Self-Hosted Setup For A Noob

Hi,

I am a long time marketer but new to email marketing.

I want to setup a self-hosted email system that uses either IEM or ARPReach, the getting in the inbox part of emailing I will learn and figure out through this forum and past posts.

As for the setup, I am looking for direction in terms of hosting & domain setup. I am working with an existing list of opt-ins of about 80k and plan on aggressively getting new subs through paid ads.

1. Do you recommend a dedicated or shared server? any recommendations on who?

2. Should I use a new or aged domain just for emailing or setup on my current main domain?

Any help would be appreciated, having the confidence to go with this type of solution is tough since the configuration is key.

Thanks
Bob

 

Bob
You would be better off going with an ESP for only 80k optin names... there's no need to learn the ropes and reinvent the wheel and learn all the painful lessons many marketers have gone through with 80K names, get yourself a solid ESP account at like an iContact or somebody that will help you with the process, so you can focus more on your newsletters and less on worrying about delivery...

 

Thanks for the feedback suggestion, my plans to ramp up are very aggressive and I want to go at it self-hosted from the get go and experience the process of learning & optimizing (sprinkling in the failures).

I know it's not the best route but one I wish to take. Any tips on the original post appreciated.

 

onpoint / kobeni is pretty popular here. it's also on the cheaper end if you want an ESP. going to be over 1k a month. Not sure how you can rationalize that for 80k records. Otherwise buy a copy of interspire and mail it from one IP. However as roundabout said that isn't going to be as effective is piggybacking off of iContacts ip.

You can go the sendgrid / smtp relay option but also in my experience i don't think its as good of delivery as you would get with icontact if you don't know what you are doing.

 

Ok this is not the right place to advertise and I apologize for this in advance but sounds relevant to the OP.

We recently launched a new feature that allows you to mail through multiple email servers that you own, plus the ability to relay through a third party service (like amazon SES, dynect, jangomail, iContact, etc). This way you keep all your mailings at one place. This combined with autoresponders makes easy for you to monetize your clickers through a whitelisted (third party) managed ESP's IP, while generating them (O&C) through your own MTA servers.

PM me if you need more info on how this works.

 

Thanks for the feedback, yes, 1k monthly for 80k records is more than what I wanted to pay. I think ARPReach supports 3rd party SMTP and I guess that can always be an option if mailing from my own IP doesn't work out.

Looking for a recommended hosting provider and whether to go shared or dedicated server?

Thanks again to all.

Bib

 

you really should put what you think your ideal setup would look like and maybe we can comment on that. I still don't know what you are looking to spend or want to do.