Adestra vs. Springbot

Small businesses with even smaller marketing budgets and no email marketing experience would be better off selecting a lower-end email marketing provider. However, Adestra will provide a growing company with every email marketing tool along the way.

Incentivized

Well Suited For:

• Small businesses with small marketing teams.
• Shopify Customers.
• Small businesses that want more reporting/segmented lists.
• Businesses that are upgrading from a service like Constant Contact or Mailchimp.

Less appropriate

• Customer who are currently using Klaviyo.
• Business who do not have a Shopify website.

• Adestra's "dynamic" list allows users to consolidate multiple lists in combination with data filters and exclusion lists. This implements segmentation and is a powerful marketing tool.
• Adestra's MessageFocus API integration provides developer-tools for list, campaign or transactional automated requirements.
• Campaigns can be sorted into project folders. This allows marketers to group campaigns together for management or reporting requirements. Moving or copying campaigns from one project to another is a simple process.
• Data downloads via Reporting is available at every level, from overview to individual KPI.
• Creating "core" tables helps marketers develop lists with similar attributes. Whether a list has many fields or simply the one required email address field, a "core" table helps to quickly map data labels from spreadsheet to online database. Creating data labels on the fly is a simple process, as well. The "core" table also groups similar contacts into one core database.
• Any list can be quickly "emptied" for to manage refreshed data. The contacts within the "emptied" list would still be members of the "core" table and so the process does not negatively impact reporting.
• Unsubscribes can be managed in one list (as a default) or individual lists. Creating individual unsubscribe lists -- dependent on business requirements -- would allow for a preference center, whereby recipients could be given a choice as to which campaigns they receive.
• The Form tool creates signup forms, simple surveys and landing pages. These can be hosted via Adestra or otherwise on the web. The tool provides for branding and proprietary cascading stylesheets, with a number of actions available through a drag-and-drop interface.

Incentivized

• The demographic data was great. I could see how many males vs. females, ages, income, married, with or without children. It gave me a good idea of who my customers were.
• Using their tracking URLs in all of our campaigns allowed us to get a better idea of what exactly was driving revenue.
• Not only could I see top performing products, which I can do within Magento, I could also see top selling categories and colors.
• I can pull a Coupon Usage report our of Magento, but Springbot gave me additional info like AOV and ROI on those codes.
• Springbot also gave me a lot of info about our abandoned carts. It shows us which products are most abandoned along with views, conversion rates, etc.
• Springbot gave us an Instagram Shop page that allowed us to curate social shares and then tie them to products on our site.

Incentivized

• As of this writing, there are at least 3 different editors available (a drag-and-drop, a WYSIWYG and HTML). However, only a small template library is available if requested through support. Those expecting to find ready-built templates for re-branding would find them through the third-party EDM Designer drag-and-drop editor.

Incentivized

• After our purchase, I let spring or know that I was currently too busy to implement the system and to put things on hold. They ignored this request and kept charging us a monthly fee without using any of their systems. I have only logged in once. Nothing has been set up. They can see that from their side.
• After multiple emails back and forth their out was in the user agreement. I never asked for my money back only credit so I can regroup and when I have time get on to implant the systems. They tell me they don't do that.
• They don't care about any of the customer's needs. They only care about charging you that monthly fee. Terrible bus plan. With enough bad feedback, they will suffer from such a narrow plan.
• I wish we had actual information about the cons using the system. Unfortunately I was not given the opportunity to do unless I wanted to keep paying while not using the system.

I have been self-trained on different ESPs for over 10 years, so my experience isn't comparable to most users. However, I've trained people on various email marketing platforms, and with some training, clients have a positive user-experience with Adestra.

Incentivized

Springbot has top navigation that helps me quickly jump from emails to social, and reporting very easily.

I have had campaign related issues solved very quickly. When there are technical issues, that involve more than one departmental, it may involve a longer turn-around and management.

Incentivized

We have raved about Springbot's support because they always get back with us so quickly. Our rep, Jared has been phenomenal in helping us, always being available to chat with us and explaining some of the metrics with us so we can better understand. He completely handles our ads, checks on them, and lets us know when to update and why.

For medium and large sized businesses, Adestra competes well with dotMailer. While many of the functions are available through either provider, creating campaigns, managing lists and reviewing metrics are somewhat different. As of this writing, dotMailer's drag-and-drop editor dominates that platform and performs well for low-end users with little-to-no HTML experience. Even high-end users will appreciate how quickly campaigns can be built via the drag-and-drop editor. While Adestra utilizes the EDM Designer drag-and-drop, the third-party functionality is not completely cohesive and lack of a template library gives dotMailer a bit of an advantage.

Incentivized

Springbit is more expensive, more complicated and delivered less.

• For companies that focus on goals and analytics, Adestra provides all the necessary tools.

Incentivized

• Springbot gave us a better idea of who our customer was. We just launched in January 2015 having been B2B previously. So we weren't really sure who we were marketing to.
• I only paid $200/month for the service so I didn't waste a ton of money trying it out. They have a 30 day cancellation policy so I wasn't stuck in a year long contract.
• It was a let down because I had such high hopes of everything it would allow me to do and see with one platform. Give them a couple more years and I think they will work out the kinks.

Incentivized