All the gurus say “the money is in the list”. It’s true that we all need to build a list, but before we can do that we need an autoresponder. It would be almost impossible to manage a list of subscribers without one.
For newbies, an autoresponder is a big expense when starting out, because it takes a while before you can recoup the expense. There is a superb service called MailChimp that is free until you have 500 subscribers. The next level is just $15, whereas AWeber is $19 a month for up to 500 subscriners and then jumps to $29. Quite a difference.
MailChimp has an amazing list of features/functions and the site holds a massive amount of helpful information and statistics about email marketing.
Compare MailChimp with other leading autoresponders