I was so focused on deliverability with Mailchimp that I didn’t realize (until I just checked) that I’ve been paying for 2,000 unsubscribers. I had assumed I wasn’t. Deleting them would have moved me down a tier. Strongly considering MailerLite now.
Presumably it would also have lost your record of the fact that they'd already asked to not get your email. So you'd have added them back to the spam list if they ever dealt with you again, so they'd have to unsubscribe again.
Spam has gotten so normalized that not only are people not even pretending to get opt-ins, but they don't see why they should have to pay any real attention to opt-outs.
Yes, you are a spammer, and so are most of the businesses on the Internet at this point.
After trying a few also we ended up with EmailOctopus because of simplicity (we only send plain text emails) and cost. The trick was using their Connect [1] plans so it could send via our AWS account, which is cheaper (we pay $30/mo for the 10,0000 subscriber plan).
I also tried Loops and wanted to love it since they're perfect for SaaS companies, but back when I tried them we just got a ton of spam subscribers since they didn't have any built-in mitigation, so our list (and cost) grew.
But that was in their very early days, so I assume they've resolved it by now and I'd like to try them again at some point since they're much more modern and purpose-built for SaaS (and a YC company).
[1] https://help.emailoctopus.com/article/161-what-is-emailoctop...
What about email deliverability?
Deliverability refers to the percentage of emails you send that actually make it into your contacts' inboxes.
The tool you choose can impact deliverability. However, it’s a complex topic, and I won’t dive into the details here. If this is something you’re concerned about, there are experts far more knowledgeable than me who can explain it thoroughly.
This ought to be disclaimed at the top instead of the end.
… unless you’re a spammer haha.
Deliverability is the single most important thing to reach individuals in the first place, even more critical to maintain the transactional or workflow email relationship.
Anthropic right now has an issue where their "passwordless" emails go to junk for M365 customers (85% of SMBs in U.S.), people literally can't use the service since the email isn't delivered to the inbox.
To your point, in a past gig helping thousands of businesses with turning contacts into not just buyers but fans, I discovered mass marketers don't really care about deliverability at the level of "every single communication must land with every person".
At the same time, I learned customers you want to build a relationship with very much do care. Ever since, when evaluating these, I start there, even before price. How many communications, transactions, or workflows with a future buyer with intent are you willing to fail to connect?
"You had one job" means the primary, not only, dimension. Yes, the primary job of a mailer is for the mail to get there.
I agree there's lots more to look for as well!
These mailers all have different levels of trust and deliverability stats. It's critical to know.
You are of course correct that neither GMail nor Microsoft 365 or Hotmail or whatever they call it this week is suitable for any serious use.
First month, we were debited 3500EU for opted-out profiles that they had auto-pulled, against the consent of customers and us.
Even with the CEO looped in on emails, we had to threaten chargebacks before they refunded.
They also refused to remove data under our official GDPR request.
(I originally considered it “not automated” because it wasn’t on by default but that’s a bit harsh in hindsight. )
I tried different cards, addresses, even a VPN. Nothing works. After googling a bit I found on Reddit that this is very common. I don't thinks their investors are happy with them not accepting customers.
Emphasizing this. Validation emails sent to Microsoft hosted email are at high risk of never arriving.
For at least 2 years I've seen this on MS's free, paid and enterprise/hosted services. The issue is per validator; mails all arrive or none ever will. Generally I'll try again months later and find that service is still blocked.
It's commonly known and used in the agency and marketing world. Search for "go high level" on YouTube. Every marketer I know switched from ClickFunnels (reviewed in article) to High Level. It uses Mailgun on the backend for email delivery or can connect directly to SMTP.
If you need a CRM with AI features, calendars, newsletters, funnels, etc. then High Level is worth considering. I've been using it for a couple years and love it. For startups, it's a cheaper alternative to HubSpot.
For additional context, I've switched all my businesses and clients out of Mailchimp and Klaviyo to High Level.
Never had any issues with deliverability or receiving and been using it for years in a business context.
Affiliate-driven reviews introduce a major bias into the author's opinion, as they have incentive to speak more positively about platforms that are likely to pay the most.
And email marketing platforms pay a lot in affiliate fees. Just scanning some of the recommendations, if someone signs up for MailerLite through this reviewer's link, they'll pay the reviewer 30% of that subscriber's fees forever.[0] I wouldn't be surprised if the reviewer's top pick is coincidentally the platform with the highest-paying affiliate program.
The thing that really woke me up to affiliate-influenced reviews was the 2017 article, "The War To Sell You A Mattress Is An Internet Nightmare."[1] The reporter figured out that top YouTube mattress reviewers just gave positive reviews to whichever company paid the most in affiliate fees, and when one company lowered their fees, the reviewers retroactively downranked them for contrived reasons.
[0] https://www.mailerlite.com/affiliate
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...
That being said: besides running a startup (Atlist.com) I also run an affiliate site (it’s how we funded Atlist) and I would agree there is good reason to read affiliate websites skeptically. I regularly receive offers from website builders to “buy” the top spot in my best website builder roundup. https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/best-website-builder
Even for smaller shops, would recommend checking out some of the big players (eg Adobe, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Eloqua, Twilio, etc) as they have entry level lower tiers that may end up costing less over time than some of these startup focused solutions (which all seem to nickel and dime you and hit you up with various types of overage charges), and will get you much higher deliverability, automation, and integration capabilities.
Going to get downvoted for this - but I don’t know how spam is just considered OK and normal. We’re all bombarded with garbage every day. Managing my inbox is more annoying than ever. Just stop it already.
With bigger and more expensive email providers like Mailchimp, you're ultimately paying for higher deliverability.
For startups just getting going with waiting list signups and newsletters, there are a few basic rules to staying out of the spam folder and Promotions tab.
1. Make sure SPF, DKIM and DMARC are setup properly
2. Always "warm up" a new domain and outbound email address
Double opt-in where people have to either reply (highest signal) or click to confirm their email address tremendously helps warm up email. It's also important to slowly ramp up send volume over a few weeks or months and then keep send volume relatively consistent.
3. Consider using a warm up service that auto sends to and replies from an existing pool of recipient email addresses. It can help land your emails in the Primary inbox.
4. Watch out for shared IP addresses that end up on blacklists. If newsletters and emails are important to your biz growth, it's worth getting a dedicated IP address. Just be sure to warm it up properly.
5. Watch out for spam trigger words. Crypto, supplements, etc. It's an ever evolving list of words and phrases that bump up spam scores. Tools like https://www.mail-tester.com/ are useful for checking email config and spam scores.
So they support a bunch of things, but personally I would not use it for anything except simple marketing campaigns. We do use it for that, but someone had the idea of having all customer emails go through it, and I don't really like it.
Anyways, I'm surprised to not see them mentioned or considered at all. Did they fly under the radar or do I just have the wrong impression of them?
- Customer.io
- Iterable
- Braze
- Marketo
- Salesforce Marketing Cloud
I am building an Open Source email marketing platform (https://www.keila.io) and our current pricing model only considers the amount of emails you send, not the number of contacts/subscribers.
I've been thinking about switching to charging per contacts instead – and I probably wouldn't have considered not including unsubscribed contacts if they're still stored on the platform. But now I will, thanks!
What would you compare the tools on? Be specific
The article is just “why we chose breva” and is very specific to you. As far as I can tell you didnt even use half of the offerings since they were ruled out purely due to pricing models.
EDIT: just an example. If I wanted to know about sendgrid and how it compares, the only information this page gives me is “it has an overage charge”. How am I supposed to consume this article as an informative comparison?
You didn’t even read the article!
I've been using Postmark for hobby projects for the past three years, and I've been happy with them, but my needs are super minimal - just sending out <100 emails per month programmatically where latency doesn't matter.
The moment I say "double opt in", marketing will decide I lack the skills to be involved in mail and deliverability will be placed in the hands of someone with a graphics design background that has never heard of dns.
I've seen it in every single place I've tried to help marketing campaigns for over 20 years.
"5. Scammy Email Tactics Then there’s their sneaky signup process. When creating an account, there’s a checkbox that reads: “By NOT checking this box, I agree to receive promotional emails.""
For those using HighLevel, they're usually saving up to use HubSpot for their clients as an agency or freelance marketer - as I did. HighLevel is just a budgetary HubSpot.
Btw you look like Finnish actor Pekka Strang.
As much as people hated the display advertising common on the old internet, I'd actually argue this is far worse.
Instead of clear delineation between what's an ad and what's content, combining the two together just creates even more sinister incentives. Even the most good-hearted, honest and trustworthy "creators" can't escape those incentives over time. I've seen so many of my favorite creators head down that path I just expect it at this point.
Even the formerly trustworthy Wirecutter has lost its reliability post-NYT acquisition, clearly favoring products that offer affiliate payouts.
https://playbooks.hypergrowthpartners.com/p/picking-your-lif...
I wrote this up about a year ago for a more comprehensive perspective for companies series A+
Back then they were rather convenient and we didn't have any problems with tainted IP addresses, not sure if their new rather villainous owner has changed the Postmark business. I kind of expect them to pull IP addresses in through the email sending business to build reputation and then promote them to the ad delivery business.
It's like you gave 1000 monkeys access to stack overflow with two buttons - one to copy and one to paste, then you trained an LLM on the garbage they produce, and then you asked the same monkeys to write a prompt for the LLM to write an email campaign manager...
Seriously Sendy is without a doubt the worst piece of software I've ever had the displeasure of reading the source code, ever. It makes Wordpress look like a well architected marvel of software engineering.
Sendy takes the hyperbole about junior developers copy and pasting code they don't understand to whole new levels.
Are these websites doing something other than a pretty UI for AWS SES for non technical folks?
I know it's in widespread use through the online marketing sphere, but I really dislike that phrase.
If I give you an email address, until it has been confirmed - by means of you sending me an email which I have to confirm I've received by whatever means - it's not "opted-in" by any sane definition.
That’s not even true! Loops is in “the best” and if doesnt have an affiliate link.
All “the rest” have affiliate programs too… I was just lazy to sign up for them.
Not everything is a conspiracy. The reality in this case is more mundane.
That’s not even true! Loops is in “the best” and if doesnt have an affiliate link.
All “the rest” have affiliate programs too… I was just lazy to sign up for them.
Not everything is a conspiracy. The reality in this case is more mundane.
And it’s not as simple as cross-checking their public affiliate offers because these types of companies are always offering higher, private payouts (in exchange for editorial control).
Does the content of my article seem dishonest?
I agree affiliate content should be read skeptically but you also have to be realistic: why would anyone go to all this work if not for some financial incentive?
Especially when you underscore the incentive issues with your closing question: if the only reason you can imagine going to the effort of a substantial review is financial incentive, that in itself is a pretty good criticism.
Your evaluation criteria was downright silly (1), you didn’t actually try most of these tools, and your “top pick” has the highest affiliate payout (and longest affiliate window) on the list.
In fact, I have no idea how this article hasn’t been flagged since low quality affiliate listicles generally don’t make the front page here.
(1) Strict pricing models and not supporting web fonts like Inter are features, not bugs. Cheap platforms have crap quality shared IPs and 70%+ of inboxes (including most Gmail/outlook clients) don’t support web fonts at all. You’re designing something nobody will see correctly: https://www.caniemail.com/features/css-at-font-face/
People die for altruistic causes. I don't think its unheard of for people to run websites for fun or fame.
Email is expensive on purpose to incent customers into following good practices. Otherwise you attract all the worst customers (“let’s email everybody who’s ever interacted with us for a decade, regardless of if they want our emails!”). Then Gmail starts putting all emails sent on the cheap platforms IPs to spam by default.
Based on your practices, it sounds like these pricing models are doing their job of correctly scaring you away.
- An API to sign up to the list - A welcome email automation
That’s all. And I pay like $700 annually for that. When they sent me an email the other day of all of the features my plan has - none (not one!) applied to what I actually use it for! I don’t need ecom functions, a website builder, AI, none of that. I’m frustrated that there doesn’t seem to be a product for me.
The degree to which your emails actually reach people’s inbox is the most important thing BY FAR and there is considerable variability between platforms on this metric.
I also find Mailchimp’s pricing and dark patterns extremely frustrating but it also has the best deliverability of any platform I have tried by a mile, which can’t just be hand-waved away.
This post seems less about “trying every email marketing tool” to actually just being about “what’s the cheapest tool”.
When we wanted to improve our marketing automation, I decided to try Klaviyo because many people online recommended it. I spent around 500 euros and 3-4 days to integrate it with my custom ecommerce platform. After sending 2 campaigns, the open rate dropped to 15%. Later I discovered Klaviyo put us on a shared IP with not-so-good senders, so my emails were going to spam folder.
This made me think - how difficult would it be to build some of Klaviyo's features myself? Especially because I was already collecting customer behavior data like item views and checkout steps.
I spent 5 days building a custom solution with:
- Simple drag-and-drop email builder - Dynamic coupon generation with dynamic criterias - Template variables - SQL-based segmentation (<-- priceless!) - Automated flows (abandoned carts, welcome series, etc..) -SMS integration
I connected everything to Postmark and used their webhooks for analytics (opens, clicks, spam). Now I have a good in-house email marketing system that costs only $20 per month on Postmark, and my open rates are back to normal, as the profits too.
Sometimes the "simple" (hah) solution is the best one.
I don’t want an email marking tool that:
• Charged overage fees • Uses dark patterns to charge me more
I’m suggesting a more productive argument would criticize the substance of my article — not my incentives.
Should we police the bandwidth of every founder?
Ohhhh and on this step we eliminated all the companies that don't have an affiliate program.. hmm but we'll say it's because they don't have feature x....
The listicle tried to paint every other company making money as a scourge and the op as the only good guy trying to find the best deal for users when ophas the most corrupt incentives since those incentives are not even documented in a bloody helpdesk article somewhere.
I tried every gym in the world, but I can only pick those in my local area due to location concerns. So of the six gyms in my area...
I ran away from Mailchimp more than 5 years ago when they started with their shenanigans and arrived at the same conclusion: Mailerlite is great. I used to have lots of respect for Mailchimp for being a bootstrapped business and never taking investor money but once they sold their soul, it was game over. One thing the article doesn't mention is the fact that Mailchimp has been moving from an email marketing SaaS to a marketing platform SaaS. From a quick glance at their services, they now offer a website builder, a CRM, ads retargeting, social media integrations---and as a customer, you end up paying for every single feature, regardless of if you want it or not.
You want engaged customers/contacts. The right message to the right customer at the right time to sell whatever you are selling. The worse you do this, the worse the delivery reputation, the less you land in the inbox.
These other decision makers know they don't personally want nor respond to spam. They have to realize that their customers feel the same.
In my honest opinion, it really does not matter which one you use. Aside from the feature and price differences, I consider them to be small details.
What you want to focus on is providing valuable education in each email, and being consistent. An Educational Email Course is a great example of this.
One is a good person. One is a bad person.
BOTH people are distorted by the wrong incentives.
It is NOT a question of being pedantic. They're literally not criticizing you when they criticize your incentives. I think this critique is from a board with relatively high percentage of systems-type thinkers.
I think we will be all happy with just that.
And, it’s the law im Canada: https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/deceptive-marketing-pra...
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OP does disclose this more clearly than 95% of other sites, most of whom omit the notice entirely or bury it after the article content.
I think arguments by people making these choices would be very educational to me (as a person with a bit of a scatterd brain).
Sneaky, I almost trusted this til I reached the comments that this just another pretty looking affiliate spam
We recommend software products too but don't hide behind euphemisms and hide our commissions.
- A company I worked for wanted to be 100% focused on doing one thing. It was spending 10x more than it was making revenue. It went bankrupt.
- Another company I worked for always insisted on not having all eggs in one basket. There was one big revenue maker that dwarfed the others though. The company is still around and doing well.
I have quite a scattered brain too so I get the appeal of "choosing to focus". But looking others do it I see the risks : refusing to experiment and learn new stuff, or find new opportunities.
EDIT: I'd like to add that focusing or not focusing is not a useful dichotomy, it's more about finding the right "exploration vs exploitation" balance.
Gmail's algorithm has really tightened up this year. Open your spam folder right now and you'll probably see more than a few legit businesses in there.
Basically if your engagement (opens, clicks, unsubscribes, complaints, etc as a percentage of total sends) is poor enough, Gmail will dump you in spam by default. They don't just "trust" that you have permission to email the people you're emailing. So many businesses abuse this, and they're incentivized to keep your inbox clean so you keep visiting your inbox (and click those Gmail ads!).
If you're getting low/declining engagement over time the algo just assumes you have poor sending practices, which to be honest, if that's happening, you probably do.
So the word deliverability includes making it past spam filters?
Then your domain reputation will be good because Gmail/outlook’s algo will see good numbers coming from your domain. Then the only thing you have to worry about is your IP rep (which comes from the platform you’re using — basically “are you sending from a platform that has high standards for customers and zealously guards their IPs”).
You can spend $thousands on consultants and what they’ll tell you will basically just boil down to that.
If not, then you also would not put in a bunch of work on anything simply for fun or fame