Forget Feedburner and Use IFTTT instead to subscribe to any RSS email newsletter

After Google Reader shutdown news, blogosphere is highly speculating the demise of Feedburner in very near future.

And why not, Feedburner service hasn’t been updated in years, it hasn’t added any new features and still has the most outdated interface.

Surprisingly, even though Feedburner is one of the most important service for Bloggers, it hasn’t seen much competition. Bloggers can’t live without it though.

Feedburner helps them offer RSS feed and email newsletters to the subscribers. With Feedburner bloggers also receive analytics on various aspects of subscription.

Using Feedburner is probably one of the many important steps of creating a successful blog.

With fears looming around that it may no longer be available in the long run, do we have alternatives. As a matter of fact, yes, there are. There is MailChimp and there is Feedblitz. But they are not free and as easy and sophisticated as Feedburner.

Which brings us to IFTTT, a service, most of the bloggers are big fans of. IFTTT stands for If This Than That.

Like I said, forget Feedburner and use IFTTT.

How does IFTTT help?

IFTTT works on triggers and actions. Consider the trigger that a RSS feed is updated which initiates the action of sending email.

By using this recipe, users can subscribe to any blog’s RSS email newsletter. Below are the steps:

1. Use this recipe.
2. Add the RSS address of the blog you want to subscribe to.
3. Setup Gmail or email channel on IFTTT to receive the newsletter in email.
4. Wait for the blog RSS feed to get updated.
5. As soon as it gets updated, the triggers are initiated and you receive an email.

What IFTTT doesn’t do?

Even though it solves one part of Feedburner service – sending email newsletter. It isn’t designed to replace Feedburner. Below is what it can’t do:

1. The bloggers won’t know if someone subscribed to their blogs.
2. There is no customization/branding of the email newsletter.
3. There is not going to be a way to add this recipe to your blog where visitor can subscribe too. There is currently no workaround that I know of.
4. Not sure how many emails you are allowed to send using IFTTT. (It doesn’t seem to have any limit for now.)
5. Bloggers can’t add a subscription link/box to their blogs –for that, services like MailChimp and Aweber are more appropriate.
6. It is up to the visitor to decide if they would like to use this method and they would have to use IFTTT as well for it.

What are your views about this method? I know it’s not the best, but at least something is better than nothing. IFTTT seems to cater more to bloggers and social media managers rather content consumers.

I just wish Google decides to keep Feedburner alive and revive it offer more integration.