Introduction to bulk email services using CAWI

Survey Management
#1

Hello Survey Solutions team,

It is my first experience using CAWI at Survey Solutions.

We want to use CAWI mode to deploy to a short survey (approximately 50 questions) that targets approximately 75 people once a month.

I was reading about CAWI mode and there is a possibility to use Bulk Email Service to send invitations using Amazon SES or SendGrid but this has a cost and since this is the first experiment in the use of the CAWI mode, we are not sure of wanting to pay for this service if this first experience does not have the expected acceptance in our informants. On the other hand, I think that it is not a good first experience that my HQ user has to send invitation by invitation (download link by link) to each of the informants.

My specific question is: what do users who have worked with CAWI recommend considering that I only need to email less than 80 invitations per month?

Thanks for your help, I have learned a lot from you.

New way to send a Server Request
#2

  1. Amazon SES pricing is here: https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/
    Amazon charges 10 US cents per 1,000 emails, 12 US cents per 1GB of attachments, and outgoing traffic.
    A useful explanation of their terms is at this page:
    https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/projects/setup-email-receiving-pipeline/services-costs/
    So the back of the envelope calculation for the total cost of surveying 75 people a month should be roughly and approximately $0.25US but will likely be more due to rounding.

  2. If the above figure is too high, the first 62,000 emails are free if you are hosting your server with Amazon (according to the same price schedule).

  3. Amazon may also offer special pricing plans for larger/corporate users. Please inquire if there is such a plan with Amazon directly or with a person responsible for such transactions within your organization.

  4. The situation with SendGrid is similar.

  5. You can develop your own mailer, by picking up the file with assignment links and sending them out. But the cost of development will likely be more than 0.25USD.

As for:

what do users who have worked with CAWI recommend considering that I only need to email less than 80 invitations per month?

I’ll let the other users speak for themselves.

#3

@sergiy thank you very much for such a comprehensive explanation and for helping us to clear up all the doubts or questions that arise in each project.