Aweber or FeedBurner: Which is Better?

A few weeks ago, I was having a discussion with my team on the question of whether Aweber is better than FeedBurner. Many of the team members believed that Aweber is definitely better than FeedBurner. But my suggestion was to take this question in different contexts. Aweber could be better for some bloggers but for some others FeedBurner is an excellent choice.

Lately, we have been hearing many expert bloggers to recommend newbies to opt for paid email auto-responders like Aweber. In the name of collecting email addresses, such a scenario is being painted as though if you’re not using Aweber, there is no chance you’ll ever succeed in professional blogging! I am not against Aweber, I even use it on some of my projects, including TechWelkin. But I don’t agree with the suggestion that every blogger-wannabe must opt for Aweber. Let me tell you why I think so.

Is Aweber better than FeedBurner?

Well, obviously, Aweber is far richer in features. But then one also needs to consider the fact that FeedBurner is free!

The primary question that we need to answer is whether FeedBurner good enough for a blog’s success? A lot of similar questions come in every blogger’s mind who is serious about his blog. But trust me, if you’re a small to medium level blogger, you should not worry about such questions.

For small and medium level bloggers, FeedBurner is more than enough. FeedBurner is a Google service, so it is very reliable. It does its work in a pristine fashion. And most importantly, FeedBurner is free!

Why Aweber is better than FeedBurner

Aweber is better than FeedBurner mainly in two aspects. Using Aweber, you can send newsletters (or any sort of custom messages) to your email lists. In contrast, FeedBurner only sends automatic updates to your subscribers when you create a new post (i.e. when your RSS/Atom feed gets a new entry).

The second reason why Aweber is better is that Aweber gives you more control on your email lists and formatting of message that is being sent. For reasons only known to Google, FeedBurner allows only limited customization of messages. Yes, you can customize email’s subject line and color and font of the email body. But still FeedBurner leaves you wanting several tiny but important bits.

I am really surprised why Google has not spruced up FeedBurner ever since it acquired the service in June 2007 for a sum of $100 million. For a massive company like Google, it is nothing to assign a few engineers to provide these tiny features. FeedBurner is perhaps one of the most neglected service of Google.

Anyway, I am sure sooner or later Google will give us a new and better FeedBurner.

Why FeedBurner is better than Aweber

FeedBurner is still a great choice for new bloggers, simply because it is free. If you’re earning anything less than $400 a month from your blog, I would not recommend you to go for paid services Aweber or GetResponse.

These paid auto-responders give you some fancy-looking widgets for subscription, but you can make your own widgets, as fancy as you want, and use them to ask your readers to subscriber via FeedBurner.

Both Aweber and FeedBurner (and other similar services) have to maintain double opt-in mechanism. That is to say that in all these cases, the subscriber receives a confirmation email and subscription gets activated only if the confirmation link is clicked.

But there is a significant number of subscribers who do not click confirmation link and you lose their subscription. If you think Aweber can save you from this, that’s not correct. FeedBurner or Aweber, there will always be some “unverified” subscribers in your list. One advantage Aweber gives you is that you can offer an incentive to  subscribers for confirming the subscription.

You can , and you should, also send reminders to your unverified subscribers in FeedBurner. Although, you will have to do a bit of work to achieve this. But then if you’re really serious about making money from internet, you can not avoid working hard anyway!

Alright, in conclusion, I would say that if you’re earning more than, let’s say, $400 a month from your blog, you may think of using Aweber or GetResponse. But if you’re a struggling blogger who is still learning how to make money from blog, FeedBurner is a good choice. At least, you would not need to pay for it from the cache of your small earnings.

I hope this comparison between Aweber and FeedBurner was informative for you. I also hope that it will help you in solving the Aweber vs. FeedBurner dilemma. Please feel free to ask me if you have any questions. You can post your questions in the comments section below. I will try to assist you. Thank you for using TechWelkin.