Cheetah Messaging vs dotMailer

Likelihood to Recommend

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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Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology

Entertainment Company, 51-200 employees

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Well suited for a company with a larger marketing budget as this is a costly program compared to the other ESPs. If your use case is not eCommerce, you would probably be better off with a standard ESP like Drip.

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Tim Berman

Founder and Growth Evangelist

Big Red's Equipment SalesRetail, 11-50 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

Cheetah Messaging

dotMailer

WYSIWYG email editor

Dynamic content

Ability to test dynamic content

Landing pages

A/B testing

Mobile optimization

Email deliverability reporting

List management

Triggered drip sequences

Cheetah Messaging

dotMailer

Dashboards

Standard reports

Custom reports

Pros

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.

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Duncan Hernandez

BI Engineer II

Answer Financial Inc.Insurance, 201-500 employees

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Easy Editor - no HTML required. It's very easy to drag and drop your elements, customizing the campaign according to your needs.
Reports- the reports are robust, showing you your open rates, browsers used, who clicked what, etc. It is easy to section out this information and deliver it to the appropriate stakeholders.
Templates - building your own template library makes creating and sending campaigns and quick and easy experience. In a global company like ours, it also enables consistency across the brand locations throughout the world.

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Amanda Kocefas

Marketing Manager

FiveTen GroupStaffing and Recruiting, 501-1000 employees

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Cons

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.)

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Verified User

Professional in Marketing

Automotive Company, 51-200 employees

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Integration is overly complex.
Cannot progressively profile from anything other than an email address.
Too expensive.

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Tim Berman

Founder and Growth Evangelist

Big Red's Equipment SalesRetail, 11-50 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Cheetah Messaging 7.6

Based on 3 answers

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,

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Verified User

Employee in Marketing

51-200 employees

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dotMailer 10.0

Based on 1 answer

Since this is used on a global scale and it is preferable to all of our brands, I cannot see us switching to a different provider. We have built years worth of contacts and templates within our current system, which saves our marketing team a lot of time when putting together future campaigns. All of them are mobile optimized which makes it even easier to work with

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Amanda Kocefas

Marketing Manager

FiveTen GroupStaffing and Recruiting, 501-1000 employees

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Usability

Cheetah Messaging 4.0

Based on 1 answer

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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Verified User

Employee in Marketing

51-200 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

Cheetah Messaging 2.0

Based on 2 answers

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.

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Verified User

Employee in Marketing

51-200 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

If we are comparing apples to apples for just sending emails, all the tools were about the same. Upload a list, code email, send email. For that they are all pretty much the same. The thing that brings Cheetahmail down is the support. The support is not bad but because they are in a different country it makes it tough to fix issues in a timely manner.

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Verified User

Strategist in Marketing

Human Resources Company, 10,001+ employees

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DotMailer is built for eCommerce. Drip, ActiveCampaign, and Infusionsoft are not eCommerce platforms out of the box, though they can be tailored to that use case. DotMailer is especially geared toward retail businesses.

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Tim Berman

Founder and Growth Evangelist

Big Red's Equipment SalesRetail, 11-50 employees

View all 2 answers on this topic

Return on Investment

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.

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Verified User

Manager in Marketing

Insurance Company, 51-200 employees

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Better customer service
Increased brand awareness
Increased brand engagement
Streamlined processes
Regular communication with customers
Increased audience/reach

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Amanda Kocefas

Marketing Manager

FiveTen GroupStaffing and Recruiting, 501-1000 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

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Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Cheetah Messaging Editions & Modules

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Additional Pricing Details

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General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

dotMailer Editions & Modules

Edition

Growth	$150.00¹
Professional	$500.00¹

Per Month

Additional Pricing Details

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Rating Summary

Cheetah Messaging

dotMailer

Cheetah Messaging

dotMailer

Cheetah Messaging

dotMailer

Cheetah Messaging

dotMailer

Likelihood to Recommend