Cheetah Digital vs. Square Customers

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.

Square is absolutely brilliant if you are just starting out and your business has both an in-person and an online component to it, as Square will solve both in-person POS and online booking/billing. Square also offers the option to create a free website for your company, though it is a very basic site, if you don't have a website yet, this is a VERY helpful option, as it takes away a huge cost. Square allowed us to be up and running in no time, taking away the need to worry about an expensive appointment-setting add-on from our current website provider (Square integrates quite nicely with our current site). Square is probably less ideal for more advanced users or companies with a need for more detailed inventory/service management. But even then, Square will more than likely be able to get the job done!

Incentivized

• 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

• Sales pipeline
• Customer engagement
• Marketing

Incentivized

• 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

• Some of the build quality on the peripherals could feel a bit better.
• Have more options for businesses with more credit card transactions such as monthly or discounted per transaction once a certain number is reached.
• Have functionality to allow for a typed card number without the higher fee if the software verifies there is a hardware/read error with the card.

Incentivized

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,

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.

The user interface is easy to navigate - that's not always the case for some software! I look for something that is intuitive, easy to use, and doesn't take a ton of training to get up and running quickly.

Incentivized

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

Square is mostly focused on FAQs and online support, and they do a very good job creating a rich knowledge base. But, if you are not very tech savvy, it could be easy to feel a bit overwhelmed. I would recommend that they add a direct line or chat feature to call, rather than email or Knowledge base first. This might be due to staffing issues at Square, so perhaps it is the best they can do for now.

Incentivized

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

A lot easier to use than Infusionsoft!!

Incentivized

• 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

• This has allowed me to accept credit / debit transactions without having to have a monthly subscription to a service and lose money on times of no to little use, allowing me to have a broader customer range as checks are risky.
• All of my initial equipment was free and there were no startup costs so my return was immediate.
• The small fee taken out of the transaction is very much worth the ability to accept nearly all plastic transactions.

Incentivized