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Cheetah Digital vs. SparkPost (discontinued)

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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

    SparkPost (discontinued)

    Score2.8 out of 10
    N/ASparkPost offered real-time analysis of email delivery and customer engagement as well as personalized email templates. The service has been discontinued.

    $30

    per month

    Pricing
    Cheetah DigitalSparkPost (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Starter
    $30
    per month
    Premier
    $75
    per month
    Enterprise
    Contact sales team
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cheetah DigitalSparkPost (discontinued)
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Best Alternatives
    Cheetah DigitalSparkPost (discontinued)
    Small Businesses
    Listrak
    Score10 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Sailthru
    Score5.3 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Listrak
    Score10 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cheetah DigitalSparkPost (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (13 ratings)
    1.0
    (6 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.6
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    4.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.8
    (3 ratings)
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    3.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cheetah DigitalSparkPost (discontinued)
    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.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Our early experiences with SparkPost were great; we were looking for a low-cost (or no-cost) solution to our email messaging needs, and SparkPost had the best low-cost option: 100,000 messages per month for free, guaranteed for life. Even though our team has experience with other APIs, we chose SparkPost because it felt like the best value. Our experience with it was great. Two years ago, they discontinued their free option but sent the existing users the following message: "When you signed up, we promised that if we ever changed the terms of our 100K free plan, we would continue to honor the original plan for the life of the account. I would like to reaffirm this promise: while this plan is no longer available to new customers, you are grandfathered into this level of free sending volume." The following year, apparently following a change in leadership, they decided to "deprecate" existing free plans, dropping us down from 100,000 messages per month to 500, the lowest of any email API service I'm aware of. No recognition of the broken promise, the reneged guarantee, just a 20% off coupon. This atrocious behavior that reeks of a new culture of squeezing as much money as possible out of its users and has coincided with a steady deterioration of functionality and customer service. At this point, I have no idea why anyone would pay more for a worse service that treats its users so poorly when you could use SendGrid or a similar competitor for a lower price and way more features.
    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
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • When you don't want to spent time writing your own code to send emails from your apps
    • When you're looking for a product which provides all that you need regarding email features to make it part of your software
    • When you want to use a product which includes templates that can be re-used instead of writing your own and all the required effort to do that
    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
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • When I first implemented SparkPost, I did not take advantage of the sub-account feature, and my account was suspended on New Year's Eve. It took two days until I could speak with a support representative to get my account re-activated. I am now using sub-accounts to alleviate the underlying problem, but I was disappointed that my account was suspended by an automated system with no notice.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Discontinued Products
    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.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Would give it a zero if I could. Their customer service used to be incredible; fast response times, really hands-on with their users, and a pretty regular feedback process. They sent me an awesome t-shirt that became part of my go-to climbing gear. But for the past year, their response times went way down, their customer service was less helpful and generally a lot more rude, and they haven't asked for customer input once since their leadership change
    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
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Mailchimp and sendgrid are giving good services and good customer support 24/7 and ROI is increased with this as transition is very smooth. SparkPost is very expensive and not good as much as we think and they will least worried about your mails, tickets, call and messages. Highly not recommended this SparkPost to any one
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • It has helped us with our IP health and making sure that we avoid spam traps
    • Very high deliverability and automatic retrying once they have the event
    Incentivized
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