MailPoet – Newsletters, Email Marketing, and Automation

Mailpoet is the best balance of ESSENTIAL free features, a simple experience, and really easy integration with Jetpack CRM and other tools. Everything a small business or freelancer could need. As a little guy, I can’t afford to pay for SAAS (on top of hosting and all my other costs) to send basic emails thru my own server (ie: DIY folks don’t need to use Mailpoet’s servers). Setup with SMTP plugins was a breeze; it just worked. (In my case I used FluentSMTP cause it was simple). I tested around half a dozen of the newsletter plugins. Most are kneecapped in tedious ways by paywalls, they limit how long your list can be, or other arbitrary limits that don’t really have any relation to how much you use the product. Many use pre-gutenberg page builders that are clunky or basic WYSIWYG & code editors. Mailpoet uses a page builder (which is very easy) but is moving in the direction of deep integration with the Block Editor in their alpha email editor. Anyone building block themes totally in FSE/Gutenberg will rejoice. MAILPOET TEAM: You’re doing everything right. Congrats and thank you from the little guy. Thank you for understanding the balance between not limiting DIY open-source culture VS your paying customers who need your servers and pay for what they use

Even the free version is great with reasonable and friendly limits!

I’m really enjoying MailPoet. I’ve used both Constant Contact and MailChimp, and while I don’t strongly dislike either one, my workflow is so much easier with MailPoet, since I can quickly and easily go between communication to my list and my website – I especially love that media items are shared with my website. The integration within WordPress feels pretty seamless to me. It was also pretty easy to set up and do my DNS edits with SiteGround (where I have my hosting). I had a really fun time setting up the custom web pages and automated subscription emails. This part was particularly enjoyable since it is all hosted on my website – and I really appreciated how easy it was to customize the automated process so that people who subscribe will receive a process that feels “on brand” for me. It was easy to create forms and add them to my website and I love that I only need one login and I don’t have to share out passwords with other people who are using it, since they access it with their Wordpress login. That’s a whole lot better than having a single login that everybody in the organization has to share and then dealing with “did you get the 6 digit code in your text?” And “Who is getting the verification code?” The design process is pretty straight forward and easy to learn and feels a bit less glitchy than some of the other providers I have used. Lastly, I had an account issue and reached out for support and heard back from the AI within seconds and I got a thorough and easily actionable response that was worded in every day English, and easy to understand and completely solved my issue. I realize that not every tool is good for every person, but as long as MailPoet keeps their pricing in a range that is within reach for normal people, this will be my new favorite plugin. On that particular note, I appreciate that they have a free version for up to 500 subscribers. That feels very realistic for me – that it gives me breathing room while I build my business, and then when my business hits a level that is sustainable, I will be happy to pay for an annual plan that doesn’t blow my budget (glaring pointedly at MailChimp and Constant Contact).

Sometimes even the most experienced website owners run into problems that seem insurmountable. When that happens it’s nice to know there are answers available. MailPoet answered my help ticket in a timely fashion with advice that worked and that’s what really counts in the end.

I have used MailChimp for years and before that Constant Contact. MailPoet is significantly cheaper than both of those, and may be a good fit for you that will save you money. But it is not at those level of professionalism as those services, so be careful before you switch. I am using it, and have canceled MailChimp, however it is frustrating to use and it is more limited. I want to tell you here some things you may not have thought of and which are hard to know until you use MailPoet for a while:1) The biggest difference is the support. MailPoet doesn’t really offer support. Technically you can email their team, but responses (yes for PAID accounts) can take many days and as is often the case with email support, it takes multiple emails to just get them to understand your issue correctly. You will not get same day support. You will not get support on weekends, period. And their support is not that great when they reply. In short: If you are confident in yourself and your IT abilities regarding email and learning new systems, have at it. But if you need hand holding, skip MailPoet. Just skip it. 2) They have a very frustrating onboarding AND upgrading policy. When you onboard, once you get everything set up and import your first “List” (also called “Audience” in other services) you will get a message that they have to review your list and account before you can send emails. This can take days. So know that once you get signed up, you will still need days before approval, and remember, nothing happens on weekends as well. Now you might say that is no big deal, but this also happens when you UPGRADE! They do not tell you this, but it is true. So let’s say you add some subscribers, say from an event you do on a Saturday, and it takes you over your current limit. You will need to upgrade to a higher tier. Normal stuff, all of these services price this way (for the most part). BUT, when you upgrade to a higher level MailPoet requires that you go through the approval again! We added new subscribers on a Saturday, had to upgrade. Guess what? After upgrading we were locked out of sending new emails until approved, so all weekend. We wanted to thank people THAT DAY, but had to wait until Tuesday. This kind of stuff is not really acceptable to professional organizations, especially as it is not documented when you upgrade, but honestly even if it was. Be prepared for these surprises AND that you will not be able to contact anyone and get them fixed. If you are used to real customer service, you will not get it here and you will be frustrated. If you can deal with it, you will save money. But if not, don’t switch. 3) Unprofessional and confounding quirks. There are numerous of these. Let me give you one example: You can not name your EMAILS (called CAMPAIGNS in MailChimp). Emails you send out are named by the SUBJECT of the email, you cannot give them a custom name. How is this a problem? Say you use segments to send nearly identical emails to 3 different groups. For example segment one is getting a coupon for 10% off, segment two 20% off and segment 3 for 30% off. So the email is exactly the same except for the text about the amount and the coupon code. In a “normal” service you might name these something like “Winter sale 10 off”, “Winter sale 20 off”, “Winter sale 30 off”. All with the same email subject “Big savings in this email. Time is limited, shop now!” and almost the same content. So when you look at your list of emails to send you will see your three versions. Well in MailPoet you cannot do that. You will have to modify the SUBJECT of each email so they are different and they will be listed by subject. This can really be annoying and difficult if you do a lot of segmentation with nearly identical emails. And frankly it makes no sense. There is no reason MailPoet cannot easily allow you to name your emails for internal reference. It’s just dumb. And there are numerous things like this that you will encounter where you will say to yourself “Wait, this cannot be right…. I must be able to do XYZ.” But no. Be prepared for this. 4) AI chatbot. Yes, everyone uses these annoying ChatBots for support and as gatekeepers to their support staff nowadays, and we all hate it. MailPoet takes it a step further though. Their ChatBot will give you literally incorrect information. It will tell you things that are completely wrong. It will say you can do things that cannot be done. It will give solutions that mention fields or flows that do not exist. It is not just unhelpful, it is incorrect. Of course you can use ChatGPT or GEMINI or whatever service to ask support questions instead, and I suggest you do. I use ChatGPT and it works very well on MailPoet questions. But stupefyingly MailPoet’s own support AI does not. Also, this may give you some idea of how poor the support experience is with MailPoet. Summary: If you can live without support, or very slow (days, perhaps weeks) support, OK. If you can deal with UI quirks that often make little sense. If you are ok doing workarounds in Segmentation or do not use segmentation. If you know what you are doing technically, at least fairly well. If you are either not spoiled by the support of more expensive services, or truly willing to live with substantially lower levels of support in exchange for substantially lower prices…… if all of this? Then “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it”. Or at least, you will save money. Also, if you use WordPress for your site, the integration as this is a WordPress plugin is very helpful and makes a number of workflows simpler and faster. I have not commented on this as it is well documented in their marketing, and in other comments etc. As I said at the beginning, I am sticking with MailPoet despite the annoyances. But know what you are getting into! Best of luck 🙂

Quick and efficientWhat else ☺