A great email marketing automation tool

I use the SendinBlue free plan that allows me to send 9000 emails monthly. I rely on SendinBlue solely for their automation feature (PS: It's still in Beta). It's rare to find a free email marketing service that offers automation which was the reason why I signed up for SendinBlue. I still use MailChimp but I'm starting to find myself using it less than I did before SendinBlue. I used the automation to create a free 5-day email course. The path was simple: Visitor fill form on my website added automatically to a list wait two minutes send welcome email + course brief wait five minutes send day 1 of email course wait 23 hrs send day 2 wait 22 hrs send day 3 (etc...) It was simple to do, all I had to do was create the templates for each email and select them when creating the workflow and tada my course was good to go. I had to validate my account by answering a few questions such as where I got/will get the emails on my mailing list from. Once I sent them a link to the sidebar and fly-in widget on my website for the email course, to prove that I wasn't spamming anyone or buying lists, my account was validated. I wasn't happy that SendinBlue doesnt have a direct integration on Facebook, to include a tab for getting fans to subscribe, so i contacted them on facebook and they replied with a solution.

Pros

To me the pros are: Free 9000 monthly email send Amazing email automation for email courses etc. Fast and helpful customer support Responsive email template: I tested the emails on my PC, tablet, kindle tablet and phone and it looked great.

Cons

After I created my email course I received no notification to let me know if someone had signed up to my course or if they had completed the course. I contacted customer support and was told that they didn't have such option on their platform yet so I'll have to manually track my subscriber activities through the contacts section and automation log.

I wish the signup form were as fluid and fully customizable as MailChimp's especially the ability to use an image as the header of a signup form.

Excellent Email Marketing Tool

I think SendInBlue is an excellent tool for use in Email-Marketing. Its very user friendly and it has all the important features you need to do a good job in managing the newsletters. But for me, the most important point is the Customer Support: is AMAZING! They really do an effort to help you in all you ask. If you have to choose an Email marketing tool, SendInBlue is the one to choose!

Pros

The Costumer Support

Cons

You cannot send a text explaining something, in the email test.

I would like to relay on you!

For me and my company the high availability is very important. Generally our experience is good with you guys, you offer great products, but sometimes we have to get in contact with you to solve some connection issues or deley problems. Getting in touch is also quite difficult, you don't offer any emergency phone number to contact you in some emergency cases, email respones are slow. We had situation that we had to switch to Google mail for our transational emails, but that was few months ago. Since few months everything works fine and we are happy to use Sendinblue. Keep doing what you are doing!

Pros

- transactional emails
- sending campaigns

Cons

- sms is too expensive (at least for Poland)

Buggy HTML compose interface and lack of support for mobile left us wanting

First, great ability to manage multiple lists, and focuses attention on the acquisition of emails without manual entry. Much better pricing than other software depending on your sending habits. Second, Oftentimes I would have to "save as draft" and go back and edit or duplicate from an existing email because the HTML editing interface would crash. Combined with the inability to do anything from mobile meant it was hard to get out important announcements about events and other happenings on short notice. Maybe not really its strong suite, so still giving 4 stars for overall excellence.

Pros

Pricing, very competitive
Beautiful, well integrated with email acquisition

Cons

Buggy editing window often required lots of page refreshes/work arounds

Good choice when Mailchimp became too expensive for your size

We grew a lot on Mailchimp and it became too expensive for us. We found Sendinblue and it worked well enough for our needs. It has a functional campaign editor that is a bit glitchy and not as polished. But usable enough! Their API (we use the Ruby gem) is simpler to use than Mailchimp with on feature clearly lacking: we cannot register our subscribers server-side AND send an opt-in.

Pros

It's cheaper than Mailchimp for our list size.

Cons

The campaign editor is glitchy. I addressed the issue but the devs had other priorities than details (understandably).
The API doesnt support server-side double-op-in subscriber registration, but is overall easier than Mailchimp's.

Excellent Bulk Mail Provider

Send in Blue are excellent bulk email providers, combining common sense with high standards and the sort of value for money that to my knowledge is not available in the industry with any other organisation even approaching this level of quality and service. I must admit I was surprised that they don't offer an im support service, which is pretty common in the industry, but they do respond pretty quickly on email. I did also tell them that I feel they should let new clients know more about their procedures, since I was horrified that my first send hung at 500, having used previous providers where sends just hung and didn't get any further due to technical problems with their systems. It wasn't a problem in this case. They have a standard procedure of halting the send at 500 to check the stats are OK before completing the send. But I did suggest they should tell people that! However it's an assurance that the company is ensuring the continued quality and credibility of its system, which is important for all its clients. And I do believe they are a listening company, so hopefully they will tell new clients more about their procedures. These are hardly major issues though. This is an excellent service and would be difficult to better at any price, and certainly at the prices being charged by Send in Blue.

Marketing + Transactiona..I couldnt ask for more

Using mainly WordPress its vital to have a good transactional mail service provider(we can't rely on WordPress solely for mail sending). With Sendindblue i just make sure all my contact forms messages are sent and received..with a good reporting too at Sendinblue side. Adding to the fact that it also provides great email marketing features, it's awesome that i can manage both within the same platform

Pros

The drag and drop is very intuitive and easy to use. It also has all the features i need to design a good campaign. Automation tools work great and are created in minutes.
The transactional email service is the main reason that made me adopt Sendinblue over other platforms. It's a 2-in-1 that i really needed.
Support is fast and effective.

Cons

There is nothing that i dislike in this platform.

An excellent low cost alternative to Mailchimp!

We took up Send in Blue after working with Mailchimp for about three years. We had no issues with Mailchimp aside from the cost and the fact that it wasn't based in the EU, which after Safe Harbour was abolished and due to Mailchimp being base in the US, made it a service which breached Data Protection guidelines for Academic Institutions. SendinBlue offers most of the features offered by Mailchimp, and its automation feature in some ways is superior to Mailchimp's. The only issues we came across were to do with the Email design interface - ok, but not quite as polished as Mailchimp's. Also, the Transactional Email API, although good and less expensive than Mandrill, wouldn't work with our in-house CRM (more a limitation of the CRM than SendinBlue, but still an issue). It's that limitation which prevented me from giving SiB 5 stars. Overall, and despite those minor gripes, SendinBlue is an excellent service that I have no problem in recommending to others.

Pros

Good interface, no limit on the number of email addresses - a good alternative to Mailchimp's subscriptions-based pricing.

Cons

The Email designer interface isn't quite as easy to use as Mailchimp's, but it's not a terrible interface by any means.