New RSS Traffic Tool: RSS Feeds Submit

[Notice: After reading the article below please also read "RSS Feeds Submit Might Not Be What it Seems", published a day later, since it provides some new information on the product reviewed below.]

In terms of generating traffic, what good is an RSS feed if no one can find it, right?

Part of promoting your feeds and using them to generate traffic is of course submitting the feeds to appropriate search engines and directories, quite a tedious process if you're doing it by hand, given the large number of directories and engines out there.

Some time ago I reviewed RSS Submit, which makes this process easier by automatically and semi-automatically submitting your feeds to the most important directories and engines, making your job much easier.

While the guys behind RSS Submit have been doing a great job updating their software, they now have a new competitor, RSS Feed Submit. Yeah, difficult to differentiate between the two, given their almost identical names.

Anyway, both solutions are actually quite simillar, with only small differences between them. Esentially, which you decide for is going to depend on how much these small differences matter to you.

Let's compare the two solutions ...

a] Both tools are desktop software, which essentially submits your feeds to the appropriate places online. As such, both tools provide the same functionality.

b] RSS Submit will submit your feeds to 78 engines and directories, while RSS Feed Submit covers 75. Not much difference here, although it seems that RSS Submit might be doing a better job at keeping their tool updated (I've been using them since April and already received many updates that made the software easier to use and added new engines and directories).

c] Certain search engines and directories require more information than can be provided through a fully automatical submission process. RSS Submit tackles this problem by first asking you to fill-in a longer form and then automatically taking you to each of the manual submission sites, where it already pre-fills the forms and only asks you to confirm manually. RSS Feed Submit makes this even easier, first requesting that same information, but then doing all the work automatically. The only question in my mind is the quality of submissions and how they compare to eachother.

d] Ease of use is a strong factor, and RSS Submit takes the game here by allowing you to submit multiple feeds at the same time, save them in the management interface and track how many times you submitted each of them. RSS Feed Submit allows you to do one at a time.

e] As far as expanding the basic functionality of the tool, RSS Feed Submit is the clear winner, as it allows you to add new search engines and directories by yourself, even easily tackling those that would otherwise require a manual submission. A great user interface for adding new sites.

f] The final differentiating factor is the price, with RSS Submit starting at $44.95 for the Personal Edition, and RSS Feed Submit selling for $29.95.

As I said, which you decide for will depend on your preferences towards their small differences.

And they both provide a free trial version, so choosing your favorite shouldn't be that difficult.