If you don’t use the Free MailChimp service you don’t have to make any changes and can disregard the rest of this email and go about using your newsletters as normal. Yay!

You know how you think you have something under control and then surprise things change?  Well, we’ve had one of those surprise bumps in the road that is outside of your control or ours.  Many of our subscribers use the free version of MailChimp as their email service.

Hello to our fab members!

Mailchimp just announced a change in their services and pricing.  There are a lot of details, but the main thing is that the free version won’t support the “Code Your Own” function that is used to load our newsletters into Mailchimp.

Certainly not the news any of us wanted.  Debbie and I both feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy moves the football when he’s trying to kick it. But we are resilient so we are working to give you a proactive solution.

If you have a free Mailchimp account you need to know that your email service provider is an important piece of communicating with your customers by email.  It allows you to have good deliverability, the correct viewing and formatting of the newsletters, and keeps you compliant with email marketing rules.  Consistent email communication remains critical to your relationship building and communications with customers.

If you have a free Mailchimp account you can choose to:

• Upgrade to the Mailchimp for $14.99/month (500 contacts or less). We know this is a step up in expense from free, but it’s still an affordable option for a quality service. We’ve been using this provider for 4 years now on a paid subscription.
• Use DBWS (this is a short term option since the newsletter portion of DBWS is going away).
• Change to another email service, most have monthly fees for the service they provide.  (Debbie has scouted out some options below).

Check out our video here on using Mailchimp’s Free Service with our Newsletter Service.

Debbie and I have discussed and brainstormed what the best options are and what we should recommend.  For the short term we recommend sticking with Mailchimp and upgrading to the Standard service.  This way you can continue to use your newsletters without interruption.

We know our newsletters work with Mailchimp, Aweber, Constant Contact and Sendinblue.  We have not tested them thoroughly in the other platforms.

If you have questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to contact us and we will do our best to help.  Thanks for understanding that we are as surprised by this change as you are and we are doing our best to make this transition as easy as possible.

Debbie has done some quick research on email provider options as of May 2019.
1) sendinblue– Free Monthly limit of 9,000 emails per month
2) Mailchimp $14.99 for 500 Contacts or less (automation, Multi-Step Custom Workflows, Send Time Optimization)
3) Constant Contact 0-500 subscribers: $20 per month
4) GetResponse – up to 1,000 subscribers: $15 per month
5) ConvertKit – 0-1K subscribers: $29 per month
6) Aweber – 0-500 subscribers: $19 per month
7) MailerLite – 1-1,000 subscribers: $10
8) ActiveCampaign – Up to 500 subscribers: $15 per month

Let us know if you have any questions.  We are here for you!

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