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DAP vs Aweber

(Or… “DAP vs MailChimp”, “DAP vs. GetResponse”, “Amazon vs Web Host”, …. “DAP vs 3rd-Party-List-Service”)

Quick Summary: Here’s what we recommend, in the order listed below:

1) DAP + Amazon SES: Best option – this is what we use ourselves here at DigitalAccessPass.com and WickedCoolPlugins.com.

2) DAP + ActiveCampaign: If you must sign up for a third-party service for their advance analytics, we highly recommend ActiveCampaign, which is a very robust and popular email service, which we recommend over even, say, Aweber. This #2 option is great if you want advanced email analytics – like click-thru rates or open-rates – that DAP itself doesn’t offer yet. You will still be able to add the subscriber/buyer to both DAP and ActiveCampaign, for eg., and you will have the choice of sending out the emails from either system. This offers more flexibility, but comes at a cost of the services like ActiveCampaign or Aweber.

3) DAP + Your Web Host: Very usable and workable option as long as you are hosting with a decent web host.

Now, for some background information…

We often get asked why use Aweber (or other third-party list service) when DAP itself has a built-in Autoresponder system as well as an Email Broadcast system. So here’s a brief overview of when and why it makes sense to use DAP – or ActiveCampaign/Aweber/MailChimp/GetResponse, etc.

Why DAP Rocks

DAP integrates with Amazon SES  (Simple Email Service), which allows you to send out tens of thousands of emails a day using DAP. Which means that it will only cost you pennies to send out a large volume of email via DAP (just $0.10 per 1,000 emails). So imagine the power of DAP and the deliverability of Amazon in one sweet, integrated system!

Until quite recently, it used to be that the biggest advantage of using a third-party service like Aweber was their email delivery rate. But with the onslaught of high-powered, high-deliverability but-still-inexpensive services like Amazon SES, the advantage now shifts more towards DAP.

Also, when you use a third-party service, like Aweber, and you send out an email and a number of people mark it as spam (incorrectly or not), your account could get shutdown without notice, and you would lose your entire list (unless of course, you have been maniacally exporting the data every few days and storing it on your computer in the form of a CSV file, the chances of which are highly unlikely).

But when you use DAP with say, Amazon SES, your “list” is still stored within the DAP database on your web site. So you always own the list, and the data is always going to be there on your web site, even if you stopped using DAP. And if the same spam issue happens with SES, then Amazon will probably shut down your SES account too – but in this case, that’s not a bank-breaker, because you can sign up with a different email provider, like AuthSMTP.com, or SMTP.com, or Mandrill, integrate DAP with this new email service, and resume your emails like nothing ever happened. Obviously, we’re not telling you this as a way to spam people. The point is that nowadays, people who don’t want your messages any more, instead of unsubscribing, will sometimes mark your email as spam. And when stuff hits the fan, that’s when it’s nice to have some options (like DAP + SES), instead of losing your entire list.

But first, some basics…

DAP is not an email service like Aweber or ActiveCampaign.

DAP is just a tool – like Outlook or Thunderbird – that simply sends out email using your web host’s email server, but in an automated fashion, of course.

If your inexpensive shared web host is hosting a large number of sites on one server, and one of them sends out spam (or mistakenly gets flagged for spam), that will put the email deliverability of every web site on that server, in jeopardy, because your site now shares the same IP address as that of an “alleged” spammer. So your emails could get sent to junk/spam folder by Gmail and Yahoo. Or worse, they just totally disappear into the ether. Some customers won’t get your emails. This won’t happen with Aweber (for the most part).

Aweber (and other premier email service providers) have staff on hand just for this purpose. Their core business is about email deliverability. They spend a lot of time, money and resources dealing with regular ISP’s (like AOL and SBC) to make sure their lists – and their reputation – remain clean. Which is also probably why they shut down large lists without much of a warning to you, and do other similar crazy stuff.

I guess it works for them – and the other Aweber users, because when you send out an email through your Aweber list, it almost always gets there in your recipient’s inbox. Which is very cool. And which is why they also charge so much for their service.

And that’s where DAP comes in.

You can use DAP’s built-in email autoresponder and broadcast system, and send out emails through your web host. But that normally means that the deliverability of those emails is only as good as your web host’s deliverability. And if you’re not on a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a Dedicated server, then relying on your cheap, shared web host to safely deliver your email to your members is totally unrealistic and naive – just ain’t gonna happen.

And that’s where the 3rd-Party SMTP feature of DAP comes in real handy – this is one of the un-sung features of DAP that makes it so much more powerful than almost all other competing WordPress membership plugins, and just doesn’t get talked about enough.

You can use DAP as an “Email-Sending Tool” and hook it up to an external SMTP service provider – like Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES), Fusemail.com or AuthSMTP.com – to send out bulk-mail through DAP – while completely bypassing your web host’s email system.

Which means you get high email delivery, thanks to a 3rd party SMTP provider like Amazon SES that practically guarantees you sky-high deliverability rates and rock-bottom rates, and you can host hundreds of thousands of emails in DAP for no charge other than standard hosting fees (it’s after all just disk-space in your database), and send emails through Amazon SES (costs just 10 cents for every 1,000 emails you send).

Don’t wish to pay even those few pennies? Then simply use DAP on a decent web host like Liquid Web.

DAP also has a built-in job queue to schedule outgoing emails, with the ability to throttle the number to make sure that you don’t exceed your web host’s hourly email sending limits (most web hosts limit you to 300 outgoing emails/hour).

You can even use multiple SMTP servers from your own other lesser-used web sites, all combined together in a round-robin fashion, be able to send thousands of emails an hour right from your web host for absolutely free!

So, to summarize, here’s what DAP can and can-not do when compared to more expensive, dedicated email services like Aweber and GetResponse.

Advantage: DAP

  • Aweber and similar services cost several hundred dollars a year (see Aweber.com – it could cost you about $794 a year – based on an annual fee of $194/year + another $600/year for maintaining a list size of just 5,000 subscribers). But all emails sent via DAP are essentially FREE! You don’t pay anything to send out thousands of emails and have a list with tens of thousands of members. The Autoresponder & Broadcast features are built right into the core DAP software.
  • Don’t trust your web host to deliver the emails? Simply hook up DAP to an external email system like Amazon SES and send thousands of emails for mere pennies! Takes all of 5 minutes to set up!
  • Unlimited Autoresponders
  • Store Unlimited email id’s for free (no limit on how large your list can grow – so it’s practically free, since you’ve already paid for DAP and your web hosting)
  • Full control over your list. You can make the sign-ups single opt-in. You can add your buyers to your list without forcing double opt-in on them. Services like Aweber will force double opt-in even when it’s a paid member who just purchased your product or service. And there’s no way around it. And you have to play by their rules, even if they don’t make sense sometimes. But since you control the DAP software, you get to decide who to send out broadcast or autoresponder emails to. Bring them all in as single-optin if you want. Or move them from one list to another. Or add them to multiple lists. Whatever you want.
  • Import any CSV list (just need an email) and broadcast to them or add them to your autoresponder. You don’t even have to add them to your database at all – do on-the-fly mailings without storing any of the emails or subscriber data (imagine sending out a quick email blast to your mastermind group – or soccer team parents!). A very powerful tool – so don’t abuse it (i.e., don’t use it to spam!)
  • Add same email to multiple Autoresponders (unique to DAP)
  • Email throttling included, so as to not exceed your web host’s hourly email sending limits
  • DAP has a stunning-looking “Lightbox” plugin with several built-in templates, to show your DAP signup form as a popup. See List Builder Popup for DAP
  • Ability to merge member data – like password or affiliate link or user id – right into the emails (DAP only). Third-party email services won’t know as much about your members as DAP does, and won’t be able to (say) send members their personalized affiliate link (like DAP can).
  • International-friendly: Using DAP, you can send out autoresponder and broadcast emails in multiple languages. Not restricted to just English. DAP now supports Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Danish, French, Italian, and Hindi – and that’s just what we know! DAP will surely work with any language that is UTF-8 based. We don’t think any of the big third-party email marketing services – like Aweber or GetResponse – support non-English emails. This in itself is a HUGE plus for DAP.

Advantage: Aweber and the others

  • Ability to track open rates and click-through rates (coming in a future version in DAP)
  • Ability to automatically send out your newly published blog posts as a broadcast (also coming in a future version in DAP)

So given a choice, here’s what we recommend, in the order listed below:

1) DAP + Amazon SES: Best option – this is what we use ourselves here at DigitalAccessPass.com and WickedCoolPlugins.com.

2) DAP + ActiveCampaign: If you must sign up for a third-party service for their advance analytics, we highly recommend ActiveCampaign, which is a very robust and popular email service, which we recommend over even, say, Aweber. This #2 option is great if you want advanced email analytics – like click-thru rates or open-rates – that DAP itself doesn’t offer yet. You will still be able to add the subscriber/buyer to both DAP and ActiveCampaign, for eg., and you will have the choice of sending out the emails from either system. This offers more flexibility, but comes at a cost of the services like ActiveCampaign or Aweber.

3) DAP + Your Web Host: Very usable and workable option as long as you are hosting with a decent web host.

Feel free to comment below if you have any questions.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 22 comments
brian - May 21, 2010

thanks for the information, it makes more sense now.

Reply
Matt Jones - January 9, 2011

Hi all
Has anyone used mailchimp with DAP? I am keen to use instead of Aweber but hesitant after reading that this blog says Aweber is the ideal autoresponder match.
Any input would be most appreciated
Thanks,
Matt

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Patricia Reszetylo - April 9, 2011

Matt,

I would seriously hesitate to use Mail Chimp. They DO NOT allow affiliate marketing whatsoever, and have a ton of other limitations. If you can afford DAP, you can afford Aweber.

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Lia Huber - July 13, 2011

I cannot get AWeber to work with my new installation of DAP. I’ve been troubleshooting with AWeber for days now, and they finally said they have no idea why it’s not working. Has anyone else had this issue?

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Ricardo - August 20, 2011

Lia: what’s the issue with aweber? All good but your new members not getting subscribers into the mailing list?

Similar issue here until deep troubleshooting. In a nutshell: ask your hosting provider to check in your reverse DNS setting.

More descriptive explanation: I did experienced the same and DAP worked fine including sending notification emails to third party to any email address BUT list@aweber.com.

The only difference between any regular email and list@aweber.com is aweber parser for DAP. Happens that parser does follow several checking/validations including reverse DNS so if your host is not set up to get the right information on reverse DNS your email to aweber list does not go through the parser so obviously does not makes it into your list.

Hope this makes sense to you but if not just make sure to ask your hosting to check your reverse DNS setting is set up correctly.

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Lisa - March 27, 2012

Can DAP integate with other third-party autoresponders?

We use Vertical Response for our regular email marketing campaigns and we really don’t want to use a separate tool for our member site and info products. Let me know if we can use it (and/or let me know if there’s anyone else out there who is successfully using VR with DAP/Optimize Press). We’re getting ready to launch our first product tomorrow and I need to figure out the autoresponder ASAP. Thanks!

Lisa

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Veena Prashanth - April 16, 2012

>>We use Vertical Response for our regular email marketing campaigns and we really don’t want to use a separate tool for our member site and info products. < < If your autoresponder has a subscribable email address like "your-autoresponder@autoresponderservice.com", then all you have to do is to enter this email id into the "3rd Party Notification" field on the Products page to integrate dap=>3rd party autoresponder service.

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CY - May 21, 2012

Hi Veena

Great work on the recent update. Could you please tell us more about the Gmail option? Will it have the same deliverability rate as Amazon or Aweber?

Thank you.

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Veena Prashanth - May 22, 2012

>> Could you please tell us more about the Gmail option? Will it have the same deliverability rate as Amazon or Aweber? << Gmail will surely have great deliverability, but you have to remember that Gmail is NOT meant for mass emails. It is not meant to be used as a list service. Plus they have a very strict restriction of 500 emails per 24 hour period. You exceed even by one, and they will disable your account for about 24 hours. Sending a large number of un-deliverable emails resulting in bounces, could also get your entire Gmail account suspended. However, DAP also has a round-robin emailing system - so you could set up and use multiple Gmail accounts - each with its own 500 email limit per day - and combine them to send out a larger broadcast. However, remember - it's Google - they can suspend/cancel/delete your account for any reason at all, more so when you're going against their TOS. So best to use Gmail only for a small list of emails.

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Kathryn - June 2, 2012

Hi Veena,
Does DAP’s autoresponder/broadcaster keep records of all emails sent to each customer?
thanks
Kathryn

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Veena Prashanth - June 3, 2012

Hi Kathryn,
DAP saves a copy of sent emails in the dap system -> job queue but there is no tracking / reporting feature.

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fred - June 14, 2012

“Ability to track open rates and click-through rates (coming in a future version in DAP)”

When? When? When? 🙂

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Robert Briese - June 27, 2012

Hi – I am currently using DAP + Amazon SES. I noticed that DAP supports HTML emails. A number of the other services such as Awebber and MailChimp offer HTML email templates. Have you also though about doing this? What is the best way to use HTML email templates with DAP for my emails? I am not a programmers. Thank you, Robert

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Veena Prashanth - July 1, 2012

Hi Fred,
>>“Ability to track open rates and click-through rates (coming in a future version in DAP)”. When? When? When? << Hopefully within 6 months :). Our next 2 releases are already pretty full. Thanks, Veena

Reply
Veena Prashanth - July 1, 2012

Hi Robert,

>>I noticed that DAP supports HTML emails. A number of the other services such as Awebber and MailChimp offer HTML email templates. < < Yes, when we will add a lot more new features to the dap built-in email auto-responder/broadcast but no timelines yet on release. >>What is the best way to use HTML email templates with DAP for my emails? << Pl see this doc on what's currently supported : http://www.digitalaccesspass.com/doc/sending-html-email/

Thanks,
Veena

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Andy Magnus - June 24, 2013

Has the open/click through feature been added? How simple is it to import data from Aweber to DAP?

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Veena Prashanth - June 24, 2013

>> Has the open/click through feature been added? < < Sorry, no. >> How simple is it to import data from Aweber to DAP? << Please see this on data import : http://digitalaccesspass.com/doc/importing-users-in-bulk-into-dap/

Thanks,
Veena

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Jason - September 14, 2014

If we are using shared hosting via HostGator (per your recommendation) with Amazon SES do we still need to thottle the emails below 300 per hour, or is the throttling only needed if using method #3, the DAP + Webhost method?

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Veena Prashanth - September 14, 2014

Hi Jason,

You can use a higher limit if you use Amazon SES to deliver emails. DAP still needs to connect to the SES server to send out emails. You can start with say 800-900 and then tune it further.

Thanks,
Veena

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Anthony - January 26, 2015

Hi Veena,
New “Dap-er” here. Any progress on the tracking open rates and click through rates using dap + amazon ses? My $150/month aweber bill is annoying! (And will be bigger soon).(One could track click through rates on broadcasts with ses emails using a simple tracking link)
Cheers
Anthony

Reply
Veena Prashanth - January 26, 2015

Hi Anthony,

>>Any progress on the tracking open rates and click through rates using dap + amazon ses? << It will probably be about 5-6 months, It's on our to-do list. We are working on other higher priority items for dap currently. You might want to checkout active campaign for better tracking: http://digitalaccesspass.com/doc/active-campaign/

Thanks,
Veena

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Mozie - May 22, 2015

This is extremely helpful thanks.

I currently ave 3 memberships running on DAP and my email delivery rates are extremely bad running on hostgator and custom login emails are hitting spam boxes 90% of the time.

I have Aweber and have a Amazon account so desperately needed to move my DAP emails and autoresponders to reliable providers.

I am honestly leaning towards SES, since you guys use it and they are really dirt cheap. I think I’ll test delivery rates to a few different emails providers and see the results.

Mozie

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