Few people LOVE email marketing – either sending or receiving it. However it remains one of the most efficient ways for either an individual or organisation to scale up their communications.
Done well, it can offer a way to keep an interested audience up to date with your events, products and services. Especially with community management, it gives an “opt in” way for those who want to stay in touch, and they can unsubscribe at any time. In this way, you can also remain GDPR compliant with less room for human error, as an enewsletter/email marketing platform can easily track actions & preferences.
Nine years ago, in 2015, I did a comparison of various email marketing platforms, which you can read in my blog post here:
2015 Zestee List of Email Software
Back then, I decided on MailChimp & Mad Mimi.
However I now need to look into this again. So below are my 2024 notes of my analysis email marketing tools for Zestee and the various communities I’m involved in. This is a summary of many hours of research and testing, so am sharing it here to perhaps save YOU some time.
Mail Chimp
Probably the largest and most popular email marketing platform, this is the tool we use for the weekly Weekend Specials email for TheHagueOnline where I am editor.
I don’t love the interface though of MailChimp, and over the years I’ve found it has become increasingly complicated. Perhaps I simply need to dedicate some more time to (re)learning it, but hope to find a more simple option. It’s also become quite expensive for a small business. It offers a lot of features we just don’t need. So I’d like to explore other options to decide whether to stay with MailChimp, or perhaps switch.
Mad Mimi
I used this for many years and very much appreciated the simple design, ease of use, and reasonable price. For my Dutch Australian audience, I set up an RSS feed, where once a month, subscribers automatically received any new posts on my WordPress website: www.dutchaustralian.com
In the past, for my Zestee Social Media School, I used Mad Mimi set up with a drip feed of lessons, so no matter when a user started the course, they would get daily or weekly lessons delivered.
As an early Mad Mimi user and supporter, I was also fortunate to have had several “grandfathered” accounts – where I was able to use what became paid accounts for free (as this level was free when I first signed up).
However from the end of this month (August 2024), Mad Mimi is sadly discontinued. It’s been taken over by GoDaddy….
Go Daddy
I’ve looked at their options – however already decided not to use them. The main hurdle is that though an American company, they operate worldwide. However as I’m based in The Netherlands, the system automatically keeps throwing me to the Dutch site – in Dutch. There is no option for me to switch this to English. Unless I select for example the UK or Australian region – but in past experience this can be problematic.
Thus, a hunt for other email marketing options. I’ve also used SendFox and heard of MailerLite. Before I invest my time and energy in deciding which to focus on for the future, I’m doing some further research – and sharing it here with this article for others who may be doing the same.
SendFox
In previous years as the chairperson for the DelftMaMa community, I needed a way to update parents on upcoming playgroups, without spending a huge amount of time on this. I found the free version of SendFox met our needs well. There is an opportunity to have a landing page to sign up, and it was simple for me and other members of the team to create weekly updates.
SendFox is created by AppSumo, a fabulous platform promoting various software that is usually in developmental phase. This can mean it doesn’t always work 100% smoothly, but in my experience, the actual AppSumo tools like SendFox (and another I use – TidyCal) work just fine – and if there are any issues, they are fixed quickly. Another advantage to being an early adopter of tools is that often you’re onboard for future updates (like I was above with MadMimi).
What I like most about SendFox, apart from the simplicity, is that it’s free to use for small audiences – so it’s great for community groups. The pricing model also offers a one-off upgrade fee. Below is a screenshot of the current pricing.
What I don’t like is the limited options for “pretty” emails and templates…but this could be also as I haven’t spent enough time playing with it yet.
Which email marketing platform is best?
Beyond the tech tools above which I have already used, this video came up early in my general search and was hugely helpful. Highly recommend a watch.
Melissa gives an excellent analysis and overview of several tools. You can visit her website for a handy comparison document: https://witandwire.com/download-email-marketing-toolkit/
Which, of course, includes you subscribing to her enewsletter – but you can always opt out!
Here is another great blog post comparison of 17 different tools:
https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/email-marketing-services/
They also summarise this in a video:
Now back to my own personal tech tools analysis…
MailerLite
This has been on my list to check out for a while. Below is the current pricing. I appreciate when software offer a free option for small audiences, so I can try it for a while and see if it suits my needs before possibly upgrading as my community grows.
(Convert)Kit
Had not heard of this until watching the video above, but looks like a great option. I am trying it out on the free version. It’s currently called ConvertKit – but next month will rebrand to just “Kit”.
The screenshot below shows their current pricing (August 2024):
Beehiiv
Another recommendation from the video above that I’ve taken a quick look at, and plan to come back and explore more soon. They also offer a free starter (launch) option.
Mailjet
One of the few European companies I found…based in Paris. Curious to check this out soon.
Another based in Paris is https://www.brevo.com but as they use a per day send on the free account, it doesn’t really work for me. Oh – and I’ve just seen that Mailjet does the same on the free account – though you can have 6000 emails a month, but a max of 200 a day. So it’s a no for now as I’d like to use it to send to a mailing list about once a month to around 400 people.
Others
Some others I considered briefly but decided not to use, mainly as they are either too complicated or expensive for my current needs. They may suit other (larger) organisations though, and I may end up coming back to them later.
- Hubspot
- AWeber
- Bento
Conclusion – which will I use?
I’m going to try a mix:
- MailChimp : continue for now for The Hague Online newsletter (while considering others)
- MailerLite: Plan to try for my Dutch Australian audience – need to see if they do RSS feed
- SendFox: as a quick, easy option to gather GDPR compliant lists for various communities
- ConvertKit: so far I like this for my main Zestee account, possibly with drip feed elessons.
Yes – it’s a lot, but I think each is suitable for different purposes for the communities I’m currently managing and building.
Experimenting with a few also gives me a chance to make better future decisions for myself and communication clients.
Which enewsletter do you currently use? Or are you considering starting one? Feel free to comment below or contact me.
Renee
Zestee 