SendPulse Review PROS & CONS (2023) – Powerful & Affordable Email Marketing Platform

As a website owner, you probably are already utilizing the power of email marketing to stay connected with your readers. Popular email marketing services like MailChimp, Aweber etc. might be useful for email campaigns. But email is not enough.

You need to use every messaging option possible. SMS and push notifications are a good start. But this typically means using a different service provider for each option which can also become expensive.

This is where SendPulse comes in. SendPulse is a marketing tool for people which need more than just an email newsletter. With SendPulse, you can send emails, text messages and push notifications on the same platform.

You can segment your audience, create A/B tests, and do everything else you’re used to with market leaders like MailChimp or Campaign Monitor and more. SendPulse is easy to set up, and free to start. SendPulse will guide you through your campaigns.

 

SendPulse Review

SendPulse is a three-in-one integrated campaign system. It takes care of your email campaigns, SMS and web push notifications. All that comes at an affordable price as compared to other players on the market. You can check my WordPress push notifications post where I have mentioned free and paid push notification options for WordPress.

SendPulse is an email marketing service, that focuses on small and medium businesses. It stands out due to several reasons:

1. User-friendly and intuitive interface – It makes the work easy even for the beginners.
2. It combines several channels of communication together – Email, SMS, and we push.
3. Pricing plans – There are both free and paid pricing plans, so you can test or even use some services for free for a long time.

 

 

Now let’s examine each service and its features in particular.

 

SendPulse Email Service

Email Service in SendPulse has the widest choice of features available. A good news is that you can use free pricing plan to discover them. If your mailing list is not more than 2500 subscribers, send up to 15 000 emails every month for free.

Paid pricing plans are cheaper than in other services:

• 2500 subscribers – $9.85/month
• 3000 subscribers – $29/month
• 4000 subscribers – $32/month
• 5000 subscribers – $35/month
• 10000 subscribers – $53/month
• 25000 subscribers – $108/month

SendPulse has VIP plan in case you have more than 1 million subscribers.

 

Artificial Intelligence technology (AI)

Why is it necessary? This is a real must if you take your business serious. Simple email campaign sent to all the subscribers won’t bring the expected results which are higher engagement, brand awareness, and conversions.

Individual approach to every client is essential as it shows not only your desire to earn money but real concern about your business. It means that you are eager to work hard to improve it.

How does it work? AI will help you to discover an individual approach to every subscriber. This technology carries out a deep analysis of a user’s interaction with your business.

For example, if you own an online store, the history of purchases, email opens, activities of your clients will be taken into account while analyzing.

Then, on its basis, you will be able to send only relevant and useful content to every subscriber, including information about preferred products or services.

Besides, AI technology will help you to discover the best time for every subscriber to receive your email, as well as the device used.

You have to send at least 10 email campaigns before in order to get an accurate analysis. Then, you’ll have an appropriate basis for personalization and segmentation.

AI Technology raises conversions by 70%! This is also achieved by the feature “Resend to unopened messages”.

 

 

Of course, all your emails won’t be open by subscribers due to different reasons. Using this feature, you will be able to resend unopened emails using web push or email.

All you need is just to create new subject line and set the sending date. The new subject line is to be more creative, original and eye-catching. Using AI Technology is available in all paid pricing plans.

 

Drag and Drop Editor

Design of email template plays an important role as it makes your subscriber read your email till the end. In SendPulse it is easy to create good-looking email templates without any special skills and programming.

Even a beginner in email marketing will cope with it. There are 4 variants with different structure within layout template editor.

 

 

The editor is quite simple. There are 7 elements at the left, which you should drag to your template. At the right, there are design options. Choose the necessary element and edit its color, font, background, width, font size, etc.

 

 

If you don’t want to create your own email template from the scratch, SendPulse offers eight categories of nice email templates. Choose any to your liking and edit if necessary.

 

 

 

All email templates created in SendPulse are responsive. It means that they will look nice even on the smallest screens.

 

Email Campaign Creation

It doesn’t take much time and efforts to create an email campaign in SendPulse.

There are 3 steps to follow:

• Information about campaign
• Template and message text
• Review and sending

But, before creating an email campaign, create a mailing list. All email addresses should be legal and valid.

This means that you have an email permission to send campaigns. There are 3 methods to add email addresses to your mailing list:

• Upload a file
• Copy and Paste
• Import from another service

 

 

Personalize and segment your mailing lists for better performance. So, how to create an email campaign?

Step 1- Information about campaign

 

 

Choose a mailing list, segment it if necessary. You can send a campaign to multiple mailing lists at once.

Step 2 – Template and message text

Four variants are available here:

• Import your own template
• Drag-and-Drop editor
• Existing design templates
• HTML editor

Create email template, fill it with your content, use variables. Be creative!

Step 3 – Review and sending

Check all the information at this step and preview your message body.

You can use the scheduler to plan email sending. If you want to send an email campaign during non-working hours or to congratulate subscribers on their birthday, set the sending date and the email will be sent automatically.

Enable tracking statistics of your campaign. You can tick opens, clicks and add UTM-parameters for Google Analytics. You will be able to monitor the effectivity of your work after sending a campaign.

You can track the following metrics: Delivered emails, Errors, Email open rate, CTR, Emails marked as spam, Unsubscribed, Opens by location, Click map and Opens by devices.

 

 

You can enable Resend to unreads feature if you want more email open rates. Set the sending date and time, create a new subject line and your email will be resent automatically.

 

 

You can use a dedicated IP address to send out email campaigns. Thus, there are fewer chances that you’ll get in the spam folder and be will blacklisted and your reputation as a sender will increase.

There is also an option to use DKIM and SPF. Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) is a technology that allows organizations to vouch for messages sent by email.

This technology uses a cryptographic signature to confirm a sender’s domain. Also, it looks for spam in emails, filters them, in other words.

 

Unsubscribe Page

In SendPulse you can create your own unsubscribe page with the reasons, but you can’t change the unsubscribe form design. You can edit text color, background color, and favicon.

Adding unsubscribe reasons will help you to understand your mistakes better. You can either choose existing reasons or specify your own one.

After creating an unsubscribe page, it will be sent for moderation and approval. Then, you can use it in your campaigns.

 

Autoresponders

It is important to make your email marketing automated, as you will be able to prevent mistakes, not to forget about important events (holidays, special dates etc), save time. There are several automations in SendPulse.

 

 

For example, you can create automated series that will be sent after a user subscribes or is added to the list. You can add SMS to the autoresponder, click “Activate SMS”. Also, you can add triggers such as email open, click on a link, email was not opened.

 

 

Subscription Forms

In SendPulse you can choose an already existing subscription form and edit it in the Form Builder, or create your own one. Form Builder is easy to use. Just drag the necessary elements to your template and edit them.

 

 

Then, select a mailing list for a subscription form chosen and go to Builder. Subscription forms in SendPulse have a double opt-in.

With the help of A/B tests, it is possible to test some email elements, such as Subject line, Sender’s data, Preheader, Call-to-action, Text settings, Photos, GIFs in email and Links.

You form a hypothesis and choose a successful condition. For example, if you test call-to-action, an email with a higher number of CTR wins. Test your hypothesis for several times to get a better result.

When you discover an email with the winning element, you can send it manually or set its sending automatically while creating an A/B test. SendPulse has several integrations for eCommerce, CRM, and CMS:

• For eCommerce: WooCommerce, Opencart, PrestaShop, OptinMonster, WebAsyst, and x-Cart.
• For CRM: Bitrix24, Highrise, Vtiger, Sage, and OneBox.
• For CMS: WordPress, Lander, and Drupal.
• For other systems: Zapier, Typeform, Justuno, Translation Exchange, Facebook Ad Leads, LeadsBridge, and Convertful.

 

SendPulse Email Plugin for WordPress

SendPulse has email plugin for WordPress. With the help of it, it is possible to add a subscription form to a site. Integration and installation are done in 1 click. All the subscribers will be automatically added from WordPress to your mailing lists in SendPulse.

SendPulse also has push notification plugin for WordPress. Inform your clients of recent news, updates, sales and discounts with the help of quick offline message in their browsers.

With this integration, you can send any amount of bulk and triggered push notifications for free. There are no limitations.

You can apply personalization and segmentation for every subscriber to receive relevant and interesting content. In addition, you can monitor the results of your web push campaign: deliveries, geography stats, CTR.

 

SendPulse Web Push Notifications

Push notifications in SendPulse are highly effective due to several reasons:

• Always free without any limitations
• Highly visible in a browser window
• Supported by all browsers
• Can include large images
• Personalization, segmentation, A/B test are available
• Possible to track the results (deliverability, active subscribers, conversions)

Push notification sending is easy. But before using you have to add a new website, website image and subscription request.

 

 

Then, download the setup files.

 

 

Add code to your site and start sending notification requests.

 

 

NOTE: If using on WordPress site you don’t need to do all mentioned steps. Just install SendPulse Free Web Push plugin and follow steps.

 

SendPulse Push Notification Features

 

SendPusle SMS Service

SMS like a push notification is a good idea to tell your clients that you have special proposals and discounts for them. There is a free trial in SendPulse. You get 10 free SMS to test the service.

 

 

Fill all the fields, mind that you can’t change SMS text within free pricing plan. You can choose a mailing list or enter the recipients’ phone numbers manually.

Set to send SMS immediately or set the sending date and time. Preview the way your SMS will look like on the recipients’ screens. In SendPulse you can automate your SMS marketing and apply personalization.

 

SendPulse Review Final Words

SendPulse is a perfect email marketing platform. It is one of the few in the market that provides multiple channels of communication with your audience. You can use any combination of bulk email, bulk SMS messages, and web push notifications to engage your subscribers and grow your email list.

I have tried outlining major features and services in the SendPulse review above that might help you to decide if SendPulse is the right choice for you. If you are small or mid-size business or a blogger, you should give SendPulse a shot. It is affordable and provides an all-in-one (email, web push & SMS) platform for all of your email marketing needs.

As alternative to SendPulse, I suggest you check Omnisend review, AcyMailing review, Moosend review, MailOptin review, or Mailster review. If you don’t want to waste time searching for email addresses and the ways to reach out to people, then you should check Snovio an all-in-one platform.