The primary draw of MailerLite is that it's free, at least to those with fewer than one thousand subscribers (that's me!) And in a departure from my past impulsivity, I actually did some research before joining. My two main criteria were ease of uploading subscriber emails and an embeddable form for my website to encourage subscriptions. MailerLite offers both.
Naturally I hit a roadblock immediately after signing up. The site wanted an email address that is connected to my website. I have no such thing. Long-time readers here know that I created my site using Blogger, which does not offer a dedicated email address (it's Google, after all. They want you to use GMail.) I explained that I don't have one of those, so in lieu of that, they asked for my website address. No problem. Soon I received an email telling me that they needed a bunch of other stuff, such as social media account links, my website address (again) and the purpose of my business (again). I was prepared to be rejected for not possessing that one key element they seemed to need. And off I would need to go, searching for another host that was more accommodating to a start-up like mine. But surprise! They approved me!
Uploading my subscriber list was easy once I discovered I could copy and paste from my Excel file ~ eerily easy. I don't think Substack ever managed to accomplish that task for me. Then I went about creating my subscriber button. This was a bit more complicated than I'd anticipated. Free accounts have a minimal number of templates from which to choose, but they are customizable. Really, choosing font and background colors and font styles was difficult enough, and in the end I just wanted to create something that would work. I managed to do it. Then came the "insert HTML code" part that I was dreading. I type my blog posts in "compose view". HTML view is like trying to decipher Chinese. I didn't know where the hell to insert the code, so I basically guessed. (What's with all the "</span></div></span></span></div>" nonsense?) Surprisingly, I was pretty close.
But did it work? I pulled up my site on a different browser and input one of my many email addresses, then went back to MailerLite to see whether that address showed up on my subscriber list. It did! I honestly can't believe things have gone so smoothly.
So, now I have an uploaded subscriber list and a subscribe button on my website. I haven't tried to create a newsletter yet ~ I mean, come on, the fastest way to lose people is to be a pest and I just did one of those Substack thingies last week. I do think I will play around with the newsletter options, though, just to familiarize myself with MailerLite's templates and how customizable they are.
So far, so good. My next task is to notify my two or three Substack subscribers that I will be moving on. I gave Substack my best shot; it's just not for me. In my previous profession as a corporate trainer I explained things the way I would want them explained to me if I was a neophyte. The materials I wrote were clear ~ Step 1, Step 2, etc., with screenshots and arrows. I'm well aware that IT people are not "people friendly". I worked with plenty of those people over the years. Their minds simply don't work that way. They assume you as a civilian should automatically "know" what they're talking about. I still maintain that before a service provider goes live, it needs to test out its instructions on Everyday Joe and have him create a dummy account using only those instructions. But Substack will soon no longer be my problem. Kudos to anyone who has managed to crack its code, though.
As of today, I'm happy with MailerLite. The price is right, the templates are satisfactory. All its bells and whistles seem to work.
I'll stick with them unless and until they prove me wrong.
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