Blog Bites Man

A few months ago I blogged about Zookoda, a free service for emailing blogs that I had initially really liked. Recently, we switched email providers (we switched to Campaign Monitor). Because Zookoda was free, and had no revenue model, it came with some problems. The biggest problem was that there was no support. When we discovered that a good percentage of emails were getting trapped in spam filters, or that a mass email was trapped in the Zookoda mail server, we had very little recourse to resolve the issue.

The Zookoda guys eventually responded, but there was a lag that was likely due to other fires they had to tend to. Zookoda had (I suppose it still has) an elegant user interface. I’ve used maybe half a dozen different email platforms in the past; while none were ideal, Zookoda’s came the closest.

With their acquisition by PayPerPost, I hope Zookoda gets the much-deserved development it needs.

Update: my company discontinued using Zookoda months ago, we switched to Campaign Monitor.

I’ve been playing around with Zookoda for a couple weeks now and we’re about to send out our first newsletter powered by Zookoda. Not that I necessarily want the Zookoda guys to take my advice, but they should be charging for this system, or keep it free up to 100 emails per month or something. Aside from a few shortcomings — poor documentation, limited control of template variables, limited reports, no convenient online search for users, only one feed can be drawn upon — the system is hands down better than most every other inexpensive hosted newsletter system I’ve tried… and I’ve tried many. Though not as feature-rich as some of the systems out there, Zookoda does a great job for a new tool. The UI is superb, better than 99% of the systems out there, ExactTarget comes a close second. I love that every page has a user feedback field (with no redirect, so you don’t lose the work on the page you’re using). User management, opt-in forms, templates, reporting, it’s all there. Try it while it’s still free.

NOTE: The app is ostensibly for sending a summary of blogs, but you don’t have to use the feed field at all. Really, it’s a fully functional newsletter email system.