Feedburner is slowly being killed off by Google. The 14 years old feed management provider will terminate its email subscription service in July 2021. For Blogger users, this news is quite worrying.
FollowbyEmail widget is a Blogger feature that allows your visitor to subscribe to your blog. Whenever you publish a new article, your subscribers will be notified by emails. Unfortunately, this widget is tied to Feedburner's email subscription service. Therefore, FollowbyEmail feature will also be phased out.
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The FollowbyEmail gadget in Blogger is being terminated. |
For most people who use this blogging platform causally, you probably don't bother to set up the widget properly. Let's face it, email newsletter is no longer as popular as it used it. Moreover, for those of us who currently use FollowbyEmail widget probably doesn't get much traffic from it.
For example, this blog, SofanMax, is also using Feedburner's email subscription service. There are only 12 people who subscribe to my blog by email. It goes to show that email subscription is not very being used that much.
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Most visitors will not bother to subscribe to our blog, that's the reality of
the current situation. In that respect, losing FollowbyEmail is perhaps not
going to be a big deal.
However, from different point of view, this change may threaten the existence of Blogger. Losing widgets one by one will surely kill this blogging platform one day. It also shows that Google will not hesitate to terminate its own product, even though it still being utilized by a lot of people.
Contrary to WordPress who adds more functions every updates, Blogger is terminating a lot of its features. Despite the new massive update in 2020, Blogger doesn't seem to add new feature at all. Moreover, the new update was quite glitchy and broke several functionalities. Even today, the AdSense monetization feature is still quite buggy.
The lack of widgets, reductive updates, and bugs may turn off current fan base and chase away potential users. The future of Blogger is questionable in this regard.
Read also: How to Write an AdSense Friendly Article for Beginner Bloggers
What will happen from now on?
You will no longer be able to install the widget in newly created blog. The widget functionality will be deprecated and no automated email will be sent to your subscribers anymore. Other than that, your blog should function normally, just as the usual.
What should you do?
If you have a lot of subscribers, I suggest you to download the email list from Feedburner. That way, you can continue sending your subscribers notification by different method. You can download the list anytime. You should also remove your FollowbyEmail widget from your blog to avoid confusion.
For Blogger template designers, this update means that they will have to
remove email subscription from themes. It is imperative to remove deprecated
features so that the performance of the theme is not compromised.
Is there free alternative for Feedburner subscription service?
Currently, I am still finding the best free alternative to get around this
situation. Blogger itself has stated that there is no immediate built-in
replacement for this gadget. It is unfortunate.
Blogger's Follower Widget - Is it a good alternative of FollowbyMail
widget?
If you go to your Blogger dashboard, you will notice a section called Reading List. It provides you with list of new updates coming from blogs that you follow. You are also provided with widget called Followers.
The Followers widget will display the list of your blog's followers and allow other bloggers to follow your blog. You can check my sidebar at the homepage to see this particular widget in action.
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The Follower gadget. |
Unfortunately, Follower widget can only be used by other people who also use Blogger. The followed blog is only displayed on the Reading List inside Blogger's dashboard. It means that, visitors who do not have Blogger account may not be able to follow your blog.
Therefore, Follower widget is not an alternative of FollowbyMail. You will need a feature that allows regular users to receive notification. Nevertheless, Follower widget is still worth installing, in case most of your visitors are also Blogger users.
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