Brevo vs. iContact

I wanted to pull a publication from MailChimp and park it elsewhere. Brevo was a bit of a pain to set up, but after I invested the onboarding time, it's been a cost-effective way to produce this newsletter. I would encourage someone to build in the time with both templates and editor. After that, using Brevo is as easy as using other services.

Incentivized

iContact is a great option for small businesses. It doesn't have enough features to create the demands of a large corporation. Of course the price goes up exponentially with more subscribers, which would also make it beneficial for small businesses. If you have too many lists to add people to it can get a little crazy too.

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

• Customer service is wonderful! They are always helpful, guiding and available for any odd question, even if those questions are training for a newbie to the email world.
• Building forms for data collection and the code generator the for the site is very easy.
• Ensuring double opt-in is extremely straightforward.
• Including unsubscribe on every message automatically means we never have to worry about CAN-SPAM.

Incentivized

• not easy to move/duplicate sections. much easier to just drag and drop. still working this out.
• don't like the logo or text included with the newsletter sign up form. have now upgraded, but think this should not be included for lower pricing plans
• not getting issues completely answered by support team. currently have an issue with email sign up not working on mobile. have been told it is not working, but not given any suggestions on how to fix this.
• have had unusual issue come up with a link. On 2 separate occasions, with 2 separate newsletters that went out, and 2 different images/articles/links, the link was wrong. Even though we checked it, previewed it and sent test email before we sent out these newsletters and these links were correct. It is the section at the bottom of our current newsletter. On both these occasions, when the customer has forwarded the email they received to us, the link was was to an old link - and it was the same old link on both occasions. We have asked for this to be looked into and are waiting on reply. We are going to try to delete this section this week and re-create. It is not a good look for us.
• We have another issue with how our newsletter is previewing in Outlook. The images and the text are not lining up - not on every section, but on 2 sections out of the 5 sections. Also, the Read Full Article text in the button is not showing properly. Again, not a professional look for us which we are not happy with.

Incentivized

• Every time you edit or sometimes open an email it brings it to the top of the list. I would prefer my email to go to the top only after I send it out to my subscribers.
• When I add a new contact I sometimes copy and paste the email. This is not allowed sometimes and I have to manually type the email in.
• LinkedIn will not allow you to add pictures anymore when sending emails out.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

After 4 years of using iContact we finally cut the cord. It was hard to justify staying with them when it seemed like they had some of the most outdated software in the industry, some of the worst deliverability, and were in general extremely lacking in customization. They are a decent ESP for a great price point, so if that is your main concern it may be worth it, but if you want to have your emails you are paying for hit inboxes (not spam folders) then look into someone else that guarantees great deliverability.

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 rate iContact as an easy to use program due to its user friendly dashboard and user interface. Most companies of small to medium size do not have a dedicated marketer, therefore it is someone multitasking who may or may not have this kind of experience. iContact makes it relatively simple and can actually expand one's knowledge in the area of business promotion.

Incentivized

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

iContact is regularly up and running. Only once has it been unavailable for maintenance, which is to be expected and even desired for optimal performance when needed.

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.

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

They have always been responsive to any issues or concerns that have arisen with our account. Our customer account manager participates in our monthly county-wide communicators meetings via telephone to ensure that we are getting the most from the service. He also analyzes our lists to help us weed out inactive contacts.

Incentivized

The templates are difficult to customize, and they don't render well in email platforms

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

i wouldn't be using it if i wasn't satisfied. time is money

Well, these other tools do the same thing, they contribute to email campaigns; however, we tried them and stopped using them because they are not at all simple, and we believe that Brevo is the simplest, most intuitive, and most effective tool that exists for this type of strategy, so we decided to stick with it. Bueno estas otras herramientas hacen lo mismo, aportan a las campañas de mailing sin embargo las probamos y dejamos de usarlas ya que no son para nada sencillas y creemos que brevo es lo mas sencillo, intuitovo y efectivo que existe para este tipo de estrategias por ello decidimos quedarnos

We selected iContact because it was available at the time, and in our price range. I inherited it at the school. If it had been the program it is now back then, I would not have chosen it. At the moment, we are too busy to fully vet another program, so we are stuck with this one. It does get the job done. It is great for a small business with small needs, but once you start expanding and having more intricate needs, it does not compete with others like MailChimp

Incentivized

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

iContact stays the same with the number of users added or taken away. It certainly remains reliable despite increased usage, and so, can be considered scaleable in that aspect.

• 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

• Increased Employee Efficiency - once a template is created, it is very easy to edit the content within the template with minimal or no assistance from developers.
• Domain Reputation - if you aren't careful, it is very easy to hurt your domain reputation when using iContact. Make sure the person in charge of email marketing knows the risks of email marketing or is willing to closely work with iContact's customer service to follow best practices.
• Increased Lead Conversion - through the use of automated email functionality, you can stay in the forefront of your customer's minds. This increases conversions by reminding customers that you are there to provide the goods or services that they may need periodically or in the future.