The FeedBurner's email subscription service is officially ended. It is no longer possible to use the Follow by Email widget in Blogger because the two platforms were integrated. Fortunately, a third-party service namely follow.it is ready to provide us with free replacement to the Blogger's missing widget.
We can set up a follow.it email subscription form to replace Blogger's Follow by Email widget. The service is free and, so far, I find it to be quite reliable to deliver updates directly to my blog's subscribers.
Read also: How to Use follow.it to Replace Blogger's FollowByEmail Gadget - Free Feedburner Alternative
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It is essential nowadays to maintain a list of loyal readers. These type of visitors will provide us with a continuous traffic stream that will not be influenced by the volatility of Google's algorithm updates. Therefore, to provide our loyal subscribers with timely and convenient notifications, we need a dependable email subscription service.
There are not many free companies that provide a free service to deliver our new articles via email to our subscribers. The follow.it is among the few services that is capable of reliably sending your subscribers with timely notification via email for completely free.
When it comes to choosing the best email subscription service for your blog, there are some criteria that you need to pay attention to. You should not just put any random third-party service to replace Blogger's Follow by Email widget because it may impact your website badly.
Here are some characteristics that you need to understand when choosing the best alternative for Blogger's FeedBurner:
1. The email subscription provider should be user friendly
It is essential to provide a user-friendly subscription method. You need to provide your visitors with an easy and simple procedure to subscribe to your website. If the process is too complicated, no one will bother to subscribe to your blog. The follow.it is an excellent example of user-friendliness.
The follow.it email subscription service has a function that is easy to follow. Your readers only needs to input their email inside the subscription form, then they will receive a confirmation email. It basically works just like the old Follow by Email in Blogger. Most visitors will be able to follow the familiar procedure easily. After that they will receive a timely updates from your blog directly to their emails.
2. Avoid dodgy and shady free email subscription service
Ever since FeedBurner stopped the email subscription service, many shady companies have offered free alternative. However, do not be fooled. These shady companies may actually be just mining your visitors data.
Your visitors' emails are valuable. Some of the shady companies will harvest your visitors email via the free email subscription service pretext. When you are using the service from the shady companies, your subscribers email may be sold to another third part. Even worse, your subscribers email may get bombed with spam messages.
Luckily, this type of incident does not happen with the free follow.it service. I have not notice any increase in spam messages after using their email subscription platform. Moreover, follow.it doesn't seem to slow down your blog at all if you set the form correctly!
3. Choose Email Subscription Service that provides additional features and value
The Follow by Email widget provided a simple feature that only allows your subscribers to get updates on your blog. The services provided by follow.it will provide you with so much more useful functions that will allow you to manage your subscribers properly.
The follow.it also provides us with premium options which are priced fairly. The cost is scaled based on the amount of your blog subscribers. The premium version of the follow.it will improve the performance of your blog because it will allow you to get listed on their public feed directory.
Moreover, you will be able to choose how each of the subscribers will receive their updates.
You can specify the way the updates are delivered. For example, you may
choose to let users to receive their future updates on the exact hour
they were subscribing. If they subscribe on 8 A.M., they will also
receive notification on that time in the future updates, thus ensuring that
your notification will be opened. It is very useful if you have various
visitors from all over the world who have different time zones.
You can also customize the way your feeds are presented inside your subscriber's email. If your notification is attractive, your readers will more likely to immediately check your website.
Moreover, follow.it also provides notification to your readers via Telegram instead of the old email. It's also quite convenient though still uncommon. There are also other useful benefits that I have not listed in this articles. You can try it yourself to find out if it is suitable for your or not.
For more premium features from follow.it, you can directly check their pricing on the company's website. They are very cheap too, around 2-5 USD per months. It is worth it if you want to provide the best experience for your loyal blog's subscribers.
If you don't want to spend any money, then the free follow.it version is already good enough and ahead of other services. There is not much limitation even when you are using the free service. If you have a small blog, the follow.it free version is more than adequate. You can always upgrade any time once your blog has grown bigger.
If you are interested to use follow.it, here is a complete guide on how to set it up on your Blogger websites. It is very simple!