[Ankesh]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for thinking about the fishbowl approach.

I would suggest going with Constant Contact too.

While I use aweber.com - I'd say its not suited for your needs. Aweber requires double-optin if you import email addresses. So if you collect email addresses offline - and then import them to aweber - they'll send a confirmation email to those people. Which could lead to your losing 50% of your list.

(There is a way to overcome this double optin. But it requires a programmer working for a couple of hours. And the solution may be against aweber rules - not sure. Email me if you want to know what the solution is. I won't be posting it here as it's in the grey area.)

You could also go with running your own mailing lists. You could either go with PHPlist or Autoresponder Plus scripts. But you will have to invest in a dedicated server to send out the emails - once your list crosses 1000-5000 mark (depending on your web host). So thats a cost of $150-200 per month.

So I would suggest Constant Contact to you. Its affordable. And comes with no headache. Perfect for non-techies. Best of all, they take care of email deliverability issues.