Email marketing is fast becoming an essential marketing channel for all website owners, and the tool that powers this channel can make or break your efforts. Choosing a reliable autoresponder software that has all features such as sequential autoresponse, timed mailings, bounced management, etc. is usually found in subscription-based service or expensive software.

The Omnistar Mailer email mailing list manager is a serious contender that meets (and exceeds) all of that for a very good price. Based on the popular PHP and MySQL combo, this web-based mailing list software is flexible and customizable. Follow me as I take you step by step to install and test it.

The Omnistar Mailer can be purchased online at www.omnistarmailer.com and can downloaded instantly. It comes with a 30-day money back guarantee and free installation. Being the propeller head that I am, I decided to get my hands dirty.

The download, unzipping and uploading was fairly fast and simple, and soon, I'm greeted with the install screen. Here's where you might benefit from using their install service. Theres' some file permissions which needed to be sorted out before you can proceed with the install. After filling in all the necessary details (don't worry if you don't know some of them, just give the nice support people there your hosting signup details) and the installation took care of itself. Note: Omnistar is careful here to warn you to use a NEW MySQL database. It's best to heed this warning.

This is the screen after you first sign in.

So I tried to create my first list and generate a subscription form. So far, I'm finding the Omnistar Mailer autoresponder system really simple (and fast!) to use.

After signing up, you can choose to add more fields than the default 'Email' and Subscribe button. The form generator is especially handy as you can customize the colour, text and even subscribe button.

Here's another feature that I like and is extremely useful. You can also add an option to subscribe to specific Interest Groups and also an option for passwords to change subscriber details later. Sweet.

All in all, I found this to be a very solid mass email software that delivers what it promises. Since it has unlimited mailing lists capabilities, you can easily use this as your primary email list management tool in a central server and have all your websites use this.

Another big plus is that they allow you to rebrand this for your clients, so you can package it as part of your web development.

Having used and reviewed many similar software, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Omnistar Mailer which to me is really worth the investment.

=> Check out the Omnistar Mailer Autoresponder Software today!