If you are looking for an email newsletter application then read my story.

Interspire’s Email Marketers app is full of bugs. It has a very impressive feature list, majority of functions apparently works… but this is just the surface. On the background you get bad / incomplete reports, wrong segmentation, serious errors when sending email, screwed-up templates, etc. This is a big mess, a piece of junk – all for 500 USD.

They require a yearly 250 USD support renewal, which is ridiculous, as the app does not work properly. You can send out simple newsletters, but once you’d use the advanced features (segmentation, advanced templates, survey, etc) it fails, works with lots of errors.

If it were a very good app and I were a pleased user, I’d go for the maintenance, but 1. I hate being a beta tester of a 500 USD app and always requesting support 2. hate paying so-called 250 “maintenance fee” annually for ironing out bugs that are in the software. They should remove it without any notice immediately – but no, they do not.

What happens when you pay 250 USD maintenance feel? A technician logs-in to your server, hack the code to make it work at your copy of Email Marketer – this method was applied several times, and however the quick fix works, this seems to be very unprofessional and the updates are very rare.

Even if it is more pricey, all I can recommend to go with the established email service providers who charge you a monthly cost, but that works.

Baci

multi-user access
and larger amount of emails
better analytics
etc…

It has been nearly 30 hours since I requested a response, and they promise 24. I’m suspecting I’ll be doing business with a company with better support. I found OmniStar on my own, and I’ll be calling them up to discuss their software and support.

I’ve been a happy and loyal customer for a number of years, but no more. I’m looking for alternatives now.

Positive:

- Interspire has a great Backend, easy to use and very visual.
- The mailer itself is very robust, I had never any problems with it, seems perfect.

Now let´s look on the negative points, in my case they are “no-goes” and this is the reason why I like to change.

- Not a relational Database
Let me explain: Every Data is saved separately. If you have three eMail-Lists, for example a newsletter, a follow-up-mailing for your product and a special christmas-sale with some follow-ups, then the user will be able to sign in with just one form, but he will be saved triple.

When he changes his eMail … he will have to change it in all three lists. When he inserts data like “Firstname” or “Genter” or others, they are only present in the list, he has put it in. There is no point where all this information comes together.

The very absurd thing is that Interspire startet to integrate some small CMS-Elements. But it makes no sense: The one “user” is in the one list, the other “user” is exactly the same, but in another list, so for the cms-parts it is like a complete different customer. So even in the CMS you don´t see any “combination”, you have just one subscriber, but he is “splittered” through all different lists.

- Not usefull “segmenting” of lists.
Some interspire-users suggest to just use “one list” for all contacts and then “split” the list in different parts, so you can manage “three lists” in one. This “could” be usefull, interspire has something called “segments” and it could be easy, to work with just one “list” and then different “segments”.

But “segments” can´t do the same things as lists, and I don´t understand the sense in limiting the segments. For example: You can´t sent a Follow-Up-Mailing to a segment. The easiest situation to udnerstand why this is just stupid is with “non-confirmed subscribers”. I have some daily users who subscribe but don´t confirm. So I have built a segment with all “non-confirmed” users. But now … I can´t resend them a confirmation-eMail, because I would have to sent it out as a follow-up, one day after theire sign-in. Makes no sense to me, that the segments are limited like this.

- Pricing
The pricing is “high”, I´m okay with that. But what I´m not okay with is that they doubled theire prices without any announcement and without any new feature that I have seen there. Now I have to pay for one year of updates the same price that I paied in the begining for the whole liscense.

In fact, I think that the software is not so good as it was years ago. The new editor … I don´t like it and I don´t like that it works with lots of pop-ups and things like that. I prefered the “tabs” in the old editor. I don´t understand why such a high-priced product is not using a professional Editor, but only the TinyMCE. Well … it is a good Editor for cheap software, that can´t afford more. But in fact … Interspire is HIGH PRICED, so I expect good parts inside!

- The support is quick … but useless
Before you are able to sent out any support-question, you have to click through hundereds of messages. It says “have you checked the forum?”, you have to click “Yes”, then it says “Won´t you like to first look into the knowledge-base”, you have to click “no” and so on. Yes, they have support, and yes, the answers are comming quick. But it seems to me like they try to block support-questions.

- Features
Feature-Requests are mostly sent to a UserVoice-Forum for voting. But I never have seen any effect there. In fact, there are so few users inside of the Voting for features, that it doesn´t seem to me like a “usable” thing. However … The support doesn´t really think about the question. They only say “Write it there…”, that´s it. Once again, it doesn´t feel that they are really interested.

- Statistics
In my case the statistics are very incorrect. For example, it says I have 20 new subscribers in a list, but when I look in I only see 3 new subscribers that are really in.

Well … I might have asked the support. I haven´t, since months. I´m just not that motivated, even if it could be just a small thing to correct.

- eMail-safety
Interspire says, they do everything to use a “valid” eMail. But they don´t and in fact, they are not interested in correcting that.

One example: They count “soft bounces” and “hard bounces”. A hard bounce is deleted directly, a soft-bounce has a counter: When a user has 5 soft-bounces, he is also deleted.

But … they don´t care if this five soft-bounces come in two weeks or in 10 years. When a user has his mailbox full five times, then it get´s five soft-bounces and the user is deleted of the list. But how easy can it happen, that his mailbox is full? Imagine, that he makes two weeks holiday, when you sent two informations out, then this are the first two soft-bounces. And once again, in christmas-time. Number three. The counter never goes down … it is just a matter of time when “every subscriber” will be deleted of your list.

Bad, bad strategy. And … I told it to the support. They seemed not to be interested.

Best wishes, Julian!