Many email marketing companies charge their customers based on the number of subscribers. The more subscribers you have, the more money you pay.
Sounds fair, doesn’t it?
However, it seems that by “subscribers” at least one company understands also the people who unsubscribed from your mailing list. No, I’m not the one who’s kidding ;-)
I’m not talking about a newcomer in the email marketing industry…
I’m talking about… No, I’ll tell you later. What’s the hurry?
Let’s start with the beginning and put myself in the prospect’s shoes.
I’ve read their features overview. Very nice indeed!
Then I moved to their Pricing page. “Pricing for over 500 subscribers”…
Everywhere I’ve seen the word “subscribers”. So they’ll charge me based on the number of subscribers. Good to know…
Then I’ve read also their terms of service and the help article “How Does the Billing Work”.
Do I really need to read more? What do you think?
They have tons of help pages. But I’m not a newbie. I’m not going to spend a whole week or even more by reading newbie stuff like “What is spamming?” and other similar articles.
If I sign up for their services, I have to agree with their Service Agreement. I am not requested to agree with their blog posts, help articles, political views or anything else.
Right?
Wrong! It seems that the opinion of this email marketing company is that I’m supposed to read and agree with their help article “How Do I Delete My Unsubscribes?”
Doesn’t it sound weird? Why should I read that help page? Who is this company?
Well… It’s a company many marketers consider as being the best. I told you it’s not a newcomer… It’s AWeber.
And that theoretically unimportant help page should be read because it includes one vital piece of information that it’s buried there…
What does that mean?
Here’s a practical example… You’re an AWeber user. You have 481 subscribers and during the last 5 months 20 people unsubscribed from your list. Well… Surprise… If you didn’t delete these 20 unsubscribers, you won’t pay $19/mo. as mentioned in the Pricing page (under 500 subscribers). You’re billed for 501 email contacts: $29/mo.
That’s quite a difference, isn’t it?
Preliminary Conclusion
I’ve noticed that some users were angry because AWeber charges for the people who unsubscribed from their mailing list.
I don’t agree with such complaints. Any company is free to decide what’s included in their service package. It’s not unexpected to charge for a service that it’s provided. If the user doesn’t delete the unsubscribers, they remain in AWeber’s database and reports that include them are available to the user.
Do you want access to the most accurate old reports? You pay for them. Don’t you need them to be accurate? Delete the unsubscribers, they won’t appear in the old reports and you’re not charged for unsubscribers.
What do I think about such a policy? It’s not important. As long as it’s posted in a visible place – Service Agreement or the Pricing page, I can read it and then it’s up to me whether I still buy the service or not.
However…
These days, many people buy different things online without reading the Terms of Service. That is very wrong, and it’s only their fault if they miss something important. They aren’t supposed to agree with the ToS without reading them.
However, in order to find out important pieces of information, such as what services you’re charged for, you’re not supposed to read tens or hundreds of help pages, are you? Expecting someone to do that is… No, I won’t be rude and I will stop here.
What If Aweber Didn’t Notice the Users’ Problem?
Their team is very active online. It’s a great team actually. It’s impossible for them not to notice many articles and comments posted by their users who were surprised when they found out that they paid for unsubscribers.
Actually I found out about Aweber charging for unsubscribers by reading this recent article.
What if AWeber knew that some of their users weren’t aware of the extra charge for unsubscribers, and didn’t ask themselves what the reason for their users not being aware was?
I don’t believe such a reason being a realistic one. But anyway, now they know…
The tweets shown above are part of a Twitter chat we had more than one year ago. Nothing changed in the meantime …
Conclusions?
I pondered a lot… Sorry, guys, but I see only 4 possible conclusions…
1) According to AWeber, a person who unsubscribed from a mailing list is still a subscriber. Forever. Unless someone deletes that contact from their database. Or…
2) AWeber knows very well what a subscriber is, and it charges hidden fees (not mentioned on the Pricing page) for the people who aren’t subscribers anymore and who weren’t deleted by the users from AWeber’s database. Or…
3) AWeber considers that the Service Agreement includes every little phrase posted on their website, even if the agreement doesn’t state so. That would include my comments posted on their blog. Or…
4) The phrase that mentions the billing for all unsubscribers who aren’t deleted is included in the Service Agreement or posted on a main page, prominently, and… I still haven’t see it. Neither have many AWeber users. Neither has that person who runs AWeber Support on Twitter.
I don’t know what the right conclusion is… Maybe #3 …
What I know for sure is that this isn’t an “I hate AWeber” article. For one reason or another, I’ve never been their user. They never hurt me in any way. So why should I hate AWeber?
I’m just disappointed…
Disappointed with AWeber. And especially disappointed with many marketers I know, who published ‘AWeber is the Best’ raving reviews while hiding such an useful piece of information.
To your email marketing success!
Adrian Jock
P.S. There’s at least one other company who applies the same policy. However, there’s a fine difference between them and AWeber: they don’t claim that they charge customers based on the number of subscribers while actually charging also for people who aren’t subscribers anymore. They charge based on the number of contacts.
Contacts, not subscribers. Not fully satisfactory, but slightly better. It’s almost the same thing, but there’s a fine line between them though… While I’m 100% sure that someone who unsubscribed cannot be called subscriber, I cannot say the same for the word “contact” ;-)
P.P.S. What do you think? Are you an AWeber user? Did you know about this issue? Where have you read for the first time that you’re paying for unsubscribers?
| 0-500 subscribers |
501-1,000 subscribers |
1,001-2,500 subscribers |
2,501-5,000 subscribers |
5,001-10,000 subscribers |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWeber | $19/mo | $29/mo | $29/mo | $49/mo | $69/mo |
| GetResponse | $15/mo | $15/mo | $25/mo | $45/mo | $65/mo |
Hi Adrian,
I am convinced that Aweber isn’t the best. Yes, they have a great support. They are a great company.
But, there are others as good as well. It is untrue to say that Aweber is the best because they are not. They are just another average Autoresponder company.
No questions! I am with on this one!
Cheers!
Kumar
Hi Kumar,
Thank you for your comment :-)
There are many companies that offer a great customer support service. There’s nothing special in offering a good customer support. One of the companies I use for my email marketing needs is MadMimi. Every time when I sent them an email, I got a reply within maximum one hour.
Quoting from Reddit:
“I admit I didn’t know this at all and have been using aweber and recommending it to clients for ages. Damn… and I went and looked, one of my clients has a list of 7k but has over 1200 unsubscribes.”
I’ve known since I first signed up 8 years ago that Aweber counts unsubscribers in the fee.
I signed up on the recommendation of a program I was in at the time and they taught us to make it a habit to manually delete unsubscribers when the list starts to get close to the next pricing level.
I also delete subscribers who have not opened my emails for a long time. I save their contact details
in a separate file on my computer should I need to
import anyone back into Aweber – although this has never happened. I would probably have to ask them to opt in again, though they did not unsubscribe.
Aweber states “…There are no setup fees or hidden charges with any of our account plans.” I agree with you that they should be more transparent and upfront that “unsubscribed” people are included in the pricing level unless they are manually deleted.
~Jude
Thank you very much for your comment, Jude.
So you were taught by someone else to manually delete the unsubscribers ;-) This is my point – you should find out such a piece of info directly from AWeber, not from someone else.
Are they saying that there are no hidden fees? Not unexpected, but I guess that some people like to play with the words… Honestly, I don’t appreciate that kind of play. I don’t know who appreciates it. Maybe these fees aren’t hidden. They aren’t visible though :-) Considering an unsubscriber as a subscriber, fees that aren’t hidden but aren’t visible…
As for deleting the subscribers who haven’t opened your emails for a long time, that’s not a good strategy. The measurement of the opens isn’t accurate, so you shouldn’t relate on opens. Read more here. Always base your decisions on clicks, not on opens ;-)
Hi Adrian,
I am with another company that has this same policy, and I only discovered it when I went over the 500 “contacts” which included some “unsubscribes”.
Disappointed would be mild compared to what i felt :-)
Joy
Hi Joy,
Sorry about that :-( Just curious… What’s the name of that company? I checked your blog and I’ve noticed AWeber forms…
Hi Adrian,
Sorry for the delay in replying…. it was a long time ago and I THINK it was GetResponse, but the old memory isn’t what it used to be LOL
Joy
Better later than never :) Thank you, Joy!
Very interesting article. I did not know about Aweber counting unsubscribes as a total for my account until much later in my use of the service. But I never went over, so it never caught me by surprise.
I don’t see it as a good reason to “hate” the service or the company. Although I agree it’s not exactly best practice, They should at the very least send customers a notice they will be going over, before the next billing cycle. Seems that would help from upsetting customers.
I’ve been using Aweber for many years now, and while they are not perfect, in my opinion they are one of the best autoresponder services.
One of the reason I like them is because they are so knowledgeable about their service and they go out of their way to help you. Never had a question that wasn’t answered in detail. Plus they have so many help pages.
For a short time I tried Get Response and sadly, the few questions I had pretty much went unanswered. Support responded, but almost every time where of little to no assistance. The staff just did not seem to know much. And these where legit questions about using their very service. Was sorely disappointing.
Well, just my opinions and experience :)
Hi Ron,
Thank you for sharing your experience.
I had a bad experience with GetResponse staff when I tried to join their affiliate program. I don’t like to waste my time with people who aren’t professional, so I gave up and moved on.
I don’t remember the exact details but several years ago AWeber explained why they considered unsubscribes as subscribers. It had something to do with other reasons why we might need to keep them in the database so AWeber wasn’t able to remove them. If they didn’t charge for the unsubscribes and couldn’t remove them, the unsubscribes would quickly overtake the actual subscribers and cost them money because no one would have an incentive to clean their lists. I think it had something to do with ecommerce and recordkeeping, I just can’t remember.
I’m not defending them; it just made sense at the time. That doesn’t explain why their competition doesn’t charge the same way but seem to stay just as competitive pricewise.
Hi Brian,
Thank you for your comment.
Everyone is free to have whatever ToS they may consider appropriate in order to run their business. This isn’t about, “Why AWeber charges for unsubscribes?”
Everyone is free to use the language they want. I don’t mind if someone uses “stuffed” in order to define a person who is “hungry”, or uses “subscriber” in order to define a person who unsubscribed from an email list LOL
However, if you’re running a business and charging people for your services, I think that the terms and conditions should be ALL included in the ToS, and I also think that you should make the customers or prospects aware of your own new language.
Hiding important pieces of information in 101 help articles is… let me be polite and say… disappointing.
I totally agree with you, Adrian. Their users may want to keep the emails and data on their unsubscribers, but it should be clear in advance how they are charging. Kristi Hines wrote a post on this issue related to how spammers can cost you big time. It is worth a read: http://kikolani.com/spammers-mailing-list-costing-money.html
GetResponse is getting a lot of press about enhancements they’ve made. I first noticed when Tom Drake wrote a guest post for GrowMap about why Create Hype switched from AWeber to GetResponse.
Since then I’ve researched and written about their landing page creation and their moving into the meeting and webinar space with ClickMeeting and ClickWebinar. I was surprised they can automatically translate on the fly into 52 languages. I haven’t seen anyone else do that. Worth checking out.
Hi Gail,
Thank you for your comment. As for GetResponse, I’m happy with my email service provider :)
Good to hear you’re happy with MadMimi, Adrian. I know some other bloggers who use it.
As a new blogger, I have had numerous people direct me to AWeber, thanks for clarifying a more substantive review than, “it’s great!”. I’ve been testing out MailChimp, MadMimi is next on my list to try; guess, I’ll move that up in priority after reading your review.
Hi Adrian
I love this post.
Sincere review is hard to come by. You know I bet there are many people who are not aware of this information and still many marketers ace Aweber as the best.
Thank you for sharing this information. You certainly will help bloggers who feel guilty that they are not using Aweber.
I also agree that we should learn to read terms and agreements but like you have mentioned, there is so much jargon and it is too long. Companies need to figure out how to condense their information for users.
Thanks again. Have a sweel week.
Hi Ikechi,
Thank you for the comment. Long time ago, AWeber attracted a lot of marketers by offering them a deal: a fixed price per month for the rest of their life, irrespective of the future growth of their list. Those veterans are very happy with AWeber and keep recommending it to the new users. However, the new users don’t get the same deal – that’s kind of another AWeber ;)
Thank you for writing about this. Although I don’t use AWeber I will be looking into the company that we do use. I would hate to be charged for emails that aren’t actually sent.