

Ask YC: Trying to use Google Apps to e-mail users but confused. Please help!? - shafqat

Hi All - I'm tearing my hair out. I want to use Google Apps for sending e-mails to our user community. I know some people here use it so I have a few questions:<p>1) Do you use the "e-mail list" functionality. Or do you merely route your e-mail through Google within the daily limits? i.e. using the standard gmail functionality?<p>2) Is there any point in using the premium edition apart from the 2000 email limit? Its not enough for us anyway, so we'll have to break down into smaller chunks.<p>I was just on the phone with a Google "power user" and they said e-mail lists were not for mailing lists but for internal distribution. So I'm pretty confused. If anyone is willing to clarify, I'd be super appreciative.
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furiouslol
You can always add your users' emails manually & create groups for them. So
next time when you want to mass mail them, just send an email to that group.

Tried it. Works fine. Just a hassle to add the users' emails manually

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shafqat
You can add users in bulk to Gmail Groups in your contact via a csv file. But
you can only send 500 e-mails a day from each e-mail address. So its not
really a sustainable solution.

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furiouslol
Use Icontact or Mailchimp then.

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shafqat
Thanks! MailChimp looks awesome. First one that Ive seen that it's the YC
mold... fun, modern, easy. The rest of the services are all dinosaurs from the
Web 1.0 stone ages.

I wonder what MailChimp's delivery records are like. Do you know if they have
agreements with ISPs like the others?

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furiouslol
According to their website, they have agreements with ISPs.

<http://www.mailchimp.com/learnmore.phtml> See: Deliverability

Here's a nice comparison of them vs IContact:
<http://www.mailchimp.com/compare/>

On an unrelated note, i like the clean design on Newscred. (Yeah. Nothing to
do with the post but just thought I let it out)

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shafqat
Thanks... unexpected feedback is always welcome. And positive feedback makes
us want to just work harder to continue to delight you guys!

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noodle
for mass emails, you're probably better off using either a service or
installing appropriate software. especially if you're breaking past the 2k
limit on premium.

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shafqat
Thats what I'm starting to figure out. I was just confused because I saw a lot
of startups say they use Google to manage their mailings to users.

Back to iContact or Constant Contact or one of those I guess...

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scribblewiki
Probably because its free; but, things like MailChimp are a lot simpler.

