FreshMail is a browser based email marketing solution used to create and send newsletter campaigns. This solution leads users from campaign planning and creation to final reports.
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Marigold Engage+
Score 8.0 out of 10
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Marigold Engage+ (formerly Cheetah Messaging or CheetahMail) is an email marketing platform. It is optimized for delivering segmented email marketing campaigns with security in mind. It also integrates with any third-party CRM software.
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Pricing
FreshMail
Marigold Engage+
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshMail
Marigold Engage+
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
No setup fee
Additional Details
FreshMail is absolutely free if you send less than 2000
emails to up to 500 subscribers per month.
The platform works very well for sending emails with simple layouts, it also allows you to keep track of the opening data of those who receive the emails. The platform could improve its ability to modify databases and integrate with other platforms in order to automate some of the marketing actions.
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.
My campaign got delayed because of their moderation process. When I wrote them to ask what was going on they said they have some kind of anti-spam moderation process that was taking longer than usual.
I don’t like the fact that you can’t edit your template in HTML in their editing program (FreshMail Designer). This is probably isn’t a big deal for most people but some of us like to take over every detail of the template.
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.)
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.
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.
FreshMail stands out for its ease of email design. Being a specialised email tool, it is more versatile when it comes to obtaining data from users, it is more intuitive, as the amount of time that needs to be invested in learning how to design emails, landing pages, a/b testing and others, is much less than the competition
CheetahMail is very far behind these other providers. Specifically in Lyris we could build forms that automatically generated code connected to specific lists and be up and running in less than a few hours. With CheetahMail that would take days and developers at times.
The customer service team at CheetahMail was good and efficient. It is always a frustrating experience to call in when your stuck on something but the CS team did a good job of quickly and effectively helping us when we called them for support.
Compared to other ESPs that our employees support, this platform was quite easy to learn and the documentation provided often helped us figure things out without having to go and call CS.
