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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SendPulse
Score 8.7 out of 10
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SendPulse is an integrated messaging platform providing user communication that includes emails, SMS, web push, SMTP, and user management.. This solution includes 15,000 free emails with up to 2,500 subscribers per month.
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Pricing
Marigold Engage+
SendPulse
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Marigold Engage+
SendPulse
Free Trial
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Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Pricing starts from $9 a month and depends on the number of messages sent.
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.
SendPulse is great if you want to connect with your list on a more personal basis, and making sure that your email reaches your subscriber when it is best for him/her. You can also use the SMS function (though I haven't used it yet). Let's say you have clients and want to send a message to them automatically on their birthday, SendPulse allows you to do that. It allows you to add in specific fields that are relevant to you, in order to customise your messaging as much as you want and need.
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.)
I like its Drag and Drop function to design e-mailers but it lacks in some functionalities. Foe example when I write two different contents in a same box I need a line to show separation between my contents in the same box but this feature is unavailable in SendPulse.
They should include more fonts. Every product or service needs different kind of fonts to make a right impact on customers. With limited option of fonts it restricts user's creativity.
It is good to have templates to give users some idea for designing campaigns but here SendPluse has nothing much to offer. They have very limited number of templates.
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.
I find that overall SendPulse is very intuitive to use and the support is there to help you out in case you don't find how to do what you wish to do. The drag and drop functionalities make it easy to create the newsletters you want. Every field is explained and small tutorials are included to show you how to create a new template, newsletter, etc. which makes it very easy to use.
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.
Every time I contacted the support team with a question or a problem, they were very fast in replying and helping me out solve it. Usually latest within 10 minutes I would receive a first answer, and the problem would get solved on the same day.
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.
For SendPulse's price point, I consider their competition to be the likes of Mailchimp, ConstantContact, etc. While SendPulse rates roughly average across the board in all areas, for businesses looking for the cheapest option (which comes with a lack of features/quality), ConstantContact beats them. For quality/features/value, I'd say Mailchimp is the best option for small businesses.
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.
