Act-On Software vs. Brevo vs. SendPulse

We often have quick turnaround time requests, and Act-On's new composer is great because it is easy to make an email look great in desktop or mobile views. This has been a huge time-saver for us! We have benefited from using Act-On for many years and are accustomed to where everything is and how to use it. For the new accounts we train, we will sometimes hear that the organization of where things are could be improved.

Incentivized

Brevo is very suitable for companies and individuals who want to run email marketing campaigns, create a strong corporate image, manage customer relationships, and build customer loyalty. Like any application, there are areas for improvement, such as more templates and a simpler CRM application, but I believe it has more positive features than negative ones, and for us, it has become a strategic partner. Brevo es muy adecuado para empresas y personas que desean realizar campañas de mailing marketing, crear un sólida imagen corporativa, el CRM con los clientes y fidelizarlos. Hay puntos de mejora como toda aplicación como mas plantillas, mejor sencilles en su aplicativo de CRM pero considero que tiene mas funcionalidades positivas que negativas y para nosotros se ha convertido en un aliado estrategico This review was originally written in Spanish and has been translated into English using a third-party translation tool. While we strive for accuracy, some nuances or meanings may not be perfectly captured.

SendPulse is great if you want to connect with your list on a more personal basis, and making sure that your email reaches your subscriber when it is best for him/her. You can also use the SMS function (though I haven't used it yet). Let's say you have clients and want to send a message to them automatically on their birthday, SendPulse allows you to do that. It allows you to add in specific fields that are relevant to you, in order to customise your messaging as much as you want and need.

• The templates are easy to use and set up campaigns.
• It's simple to use, and the email editor features a drag-and-drop interface.
• It's easy to set up a drip campaign or a series of scheduled emails.
• It has the flexibility of having a variety of scheduling options and the use of user experience automation.

Incentivized

• Sendinblue allows you to send emails that do not arrive in spam
• Sendinblue, through its security measures and filters, helps keep contact databases well organized and up to date
• Sendinblue offers an easy-to-use newsletter creation tool and, in case of lack of inspiration, many templates

Incentivized

• One of the best features of this software is its user interface. I found it very intuitive.
• It has sms feature also which is a great add-on to this software.
• It has live chat support feature. And I find it very helpful when i find any technical problem.

Incentivized

• The designer tools, especially for emails, were often difficult to use. The formatting of the text would be all over the place and change / refuse to change at random. Moving boxes around was shifty and sometimes nearly impossible. It just wasn't customizeable enough. No "undo" functionality either.
• The only way to collect information expansively over time (there's a term Act-On uses for it, I can't recall) where it adds questions to the form each time a user fills it out, is if the person were to fill out the same form multiple times. I know this does happen for some websites/resources, but as a company that wanted to collect new information each time someone filled out any form, regardless of the resource or the URL, that was simply not an option, and that doesn't really make a lot of sense. I know it's not really possible to track someone but if they filled out the first part of the form and then it added new questions to answer, and then they submitted and got through the gating, that would actually be helpful.
• There was no "trash can" of sorts in case you deleted something by mistake. This could be so stress-inducing if it was a major project. My coworker did this once, contacted Act-On, they couldn't even recover it.

Incentivized

• Onboarding can be a bit tricky. As with most WordPress additions, different plugins will have different configurations. Don't expect to install and just click activate.
• Online support is highly technical. Email is its own beast and even good digital may not know more than the basics.
• The reporting is strangely not intuitive or even very end-user friendly even with the robust data being tracked.
• Composing in their editor can sometimes sync differently. Just like a video game, it's helpful to save often despite the autosave.

Incentivized

• I like its Drag and Drop function to design e-mailers but it lacks in some functionalities. Foe example when I write two different contents in a same box I need a line to show separation between my contents in the same box but this feature is unavailable in SendPulse.
• They should include more fonts. Every product or service needs different kind of fonts to make a right impact on customers. With limited option of fonts it restricts user's creativity.
• It is good to have templates to give users some idea for designing campaigns but here SendPluse has nothing much to offer. They have very limited number of templates.

Incentivized

It's my single biggest asset in my current role. With limited resources, its enabled Anachron to punch well above our weight marketing wise and although we're still at the beginning of our journey I know the system can scale with us

SendinBlue is providing an excellent value to my business by simplifying and speeding up the way that we interact with our customers

Incentivized

Because I love how easy and intuitive SendPulse is.

It's a great tool for our business, and we get a fantastic ROI on it every year based on wins for customer service and automation responses. It's save projects, repaired salesperson/customer relationships and generated new sales and interest yearly. We really wouldn't hesitate to recommend this platform at all.

Incentivized

It's okay, it's easy to use, has good features, and good automation options, but it lacks better delivery support. Many messages end up in spam, even though I have a dedicated IP address that I pay for separately, and I think it needs more design options to make emails stand out, especially in terms of typography. That's why I'm not giving it a 10. It also lacks integration with other tools. EStá bien, es fácil de usar, tiene buenas funcionalidades, tiene buenas opciones de automatización, le falta mayor apoyo en cuanto a entrega, muchos de los mensajes se vana spam, aun cuando tengo una IP dedicada que pago por aparte y creo que faltan opciones de diseño para que los correos puedan ser diferentes, sobre todo en tipografía. Por eso no le doy 10. Falta integración con otras herramientas.

I find that overall SendPulse is very intuitive to use and the support is there to help you out in case you don't find how to do what you wish to do. The drag and drop functionalities make it easy to create the newsletters you want. Every field is explained and small tutorials are included to show you how to create a new template, newsletter, etc. which makes it very easy to use.

I have always found them quick to respond to my query by web inquiry. In those instances when I call, I have always reached help quickly. They are conscientious and skilled in discussing my concern and finding a solution to my problem. Other tech organizations should use Act-On as a model for top-notch customer service.

I have never had any planned outages in the time I have been using the software and have had no issues with accessing it.

Great for the most part. Sometimes there are little lags, but that's likely because I'm requesting to see a lot of data at one time.

Everything loads very quickly, it saves as you go along so you're unlikely to loose work if your computer fails. Reports are there immediately too so you're able to act quickly on customer engagement.

Since we start using Act-on for ourselves and our clients, we have been supported very well. Often we need to integrate with legacy systems and we find the support team on our side during the whole endeavor. Always asking if they can help us further, always willing to do a better job. The support of Act-On is one of the main differentiators

These people helped me identify errors when setting up DKIM and were more than helpful in trying to diagnose low open rates with a few campaigns identifying where improvement can be made and how to more effectively manage contact lists. The support is excellent.

Incentivized

Every time I contacted the support team with a question or a problem, they were very fast in replying and helping me out solve it. Usually latest within 10 minutes I would receive a first answer, and the problem would get solved on the same day.

Dan D. was great. He took the time to understand how I needed the program to run, and was very flexible to our special CRM setup.

Act-On had a lot of resources, and their staff was great at answering any questions I had to make sure we got started on the right foot. Looking back, I would have preferred some additional training sessions since we didn't have any previous experience with Marketing Automation and best practices.

What impressed me most is that Act-On showed full committment in making our implementation successful, even when it required additional support from their team. This gave me a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings. Most other software software vendors are not anywhere close to being this responsive and effective

If you follow all the steps of the setup process they give you, any one can set this up in about 1 - 2 hours.

Incentivized

When implementing SendPulse, it is a good idea to have a transition phase where you still use both systems, in case anything goes wrong.

Act-On is easier to use than Marketo, but not as visually appealing and user-friendly as HubSpot. It's much better than Pardot, as Pardot feel clunky every step of the way. SharpSpring is comparable because of its price point but surpasses Act-On in its tools and intuitive interface. We selected Act-On because of the pricing model and thought all things would be close to parity with other options. It depends on the team you have. If you have developers and a marketing team that knows some html/css, you can get by with Act-On.

Incentivized

Sendinblue not stacking up so great unfortunately. We are considering going back to Constant Contact because of ongoing issues we are having with Sendinblue. We have however just upgraded to Premium with Sendinblue, mainly so we can get Telephone Support. But now it seems Sendinblue do not call you, you have to call them. With Constant Contact they would phone us and talk us through any issues we were having.

We selected Sendinblue initially because of price.

Also, our average Open rate over the last few months we were with Constant Contact was about 20%. Our Open rate - to exactly the same database, has dropped to under 10% with Sendinblue. We can't understand this. Doesn't make sense.

The Click Rate has stayed about the same - averaging about 2-3% on both platforms.

Incentivized

For SendPulse's price point, I consider their competition to be the likes of Mailchimp, ConstantContact, etc. While SendPulse rates roughly average across the board in all areas, for businesses looking for the cheapest option (which comes with a lack of features/quality), ConstantContact beats them. For quality/features/value, I'd say Mailchimp is the best option for small businesses.

Incentivized

Before I feel like I need more features, the Act-On customer service reps are contacting me telling about new features as part of my account.

They have multiple options for upgrading bigger senders or if you need more emails sent in a month.

• With the Automated Series, we were able to put in place campaigns that generated revenue that took no time to continue running once set up. This was a positive feature allowing employees to work on another project while the campaign ran on their own.

Incentivized

• Saved us over 80% of what we used to pay aWeber for the exact same services
• Maintained similar effectiveness in email blast/newsletter open rates (slightly less than aWeber but within margins)
• Saves us an incredible amount of time in content creation using Brevo content editor

• Tapping NRI clients with this software helps me in generating good revenue in last financial year.
• I grow my NRI database by 60 in last year. And this software played a major role in doing so.
• It made brand building very easy among my clients.

Incentivized