Though it’s a little less newbie friendly, and it’s a little more of a hassle to set up automation unless you pay monthly, MailChimp is a great free alternative. You’ll only be able to make one type of form, or you’ll have to custom code it yourself.

I have a MailChimp account as well! There are many uses for these accounts.

How to set up an automatic process for new subscribers without paying monthly:

If you choose Aweber, you can set up an auto responder which will immediately send out an email after a new subscriber adds their email into your system. You can use this auto response email to send a download link for the free beat you’re offering.

However if you choose MailChimp due to budget issues, then you can still set up an automated process without paying monthly.

You do this by editing the sign up forms within MailChimp. You will see there is an option to change the landing page for when they have confirmed their subscription. This is advertised as the “thank you page”, and you can change it to a page on your website which has the free download as well as a headline on it.

This is an easy way of getting out of paying monthly if budget is an issue and you only have a small list. Though the capabilities of MailChimp, especially in terms of making web forms easily, are much lower than Aweber it’s still worth comparing.