I'm only going to discuss my personal views regarding the pros and cons of the Listwire free autoresponder here, with which I've had a little experience recently (yes I really went there!)

My Review of Listwire's Free Autoresponder

Listwire is touted as "The world's best FREE Autoresponder! The only 100% FREE autoresponder and internet marketing service on the web". Fair enough, I suppose. I remember seeing them some years ago and, as they're still operating today, conclude they're an established and serious business. So I decided to take a closer look and give Listwire a try.

As you might expect, it's a basic and straightforward autoresponder where you can build a series of follow up emails on multiple autoresponder lists. Listwire also lets you send out broadcast messages to your lists.

There are some basic list management tools such as add, unsubscribe, blacklist and export. There's a very basic web form builder with a series of options such as In-Line for placing an HTML subscribe form on a web page, Pop-Up, Pop-Over, Pop-Under, Light box and Fancy box.

I only tried In-Line so I could mess about with the HTML to get it looking a bit better. Not Listwire's fault but I found that for each line of the form code, WordPress would add a line break "<br>" at the end of each hidden input field which annoyingly moved the whole form down the page. I managed to rectify this with the following simple custom CSS:

.listwireform br {

display: none;

}

You can build plain text and/or HTML emails, and Listwire has a built in WYSIWYG email editor to help you build attractive emails. You're also provided with a series of standard tags However you cannot save your work as a template in Listwire, and by the way there are no built in templates to chose from.

OK so far so good for a free autoresponder service, albeit clunky and outdated. I could just about live with this for basic usage if it wasn't for the following issues.

My Problems With the Listwire Free Autoresponder

Listwire only allows double opt-ins. That is, all your new subscribers have to click a link to confirm their subscription. This would be a problem if I was focusing upon building a list as quickly and efficiently as possible using single opt-in, which I may want to try in future.

However, my goal is to build a relationship with folk who really want to be on my list, and not joining just to get a free report or some such (nothing wrong with that though). So I would probably be looking at double opt-in subcriptions anyway at this point.

So what's the problem then? Well, when your new opt-in enters their name and email and clicks the button to subscribe, the page they're taken to is a Listwire page which tells them to go check their inbox and click the subscribe link. OK, but with paid autoresponders you can select the URL that subscribing takes your new opt-in to, which is much more preferable to an internet marketer.

And then when your new opt-in clicks the subscribe link in the Listwire confirmation email, they are then taken to a page advertising other offers. You have no control over this either, so that's another opportunity missed from an optimal internet marketing point of view.

Finally, and this is the major deal-breaker for me, the links you include in your follow up emails don't take you directly to their intended destination. Instead, Listwire uses an iframe to place an advert in between your email link being clicked and arrival at the intended destination URL.

Listwire Free Autoresponder Conclusion

As you may expect from this Listwire free autoresponder review, I won't be using Listwire. I understand that providing a free service requires a certain amount of monetisation somehow. But the level of intrusion I noticed when I tried Listwire, as reported above, is far more than is worth tolerating when I'm aiming to build positive, trust-based relationships with my subscribers.

Simply put, I feel it would be unprofessional of me to expect my subscribers to tolerate all that unwanted advertising. I also have to ask myself, if I subscribed to a Listwire list, how long would I choose to stay on it? Not long, if I had to wade through independent advertising each time to reach the link I clicked!

I'm sure that the Listwire free autoresponder is fine for some purposes. But for the reasons above, for me I think using a free autoresponder like Listwire is a false economy and I have chosen to invest in a paid autoresponder. I believe my subscribers absolutely deserve the best (ad free) experience I can provide.