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Words of Wisdom -Return Path
July 14, 2014

Words of Wisdom -Return Path

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Email Intelligence Suite

Modules Used

  • Return Path (legacy)

Overall Satisfaction with Return Path

We use Return Path for deliverability monitoring of our email clients. We add the Return Path deliverability seeds to ad hoc email campaigns. We use the Inbox Monitor, Reputation Monitor and Certification tab within the tool. We use Return Path as a first line of defense in diagnosing inbox issues at the various ISPs and use Return Path to send any blacklist alerts.
  • They have an easy interface to use and understand.
  • They provide great data to help find inbox issues, I would say the data I see in Return Path at the major ISPs is over 90% accurate to the bigger picture.
  • They are very responsive to questions that you ask.
  • They are way too sales oriented, it gets to be overkill to consistently be hounded about trying to sell our clients additional products from Return Path because we are their "partner". There have been times when our clients ask us to tell Return Path to stop contacting them directly, as they should not be doing that as our "partner" to begin with.
  • There have not been any significant changes/upgrades to the interface in the 2 years I have used it. I have heard for 2 years that they are suppose to expand their subscriber panel data and they haven't. I usually have to create a support ticket when the seeds go offline or something is broken, before they are aware of the issue.
  • Their seed lists updates constantly and it really isn't that well known when they do. It is extremely hard for us to update the seed list easily for clients because we have so many different versions of campaigns that we deploy, we have to assign values to data fields for the seeds and when the list changes all the time we cannot keep it updated and we miss the full benefit of the seeds.
  • In my 2 years using Return Path we have had 5 account reps. Definitely frustrating to get a new account rep every few months.
  • Their sales team is condescending. I was spoken to very rudely when our Senior Director couldn't join a call at the last minute. They did not seem to care about anyone who doesn't influence the bottom line and get combative.
  • It has helped identify inbox issues and thus helping our clients reach more inboxes.
  • They have negatively impacted client relations on numerous occasions. They have reached out and told clients they are having issues or need certain products when they are already our clients and we are proving solutions for them.
  • They provide solid customer support when you create a support ticket. They are usually very quick to respond and give you an answer.
We looked at 250ok and Pivotal Veracity. Each has their own perks. Return Path has the best inbox monitoring by far but is the most expensive and that isn't even close. 250ok has the best blacklist monitoring capabilities and was the best priced but the inbox monitoring wasn't as good yet. 250ok is a growing company so they will keep expanding and growing on their capability. I was new to Pivotal Veracity, and from others feedback it didn't look like they made any changes to their tool in many years.
Return Path is great for inbox monitoring and for monitoring reputation on the IP addresses. To me it doesn't make sense to use Return Path as your anti-phishing solution. It is over the top expensive when your IT team can implement a DMARC policy for free and handle phishing/spoofing attempts. They do have some good competitor data that they offer but they charge a ton for it and you really only need that kind of data maybe once a quarter.

Using Return Path

Overall they provide a solid product. There needs to be a better line drawn of where their sales team can interject and where they cannot. Developing a better partner relationship is key for Return Path to retain their clients. I think if they can make some updates and changes to the interface to help users view more data and have a bigger reach that would be key as well.