Whoosh leverages Amazon's SES to provide batch e-mail
updated 06:45 pm EST, Mon February 7, 2011
Supports plain text, HTML, mail merge
Originally created for in-house management of their own customer base, UK software house The Escapers have now released Whoosh, software that takes advantage of Amazon's Simple Email Service (SES) to allow affordable, scalable batch or bulk e-mail service using a familiar Mac user interface.
By using the Amazon SES, users can bypass having to know a great deal about HTTP services and XML, as Amazon includes a Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture, meaning the proper security and encoding is handled on their end. Either plain text or HTML e-mails can be simply input into Whoosh's interface for simple delivery. The program also supports multiple campaigns, and can import tab-delimited files and handle mail-merging.
The cost of batch e-mailing using Whoosh can be dramatically lower than with competing services, the company says. The program itself has an introductory price £30 ($48.50), compared to the free signups at web-based services such as MailChimp.com, but the cost to send 50,000 e-mail messages would be $5 versus, for example, MailChimp's cost of $500. To send 500,000 messages would cost $50, versus the $2500 or more of competitor programs.
Whoosh is available for a 30-day trial (with limitations on how many messages can be sent out) and requires Leopard (10.5) or higher (both PPC and Intel are supported). Users must already have an account with Amazon Web Services.
