Emma by Marigold vs. Litmus from Validity

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Emma by Marigold
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Emma by Marigold is an email marketing solution. Its key features include mobile-ready design templates, email automation, audience segmentation, and dynamic content. The software includes integration with third-party CRM solutions, ecommerce platforms, and social networks.
$500
per year per user
Litmus from Validity
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Litmus, from Validity, is an email marketing solution used to create error-free emails in less time. It's also used to build email campaigns, personalize and test them thoroughly, monitor deliverability, and analyze email performance.
$99
per month
Pricing
Emma by MarigoldLitmus from Validity
Editions & Modules
Basic
$500
per year per user
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Emma by MarigoldLitmus from Validity
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsLitmus offers different plan types to fit various needs, offering monthly and annual plans, as well as fully customizable Enterprise plans.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Emma by MarigoldLitmus from Validity
Features
Emma by MarigoldLitmus from Validity
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Emma by Marigold
9.1
31 Ratings
13% above category average
Litmus from Validity
5.1
341 Ratings
44% below category average
WYSIWYG email editor8.024 Ratings7.346 Ratings
Dynamic content9.025 Ratings7.246 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content9.024 Ratings7.7221 Ratings
A/B testing9.024 Ratings1.84 Ratings
Mobile optimization9.029 Ratings8.9331 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting10.031 Ratings7.7241 Ratings
List management10.031 Ratings1.82 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences9.021 Ratings1.01 Ratings
Landing pages00 Ratings2.63 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Emma by Marigold
10.0
31 Ratings
26% above category average
Litmus from Validity
6.7
225 Ratings
13% below category average
Dashboards10.030 Ratings5.610 Ratings
Standard reports9.931 Ratings7.8224 Ratings
Custom reports10.019 Ratings6.7157 Ratings
Pre-Send Testing
Comparison of Pre-Send Testing features of Product A and Product B
Emma by Marigold
-
Ratings
Litmus from Validity
8.5
332 Ratings
6% above category average
URL Validation00 Ratings8.2249 Ratings
Link Tracking00 Ratings8.1218 Ratings
Spam Testing00 Ratings8.5248 Ratings
Email Previews00 Ratings9.3330 Ratings
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Emma by Marigold
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Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Emma by MarigoldLitmus from Validity
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(32 ratings)
9.0
(355 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(5 ratings)
7.6
(25 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.9
(20 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(7 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(7 ratings)
Support Rating
2.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
4.5
(2 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
4.6
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
4.8
(11 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
4.5
(6 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
2.8
(7 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
3.7
(5 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
5.5
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
Emma by MarigoldLitmus from Validity
Likelihood to Recommend
Marigold
Using Emma for weekly templated email use with minimal changes is awesome. If you want you can create a master and make minor graphic edits quickly and easily from your smartphone. Any edit is possible as long as the artwork is on the online server. Only time I hit a bump in the road is when I was asked to change the style sheet and did not know that the pricing plan I was on did not include this feature. Client had to wait to send new format until Emma performed the requested changes.
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Validity
I’ve been really impressed with Litmus, especially the personalization features. Being able to easily plug in tools like sentiment trackers right into our emails has helped us gather valuable third-party data without a lot of extra work. I also really appreciate the ongoing learning resources—they offer tons of free webinars and articles that are actually useful. I recently read one on email deliverability that broke down specific data and gave me clear, actionable steps to improve how our emails are hitting inboxes. It’s more than just a testing tool—it’s become a go-to resource in our email marketing toolkit.
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Pros
Marigold
  • Enterprise-level email marketing with multi-level account structure allowing for multiple users at different levels to send campaigns
  • Easy-to-use WYSIWYG email template editors to create dynamic emails with enhanced personalization through merge-fields
  • A large API index that connects to many different platforms and the ability to work with Emma support to create new connections to new platforms as needed
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Validity
  • Alerts: users are notified whenever comments or approvals are made on emails, with regular reminders being sent in case some were missed
  • Centralised: all members can collaborate and give their feedback on emails, providing a better flow and efficiency for the hierarchy of approvals.
  • Integration: very smooth integration, with little to no errors, with our CRM tool.
  • Validation: alt text, scaling and image ratios are validated
  • Dark mode: a very important accessibility tool used by many email users, this compatibility theme is often overlooked on other platforms. Litmus, however, makes it clear how important it is to review and track emails in this format.
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Cons
Marigold
  • Their customer service leaves something to be desired. We ran into an issue with one of our campaigns, and we decided to reach out to support, but they didn't get back with us until 3 hours later! Time is money!!
  • We don't like that their photo editing capabilities are limited, you can only choose small, medium or large photos with no way to resize to exact dimensions. Makes emails a bit of a pain
  • The upgraded premium tools are buggy and leave something to be desired as well – it's a shame.
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Validity
  • Sometime, I feel like its slow to use. Speed is something which can be helpful.
  • AI feature. It will be beneficial for us if there is an AI feature for content updates. It can improve the subject line and content based on the performance of our past emails.
  • If it can provide more ideas on CRM based on industry standards, like I work in hospitality, and if it can share data and any new initiative for hospitality CRM, it might be useful for us to consider.
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Likelihood to Renew
Marigold
Emma has been a great tool for our marketing. It's easy to use and I've had no issues in the almost two years we've been with them. It's really been a great way for us to stay connected with customers that takes no time to setup and send
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Validity
It's one the best tools that we've found for this type of tool but we would like some additional features like spell check so if there's a platform that features that with everything else Litmus has, then we'd potentially look to move over to that platform instead. However, we are overall pretty help with the platform
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Usability
Marigold
While every WYSIWYG software will experience glitches, Emma handles them well. Keep in mind they rarely happen, but they do, it can be of annoyance. Regardless, Emma allows my organization to create seamless email campaigns using fresh data. Emma makes coming up with strategic decisions very easy. The list segmentation that Emma feature allows us to easily manage a large list without issues. Overall, Emma is extremely usable with nearly no learning curve!
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Validity
Litmus has integrations that make the software an integrated part of my work every day. Being able to test right within my email builder is just brilliant. Daily I also use the web interface to review analytics and spam testing. Overall it is one of the pieces of software I use daily without any complaints or issues.
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Reliability and Availability
Marigold
No answers on this topic
Validity
We have never had a problem with Litmus being unavailable so I would say their availability is fantastic. There might have been one time years ago that the site was down briefly but it also might have been a server issue on my end. Either way, Litmus was back up and running in a very short time
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Performance
Marigold
No answers on this topic
Validity
As with all technology, there are inevitably use-cases where you are unable to get to your original goal without some good old-fashioned experimenting. Some situations will (and are) more urgent which complicates an effective integration of a new process or a new team using an existing process but the "issues" are regularly resolved by re-starting the process specific to when Litmus is introduced to a project. If it doesn't come out the way you're anticipating, run it again and verify there is an issue before declaring all is lost
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Support Rating
Marigold
I hate that to get support I have to submit a question to a public forum and wait for a response. I just want the ability for a quick live chat to answer my simple help questions quickly or at the very least submit a ticket via email and get a status update.
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Validity
I am always so so impressed with the litmus support team. They are not only prompt but attentive and offer very personalised responses and support
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In-Person Training
Marigold
No answers on this topic
Validity
I had internal training for how to use, not lead by litmus. Unsure if there was any external training which took place before my time
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Online Training
Marigold
No answers on this topic
Validity
It has all the required information.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Marigold
No answers on this topic
Validity
I didn’t really personally participate much in the implementation of Litmus, but from what I observed during the process, it was a smooth process with minimal disruptions. The team was able to get up and running quickly, and the platform’s user-friendly interface made onboarding fairly easy for everyone involved from the start.
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Alternatives Considered
Marigold
At the time we made the decision to move to Emma, my organization was using both MailChimp and Constant Contact. Emma's drag-and-drop template editor surpassed both, and even editing the pre-made template HTML in Emma was easier. List management was much smoother than the clunky Constant Contact and MailChimp lists we had. From a design perspective, we chose Emma for its ease of use in creating templates and modifying existing ones, as well as the ability to push out branded templates and brand assets through its master admin/subaccount capabilities. Emma's analytics and reporting were much less frustrating to navigate and understand, such that, rather than spending all of our time trying to make sense of the metrics from a campaign (which we were definitely doing), we were attracted to being able to report easily and then move on to determining how to make real improvements
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Validity
This is not applicable to my role as I have used Litmus to test emails since I have started. Because of the ease of use, timeliness, consistent quality, and affordability that Litmus offers, I haven't found the need to look at similar products or organizations. If all of these features continue to stay strong, I don't plan on changing providers
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Scalability
Marigold
No answers on this topic
Validity
With our enterprise account, scalability is not an issue. I have not yet seen or heard of significant issues with user access, API connections for integrations etc. This includes down time for "Scheduled Maintenance" as some providers call them, Litmus has the technology backing to support a global team with a 24-hour workday across regions
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Return on Investment
Marigold
  • Stores using the platform have seen good deliverability stats. Open rates and click-through rates are high with the templates that Emma creates. We still face the challenge of getting more users on the platform.
  • User satisfaction is high for our users who are regularly using the platform.
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Validity
  • Litmus saves our team so much time by making the QA and email review process so much easier, streamlined, and efficient.
  • We often send out campaigns out to thousands of members, and Litmus gives us the assurance and peace of mind that everything is working as it should before it gets sent out.
  • Decreases the number of email review cycles we go through.
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ScreenShots

Emma by Marigold Screenshots

Screenshot of dynamic content used to send unique, personalized content to each subscriber based on the data stored about them from a single email.Screenshot of the editor's drag & drop layouts and inline text editing, that help to keep the creative process fast and flexible.Screenshot of a display of account activity, email performance and recent mailings in one place right after login.Screenshot of insights on the go using Metric, the included iPhone and Android app.Screenshot of response results that give insights into what's working and provide next steps.Screenshot of customizable, mobile-optimized templates to show off a brand and content in the template gallery.

Litmus from Validity Screenshots

Screenshot of Litmus Personalize Essentials, with live polls to give subscribers a voice and drive email engagement.Screenshot of Litmus Email Guardian, featuring 24/7 link monitoring to safeguard emails.Screenshot of Litmus' integrated insights reports, that can automatically combine metrics from Salesforce Marketing Cloud with subscriber engagement insights from Litmus.Screenshot of campaign preview, available in 100+ popular email clientsScreenshot of Litmus' inbox previewing and feedback tools, that help users to spot and fix issues early.