Simple Yet Effective Email Marketing, in Theory
Sendinblue sells itself as a platform with all of the essential digital marketing tools you could want. In theory, you can set up your email and even SMS marketing campaigns, automate a whole bunch of stuff, and then forget about it while you focus on actually filling orders and/or providing a service.
Well, it’s certainly hard to argue with that idea, but how well does it actually work? Can you set and forget your email campaigns? How well does Sendinblue help you manage your mailing list? How well does it keep spammers off its service, thereby making sure your emails get through to your customers?
I went undercover to determine all of that, and more, to find out if Sendinblue is right for you, Dear Reader. And well… I had a bit of trouble.
Full disclosure: This company is so determined to keep out spammers, I actually had trouble testing this service because, at first, I couldn’t get my account “verified”. I got that fixed, though, and I was able to complete this review like someone that approximates a true professional.
Email Campaigns, Templates, and Personalization
So, the actual number of emails you can send out will depend on the plan you’re paying for. There’s no limit on the size of your contact list, though. Just make sure your plan covers everyone who’s signed up for at least two-three emails a month, and you’re good to go.
That monthly limit can be anything from 10,000 emails to 1 million, with lots of room in between for variable pricing, depending on how many emails you’ll actually need to send.
If you really need to send more than 1 million emails in a month, you can contact Sendinblue about its enterprise plans, but I wouldn’t. Any business that really needs to send emails on that scale might as well have their own servers, and a self-hosted mailing platform,
You can also simultaneously publish your campaigns via SMS. If you think your customers absolutely must see your latest deals in their text messages, this is the option for you. (Personally, I’m not a fan of getting these messages, but it depends on your customers.)
You can also share any email campaign via social media. However, I did not see a way to share the campaign at the same time as you send it out to your mailing list. You have to manually find a campaign you already sent, click through a menu, and then share it via social media. Frankly, that’s an extra step that shouldn’t be necessary.
But now the question is: how will your emails actually look? Can you make them fit your brand and style guide, if you have one? The answers to those questions are “not bad” and “probably yes,” respectively.
You can choose from one of three ways to create an email campaign:
- The drag-and-drop editor – This allows you to put text and images in a simple visual layout, and what you see is what the reader sees.
- The rich text editor – It’s like Word, but a lot simpler. This is probably better for those text-heavy newsletters.
- Custom code – You can make your own HTML email template, or have one made for you, and import it to Sendinblue. This option provides the most creative control, but is also the most complicated way of doing things.
Going back to the drag-and-drop editor (which is what most people will probably use), there are 60+ templates you can start with, or you can create a design from scratch if you want to. The templates are a mix of modern/minimal designs, with some being a bit more dynamic and colorful than others. They’re sorted into categories like “Newsletter,” “Sale,” “Holiday Greeting,” and more.
Sendinblue Pros 👍 (User Reviews)
For the most part, people feel overwhelmingly positive about the experience that they can get from Sendinblue. The cost of the software is relatively good, and it’s worth noting that the tool comes with some pretty impressive analytics tools too.
Other positives include:
- Sendinblue features powerful and flexible email automation functionalities.
- Sendinblue’s Premium plan comes with an extra landing page builder for the creation and review of landing pages.
- There are numerous attractive templates and design tools you can capitalize on to make your email designing and review process much easier.
- Sendinblue’s customer support teams review issues raised and respond swiftly through email ([email protected]), live chat, and phone.
- Compared to its competitors’ cost reviews, Sendinblue plans are reasonably priced.
- Sendinblue features a free plan, complete with contact management and email automation functionalities.
Sendinblue Cons 👎 (User Reviews)
Unfortunately, any email marketing tool, including Sendinblue can also have its downsides. For instance, the tool is still relatively basic compared to some other autoresponder software on the market today. Additionally, the UI might take a while to get used to.
Issues include:
- SendinBlue supports a limited number of integrations.
- Learning curve for some users – not as basic as it could be
- Limited functionalities for mergers and autoresponders
- Our review tests revealed a couple of email deliverability problems that Sendinblue continues to experience.
Sendinblue Review: Pricing
Sendinblue offers email plans, SMS plans, and IP plans. The Sendinblue IP plans are for digitally signing your emails and taking full control of the IP reputation. You might use that at some point, but for now, our main review focus is on the email plans.
To start, you’re able to sign up for the Sendinblue marketing service for free. This provides unlimited contacts but there is a sending limit. After that, the plans go all the way up to the Enterprise plan, which has custom pricing you’ll have to figure out with Sendinblue. The most expensive plan with an actual price tag on it is for $66 per month.
👉 All of the Sendinblue pricing plans are flexible with no commitments. You also don’t have to type in your credit card to get started.
As for the plan specifics, here’s what you have to work with:
- Free – $0 per month for 300 emails per day. There’s no limit on the number of contacts you can have, and you receive items like marketing automation, an email template library, and a mobile-friendly editor.
- Lite – $25 per month for 40,000 emails per month. There’s no daily sending limit and you get everything provided in the previous Sendinblue plan.
- Essential – $39 per month for everything in the previous plans, the removal of the Sendinblue logo, and advanced stats.
- Premium – This Sendinblue plan starts at $66 per month, but it could go up in price depending on how many emails you want to send out per month. For the $66 you get a nice limit of 120,000 emails per month. There’s also no limit on marketing automation and you receive all of the features from previous plans.
- Enterprise – This one has a tailored volume and a custom price. It comes with a dedicated Sendinblue account manager.
Our previous reviews featured the Sendinblue pay-as-you-go plan, but that’s no longer available.
👉 Moving on now, here is my detailed review of the Sendinblue email marketing service:
