TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cheetah Digital

    Score8 out of 10
    N/ADesigned for high-volume, cross-channel campaigns, Cheetah Digital is used by marketers to deliver highly personalized, contextual communications across various channels including email, SMS, push, mobile wallet, direct mail, and social.N/A

    Smaato

    Score7 out of 10
    N/ASmaato is a supply-side publisher platform (SSP) from the Verve Group since the 2021 acquisition.N/A
    Pricing
    Cheetah DigitalSmaato
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cheetah DigitalSmaato
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Best Alternatives
    Cheetah DigitalSmaato
    Small Businesses
    Listrak
    Score10 out of 10
    AdRoll
    Score3.7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Sailthru
    Score5.3 out of 10
    Criteo Commerce Growth
    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Listrak
    Score10 out of 10
    Criteo Commerce Growth
    Score8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cheetah DigitalSmaato
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (13 ratings)
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.6
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    4.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.8
    (3 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    3.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cheetah DigitalSmaato
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Zeta Global
    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.
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    Verve Group
    Smaato is very well suited for user acquisition and retargeting companies. Their overlap in terms of audiences and publishers with other exchanges is very limited, which makes it a great alternative when you need to scale a campaign and want to maintain your frequency cap. They work very well in branding campaigns as well as performance campaigns.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Zeta Global
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    Verve Group
    • Fill - the ad requests we send to Smaato have seen a great requests-to-impression ration.
    • Revenue - We've seen a lift in overall revenue thanks to the high CPM bids we get from Smaato.
    • Payments are always on time and they have a responsive financial team that is helpful in answering any questions.
    • Customer service - They are very fast to respond to any issues. The set up was streamlined thanks to their professional customer service.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Zeta Global
    • 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.)
    Incentivized
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    Verve Group
    • Inventory can be a bit pricey in competitive markets like the US.
    • Reporting dashboard is limited, needs work.
    • They don't offer a lof of transparency about margins over media cost.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Zeta Global
    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
    Verve Group
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Zeta Global
    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.
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    Verve Group
    Smaato has a UI where you can control your line items on the traffic you want to receive. That is a key unique selling point that other SSPs don't offer. Most of the items that you will need like reporting can be done on a self serve manner and that is a big plus, specifically for changes that need to happen really fast and you don't need to deal with account managers that may take some time to answer emails.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Zeta Global
    I've been very satisfied with the support given by Cheetah, they are always asking and looking for areas where they can help you improve upon your business. They are very knowledgeable and are able to quickly find any answer you are looking for.
    Incentivized
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    Verve Group
    Smaato's account management team is very professional. They are quite fast in terms of customer support, which is very helpful. One item that stands out is that they are willing to understand what you need for each campaign and what is the best way to move forward. They don't just jump quickly into trying to upsell more of Smaato's products (audiences, data) like other SSPs do.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Zeta Global
    I believe Cheetah DMS is a bit more complete and a lot more complex to use than Mailchimp. Mailchimp was born as a mail marketing service while Cheetah has always worked across the whole online advertising spectrum making it a better solution for clients that need a certain level of service and sophistication.
    Incentivized
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    Verve Group
    With over 20 demand partners in our stack, Smaato is in the top 5
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Zeta Global
    • Our efficiency has decreased with CheetaMail actually. Too many service calls to find out why something isn't working as expected, account setup questions, issues with PiP, takes too long to get a simple form built, customer service response time, etc...
    • Reporting is not very streamlined. This has caused us to take our reporting offline and use a method with better visibility.
    Incentivized
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    Verve Group
    • Increased overall revenue
    • Strong demand pool
    • Easy reporting
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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