•
It turns out that a high price is not a good signal of quality for email marketing software. In fact, our independent review of 19 leading web-based email marketing solutions found an inverse relationship between price and quality.
Yes, you heard right. The higher the rating, the lower the price …even though price was just one of ten factors we considered. See the graph below for a summary of average price by star rating for the solutions reviewed.
This finding is great news for small and mid-sized businesses who want to get started with (or ramp up) their permission-based email marketing. You can rest assured that there are great solutions out there at a very affordable price. However, it also means you need to choose carefully as price, functionality & usability vary considerably.
For example, looking at the scenario of a business sending 5000 emails per month to a list of 2500 subscribers, the products given five-star ratings cost an average of $31 per month, compared to over $166 per month for the two-star products. The most expensive solution in our list cost a remarkable 17 times more than the most affordable, but was actually much less useful. Ouch!
Launch of our Email Marketing Software Review Pack
The findings above are based on the reviews in our new Email Marketing Software Review Pack, which we’re pleased to officially launch today.
This comprehensive 33 page report contains detailed independent reviews of 19 leading web-based email marketing solutions, including AWeber, Benchmark, Campaign Monitor, Campaigner, Constant Contact, Email Brain, Ennect Mail, GetResponse, GraphicMail, iContact, inwise, JangoMail, MailChimp, newzapp, Savicom, SimplyCast, Streamsend, Vertical Response, and Vision 6.
Buy the Review Pack
You can purchase the Review Pack on Software Shortlist and download the report immediately.
Win a Review Pack!
To celebrate the launch of the Review Pack, we will be giving away 2 free copies.
For your chance to win, simply complete our email marketing software survey, including the final question about the challenges you’ve faced in choosing email marketing software and why you want to win the Review Pack. We’ll choose two (2) winners based on how interesting & insightful your answers are. Entries close 31st March 2010. For full terms & conditions, see the survey.
Enter now!
Previous Winner: Congratulations to David M. from Australia. He completed our February survey about email marketing software and his answer was judged to be the best by Software Shortlist staff. David will be receiving his free copy of the Email Marketing Software Review Pack today.
•
Today we officially launch the Software Shortlist Directory – a free online resource to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) quickly find relevant software.
Don’t worry, we see the irony. Here is a company that specialises in shortlisting software that is now giving you a long list of software.
But there’s good reason for this. The feedback on our online recommendation and comparison service has been fantastic, but we have also heard from many customers that they wanted to see the full list of software that sat behind it. There seems to be a certain level of comfort people get from seeing the long list of options. Of course, we suspect that when confronted with a long list of available software, you will appreciate even more the value of our shortlisting service 
So, without any further ado, welcome to the Software Shortlist Directory.
The directory includes over 700 products in popular categories such as Accounting, Email Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Project Management, and Small Business ERP. And more categories are being added all the time.
What is particularly distinctive about our directory is that it focuses only on small business software. With no consumer or big enterprise solutions to wade through, you save time and money not having to consider options that aren’t relevant to you.
You will also find the quality of the listings is better than most. We have applied strict selection criteria as part of a global search process to create a powerful resource for small businesses. Our aim is to build an extensive yet high quality list of software — and if faced with a choice, we have gone for quality over quantity.
What are you waiting for? Go check it out at www.softwareshortlist.com/software/directory.html
•
The story begins…
Nearly 18 months ago, sitting in a cafe overlooking Melbourne’s scenic Yarra river, we were grappling with a perplexing question:
Why don’t many small businesses take full advantage of the powerful and cost-effective software solutions available?
Melbourne's Yarra River (photo: Edwin 11 on flickr.com)
We realised some of the great software we personally used (e.g. Basecamp, Campaign Monitor, SurveyMonkey) was simply not on the radar of many small and medium businesses … yet software like this could be so very useful for them.
As we pondered this situation, we found it opened up even more questions:
- Why do businesses persist for so long with cumbersome legacy systems or manual work-arounds?
- Why do businesses resort to custom software development that is many times more expensive and often less functional than off-the-shelf alternatives?
- Why do businesses settle for well-known generic software, when better, more specialised alternatives exist?
As the sun set over the river, an important realisation dawned on us – there’s a significant market failure here! The supply exists – there are tens of thousands of software products. And the demand for business software is stronger than ever. But the supply and demand aren’t connecting as they should. For some reason, businesses defer the decision, give up entirely, or make do with poor alternatives.
So, we asked ourselves, why is this?
- Is it that businesses don’t know what software is available? Perhaps, but Google, Yahoo and various software directories do a decent job of providing a long list of available software
- Is it a case of “list shock” or information overload? Maybe the act of searching brings back so many options that businesses owners get intimidated or overwhelmed by the software selection process?
- Maybe small businesses get discouraged by technical jargon and specialist language? Could it be that the “Curse of Knowledge” gets in the way of vendors communicating clearly to the potential customer?
- Perhaps the problem is a lack of comparable information on software? With only sparse information on search engines and software directories, does it take too long for businesses to trawl vendor websites and work out what each software package does and how it compares with other software?
The more we investigated, the more apparent it became that search engines are only a start, and the software directory model is broken (or at least flawed). The software directory mindset is “he with the biggest list wins”. But a long list of sparse and poorly comparable information is not useful for making decisions on software.
Inspiration strikes…
Then it hit us! We honed in on a critical insight:
Software decision makers need a short list, not a long list.
What business owners and decision makers need is a shortlist of the most relevant and promising alternatives for them to consider. Add in some apples-to-apples comparisons and detailed product information, and then you’ve got a great way to reach the right decision quickly on which software to buy.
Yarra River At Night (photo: Edwin11 on flickr.com)
And so, 18 months ago as the sun set over the Yarra river, we devised the initial concept for SoftwareShortlist as a free, online recommendation and comparison service for business software.
In the months that followed, we challenged key assumptions, spoke with software customers and vendors, mapped out a business model, started developing the website, and got to work reviewing software.
…and it now becomes reality
Today, our journey reaches an important milestone, as we announce the public beta launch of SoftwareShortlist.
Although the beta launch represents the culmination of nearly 18 months of hard work, even more importantly it also represents the beginning of the next stage for SoftwareShortlist. We have big plans for the future.
Today our beta service recommends and compares timesheet software for professional service firms and livestock recordkeeping software for farmers.
In coming months, we will expand coverage to other major software categories such accounting and customer relationship management (CRM), as well as a wide range of industry-specific applications.
Let us know what you think of the beta service – with your feedback and involvement, we can make SoftwareShortlist a great resource for businesses everywhere.
