Since its beginning in 2004, FeedBurner has focused on building tools that tap into the power of RSS, short for Really Simple Syndication, a technology standard for publishing regular updates to Web-based content. After Google’s takeover in 2007 no major updates were made until now.
On April 14, 2021, Google announced they would migrate FeedBurner to new infrastructure but remove “non-core” functionality including email subscriptions, leaving many bloggers & website owners wondering what to do next. Switching to a Feedburner alternative is therefore better done sooner than later.
The question is: switch to what?
Meet follow.it
Follow.it is a free tool that can solve this problem for you. It works on a simple concept – readers want new and interesting content while publishers want readers, so it optimizes every step in the funnel to make readers get back to your blog.
Follow.it offers a way to turn your website visitors into followers, making sure they receive notifications (automatically) when you publish new posts and maximizing chances that they see the notifications and click on them. It is not a new service, it has been around for 5 years and is used by over 100 000 sites.
Why should I switch to follow.it?
Follow.it’s sender reputation is excellent, which ensures that your emails land in people’s inboxes and have maximum chances to get read & clicked on. At follow.it, followers explicitly stated that they want to receive the content for websites they decided to follow. Also, many users receive news in their «Newspaper», an email containing news from various sources they are following. The probability that followers interact with those emails in a positive way, i.e. open & click on them, is very, very high.
A special benefit of follow.it is that it offers followers many more options (compared to subscribing to a regular newsletter). For example, visit CodeGeekz’s follow page on follow.it.
As you can see there, you can filter feeds to your needs (i.e. define which news to get – that’s especially important if the site publishes a lot of posts) and also define the output (delivery) channel.
You can pick from a “Newspaper”-option (all posts from the last 24 hours in one email, to avoid information overload), “Single emails” (one email for every new post), RSS, and Newspage. Telegram is also added as a follow channel, and many others will follow suit. See the follow.it feature roadmap.
How to switch from Feedburner to follow.it?
The process is easy, but it depends on the CMS you’re using, i.e. if you’re using WordPress you can install the Feedburner alternative and RSS Redirect plugin which will guide you through the process, and if not get started by setting up your feed on follow.it.
The next step is to download your email subscribers list from Feedburner. Go to your Feedburner’s feed dashboard and select the “Subscribers” section in the “Analyze” tab.
Scroll down to the “Email Subscription Services” and click “Manage your Email Subscriber List”.
Then go to “Subscriber Management” and export your email subscribers into a CSV document.
Now you can import the emails in the regular way – by going to the “Followers”-page for the feed you want to import users for (i.e. login, go to “All feeds” on the left menu, click on the icon for followers) and click on “Import followers”.
There you can paste the list of emails you want to import, and click on “Import them!” to start the importing process.
Don’t forget to delete your Feedburner feed so that your followers don’t receive the same notifications from two different services. You can do this by clicking on “Delete feed” at the top:
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a Feedburner alternative or just starting your blog, follow.it should definitely be considered. Its “Basic”-plan includes many features, allows unlimited followers, and is 100% free; optional premium plans are priced very fairly.
Their mission is to prevent information overload and guarantee that followers do not have to fear to receive any unwanted email and that they come back to your website! What are you waiting for? Head over to follow.it to get started!
