Likelihood to Recommend Braze is likely at its best for companies that engage with customers on both an app-level and web-level. It gets even better if you have the opportunity to leverage some of the additional channels Braze unlocks such as in-app messages and content cards. If you're only using Braze to send SMS and Email and the occasional push, you're likely better off finding a cheaper platform. Braze organizes its analytics in a very odd way in my experience, so I'd also recommend pairing Braze with a secondary reporting tool of your choosing.
Read full review I think CheetahMail, being one of the main ESPs in the market, is a quality choice. However, I would suggest that it's really only valuable for a bit larger of an organization, generally having staff of 100+ and revenues in tens of millions -- this is mainly to justify the amount of investment required, so may be cost-prohibitive to some. You also need to make sure that you understand the entire "level of support" you will gain through your specific contract.... the key is understanding what types of resources are within your organization (who's doing the coding? who comes up with the next campaign? What's the overall strategy?) Depending on these questions and resources, may help determine your final needs from a services point of view. CheetahMail can provide a wealth of various services specific to needs (and changes over time as your business changes), but a clear understanding of what you have before you bring them on will really help getting up and running quickly. Also be sure to truly understand the costs for the initial integrations, setups, IP senders, etc.
Read full review Pros Canvases are a straightforward way to dynamically target users We have a lot of control over our email templates- especially compared to the last service we used Built-in reporting is fantastic and offers solid insight Braze integration with our consumer-facing App opened up a lot of options for us when running promos Read full review Internal management - This is a great web-based tool that allows our users to see what emails go to whom. Organization - Many layers of organization for templates since there are many types of remarketing emails that we send out. Historical Records - CheetahMail sends us the raw text files of all email actions so we can upload them to our database. Read full review Cons It offers analytics insights, but this is still not incredibly detailed It takes a while for features on the product roadmap to be implemented The drag-and-drop editors of their marketing channels (Email & IAM) could use some improvement in terms of more functionality and tweaking abilities Read full review The organization of CheetahMail could at times be better, as you create more and more mailings, they just pile up in a long list. It would be useful to be able to create folders to store specific mailings in. (ex. editorial, newsletters, marketing, etc.) Read full review Likelihood to Renew As I have begun exploring competitors, I've come to realize that every competitor offers so much more functionality and integration than CheetahMail does. When we first signed our contract, CheetahMail was much more innovative and at the forefront of email. Since being bought out by Experian, we've seen a huge decline in service and innovation. They have laid off much of their staff and moved their account representatives to Costa Rica. They also heavily rely on on third parties which you will have to pay large amounts of money for while other Email Service Providers have integrated new technologies into their platform. You will get more for your money going to a different email service such as Responsys, Silverpop, Listrak and the like,
Read full review Usability Braze's usability is one of the main things that makes it stand out from its competitors. The UX and UI are excellent, and it ensures it is not overcomplicated where it doesn't need to be. The online documentation is also handy to help support teams in your business.
Read full review CheetahMail has a high learning curve to master and requires a lot of backend work with tech teams to set up. Navigation is not the best and everything that should be automated is still extremely manual.
Read full review Support Rating Very responsive and helpful on simple questions, but not great other than that. They do not have a way for the customer/user to escalate a ticket. You have to contact your rep and in some cases, they don't respond within 24 hours so you have no idea if they have escalated it. There is no phone number for an urgent issue - you have to rely on email
Read full review Account reps have a quick response time but a very slow resolution time. Because account reps do not have technical knowledge, there is a long long lead time between flagging a problem and tech team resolution.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Compared to
Salesforce Commerce Cloud , Braze is much more user friendly, flexible and provides for easier segmentation and personalization. The reporting in Braze is also much easier to use. Compared to
Marketo , Braze has a better UI and UX, and an easier learning curve for new users. The set up and maintenance of customer journeys is much easier. The only thing I miss from
Marketo is the ability to view the customer log, which allows you to see the automation that happens against each user profile, allowing for easier troubleshooting.
Read full review CheetahMail is very far behind these other providers. Specifically in Lyris we could build forms that automatically generated code connected to specific lists and be up and running in less than a few hours. With CheetahMail that would take days and developers at times.
Read full review Return on Investment Positive: A growth hacking experiment was proven successful in nudging users who abandoned their cart after checking out with a product/service and leaving their chart or 24 hours. Positive: A growth hacking experiment was proven successful in nudging users whose credit card failed when trying to upgrade to a paid account. Negative: With the plethora of teams (disciplines / business units / markets) with access to braze, it's easy to accidentally over-nurture users. Read full review The customer service team at CheetahMail was good and efficient. It is always a frustrating experience to call in when your stuck on something but the CS team did a good job of quickly and effectively helping us when we called them for support. Compared to other ESPs that our employees support, this platform was quite easy to learn and the documentation provided often helped us figure things out without having to go and call CS. Read full review ScreenShots