by Hallee Bridgeman, @halleeb
A couple of years ago, I was closing in on the “free” threshold at Mailchimp and had to make a decision about who I wanted to host my newsletter. I loved (and still love) Mailchimp’s interface and such; however, they are on the higher side of the price model. (And, in recent months, everything changed and they’re even higher on the price side for all of the services I want.)
So I began my research and discovered Mailerlite gave me everything I wanted (mostly) and switched my list to them. Several months later, a spam bot attacked their servers and my open rate declined, so I switched again to MadMimi.
Bother Mailerlite and MadMimi provided most all of the services as Mailchimp for a fraction of the price. But, I was still paying monthly quite a bit for an email service. However, I was happy with MadMimi and wasn’t looking to change again.
However, while reading an email on a writer’s loop discussing newsletter services and hosts, someone mentioned that their webhost provider also provided newsletter hosting services.
What?
So, I logged into my webhost (I use ionos.com, which is formerly 1and1.com – I’ve been with them now for about 17 years) and started digging through their dashboard. I had to get creative with my search terms (because they also are the providers for my emails for my websites, so email is the not the best search term!) and finally found it!
My webhost Ionos provides what they call “email marketing services”, which in our vernacular is newsletter hosting. And – get this – to send up to 10,000 emails a month, I pay $1. YES! ONE DOLLAR.
I assumed it would be very plain and generic and a boring text email would go out. Nope. The interface is strikingly similar to MadMimi’s. I am able to do everything – – my onboarding series, my pictures and columns and links, everything.
I’m not here to advertise Ionos. The person who originally mentioned it in the discussion used GoDaddy. Other webhosts also provide it. I’m just here to give you the head’s up – if you have a self-hosted website, you probably have access to a super affordable newsletter host, too. You just might be like I was and not know it. It’s worth digging through their dashboard and help topics to discover it.
Can Ian and Calla find love together, or will the secret she is keeping rip them apart? CALLA VAUGHN has spent the last three years desperately trying to get her life in order so that she can go back to culinary school. No matter how hard she works, though, she feels like she is just treading water and can’t see any way out of the hole dug for her by a con artist who stole her identity. When flowers she sends to her best friend with a dinner invitation accidentally get delivered to IAN JONES, she decides to cook him the best meal he’s ever had. By the time she admits that the flowers were never for him, he is as convinced as she is that God orchestrated the mistake in the first place. All that’s left is to tell him the dark secret about her father’s widow. She waits a little too long, though, and is carted off to jail for questioning on felony charges before she gets a chance. Will Ian understand her situation, or will the deception surrounding Calla destroy any trust he has in her?
With over half a million sales, Hallee Bridgeman is a best-selling Christian author who writes action-packed romantic suspense focusing on realistic characters who face real-world problems. Her work has been described as everything from refreshing to heart-stopping exciting and edgy. Hallee is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) and the American Christian Writers (ACW) as well as being a member of Novelists, Inc. (NINC). An accomplished speaker, Hallee has taught and inspired writers around the globe, from Sydney, Australia, to Dallas, Texas, to Portland, Oregon, to Washington, D.C., and all places in between. Hallee loves coffee, campy action movies, and regular date nights with her husband. Above all else, she loves God with all of her heart, soul, mind, and strength; has been redeemed by the blood of Christ; and relies on the presence of the Holy Spirit to guide her.
Comments 2
Thank you!!! I’ve been trying to find someone who has used Ionos for a month or more. I will switch over!!
The question is, however, are you running a VPS with your own IP or are you sharing an IP with other people? So, does your deliver-ability go down using Ionos/1&1 (I used to use them once upon a time) or has it stayed consistent?
I used to run the email marketing for a health company. They had around 300k subscribers. Our biggest problem was we’d try and save money by using a different service and seemed to always suffer for it.