SparkPost (discontinued) vs. Vbout

Our early experiences with SparkPost were great; we were looking for a low-cost (or no-cost) solution to our email messaging needs, and SparkPost had the best low-cost option: 100,000 messages per month for free, guaranteed for life. Even though our team has experience with other APIs, we chose SparkPost because it felt like the best value. Our experience with it was great. Two years ago, they discontinued their free option but sent the existing users the following message: "When you signed up, we promised that if we ever changed the terms of our 100K free plan, we would continue to honor the original plan for the life of the account. I would like to reaffirm this promise: while this plan is no longer available to new customers, you are grandfathered into this level of free sending volume." The following year, apparently following a change in leadership, they decided to "deprecate" existing free plans, dropping us down from 100,000 messages per month to 500, the lowest of any email API service I'm aware of. No recognition of the broken promise, the reneged guarantee, just a 20% off coupon. This atrocious behavior that reeks of a new culture of squeezing as much money as possible out of its users and has coincided with a steady deterioration of functionality and customer service. At this point, I have no idea why anyone would pay more for a worse service that treats its users so poorly when you could use SendGrid or a similar competitor for a lower price and way more features.

Incentivized

To Automate your social media presence by bulk scheduling content. Create multiple drip email marketing campaigns to support different marketing promotion initiatives. Visualize your marketing funnel. Learn what is your best referral traffic source per each initiative (for example, I learned that Quora was bringing us highly qualified leads). Create lead scores and start qualifying your prospects. Create multiple landing pages to promote your product to different audiences.

Incentivized

• When you don't want to spent time writing your own code to send emails from your apps
• When you're looking for a product which provides all that you need regarding email features to make it part of your software
• When you want to use a product which includes templates that can be re-used instead of writing your own and all the required effort to do that

Incentivized

• On email marketing, it has petty good recommendation for sending methods.
• The landing pages can be fully customized with code editor and works with Bootstrap frameworks.
• The automation comes in handy since it works on all Vbout tools.
• We can also install the Tracking Code on external websites to utilize Vbout tools.
• Awesome support team!

Incentivized

• When I first implemented SparkPost, I did not take advantage of the sub-account feature, and my account was suspended on New Year's Eve. It took two days until I could speak with a support representative to get my account re-activated. I am now using sub-accounts to alleviate the underlying problem, but I was disappointed that my account was suspended by an automated system with no notice.

Incentivized

• Since their team is so focused on being the best, they occasionally have small feature appearance issues

Incentivized

The better relation quality / features / pricing in the market

Incentivized

Great experience so far. Vbout has low learning curve. It's a user-friendly product with comprehensive knowledge base. Even if we meet a blocker, their team is ready to help us solve the issue. Their keep the dashboard straightforward that contains all tools, so we can access each one of them right away.

Incentivized

Would give it a zero if I could. Their customer service used to be incredible; fast response times, really hands-on with their users, and a pretty regular feedback process. They sent me an awesome t-shirt that became part of my go-to climbing gear. But for the past year, their response times went way down, their customer service was less helpful and generally a lot more rude, and they haven't asked for customer input once since their leadership change

Incentivized

Mailchimp and sendgrid are giving good services and good customer support 24/7 and ROI is increased with this as transition is very smooth. SparkPost is very expensive and not good as much as we think and they will least worried about your mails, tickets, call and messages. Highly not recommended this SparkPost to any one

Incentivized

Vbout offers a very robust overall solution, with a more basic solution, and a much lower price point than the Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM solution.

Incentivized

• It has helped us with our IP health and making sure that we avoid spam traps
• Very high deliverability and automatic retrying once they have the event

Incentivized

• The platform has saved us a lot of money
• It's highly functional and allows us to do a lot more than Marketo
• It's easy to manage, and it saves us a lot of time on a regular basis.

Incentivized