If you’ve been using Feedburner to track stats, subscribers and send email to your blog’s readers, it’s time to look for an alternative. On October 20, Feedburner will end its run. Or, to put it in Google terms, Feedburner’s API will be deprecated. That API is what allows you to interact with Feedburner stats and other info. Here’s a rundown of your alternatives.
Screen capture from Feedburner
Google owns Feedburner. What Google wants you to do is move your feeds into the Google world using their migration tool, which you see in the image above. Since this change was announced months ago, many people have already chosen to do that. If, like me, you’ve dilly dallied about this, now is the time to pay attention.
There are other choices. On Beth’s Blog in Is it Time to Let Feedburner Burn? you can learn how to switch to a service called FeedBlitz. Beth’s Blog walks you through the steps and FeedBlitz provides a detailed Migration Guide.
FeedBlitz will give you the RSS services and the email services you had with Feedburner. One issue, however, is that readers must have an account with FeedBlitz to get your blog post by email. Depending on your demographic, this could be a barrier.
At MomCrunch, Cecily Kellog mentions some of the alternatives in Feedburner Feeds Vanish. (She urges you to download an Excel document of all your subscribers from Feedburner to have on hand. Probably a good idea, just in case you have migration issues.) Cecily mentions these other options,
But if you don’t want to pay for it, there are alternatives. Jetpack (a WordPress Plugin) offers a free email subscription service. You can also use companies like AWeber, MailChimp, and more. Google for other free options (I think they are sticking with the search business, at least).
If you’re using WordPress, you probably have Jetpack installed already. WordPress recommends it. The directions for using Jetpack for Email subscriptions are simple. Basically all you have to do is pull the Blog Subscriptions (Jetpack) widget into your sidebar.
I’ve seen several bloggers mention MailChimp as their choice for the email subscribers because of the MailChimp RSS to Email service. In fact, it was Brenda’s comment on this blog that alerted me to the RSS to email service by MailChimp. Depending on your volume, MailChimp can be free.
FeedBlitz, MailChimp, and AWeber have integrated Twitter and Facebook services for your blog posts in addition to the RSS and email subscription services.
Notify your readers about what you’re doing. Here’s how Schmutzie did it.. I did a similar thing here in What feed are you using to read Web Teacher? That post contains several comments you may find helpful in looking for an alternative.
Bottom line, if you’re still depending on Feedburner, now is the time to decide on what will work for you and make the switch.
Editor’s Note: Cross-posted on blogher.com in a slightly different form.