Using their spam checking tool I can immediately see what SpamAssassin (the most widely used spam blocker) would say in terms of points, I usually get successful mail shots with a rating as high as 2.5

I can’t remember ever having to deal with queries about not receiving the mails or having one of the mail servers blacklisted (which I check often) so I’m not sure what type of emails you send out to get an entire server blacklisted.

I follow the rules so I add text only content with my HTML based stuff. I make sure 60% of the content is text and not just images (which would get you blocked quite quickly with anyone, not just iContact’s service) and I frequently use the Spam Check tool to make sure the messages will go through. The response per mailshot I have is around 30%, with bounces being about 1-5%.

Of course, locally speaking, it’s not the ideal solution as people are always looking for “cheaper” solutions, and I won’t say that it’s not as fast (or even faster) as IContact, but most of them don’t care to follow (and impose) the law when it comes to unsolicited mail like iContact and doesn’t offer me the 100% assurance that their email server won’t be blacklisted because of someone else being an idiot. Take Web Africa for example, their server being blacklisted by Yahoo!. So much for reliability

Thank you for your opinion! It’s always good to share this kind of thing and if you do have any alternatives that you feel works great, feel free to post the URL’s! It’s not like more information/options ever killed anyone before

I have been with many Email Marketing Providers. Have been blacklisted left, center and right, even with Icontact. Thats not the point though.
There are many local providers offering better rates.
When it comes to delivery, they all talk rubbish. Sure, I can send out plain text emails and my delivery rate is almost a 100%, but if it comes to html, most servers block those emails due to content (soft bounce).

I would only recommend Icontact when sending 2k or less per month. There are by far more advanced systems than Incontact. The last provider I signed up with promised me a send through rate of 60k mails per hour. They kept their promise. Also, their price is far below Icontacts price.
For eg. Local prices for 1k mails range from R69-R99
10k mails range from R269-R339
100k mails range from R1140-R2499 and so on.

That and I’ve never had issues with my emails being blocked at all, whereas with 1 other provider (and including my own software) was easily blacklisted without a seconds notice. I guess your experience with using this is quite different from mine, I’ve been working through them since 2008 and recommended these to my clients who are much happier now that their subscriber base is actually getting the email marketing they do send out. And if I’m not mistaken (and this is also my 2cents) the most important thing for any email marketing venture is that the email eventually lands up in the users’ in-box not so?

So yes, I’d love it for you to actually show me proof of how slow, not user friendly, lying (?) and expensive they are compared to other software which would most likely get you blacklisted quite quickly or can’t guarantee email delivery at all…

Just my 2 cents.