In 2023, we proudly bestowed the Best Email Marketing Tool for Ease of Use accolade upon MailerLite! Discover the reasons behind this recognition as we delve into a comprehensive review of the product.
MailerLite, though relatively new in the realm of email marketing, showcases a fresh and modern approach evident in its design, features, and support system. It exudes a sense of youthfulness, not in a ‘young, crazy, fun!’ manner, but rather in a ‘modern, clean, and simple’ fashion.
The core values of MailerLite highlight its position as a progressive email marketing software. With a global team of employees and support agents, assistance in your native language is readily available. Currently accessible in English and Spanish, the application reflects a commitment to diverse user experiences.
Recently, MailerLite introduced a new software version, affectionately naming the older version MailerLite Classic. This review has been updated to encapsulate the transformations in design interface, new features, and the pricing model, providing an insightful perspective on MailerLite’s evolving capabilities.
Summary of MailerLite Review
MailerLite provides a Free Forever plan, and even as you transition to paid options, it remains more cost-effective than many other email marketing tools. The Growing Business plan starts at $15 for 1,000 subscribers, encompassing unlimited emails, landing pages, and over 60 contemporary newsletter templates.
Its user-friendly interface positions MailerLite as an excellent choice for beginners in the realm of email marketing. The platform boasts outstanding email deliverability, ensuring your campaigns reach their intended audience effectively.
While some users may perceive limitations in reporting and marketing automation options, MailerLite compensates with its simplicity, offering an extensive array of choices for email campaigns, landing pages, and form customization. The inclusion of a fast and straightforward editor enhances the overall experience, making MailerLite’s ‘Free Forever’ plan feel like a valuable steal.
MailerLite Screenshot
MailerLite Pricing
Trailer stands out as one of the more budget-friendly options among email service providers available in the market.
The displayed prices pertain to the Growing Business plan. Additionally, MailerLite offers an elevated tier known as Advanced, which introduces features such as unlimited account users, Facebook integration, promotion pop-ups, and multiple automation triggers. For substantial subscriber lists of 100k and beyond, there is the Enterprise tier, granting access to dedicated IP addresses and specialized deliverability consultations.
For further details on MailerLite’s pricing and plans, feel free to explore our comprehensive MailerLite pricing guide.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Free Plan Advantages:
Comprehensive Features: The free version of MailerLite includes a robust set of features, encompassing single-trigger automation workflows, a user-friendly landing page builder, and a versatile survey maker. This diverse feature set positions MailerLite as a noteworthy alternative to ActiveCampaign.
User-Friendly Experience: The platform excels in user-friendliness, offering a clean and straightforward interface that caters to both novice and experienced users. Unlike some other email marketing platforms, MailerLite ensures a non-overwhelming experience for its users.
Landing Page Builder: MailerLite’s landing page builder empowers users to effortlessly create and design landing pages hosted either by MailerLite or on their own domain. Integration with Stripe enhances the functionality, enabling users to utilize landing pages for selling digital products seamlessly.
Outstanding Deliverability: Consistently securing top positions in deliverability tests, MailerLite reassures users that their email campaigns will reliably land in their subscribers’ inboxes. The platform’s commitment to excellent deliverability is a noteworthy feature.
Fair Subscriber Counting: MailerLite adopts a fair approach to counting subscribers. Users are not billed for inactive contacts that have unsubscribed or bounced. Instead, only “unique subscribers used” contribute towards the allocated quota. This means if only a portion of the customer base receives regular emails, the other segment does not impact the billing invoice.
Cons
Missing Pro Features:
Affordable but Limited: Despite offering attractive pricing, MailerLite does have some limitations in terms of pro features. Notable omissions include full reporting capabilities, advanced automations, CRM features, and spam/design testing.
Stringent Approval Process: While the stringent approval process contributes to maintaining high deliverability rates, it might seem a bit excessive for users eager to swiftly commence their email marketing journey.
No Templates on Free Version: Regrettably, the free version lacks access to newsletter and landing page templates. To leverage these resources, a transition to one of the paid plans is necessary, with the HTML editor exclusively available in the Advanced plan.
Subscriber Management Constraints: While providing fundamental subscriber management tools, MailerLite falls short in offering advanced features. The available database field types are confined to text, number, and date fields, and a comprehensive tagging system is notably absent.
Determining If MailerLite is the Ideal Newsletter Service for You:
Recommended if:
Ideal Users for MailerLite:
- Small Business Owners, Solopreneurs, or Freelancers: If you operate on a modest budget but require more than just basic newsletter sending, MailerLite is an ideal email marketing solution. It offers features such as automation workflows, contact tagging and segmentation, and a versatile landing page editor, enabling the execution of sophisticated campaigns.
- Bloggers or Creatives: In addition to its cost-effective pricing, MailerLite caters to bloggers and creatives with tailored features. This includes support for RSS campaigns, seamless integration with WordPress, and capabilities for video marketing.
- Complete Beginners: For those who are new to email marketing, MailerLite stands out as a top choice. Its simple interface, intuitive navigation, and user-friendly email editor make it accessible for beginners. The introduction of MailerLite Academy, offering free courses to transform users into certified email marketing experts, further simplifies the learning curve.
Not recommended if:
Requirement: Comprehensive Reporting: If your priority is in-depth reporting, MailerLite provides standard reports commonly found in email marketing tools, covering statistics for opens, clicks, and more. It also offers purchase tracking for Shopify and WooCommerce. However, it’s important to note that MailerLite does not include social tracking. If social tracking is a crucial feature for you, considering an email marketing service like GetResponse might be more suitable.
Requirement: Complex Automations: For those in need of intricate automation capabilities, MailerLite allows you to establish automated workflows triggered by actions such as subscribers joining a group, clicking a link, or having a contact field updated. However, it falls short when it comes to more advanced triggers, such as automations based on visitors’ interactions with specific pages on your website. If advanced automation features are critical for your needs, exploring alternatives may be advisable.
Rating Details
In-Depth Exploration of MailerLite’s Key Features
As evident from this comprehensive MailerLite review, the platform boasts a diverse array of features, earning accolades for its user-friendly interface. Now, let’s delve deeper into the specific strengths and drawbacks of its key features:
Thorough Evaluation of MailerLite’s Landing Page Builder:
After conducting extensive testing on MailerLite’s landing page builder, we highly recommend its usage. The notable advantage lies in the ability to construct and publish up to 10 landing pages without incurring any costs – a significant benefit, particularly when considering the potentially high expenses associated with dedicated landing page builders, often ranging from $40 to $90 per month.
It’s essential to bear in mind that, should you desire to publish your page on a custom domain, a transition to the Growing Business paid plan, priced at $15 per month, becomes necessary.
Advantages of the MailerLite Landing Page Builder:
Exploring the merits of MailerLite’s landing page builder reveals several compelling features:
- User-Friendly Drag-and-Drop Interface: The builder employs a drag-and-drop interface, ensuring a remarkably user-friendly experience.
- Diverse Content Elements: Users benefit from a wide array of content elements, including countdown timers, events, surveys, and more.
- Editable Form Fields: Form fields are easily editable, and submissions seamlessly integrate with the selected list.
- SEO Customization: Options for editing SEO settings, including the choice to index the landing page, are available.
- Automation Triggers: Automation capabilities enable the triggering of sequences like welcome series, follow-up messages, or event reminders.
- Modern Templates on Paid Plans: The paid plans offer an assortment of attractive and contemporary templates.
- Stripe Integration for E-Commerce: Integration with Stripe facilitates the selling of services and products directly on landing pages.
Considerations:
Despite its strengths, there are certain aspects to be aware of:
- Lack of Landing Page Templates in Free Plan: The free plan does not include landing page templates, potentially limiting customization options.
- Absence of Personalized Dynamic Content for Pro Users: Pro users miss out on the capability to add personalized dynamic content, a feature beneficial for tailoring content to specific user groups.
- Limitations on File Uploads: Uploading files such as PDFs directly is not supported; a workaround via platforms like Google Drive or Dropbox is necessary.
- Advancement Towards All-in-One Marketing Platform: With the inclusion of features like selling digital products and newsletter subscriptions (available in the Growing Business plan or higher), MailerLite is progressively evolving into an all-in-one marketing platform.
We highly commend MailerLite’s templates for their responsiveness and evident craftsmanship by experienced designers.
Sorting templates by category is facilitated, allowing for easy content editing. Additionally, users have the option to create personalized templates and save them for future use.
To incorporate custom code or implement password protection for your pages, opting for the Advanced plan priced at $21 per month is necessary.
Drag and Drop Editor
The drag-and-drop interface within MailerLite’s editor stands out as one of the most efficient editors we’ve encountered, backed by extensive testing. Its speed and diverse content elements, including video, testimonials, image carousels, quizzes, etc., empower users to create highly engaging campaigns. The incorporation of dynamic content enables ultra-personalized emails.
Pros of Mailerlite’s Editor:
- RSS Feed Integration: MailerLite allows automatic fetching of information from your RSS feed, enabling the automated sending of emails featuring new blog articles.
- Social Media Integration: Seamless integration with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram permits the inclusion of social media posts directly in your newsletter.
- Ecommerce Listings: Integration with ecommerce platforms allows for the direct inclusion of listings in newsletters and campaigns.
- Image Integration: Direct integration with Giphy and Unsplash facilitates the quick discovery and upload of beautiful images. Additionally, MailerLite incorporates image editing software within the editor.
- Dynamic Content Customization: Users can set the visibility for any block, ensuring it appears only to specific subscriber segments.
Cons of Mailerlite’s Editor:
- Spam & Design Testing: Unfortunately, the editor lacks spam testing functionality, and users are unable to preview how their emails will appear on different email clients.
- HTML Editor Limitation: The custom HTML editor is exclusively available in the Advanced plan.
List Management
MailerLite imposes no restrictions on the number of lists you can create, making it an attractive option for users transitioning from platforms like Mailchimp.
Types of Lists in MailerLite:
- Segments: Segments function as dynamic groups. Each segment incorporates at least one rule or condition that subscribers must satisfy to join the list. Once the criteria are met, the subscriber is automatically included in the segment. This dynamic nature allows for targeted communication, ensuring that contacts receive relevant content based on specific conditions.
- Groups: Groups operate as static entities or interest groups. In this setup, contacts are manually added and removed without the necessity of meeting specific criteria. One subscriber has the flexibility to belong to multiple groups, offering versatility in list management.
Segmentation filters within MailerLite encompass criteria such as a subscriber’s interaction with specific campaigns, their time zone, or their inactivity duration. These segments prove invaluable in executing targeted and automated marketing campaigns.
Subscriber Fields: An important aspect to note is that MailerLite’s database fields are restricted to text, number, or date fields. Unlike certain email service providers, MailerLite lacks dropdown fields or radio buttons, which facilitate the collection of structured subscriber data.
Consider a scenario where you are gathering ‘Country’ information using a free-text field. This approach might result in inconsistent entries like ‘USA’ or ‘United States.’ While both entries refer to the same country, this lack of uniformity hampers effective data segmentation.
In comparison to the advanced list management tools of the professional email marketing tool ActiveCampaign, MailerLite’s list management features may not be as sophisticated. However, it is worth noting that MailerLite’s tools are more user-friendly and straightforward.
Mailerlite Deliverability
Over the past five years, we have consistently included MailerLite in our bi-annual deliverability tests. During this period, MailerLite has demonstrated outstanding deliverability, consistently achieving a score of 90% or above in most testing rounds. This underscores MailerLite’s commitment to maintaining high deliverability standards.
In our most recent testing round, MailerLite secured the first-place position with an impressive deliverability rate of 95.85%. The average deliverability rate over the last three rounds stood at an impressive 95.4%. In recognition of these exceptional scores, we have awarded MailerLite with two accolades. Congratulations to the MailerLite team on their outstanding performance in email deliverability over the years!
Discover MailerLite’s performance over the years and compare it to other email services in our in-depth deliverability analysis.
Conclusion:
MailerLite stands out for its user-friendly interface and simplicity, catering to the email marketing needs of most small businesses effectively. While it offers a cost-effective solution, some limitations include relatively thin automation capabilities and the absence of spam/design testing.
Although the ‘Forever Free’ plan has seen some feature restrictions, it remains a suitable choice for users with fewer than 1,000 subscribers. The inclusion of a mobile app, currently available on iOS, adds to its accessibility.
However, MailerLite’s stricter approval process requires adherence to ethical list collection and email sending practices. The platform excels in newsletter creation, thanks to its excellent drag-and-drop editor and appealing designs.
For those seeking a reliable email marketing solution with a focus on newsletter creation, MailerLite proves to be a top choice. Explore MailerLite for free with up to 1,000 recipients and refer to our MailerLite tutorial for a quick setup guide.
If your contact list needs improvement, our comprehensive guide on how to build an email list can provide valuable insights.
