Aweber’s sneaky pricing policy

I’ve been  using Aweber for two years now. Overall, I love the service. I think the interface is clear and easy, the segmentation works well and it’s easy to get the stats I need at a glance. But since I do sometimes refer Aweber to my colleagues and client’s I feel it’s my duty to alert you of some really sneaky (and unfair) pricing policies that they have in place.

The flaw is regarding the number of people in your database. If you have a person signed up for more than one “segmentation” or list, such as a teleclass and a client list, for instance, Aweber counts that person as two people. If you have events every month that require the person to register (ie, they go into the list for THAT event) then each time the person registers for a list they are effectively being counted an additional time by Aweber.

Since Aweber is a system that charges according to the number of “subscribers” you have, this is faulty and erroneous. Their system has no way (or should I say, their PRICING model has no way) of recognizing that there are duplicate emails across duplicate lists.

My list is what others consider small (about 300) but with that list I operate a six figure business. So, recently I sent out a message to “all lists” and that number was 286. However looking at my bill  I am being charged the “over 500 but less than  2,500″ price, or $29.

If my number of people is less than 300, why am I paying an extra $10 to Aweber on a monthly basis? That’s $120 year. With $120/year can you imagine the ROI that I can get by putting that money towards some Facebook advertising, or attending an event, or buying business cards? Money is money, and no amount is small, no matter how much revenue you’re doing (so yes, I pay attention to even $10 a month).

I’ve challenged Aweber on this before and their answer to me was “consolidate your lists” but until they have a way of “tagging” people within the system that process doesn’t work for me. Right now, I’m sticking with Aweber but I’m actively looking for a better system within the same price tier, and I suggest that you really pay attention to the numbers.

Have any recommendations, rebuttals or response? Please post it below.

UPDATE October 2013:

Since I started investigating this I’ve moved my service over to joingetresponse.com – They have the same functionality as Aweber, with a couple of deviations here and there. I’ve been with them since February and so far no issues.