A good deal of the online marketing marketplace and many others outside of internet marketing have made Aweber the single most critical infrastructure service provider for their businesses – the single most important piece enabling ongoing list building and communicating with subsribers. 

So, it’s not surprising that the recent change Aweber made in their pricing structure became a lightning rod for anxiety, frustration, confusion and plain craziness. 

So what has happened?

After spending 10+ months of significant development and hundreds of thousands on infrastructure costs Aweber has rolled out a new higher-end tracking capability with granular analytics on text and html emails that will no doubt put lots more profit in the pockets of big list owners. 

Here’s where the controversy comes in…

They are also moving away from a long-held $19.95 flat rate pricing plan – that frankly everyone suspected would eventually increase as it iwas one of the most incredible examples of under-priced services given how well their business and service was run. 

So why the issue?

Two reasons – the size of the increase and how they have constructed their single-choice pricing for new customers. 

Let me start by saying that existing customers with Aweber will be given the choice to stay on their existing program – in fact the price will go down by some .50/month to do so…although there seems to be a new tier of 10,000 subscribers at which point even existing Aweber customers will see their existing pricing go up.

The second issue is real…and hopefully will be closely examined by the folks at Aweber.  The pricing looks like this:

– Up to 500 subscribers $19/month

– Up to 2500 subscribers $29/month

– Up to 5,000 subscribers $49/month

– Up to 10,000 subscribers $69/month

– Up to 25,000 subscribers $149/month

Each of these plans offer an annual plan with slight savings. 

Here are two suggestions I would have for the service.

1. Offer a basic service (as today) at a flat rate that does not include tiered levels until say 10,000+ for new users who will not necessarily use the new analytics features when they first start out.  They could still offer the tiers above for users who DO get tracking right from the start – but give newbies a choice.

2. Tinker with their tiered pricing somewhat.  Having coached many, many newbies online – until someone has a list of about 5,000, they are still heavily in learning mode – not bringing in a great deal of money and not ready to get involvefd in advanced email marketing.  There are exceptions sure, but for the majority – this would hold true.  In fact, many may never be ready, thus the pricing listed in #1.  To accomodate this reality, I would suggest the first-tier increase not take effect until at least 2500 subscribers – even if this means increasing the base from $19 to something like $24 for everyone. 

As an Aweber customer, I know I’ll be looked after and trust the management team…my only concern now is making sure I can still recommend their service to new customers in all different situations.  By addressing #1 and #2 I would feel more comfortable with a blanket Aweber recommendation – with the current pricing model, I still see them as one of the leading (and perhaps still the best) email marketing and autoresponder services out there.  For most of my coaching clients, I’ll still recommend them highly – the current pricing structure certainly warrants a little more thought and discussion for some of the marginal clients who will experience a longer learning curve. 

Jeff