Assalamu’alaikum.

I had made a brief study on auto responders and shortlisted them for you to choose.

This study is actually done for my own evaluation (since I have no experience in using any of the ’sequential auto responder’) and also for my customer before we decide buying it.

Before that, just a brief intro on auto responder.

Normally the hosting company where you rent the server for hosting your website will provide you a basic autoresponder. This auto responder only do a one-message reply to your received email. This type of auto responder is not enough to do follow-up with your contacts.

For your internet business, you really need a ’sequential auto responder’ where you can program a number of follow-up emails to be sent out at different stages. This type of auto responder is also commonly referred as ‘autoresponder’.

There are 3 types of autoresponders.

• Remotely hosted
• Locally hosted
• Desktop

Remotely hosted auto responder
This type is suitable for those without own domain. Therefore the autoresponder is hosted in the third party’s server - and you have to pay monthly fees as well as for the licensing. A few of popular one are such as ‘Getresponse’ and ‘Aweber’.

Desktop type of autoresponder
This type of autoresponder is installed on your computer’s hard disk
and you’ve got to work from there before you can send your email. You don’t need to pay monthly fee for this type of autoresponder. It’s not very popular.

Locally hosted auto responder
My opinion, this type is the most cost effective, especially for long term use. The autoresponder script/program will be installed in your local server where you host your domain. In term of fees, you also don’t need to pay monthly fee here. It only require a one-time payment for licensing or it may be totally free.

In this article I will only focus on locally hosted auto responder type.

I have shortlisted this list by eliminating those which cost more than USD100 and those which only allow limited number of installations.

1. PHP AUTORESPONDER
• cost $47.95 1 time fee
• for unlimited domain
• speed not reported
• testimony - not convincing
• link: click here
2. POSTIE
• Cost$27.00 (limited time offerred) 1 time fee
• speed - not reported
• testimony not available
• link: click here
3. INFINITE RESPONDER
• Open source - free
• speed & testimony - not found
• link: click here
4. EMAIL RESPONDER PRO
• Cost $47.00 1 time fee
• unlimited installation
• speed & testimony - not found
• Source code - given full
• link: click here
5. AWAKE
• Cost $49.00 1 time fee
• unlimited installation
• speed & testimony - not found
• Source code - given full
• link: click here
6. MY AUTORESPONDER PRO
• Cost $59.95 1 time fee
• unlimited domain
• speed - 600 mails per minute
• Source code - given full
• testimony - convincing
• link: click here

MY RECOMMENDATION
I personally recommend MY AUTO RESPONDER PRO (No.6) because the speed performance is made known to us and the users testimonies are quite convincing.

If you know PHP and you are willing to explore and experiment (or you may want to improve it), then you can choose the open source script, INFINITE RESPONDER (No.3).

Note:
I’m not at all responsible for any thing incurred from the choice you made based on this recommendation. This is just a guide developed from my very brief study for my own use.