The email newsletter service of this blog is powered by FeedBlitz and I’m a pretty happy customer.
The other good alternative to FeedBlitz is FeedBurner Email but I have a strong feeling that Google will merge this service with Google Groups in the long run. We have seen no new features in FeedBurner Email since long and second, the service is only available for sites that syndicate feeds via FeedBurner.
Coming back to FeedBlitz, there’s both good news and bad news. The good news is that FeedBlitz’s RSS newsletter service will continue to be free (supported by ads in the email newsletter) for all existing publishers.
The bad news is for new publishers who are planning to shift their blogs only now to FeedBlitz – you’ll pay a monthly subscription fee that can be as high as $30 if you have anywhere between 1,000-2,499 email subscribers. The newsletter for paid subscribers will be free of ads of course.
Founder Phil Hollows admits that FeedBlitz "needs revenues" to fund the service and clearly, the adverting inside email model did not prove to be very successful experiment.
Going forward, I think FeedBlitz may find it a bit tough to attract small publishers (especially bloggers who don’t generate revenues from their blog) but the big blogs may not mind shelling out few bucks for all the extra features (like customized design, news flash, etc) that are missing in FeedBurner email.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/rss-to-email-feedblitz-drops-free/6314/
Tags: feature, feedblitz, feedburner, Internet
Reader Comments
Even I am using Feedblitz.
Written by About Online Tips on 01.02.09
Amit, Your title of this post just took my breath away. I am a feedblitz publisher and I got the update on mobile and you know how I felt.
It must have been “RSS to Email Service Feedblitz Drops the Free Tag for New Publishers”
Thhank God that old publishers can still be free.
Cheers
Written by Arun Basil Lal on 01.02.09
This is going to increase revenue for the Feed Blitz all right ,but the publishers have to pay 30$ for month for subscriber count of 1000-1500 that is too much ,publishers will then shift to feedburner .
Written by venkat on 01.02.09
I was thinking to sign feedblitz for one of my blog, but you gave a bad news in the new year :-). Anyways i still have feedburner as an alternate, a free RSS to email service from Google. Thanks for information.
Written by Vivek Keserwani on 01.02.09
FeedBurner allows you to use a custom domain name, i.e., something like feeds.labnol.org. This feature is called FeedBurner MyBrand, and the only thing you need to do is edit a few CNAME records for your domain. Best part is that it’s free. More information is available here: link
Written by Ankur Banerjee on 01.03.09
I think it is easy for Google to bring out a feature to edit the news letter template . Apart from all Feedblitz benefits , a free service is always better for me than payed .
Written by techknowl on 01.05.09