscriber management allows you to understand customer actions, while its reporting provides you with the insight you need to understand how your campaigns work.

Based on that data, it also suggests actions you should take. AWeber also makes it simple to create behavioral trigger-driven workflows, so clients can receive appropriate communication automatically based on actions they have taken. Other benefits include:

• Over 700 templates
• Autoresponders are easier to set up.
• Real-time editing is possible in the e-newsletter builder.
• Plenty of free stock photos
• Extensive support options
• No stringent affiliate marketing restrictions.
• Enables segmented email lists with subscribers
• Track consumer engagement effectively with reports feature
• A/B split testing
• Low-cost plans

AWeber Review – Pricing

This email marketing software has one of the pricing structures available that is most transparent and simple to understand. AWeber has 2 different pricing plans : ‘Free’ and ‘Pro.’

AWeber Free plan

Aweber’s free plan allows you to access a majority of Aweber’s features, as long as your mailing list is less than 500 subscribers. While it provides a wide range of free plan features, it does not include A/B testing or automations based on previous purchasing behavior.

Get your one month free trial of AWeber here.

AWeber Pro plan

 

AWeber only offers one paid plan package with costs that depend on your number of subscribers. The structure is as follows:

• 0‐500 subscribers : $19 per month
• 501‐2,500 subscribers : $29 per month
• 2,501‐5,000 subscribers : $49 per month
• 5,001‐10,00 subscribers : $69 per month
• 10,001‐25,000 subscribers : $149 per month

Having more than 25,000 subscribers will require you to call AWeber for a quotation.

You can receive a 14% discount on AWeber if you pay quarterly, and a 14.9% discount if you pay annually. There are also available discounts for students and non-profit organizations.

One part of AWeber’s price system that future consumers might appreciate is how all features are included on all paid plans. You can use most of them even with a free plan. The cost only changes depending on your mailing list.

AWeber Review – Features

Importing List on AWeber

Importing subscribers to AWeber can be done in two ways: Individually or by uploading file types.

You can upload various file types on AWeber’s database. It’s pretty easy to import your existing email database and begin blasting out email campaigns. The file types you can import include:

• XLX
• XLSX
• CSV
• TSX
• TSV

If you prefer individually adding your subscribers, you may manually add individual subscribers, or copy and paste subscribers into the tool.

AWeber also gives the option to add and tag your subscribers to a specific set of autoresponders once you import your data.

Whenever you import subscribers expect to have to respond to questions about how you have obtained the data you are importing for anti-spam purposes.

Additionally, if the collection is greater than 10,000 records, you will still have to wait until AWeber’s anti-spam team reviews it. It will take up to one business day to do this.

RSS to email Templates

Aweber, similar to other products for e-marketing, can use the RSS feed of your site and convert it to e-newsletters which can be sent as per a schedule you decide. Aweber calls this ‘Blog broadcasts.’ This feature can be used technically with any matter that contains an RSS feed.

Bloggers who wish that their subscribers automatically receive e-newsletters regarding their recent posts or blog posts in monthly digests can avail of this function. In short, this ensures boosting your newsletters that are extracted from your respective website, which is a great time-saver.

It is important to note that the standard template designs from Aweber cannot be used for the purpose of turning RSS to email. You need to select from a template-set designed precisely to fulfill this purpose.

Looking at the positive side, you can find a few good ones to select from, comparatively more than a lot of solutions for e-marketing that I have tried using from other email marketing providers.

While looking at the negative side, a lot of the templates seem quite dreadful. Also, editing is annoying since you are not able to use the Aweber email standard practice of dragging and dropping interface. However, a little twist may help to make it acceptable to use.

Email Scheduling and Delivery

Aweber is comparatively slower than most programs of email marketing, but it provides beneficial tools to create as well as send professional campaigns for email marketing so it is worth it.

It is simple to import email codes. Though we were able to deliver the email to all our test accounts, there are reviews online about it going frequently in spam folders.

We observed that, for loading of subscribers individually at a single time or for a list to be imported, this software worked the slowest. Extra time needs to be planned for processing of contacts, particularly if you possess a lengthy list. A list cannot be segmented, but contacts can be tagged and these tags can be used for sending campaigns to various subscribers. You can easily create a sign-up form.  Available templates and possibility for the addition of custom fields are provided.

Newsletter Creation

Test email campaign creation has worked fairly well for us. Aweber offers various templates which are beneficial and modifiable, although editing has more steps involved than other software of online marketing. The extremely sensitive cursor track added more frustration during the process of creation. This was exclusively the only program for newsletter creation which we tested noting this issue.

Though there are a few newsletter creators which provide free images, this one offers an awesome tool for prepping your email up with free stock images, without any payment. But, we were never quite happy with the tool for image-editing.

Adding our personal photos was easy. However, when we had an image to be resized, it became blurred and this image being blurred was seen in all our messages which were sent. Apart from these concerns, the function of editing and customization of email worked well.

You should frequently save your work while editing a template or creation of emails using a template. We came across an issue regarding loss of changes while creation of one email. On comparing with other competitors, we note that Aweber offers the greatest sets of e-newsletter templates that are available; the number is over 700 templates.

Frankly speaking, not all designs are great; there are some which seem a little old-fashioned. Nevertheless, the sheer number of templates which are available shows that by tweaking a little you can find a perfect template with respect to your e-newsletters. The option to code your own is also available.

This program provides tutorials and numerous videos to guide you, thereby making it favorable for beginners who wish to be instructed rather than learning about using the program.

Aweber software for email marketing is a great option that you can choose. Although it is an application which takes a bit time to get used to, it provides some great features which can help. Addition and processing of new contacts, however, was a slow process. Nevertheless, it is effective. All the emails are sent and delivered as per expectation.

Reporting

The tracking and reporting feature of AWeber tracks all email campaign and email subscribers metrics. You can monitor the success of both your campaigns and your registration forms in that manner.

AWeber monitors vanity metrics such as openings and clicks, and more granular metrics focused on sales that allow you to calculate the ROI of your campaigns properly.
This entails such metrics as:

• Conversions
• Revenue over time
• Reports

Not only does AWeber offer a graphic representation of this information that helps you to control how well your particular campaigns perform, and how all campaigns do over a span of time, it also encourages you to take action on the basis of this information.

For example, you can create segments that contain subscribers who did a particular action (like click on a certain product, or added to cart) and give them an email that is relevant and targeted.

AWeber Review – Updates

AWeber has constantly been improving their services to better serve their customers. So of the updates they made in the past few months are:

Landing Page Builder

The new AWeber Landing Page Designer helps small business owners to rapidly develop visually beautiful landing pages that increase engagement and drive sales.

It uses the same drag-and-drop technology that consumers are already familiar with, and enables users to develop personalized, mobile-friendly landing pages at no extra charge.

To have a more robust email marketing interface for small companies, the Landing Page Builder complements AWeber’s current software. It includes sign-up forms, over 700 email templates, tag support & automation, a pre-stocked image collection, analytics and more.

They also recently added an expansion of their Landing Page Builder for eCommerce brands via Stripe. Users can easily accept payment for digital products, services, or events directly on their landing pages.

Web Push Notifications

AWeber’s new web push alerts allow website visitors to opt-in to receive updates when they are on a web page without sharing their email address. Companies can send direct and time-sensitive updates that connect to a website, landing page, sign up form, or shopping cart instantly via online push alerts.

AWeber Pro enables unrestricted sending of web push notification at no additional cost.

AWeber Review – Pros

• Great sign-up forms
• Easy to import email codes
• Easy RSS to Email set-up
• Free stock photos
• Largest set of email templates
• Beginner friendly

AWeber Review – Cons

• Reviews online about a lot of emails going in spam
• Slower than other email software providers

AWeber Review- Conclusion

AWeber is a solid option if you’re looking for an email marketing software that can do it all. You can upload various file formats into their database and monitor your marketing strategies, which is very handy.

Another positive point about AWeber is its large collection of email templates, which, if you are new to the game, is sort of awesome. It also has very extensive customer service services, and has been an award recipient in the Stevie Awards of the US National Customer Association for the past three years.

Have you used AWeber for your email marketing campaigns? Tell us your experience and thoughts in the comments section below.

You can read more on our series of email marketing reviews here.