FeedBurner Email Review

This is a second in a series of reviews on email broadcasting services. Today I am reviewing FeedBurner Email. Like Zookoda, FeedBurner is a free, web-hosted solution. In my test drive, I found FeedBurner was easy to setup. This was because the only option you can change is the from address for the newsletters. After that, all you have to do is copy and paste the subscription form code to your site.

Subscription Process

The subscription process is a little bit different than what I have encountered before for subscribing to a newsletter. After entering my email address, a window pops up asking me to enter a special code. Once the special code has been entered, a confirmation email is sent. After the verification link has been clicked, the subscription process is complete. I found entering the special code after submitting my email address annoying. To me, this was essentially turning the process into a triple optin sign-up. Once to enter the email address, the second to enter the special code, and the third by clicking on the confirmation link in the email. However, I can see why it's needed — to prevent bots from submitting bogus email addresses. Submitting bogus addresses is a special right reserved for humans only.

Subscriber Lists

Publishers can view their subscribers list online or export the list as an Excel or csv file. You can manually deactivate and reactivate subscribers, but you can't add new records manually. In order to move a list from another service to FeedBurner, you have to have the FeedBurner team do the import for you.

Branding

A nice feature of both FeedBurner and Zookoda is the look and feel of the email. With both services, the "email powered by" logo is small and located at the bottom of the email. In other services I tested, the branding was not as subtle and it was obvious you were not in Kansas anymore.

Other Features

That's it. FeedBurner does not have a lot of features like Zookoda does. There are no reports to view, no customization of the email design, and no way to set the broadcast time. However, FeedBurner does seem to be consistent in sending out the emails before the US arrives to work in the morning. Based on my tests, FeedBurner also appears to be more reliable (more about this in this post).

Conclusion

Of the two services I reviewed so far, I would recommend Zookoda if you want a lot of customization and control. However, if you want to get a newsletter up quickly and you don't care about having a lot of bells and whistles, then FeedBurner is the way to go for your email newsletters.