Emma by Marigold vs. Twilio SendGrid

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
Twilio SendGrid
Score 6.9 out of 10
N/A
Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns provides users with segmentation, campaign editing, and deliverability. According to the vendor, Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns is trusted by over 80,000 customers globally, including Airbnb, Spotify and Uber. Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns aims to help users by providing: MORE EFFICIENT EMAIL BUILDING The campaign building process is free from frustrating, rigid step-by-step wizards that slow users down. The vendor says…
$15
per month
Pricing
Emma by MarigoldTwilio SendGrid
Editions & Modules
Basic
$500
per year per user
Basic
$15
per month
Advanced
$60
per month
Free
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Emma by MarigoldTwilio SendGrid
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Emma by MarigoldTwilio SendGrid
Considered Both Products
Emma by Marigold
Chose Emma by Marigold
Emma had a more robust multi-level account structure which empowered individual locations to participate at the ground-level. Additionally corporate was able to maintain oversight, template creation, marketing automation, and data reporting. The goal is to provide the locations …
Chose Emma by Marigold
We moved from Emma to SendGrid. The deliverability of Emma is lower than Sendgrid and the overall functionality of Sendgrid feels more fit for a digital marketing agency. The number and design of the Emma templates far surpasses that of Sendgrid though. Emma is much more suited …
Chose Emma by Marigold
We chose Emma in addition to Sendgrid to protect the integrity of our transactional email deliverability. Emma's delivery rates were good. We later found MailChimp a bit cheaper and easier to work with in our specific use case but I still think it's worth testing Emma if you're …
Twilio SendGrid
Chose Twilio SendGrid
For engaging with existing (non-cold) email lists including transactional emails and just general daily/weekly newsletters, SendGrid has a good price and high deliverability rates. SendGrid is also very startup-community friendly and helped our developers get up to speed and …
Features
Emma by MarigoldTwilio SendGrid
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Emma by Marigold
9.1
31 Ratings
14% above category average
Twilio SendGrid
7.0
50 Ratings
12% below category average
WYSIWYG email editor8.024 Ratings8.537 Ratings
Dynamic content9.025 Ratings6.840 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content9.024 Ratings5.238 Ratings
A/B testing9.024 Ratings8.530 Ratings
Mobile optimization9.029 Ratings8.238 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting10.031 Ratings6.350 Ratings
List management10.031 Ratings6.044 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences9.021 Ratings5.824 Ratings
Landing pages00 Ratings8.024 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Emma by Marigold
10.0
31 Ratings
27% above category average
Twilio SendGrid
6.8
50 Ratings
11% below category average
Dashboards10.030 Ratings6.048 Ratings
Standard reports9.931 Ratings6.548 Ratings
Custom reports10.019 Ratings7.931 Ratings
Pre-Send Testing
Comparison of Pre-Send Testing features of Product A and Product B
Emma by Marigold
-
Ratings
Twilio SendGrid
8.1
12 Ratings
2% above category average
URL Validation00 Ratings7.511 Ratings
Link Tracking00 Ratings7.712 Ratings
Image Validation00 Ratings8.49 Ratings
Inbox Display00 Ratings7.811 Ratings
Email Accessibility Tools00 Ratings8.412 Ratings
Spelling and Grammar Check00 Ratings8.09 Ratings
Spam Testing00 Ratings8.011 Ratings
Email Previews00 Ratings8.812 Ratings
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Emma by MarigoldTwilio SendGrid
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Emma by Marigold
Emma by Marigold
Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
Emma by MarigoldTwilio SendGrid
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(32 ratings)
6.0
(61 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(5 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(2 ratings)
6.2
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
2.0
(1 ratings)
3.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Emma by MarigoldTwilio SendGrid
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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Twilio
If you're prepared to build out your whole staff UX, audience creation, email production, and analytics on your own using API, this tool may have that flexibility. If you require a sturdy drag and drop production tool, this tool has it but at the expense of a lot of other critical functionality. Out of the box analytics/reporting, is extremely limited. Complex queries, even something like pulling those who haven't engaged in email within a certain time period, is clunky. If you require any support at all, this is not the tool for you. I'm a deliverability consultant and have used many of the top email marketing tools and SendGrid has been extremely difficult for my team. I do not recommend it. Shiny and bright during sales, pretty disappointing thereafter.
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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
Read full review
Twilio
  • Managing email lists / audiences is easy with features like groups and segments.
  • They provide pre-built email templates that are very easy to modify. It is also super easy to create new email templates with their drag-and-drop email builder.
  • Provides clear / easy-to-read analytics of email campaigns.
  • I can easily import large email contact lists all at once or add a user manually one-at-a-time, when needed.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Twilio
  • Not necessarily their Email API but their email in general - they are currently in beta for automated email sequences but are still bare bones. Much more work is needed before it can be used mainstream and be able to convert everything to SendGrid.
  • Helping with warming up our dedicated IP for the best-sending score.
  • We seem to hit the promotions folder a decent amount (maybe the IP problem above) and even a lot of their emails hit my spam or promotions folder (whether they be transactional or marketing) which isn't a great sign when trusting an ESP.
  • Transactional email sequences would be a huge plus.
  • Now that Twilio owns SenGrid, having an integrated platform where you could see all our transactional emails together.
  • Better reporting and split reporting between transactional and marketing emails.
Read full review
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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Twilio
No answers on this topic
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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Twilio
It is usable but needs improvement in overall user experience and ease of use. A new joinee/anyone new to the tool would need more tarining currently before he can use the platform seamlessly. The set-up to value realization time for Twilio SendGrid customers is generally high because of this concern.
Read full review
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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Twilio
Twilio SendGrid Email API is everything we want it to be, and we have no reason to look for any other solution. Features and pricing match exactly what we need. As developers for SaaS products, Twilio SendGrid Email API provides a great service. I hope that they stay this way and don't inflate the service with too many marketing oriented features, because there are other tools for that and Twilio SendGrid Email API is a API for sending email first and foremost.
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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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Twilio
Sendgrid has a lot of features that other providers have and a few more - like the dynamic template builder, which AWS SES doesn't have. We choose the provider based on the scenario of use and the provider we're using. If we're going to be making regular changes to a template, then we'd go with Sendgrid, as the changes will be easier to make and don't necessarily require developer intervention.
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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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Twilio
  • As it was cheaper than the transactional service we previously used, it saved costs.
  • The API was relatively easy to work with so it helped us ship the service and test it quickly.
  • We still use the transactional email service, even though we recognize its limits as it meets our immediate needs.
Read full review
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.