WhichAutoresponder.com

Simple Autoresponders

If you've already got some web space, it's highly likely that it came with some free autoresponders.

Usually, these are the simplest form of autoresponder and just send a message of your choice as soon as someone sends an email to a particular email address on your site.

To check whether you've got a free, simple autoresponder on the web space you are paying for, simply log onto your control panel and have a look! It will probably be with the email settings, so you may need to dig down below the first level of your control panel before you find it.

If you're not sure whether or not you have this kind of autoresponder on your web hosting package, you can either send a question to your technical support team or use the quicker method of checking the initial sales page from your web host. If there are free autoresponders on your account, they will be shown there as a feature. It's then a matter of finding out how to set up your messages. Use the online help to work out how your web space host expects you to do this.

This kind of simple autoresponder is useful for saying things like: "Thank you for contacting me, I will reply to your email as soon as I can."

It can also be useful to point people to a frequently asked questions page on your site. So you could say something like: "Thank you for contacting me. Lots of people ask me similar questions, so you will probably get your question answered more quickly by going to http://www.WhichAutoresponder.com/faq.html (obviously putting in your own URL here!). If the question you have isn't answered on that page, I will do my best to reply to it within 48 hours."

This type of simple autoresponder has the advantage that it's cheap (because it's normally included free with your account) and easy to set up.

However, as soon as you want to do anything more than simply say "Thanks for sending me an email" or something similar, then you've reached the end of the usefulness of this kind of simple autoresponder.

Once you've outgrown the free autoresponders that come with your web space, you should look at the easy autoresponders offered by a variety of firms at quite affordable prices.