Internet Marketing with Josh SpauldingMaking Money through Ethical Internet Marketing.

Leave a Comment with Facebook

52 comments

1. Brent Crouch (35 comments.)
   17th February, 2010 at 3:11 pm 

   Thanks for posting this. I’m a getresponse customer too. I’d like to know if this ever gets resolved.

   If you talk to Aweber, they may let you transfer your list without requiring your subscribers to confirm a second time.

2. Josh Spaulding
   17th February, 2010 at 3:12 pm 

   I’ll let you know, Brent. I believe they require confirmation. It’s a law as far as I know.

3. Jackie Lee (4 comments.)
   17th February, 2010 at 3:13 pm 

   Hey Josh,

   It’s not just happening with domains like you have. It’s happening intermittently with all their cloaked links. I am not using a personalized domain name, and I’m having the same problem. I turned off the tracking ~ which sucks and haven’t had the problem since.

   I wish there was an easy way to move to aweber.

4. Bruce
   17th February, 2010 at 3:24 pm 

   Josh …that sucks. along these lines can you say whether you can recommend any of Aweber’s resellers like profollow?

   Its supposed to be the same service engine but a little lower priced.

5. Dirk
   17th February, 2010 at 3:25 pm 

   I don’t use tracking so haven’t experienced this problem.

   What I’m having problems with are the slow servers of Getresponse. It takes ages if you want to get something done in their interface. Support ignores questions about slow servers and messages on the forum get deleted.

   I wish there was an easy way to switch to aWeber too. I contacted them and confirmation is required. Maybe I’ll bite the bullet…

6. Josh Spaulding
   17th February, 2010 at 3:35 pm 

   I just logged into my GetResponse account and they “Banned” the email sending my list to this blog post.

   It only went out to about 70% of my list.

   So apparently they are viewing our emails and only sending out those they want to be sent out.

7. Di (1 comments.)
   17th February, 2010 at 4:02 pm 

   Whoah, thanks for the warning, Josh! I agree aWeber seems to be the best option. What about Imnica Mail – heard good things about them too.

8. Mel
   17th February, 2010 at 4:03 pm 

   Josh,
   If you do switch to Aweber, I just want you to know that you won’t lose me. I trust you and value the information I get from you.

9. Brett (5 comments.)
   17th February, 2010 at 4:05 pm 

   Josh,

   Sorry to hear that, you’ve trusted this company based in Poland, rather than go with USA based company.

   Also, that many others may be using their services. Unfortunately making the change is not so easy, as you have said, but if you truly want to make the move and cannot get support answers, I suggest you move now to Aweber, or use XMailPro.com (Aweber white label) that will provide excellent service.

   Good luck to you,
   -Brett

10. Quincy (6 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 4:39 pm 

    “I just logged into my GetResponse account and they “Banned” the email sending my list to this blog post.

    It only went out to about 70% of my list.

    So apparently they are viewing our emails and only sending out those they want to be sent out.”

    —————————————————————-

    Can they get away with that?

    Josh, you might just have to bite the bullet and start migrating your list over to Aweber, instead of continuing to pay those people.

    You’re on my ‘most trusted’ list, so you wouldn’t lose me as a subscriber.

    On a sidenote, if things don’t get resolved with them, I’d send a healthy amount of links to this post to raise it in the serps. That way anyone researching Getresponse will be aware of what they’re getting into.

    Actually, I just noticed the title of this post. So, I’m sure you’re already ahead of me

    Well, I hope this Getresponse review gets noticed (see what I did there.. hehe).

11. Josh Spaulding
    17th February, 2010 at 4:41 pm 

    I just spoke with Simon, owner of GetResponse, on the phone. He seemed concerned assured me that the issue would be taken care of ASAP.

    I tend to believe him. I just wish their support would have stayed in touch with me and resolved the issue sooner.

    Simon seems like a class-act kind of guy.

    @ Jackie – Thanks for the heads up! I didn’t even think of that, but you’re right! That means it’s a bigger problem that I first though.

    @ Bruce – I don’t use AWeber currently, so I have no idea.

    @ Quincy – lol thanks

    @ Di – I’ve never heard of Imnica.

    @ Mel – Thank you very much. I greatly appreciate the support!

12. Tom Dunn`
    17th February, 2010 at 4:42 pm 

    Thanks Josh… been using GR for years (mot based on your recommendation) and I shudder to think how muck $$$ I might have lost out on.

13. Udegbunam Chukwudi (19 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 4:46 pm 

    They can’t get their bums off the ground to fix this issue yet they are stopping people from spreading the word that their click tracking service has gone gaga!

    Did you bother asking them why they BANNED the email spreading the word of this blog post?

14. Josh Spaulding
    17th February, 2010 at 4:48 pm 

    nah, it’s no secret why they banned it. I’m sure they could cover their butts with fine print, oh well.

15. David Smith (1 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 4:49 pm 

    I’m just curious,
    Why do so many people think the only choices are “get response” or aweber?

    I use and love TrafficWave. I won’t put my affiliate link here. I’m just saying, there are other fantastic choices.

16. Udegbunam Chukwudi (19 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 4:51 pm 

    That’s true! They probably have a clause in their fine print saying “ GetResponse Customers are not allowed to badmouth over company.

17. Josh Spaulding
    17th February, 2010 at 4:52 pm 

    @ Udegbunam – Because very few other companies are going to get your emails in your lead’s inboxes every time!

18. Udegbunam Chukwudi (19 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 4:57 pm 

    Sad bunch! Anyway hope they come around and pay a little more attention to the issue. In the mean time, I’ve retweeted the post
    Take care mate.

19. Bob Bro (1 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 5:18 pm 

    Josh: I am an AWeber user, so can’t respond. I have noticed, however, that about six months ago that e-mails sent to my Yahoo e-mail account from anyone using Get Response were ending up in my Spam mail. And not just one or two — all of it. And I am talking about mail from senders with lists I opted-in to.

20. Leonard Aberts (5 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 5:31 pm 

    I am with GetResponse myself and have noticed a lot of ‘not confirmed’ lately – more than usual. As for Aweber, I know quite a few people who have left them recently because of issues with them being particular of what type of traffic they want to there affiliate program. These guys went to TrafficWave.

    I have had little problems here and there, but if the ‘not confirmed’ continues to grow (since I am not sure if they are even getting the emails or if they are getting them and the response is lost) I will be looking for another autoresponder.

    I am to the point of just buying the software and doing it myself; that way I totally control my list and how it works. There are a few site that sell different packages (and there are a few free ones) that it is a tempting proposition. That way it is just export, import, done!

21. Mark
    17th February, 2010 at 5:32 pm 

    I was an Aweber customer for a long time and I moved to GetResponse in January. I made this decision (and I believe I was not the only one) after Aweber failed to protect their customers, got hacked and all their lists (including mine) were stolen by hackers. Just Google ‘aweber hacked’. It’s all over the Internet… My subscribers got flooded with spam, and my statistics with Aweber dropped down tremendously. I would _never_ recommend Aweber over GetResponse. After I’ve moved to GR, I’m seeing a much higher response rate and better deliverability. Pity I’ve lost trust with my subscribers after Aweber failed to protect my data and, most importantly, failed to protect my subscribers’ privacy. I would never touch Aweber again with a 10-foot pole.

22. Carlos (4 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 5:50 pm 

    Josh,

    If I may make a suggestion…at your level of internet success it makes a lot more sense at least to me for you to have someone create a custom auto responder for you.

    Aside from saving the $20 a month it will cost you otherwise, the greatest benefit is that you will have total control over what happens with your auto responder.

    Don’t believe all the myths floating around about how a custom auto responder isn’t as reliable as AWeber and the like. Such myths are propagated by persons who really do not know any better.

    An auto responder is as reliable as the backend database and SMTP server doing the emailing. Most web hosts are as reliable in their backend, if not more so than AWeber and GetResponse.

    Just a thought.

    Carlos

23. Josh Spaulding
    17th February, 2010 at 5:53 pm 

    @ Carlos – There is more to it than that. Companies like AW and GR have contracts in place with companies that keep their emails in inboxes. Run your own and sometime down the road you’re going to get blacklisted and your list is done for.

24. Rick
    17th February, 2010 at 6:02 pm 

    Wow. Terrible experience from a supposedly reputable company.
    Good thing you got a lawyer.
    Hope it works out well…

25. Carlos (4 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 6:06 pm 

    Yeah…I’ve heard that before Josh and I have no reason to doubt that companies like AWeber and GetResponse do try and make such deals with other companies to white list their mailings but…I am not certain about how prevalent such agreements are.

    More importantly, and I am speaking here theoretically since I don’t yet have even my own list to test things on (I am working on my own solution before I start my first list), the problem with emails being mistaken for spam is a common one that applies to all emails. Not just to those sent out to a list.

    It seems to me that if one creates one’s list in a such a way that the spam filters do not catch it, that one’s emails will get out just as well as they would if one used one of the companies having supposed industry wide agreements in place.

    In other words such agreements are only good for sloppy email writings that get captured as spam (if I am not mistaken Josh).

    Personally I would rather write my list emails in such a way that they avoid the spam filters altogether.

    Carlos

26. Josh Spaulding
    17th February, 2010 at 6:09 pm 

    Carlos, when your list gets to a certain size it is impossible to avoid people marking your emails as spam, even though they opt-in to receive it and can easily opt-out.

    I appreciate your thoughts on the matter and some of it does seem like common sense, but you really need to look into it a bit more to truly understand how it all works.

27. Carlos (4 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 6:20 pm 

    I appreciate your input Josh. Given that I have no hands on experience with email lists in particular I will definitely take what you say into account though from my web development background I still tend to think that AWeber and GetResponse’s marketing points are a bit exaggerated.

    But again…I have no hands on experience with lists like you do.

    I’ll find out soon enough.

    You do bring up the only argument that I can think of on why it might be better to use a paid list instead of rolling your own (i.e. that paid autoresponders help ensure delivery through agreements that avoid the spam filters).

    I’ve heard a lot of internet marketing folks come up with reasons why a paid auto responder is better that on further evaluation don’t hold any water. Not saying you are one such person Josh only that our industry (I consider myself an internet marketer too though a newbie one) is full of persons saying all kinds of things out of ignorance rather than out of fact.

    Carlos

28. Josh Spaulding
    17th February, 2010 at 6:56 pm 

    I just got a response from Simon:

    “My developers and engineers have identified this issue, found the root cause and are going to roll out the fix no later than 8 AM EST tomorrow (Feb 18th). All of the affected links will work fine from that point onwards, even for mailings that were sent in the past.

    I can confirm that in less than 0.3% instances (3 out of 1,000 emails sent) a click-tracking link could have been corrupted due to a wrong checksum — as a result causing a 404 error upon a subscriber click-through. This extremely sporadic issue only occurred with less than 50 GR accounts.”

29. Simon Grabowski (5 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 7:00 pm 

    Josh,

    As the CEO of the company I wanted to respond to this
    article, and let everyone know how we’ve addressed the
    situation.

    1. Our Customer Service Representative Kristin spoke to you
    regarding the issue on Feb 12th (Friday); she escalated your
    request to our engineers the same day. Our IT team has been
    working on the issue on Monday and Tuesday this week (Fri 15 & 16)
    and today. Normally we respond to all requests within 24 hours,
    however rare escalated issues (like this one) can take 3-5 business
    days for us to handle.

    2. Our Customer Service triple-checked and did not not locate
    an email you sent about this issue. The only contact we have
    from you regarding this is the Feb 12th phone call. In my
    email to you I asked you to provide me with the date &
    from: field of the email you sent (preferably the entire email
    forwarded), so that our Admins can check on the SMTP level.

    3. My developers and engineers have successfully identified
    the issue that affected your mailing, found the root cause for
    the problem, and they’re going to roll out the fix no later than
    8 AM EST tomorrow (Feb 18th). All of the affected links will
    work fine from that point onwards, even for mailings that were
    sent in the past. This problem will not reoccur in the future.

    4. I can confirm that in less than 0.3% instances (3 out of
    1,000 emails sent) a click-tracking link could have been
    corrupted due to a wrong checksum, and as a result a 404
    “page not found” error could be caused when subscriber
    clicked on the link. This extremely sporadic issue only occurred
    with less than 50 GR accounts and affected an extremely small
    portion of subscribers, which is why this has been a tough issue
    for our team to pin down (we deliver approx. 5 billion emails a
    year for over 110,000 users). Please note that this issue by no
    means cost you thousands of dollars, as it only affected about
    20 subscribers from your last mail-out.

    Again, this problem will be permanently fixed early tomorrow
    morning and will not re-occur in the future.

    I apologize for the inconvenience that this may have caused
    and I trust that you will not lose your confidence in
    GetResponse because of this technical glitch that we’ve
    addressed.

    Regards,

    Simon Grabowski
    CEO
    GetResponse

30. Alex (10 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 7:23 pm 

    I’ve had lists at 1ShoppingCart, aweber and at present GetResponse.

    I’ve had poor customer service from both aweber and Getresponse and superb customer service from 1ShoppingCart and GetResponse.

    My 2 cents – I think your blog post was rather unfair towards GetResponse.

31. Jackie Lee (4 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 7:24 pm 

    Wow, out of 110K accounts only 50 of those were affected?? hmm…

    Good deal that GetResponse has dealt with the issue, we’ll see.

32. Jackie Lee (4 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 7:25 pm 

    I had it happen to my account 3 or 4 times last week ~ I thought it was my error lol. Guess I should have a little more faith in myself

33. Ray
    17th February, 2010 at 10:34 pm 

    I use GetResponse and never had a problem with them, but I don’t use the tracking feature as I don’t like the long ugly url’s.

34. Maurice - TheCaymanHost (8 comments.)
    17th February, 2010 at 11:32 pm 

    Hi Josh,

    I know we spoke about this in another forum and that you only feel happy with the two major players for your own service.

    However, I just thought I’d let your readership know that my provider, MK, will allow the transfer of an existing opt-in list to their service without need for existing subscribers to opt-in again. (This is done by arrangement to prevent abuse).

    Delivery wise they have performed well judging by open rates and click through tracking and there is a demo of the service on their site so that potential users can see and try it out and it is pretty feature rich.

    The service is bundled with an unlimited shared hosting plan and costs only $19.99 per month all in. Note – more than 5000 emails per month does incur additional fee on a sliding scale.

    Regards

    Mo.

35. AlanKang (1 comments.)
    18th February, 2010 at 3:17 am 

    Thanks for your warning, I will check my getresponse account now to identify if this bug still exists. Surprise that Aweber have the problem of hacked. I was thinking do I need to switch to Aweber. Now, i think i better stay with getresponse.

36. Welly Mulia (3 comments.)
    18th February, 2010 at 3:45 am 

    Hi Josh,

    Thanks for letting us know about this. I’m also a GR customer and didn’t know about this before reading your post.

    Let’s hope GR can fix this soon so we don’t lose our money!

    Best!
    Welly Mulia

37. Simon Grabowski (5 comments.)
    18th February, 2010 at 9:42 am 

    Just a quick note to let everyone know
    that our engineers have fixed the problem
    as of approx. 4 AM EST, 4 hours ahead
    of the schedule.

    Regards,

    Simon Grabowski
    CEO
    GetResponse

38. Dirk
    18th February, 2010 at 10:16 am 

    Simon,

    (Sorry Josh, I don’t want to hijack your blog post).

    Why is it that support emails about Getresponse’s slow servers get ignored by your staff and forum posts are deleted? Why do you choose sensorship above client-oriented communication?

    - Dirk

39. Simon Grabowski (5 comments.)
    18th February, 2010 at 10:53 am 

    Dirk, we do not delete or ignore any
    complaints, and do not have any speed
    related issues. Database servers and
    web servers are running at less than
    40% capacity during peak times, and
    the site is blazing fast, running out
    of our data center near Philadelphia.

    If you have run into a speed-related issue
    it could be your network, or one of the
    hops between your network and our
    network. To diagnose this, send me
    an email at simon (at) implix {dot} com
    and provide more information about
    how to replicate this on your end
    (best would be a screen video shot
    with i.e. jingproject.com or camtasia)
    along with your IP address so our admins
    can do a traceroute.

    There’s absolutely no system-wide
    speed issue — it would be your specific
    situation that our network engineers
    can look at.

    Regards,

    Simon Grabowski
    CEO
    GetResponse

40. Michael
    18th February, 2010 at 11:51 am 

    I can’t believe that someone would actually consider (even if for a split-second)
    to move to Aweber because of this.

    When Aweber recently got hacked and everybody’s lists got stolen and spammed
    afterwards (we’re talking millions of emails, including my small 6k list), they did an
    absolutely TERRIBLE job at communicating. For several days they even failed to
    acknowledge the fact that they were hacked, and when they did it was “too little,
    too late”. It’s all documented, just search Google for ‘Aweber lists stolen’ or ‘Aweber
    hacked’. I was disgusted with the damage that Aweber inflicted on me and other
    customers by failing to protect its customers from hackers. I was even more disgusted
    with how Aweber handled it. Right before the New Year I moved from Aweber to
    GetResponse, and don’t want to look back since.

    On the other hand, let’s look at how GetResponse has handled yesterday’s situation
    which (while important) is, let’s face it, probably a thousand times LESS SIGNIFICANT
    than what happened to Aweber and their customers. I mean… how do you compare
    “0.3% links not working for some GR customers” vs. “millions of emails getting stolen
    from entire AW database” (tens, maybe hundreds of millions???)

    Obviously, there’s no comparison!

    But here’s how GetResponse addressed this:
    1. Their CEO immediately responded to the situation.
    2. He actually spoke with Josh on the phone about this.
    3. He provided a comprehensive update about the situation, and
    promised a bug-fix in less than 24 hours.
    4. He posted back this morning saying that the problem was fixed
    (ahead of his own schedule).

    Wow! I don’t know about you, but to me this is as good as it gets when it
    comes to customer service. I’m in IT business myself, so I know that
    glitches and bumps do happen along the way. It’s how you address
    them and how you communicate them to your customers.

    I wish that all companies would take example from GetResponse and how they’ve
    dealt with the issue. The way how they’ve handled this actually makes me trust
    them even more.

41. Dirk
    18th February, 2010 at 11:57 am 

    Thanks for the quick answer Simon.

    If you do not delete complaints, how do you explain disappearing forum posts?
    If you do not ignore complaints, how do you explain not answering to support mails about the issue?

    I use a lot of internet services, all go smooth most of the time, but the Getresponse interface is always slow for me. Anyway, I’ll write you a mail with the information you asked for.

    Cheers,
    Dirk

42. Simon Grabowski (5 comments.)
    18th February, 2010 at 12:04 pm 

    Dirk,

    All of emails we get at Customer Service
    become tickets. We’d never close a
    ticket without issuing a response, and
    we reply within 24 hours or less.

    When you email me, please let me
    know what’s your account name and
    when did you email, so I can have the
    team look up your request.

    Thanks,

    = S

43. Dirk
    18th February, 2010 at 12:41 pm 

    I didn’t get a reply.

    Why do you ignore my question about disappearing forum posts?

44. Arnold, TheFreeMan
    18th February, 2010 at 12:44 pm 

    Hey Simon

    Thank you for the info in regard to Josh situation. I have not start my list yet, but soon will because I am getting ready to setup my blog and will start my advertising campaigns . Therefore, I trying to figure out which auto-responder service to use. I like the fact that you have responded and tried to bring a solution. I really hope that Josh case may be truly resolve for good. I desire the best to all marketers in here.

    Have a great day.

    Arnold

45. Simon Grabowski (5 comments.)
    18th February, 2010 at 1:06 pm 

    I didn’t ignore it. I told you in my first
    response that we wouldn’t delete such
    a post because the GR site is slow for
    you. Our Policy Enforcement
    occasionally deletes posts that are not
    conforming with our forum’s policies.
    GR Forum is not a public discussion
    forum, but a moderated assistance
    forum for GR users to get help from
    other GR users or GR team members.
    If you don’t agree with these policies,
    please do not use the forum. I have
    nothing further to add regarding this
    issue.

    If you are still looking for help, please
    send me an email with information
    I asked about.

    I can confirm that there are no other
    reports about speed, and GR is extremely
    fast for our 110,000+ users. I do believe
    this issue is isolated to your network.

    = S

46. Dirk
    18th February, 2010 at 1:23 pm 

    Two forum posts were deleted, that’s for sure. They weren’t violating any policy, they basically said that I have a very fast internet connection and the rest of the internet loads as it should.

    The posts were probably deleted by the forum fairies…

    Anyway, I’ll stop using Josh’s blog as a support forum and I’ll send you a mail.

    Josh, feel free to delete my comments…

47. Calvin (6 comments.)
    18th February, 2010 at 4:26 pm 

    @Bob Bro:

    You mentioned having your list emails sent to spam w.r.t. Yahoo email addresses for the last 6 months. I suspect that it is a Yahoo problem rather than a GetResponse problem. Some emails I sent out from my Yahoo account and cc’ed to myself also ended up in my spam box. Not only that, but my Yahoo email has become extremely unreliable – I am frequently unable to access my emails after logging in.

    @Carlos:

    You wrote about rolling your own autoresponder solution. Why not use a ready-made open source program like phplist?

48. Carlos (4 comments.)
    18th February, 2010 at 4:58 pm 

    @Calvin yeah….I said roll my own but I am actually making modifications to an open source, sequential autoresponder called Infinite Response. It’s web interface is really quirky and lacking in a professional look but that’s not all that important to me.

    I care more about the robustness of it’s PHP code and it’s functionality. So far it seems to be pretty good though it will require some work on my part to get it to work the way I like it (for example it asks people to confirm their unsubscribe by clicking on an email link which is counter industry practice these days).

    Using an open source PHP program as a starting point to rolling one’s own sequential autoresponder is an excellent idea Calvin.

    I said what I said to just highlight the differences between paying every single month to do what one could do on their own.

    Thanks for pointing out the open source solution.

    Carlos

49. Joe
    18th February, 2010 at 5:44 pm 

    Josh,

    GetResponse left a bad taste in my mouth a while ago, when I considered moving to them over Aweber.

    As a test, I signed up for an account and started migrating a few smaller lists over to see how their service was, how easy it was to setup campaigns, etc.

    At first it seemed okay, but later I began to feel it was much more cumbersome than Aweber. I know lot of people like GetResponse, but I personally had trouble with they’re default html code for their forms (they have everything in dv tags rather than tables – minor, but to me it was limiting) … as well as a few other things with setting up campaigns.

    After about a week or so, I really felt it wasn’t right for me and asked for a refund.

    Granted they do offer a trial (so this is my fault for actually signing up)… but from a customer service point of view, they basically told me to go take a hike. They weren’t curious of why I didn’t like the service just .. “Sorry – take it or leave it — and no refunds”

    From that experience I will NEVER use GetResponse, or even reconsider their service.

    Now with your tale – even though they fixed the issue .. you had to spend quite a bit of your time to get things corrected or at least get them to admit there was a problem.

    Anytime you use a service like this, whether its a hosting provider, email provider, etc.,. the service they provide becomes a direct reflection on your business.

    Choose wisely.

    Thanks for the insight!

50. Adam
    19th February, 2010 at 12:02 pm 

    Wow, I never even realized that Aweber got hacked. Just searched
    for that on Google and I’m shocked. The fact that spammers have
    stolen everyone’s list completely explains why I’ve been seeing so
    few clicks and sales from my Aweber mailings since early January.
    I’m moving my entire list away from them immediately. On the other
    hand, GR has handled Josh’s issue very professionally and I feel
    great about moving my list over to them. Kudos to Simon and the
    GR team!

51. But… How Do I Get Traffic? — GAME FOR ALL
    25th February, 2010 at 11:50 am 

    [...] post and give you some credit for new information ~ this just happened to me a couple days ago on Josh Spaulding’s blog. Don’t think this only works in internet marketing areas ~ it works for any niche you can think [...]

52. Ned Storm (1 comments.)
    28th February, 2010 at 4:19 pm 

    I was always suspicious about URL redirection and the shortened URL services.

    The incentive for criminals to sniff on your traffic and siphon off clicks is too great IMO