We have been using mailchimp for the last couple of months but our user list has been growing and we are looking to change the service or build our own. What is everyone's opinion about it or everyone use for their own startups/blogs etc.?
My honest advice: Think like a business.
DO NOT build your own email system. Why do that when you can use that time to evolve your app?<p>If you can't pay a monthly mailchimp fee with your current model, then the model needs changing.<p>edit: Take heed of Patrick's "marketing evolution" strategies below and realize there are oh-so-many more lucrative things to be working on than coding a custom mailer.
MailChimp. Cheap, wonderfully featured API, pre-existing Ruby code that took my integration time to within 2 hours.<p>If you're doing iPhone apps at the traditional iPhone price point, though, I don't know how any service which charges for a marginal email is going to be worthwhile for you.
The folks behind <a href="http://www.beanstalkapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.beanstalkapp.com</a> also do <a href="http://www.newsberry.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.newsberry.com</a> -- we've used it for a few projects and had good success.<p>They start off at Free! for < 100 subs, <a href="http://newsberry.com/pricing/standard-plans" rel="nofollow">http://newsberry.com/pricing/standard-plans</a>
I've successfully used cleverreach, which is a german company, because a client asked me to. It worked really well, importing addresses from CVS, personalizing, campaign monitoring, click rates, etc:<p><a href="http://www.cleverreach.de/frontend/index.php?flang=en" rel="nofollow">http://www.cleverreach.de/frontend/index.php?flang=en</a><p>For preparation I handcoded an html-table layout with some css which I later turned to inline css using <a href="http://premailer.dialect.ca/" rel="nofollow">http://premailer.dialect.ca/</a> because other css gets stripped out by gmail and other web mail clients.
I don't have any advice for software to use, buy I do suggest you use something other than your production DNS domain and mail server for sending out these messages. Even if all of them opt-in, <i>some</i> of your recipients will mark your messages as spam and that mail server/domain will start to show up on blacklists. If your production domain is xyzcorp.com, maybe you should register xyzcorp-messages.com for this activity.
We currently use Constant Contact for newsletters and email campaigns. It's served us well so far, but I could be easily convinced to ditch it -- the email templates, editing features, and analytics are decent, but hardly inspired or delightful. I'm looking seriously at both Aweber and Emma... and this thread has motivated me to consider MailChimp too.
<a href="http://FeedmailPro.com" rel="nofollow">http://FeedmailPro.com</a> is great for RSS based email campaigns.<p>The way I look at it, might as well make the email a blog post (for Google juice, so future people who look for it can find it, etc) and then just use an RSS to email service.
You don't really say, what is it about your evolving business that dictates a change in mail provider?<p>That being said, depending on your volume and functionality you require, <a href="http://www.aweber.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.aweber.com</a> is also an option to consider.
No need to build your own when things like OEMPro and Dada Mail exist<p><a href="http://octeth.com/" rel="nofollow">http://octeth.com/</a><p><a href="http://dadamailproject.com/" rel="nofollow">http://dadamailproject.com/</a>