I tried every email marketing tool. Here's the BEST

so I need new email marketing software I used MailChimp for years but I'm done with them done so to find a replacement I'm doing a deep dive on the top 26 email marketing tools on this journey I'll navigate unhelpful chat Bots strain my eyes reading fine print build a massive comparison spreadsheet and of course send actual emails using the tool so strap in things are going to get wild I use email marketing for Atlas a software company I started with my friend Carl but even though we're a software company our email marketing needs are not

super unique they're similar to what most businesses need we use email marketing for automations and newsletters automations is just basically a fancy word for saying we send email based on a trigger in our case when a user signs up for a 14-day free trial they get a few automated emails day one they get a welcome email day 13 they get a reminder that their free trial is almost done and day 15 they get a notification that their trial is complete we also send an email newsletter when we release a new feature though we don't send

these emails to everybody just to people who click this box during sign up and that's it that's all we do a few automations and an occasional newsletter it's not complicated and like many people for a long time we used MailChimp for this MailChimp is easily the biggest email marketing tool estimates have them at 64% of the Market while other email marketing tools make up just 36% but that doesn't mean they're the best and right now I'm canceling mail jimp so how did this happen what turned me off of mil jimp in the last 2 years

they've increased my price three times so it's gotten more expensive and I'm not the first person to point this out lots of people are complaining about this but it was more than that because there was also the Shady billing practices and to explain that let's rewind back to when I first signed up to MailChimp 2011 back then if you clicked over to the pricing page you'd see MailChimp charged per subscriber as you got more subscribers your price went up but fast forward to 2019 the mail jimp makes a big change instead of subscribers they start

charging you per contact contact that's a slippery weasy word because if we read MailChimp support docs we see that they count subscribers as contacts but also unsubscribers and even nonsubscribers so under the old pricing you just paid for subscribers but under the new you also paid for unsubscribers and nonsubscribers but wait it gets Dumber you see MailChimp charges you based on tiers of contacts so let's say you have 1,300 contacts well you'll want this tier but let's say next month your list grows to 1,800 contacts but mimp doesn't automatically move you up a tier if

you grow instead you incur overage charges so next month you have to guess at what chair you might grow to and if you underestimate and go [Music] over yeah there's overage charges so to recap price increases counting unsubscribers as contacts and overage charges it all just got me mad and I started noticing all kinds of crazy things about MailChimp for example they constantly claim that they have award-winning customer support they won the awards from this award show called The stevies the stevies was started to restore public confidence after the Enron Scandal and guess what up

to 40% of entries win so award winning is a bit of a stretch then I noticed this sneak check boox when you sign up to MailChimp by not checking the checkbox you agree to be opted into their promotion emails what finally MailChimp is owned by Intuit and Inuit famously lobbied the US government to stop Americans from filing their taxes for free which is frankly straight up evil so long story short I'm done with MailChimp so now that MailChimp is cancelled let's dive into research I started by making a list of the top email marketing tools

as I researched these tools I realized almost all of them used the same pricing model as MailChimp you pay based on tiers of contacts and this worried me MailChimp had kind of screwed me on these tiers would other companies do the same so the first thing I did was got rid of any companies that counted unsubscribers as a contact I hated that mil chimp did that and I didn't want it again thankfully only three companies did this mail Moto drip and aweber and by the way here's a tip never trust pricing Pages like aweber literally

says on their pricing page you're charged per subscriber but if you go to the help docs this is where aweber says they count unsubscribers toward your total count of subscribers which is just dishonest right I mean the prefix un literally means to make something the opposite so how can an unsubscriber be a subscriber I don't know anyways onwards next I got rid of any companies who had overage charges I don't like overage charges I don't have to think about avoiding them I'm trying to run a business here and I found a number of companies with

hidden overage charges Constant Contact get response mail jet send grid a benchmark you're all out I'm not saying you're bad companies I'd just be much happier if you gave me the full cost up front finally I wanted to know that if my contact list grew that I would automatically move up a tier makes sense right but even more importantly what if I deleted a bunch of contacts and my list got smaller would I automatically go down a tier well unfortunately not for example on convert kits pricing page they say We'll automatically upgrade you to the

next level but if you search through the support docs you'll discover that they won't also automatically downgrade you to a previous level instead they make you contact support and it turns out a number of companies did this active campaign clavio HubSpot campaigner convert kit email octopus Zoho campaigns you're all out now is this a big deal yes in case it's not clear having to think about this is a burden I'm trying to run a business I don't want to have to stay on top of my email marketing software's billing and to me it's also just

dishonest if you're going to automatically increase my price you should automatically decrease it too but I couldn't help but Wonder was I being too hard on these companies did I expect too much from capitalism it was just companies like convertkit made me feel jaded like look at this video convert kit posted recently really establishing the company Mission to be we exist to help creators ear a living the shift for me was realizing it's not me taking Center Stage it's me sharing this Mission and being the the spotlight or the voice for this mission that we're

all doing together what are you talking about we exist to help creators earn a living how many convert kit creators right now are overpaying because they don't even realize they have to manually downgrade their tier obviously some because you put it in your support docs although conveniently buried at the bottom of the page and I mean I worried I was missing something obvious like maybe there's a technical reason that I'm missing so I asked one company campaigner why they'd make the upgrade automatic but not the downgrade here's what they said that's just the way things

work well no not at all cuz guess what the 10 remaining companies don't do that big shout out to these companies but I still wanted to reduce my list one more time so I calculated what I'd pay monthly for each company I got rid of anyone who cost more than $200 M chimp had been costing me over $500 a month so anything less than $200 seemed like a major Improvement so campaign monitor move send interc and omnisend it's just not going to work nothing personal I'm not against companies charging a high price but my needs

are pretty basic and there we have it my list was down to six I called them the elite 6 by this point I'd already done a lot of research so if you appreciate my work at all I have links to each email marketing tool in the video description almost all the links are affiliate links so if you want to try one of these tools click those links and you'll be supporting my work I hope it's clear I'm not some sponsored vlogger the tool I choose is the current tool we're using for Atlas and it's a

major pain to switch so I can guarantee you this is our choice for the long term anyway it's time to finally actually try the elite Z first up bravoo okay yeah that that music was a little much we're just testing software here and this is bravoo it has a nice interface not too cluttered and I was able to design my email just like I had in MailChimp and automations worked exactly as I needed it's worth pointing out that brebo offers more than just email marketing there's lots of additional products WhatsApp marketing SMS marketing live chat

and chat Bots and their pricing is unique because unlike most tools it's based on how many emails you send not how many contacts you have so solid interface lots of additional products and the monthly price for me came in at $95 really good brao is a thumbs up next up loops loops had a nice minimalist interface and like brao I could design my email how I wanted unfortunately their automations editor was just a little too simple for me it didn't do what we needed it to do so nice minimalist interface but automations were too simple

and at a monthly price of $199 Loops just wasn't going to be a fit for me next up was flowes flowes had a really minimalist interface Unfortunately they didn't have our font inter which is not exactly a deal breaker but it's something and like Loops their automations workflow was just a little too simple for us so minimalist interface but automations were too simple but here's the thing the price $35 a month that's crazy but there's a bit of an AS risk on Reddit people seem to be complaining that flesk disabled their account without notice so

flesk gets a shoulder shrug basically a yellow light I'm just not up for rolling the dice on this service but comment below if you try flowes next up was clickfunnels I found their email editor clunky and uh they didn't have our font but honestly more than anything the vibe was just kind of off I mean they offer a lot of features but I just need basic email marketing I don't need all this other stuff plus they required a credit card for the free trial which I don't love and they kept pushing these coaching sessions which

I mean I'm good it just didn't feel like the right fit and Reddit kind of confirmed my suspicions with some suggestions that it's basically a MLM scheme so I'm out at this point I started to get a bit worried brao was the only company that seemed like it might work for us so far and the next compy company I tried send pulse was also a pretty quick no the email editor was clunky and they had no web fonts and like I I don't want notifications overall I found their interface just kind of a mess with

too many things calling for my attention and at a monthly price of $151 I just I wasn't interested but fortunately things took a turn for the better with the next company mailer light I found the interface to be refreshingly clear and straightforward part of this is because mailer light is focused on email marketing none of the other stuff their automations were great and worked for my needs for example it even let me Mark a subscriber as unsubscribed or even delete a subscriber at the end of an automation other companies don't let you do this probably

because they charge based on contacts so I appreciate mail or light letting me do this and the email editor was solid had my font and I was able to design my usual email so easy to use strong automations and focused on email marketing The price came in at $143 and it was a thumbs up from me now before I tell you which tool I used I should mention email deliverability deliverability is what percentage of emails you send actually arrive in your contacts inbox and what tool you choose can have an impact on deliverability how much

of an impact hard to say and frankly something I'm not an expert in so if you're worried about that if you're thinking about that you'll probably want to seek somebody out other than me so at the end of the day there were a couple tools that I would recommend to friends brao loops and mailer light and maybe flowes my choice in the end was mailer light was a bit more expensive than bro but it has a really easy to ouse interface and that's really important to me and I like that it's mostly for email marketing

I think that leads to a focused product it's funny the name kind of threw me off at first like light sounds kind of like a light version of a tool not a full version then I read a bit more about their philosophy and it made a little more sense to me specifically keeping it light means clean and functional design I think that's what I was attracted to when I first used the tool but more than anything I'm just happy to have found an email marketing tool for Atlas that I'm hopeful will be a long-term fit

and I already mentioned this once but this video took a long time to Res search and film so if you appreciate the work there are affiliate links in the video description in any case a very happy goodbye to MailChimp and a hopeful hello to mailer light thanks for watching