The Most Affordable Email Marketing Software with Automation

By James Rosenquist
October 12, 2019

Save Hundreds of Dollars a Year With This Amazing Email Service Provider That’s the Best Kept Secret in Email Marketing

Email marketing software and sending services can get insanely expensive, especially as you grow your subscriber numbers. On top of that, some services make you pay much more for the really powerful features like marketing automation.

What if you could get an email marketing platform with automation capability that comes in for far less expensive than the competition but still gets great user reviews?

I think I have found that option with Moosend.

Moosend – Much More Affordable Than the Competition

I hate overpaying for things. I also hate cheap alternatives that don’t function like I want. Both of these options are a waste of money to me.

What I look for is that sweet spot that isn’t too expensive, isn’t too cheap, and does just what I want. After researching the most common email marketing services, I was really happy (and very surprised) to discover Moosend. I really didn’t think you could get this kind of functionality at such an affordable price after looking at all the competitors. Read on to see what I mean.

Moosend vs. Competitors

Price comparisons are always hard with business software because of all the different plans and features. Most software has 3 different plans that are tiered according to what features you want. Even worse with email marketing, they are also tiered according to how many subscribers you have and, in some cases, how many emails you send per month.

The great thing about Moosend is you get access to all the features in every plan – even the free version (minus a dedicated IP address). Let’s see how it compares to the most popular email marketing programs (competitor plans must include automations).

Plan Comparison (Monthly Pricing)

Competitor plan chosen according to closest feature match. Here’s how Moosend stacks up against some of the popular, big name services:

# of Subscribers	1,000	5,000	10,000	25,000
Moosend	Free	$30	$55	$125
Get Response (Plus)	$49	$79	$95	$179
Convert Kit	$29	$79	$119	$199
Mailchimp (Std. Plan)	$50	$75	$99	$219
Constant Contact (Email Plus)	$70	$95	$125	$225
ActiveCampaign (Plus)	$49	$135	$199	$319

As you can see, Moosend is significantly cheaper. Some email marketing services absolutely punish you for growing your list size and adding great features like marketing automations.

Getting Started With the Free Version

The free version of Moosend gives you up to 1,000 email subscribers. You also do not need to enter a credit card to get going. Setup is incredibly quick and easy.

Additionally, with the exception of a dedicated IP address, the free version of Moosend includes all the features of the paid plan including marketing automations. Most of the other email services make you pay a whole lot to get access to automations. Not Moosend. They don’t hide their features from their free customers which is something I really appreciate since it lets me try all those out without any kind of financial commitment whatsoever. I think this is a very customer-centric, and very strategic, approach.

Importing Subscribers from Another Email Service

Moosend makes it easy to import subscriber data you have already collected from existed .csv or .txt files or by copy and paste. You don’t have to worry about losing all those hard earned emails if you are switching over from another email software provider.

If you are transferring from Mailchimp, Moosend makes it even easier. Just use the Mailchimp Synchronizer integration and import all your subscriber and campaign data automatically via the Mailchimp API key. Moosend really goes the extra mile to win over Mailchimp users. Smart.

Moosend Features List

Pricing can be misleading if the software being compared doesn’t quite have the features of its competitors. But in Moosend’s case, it sometimes exceeds the features offered by other programs.

Moosend divides its features into the following categories: manage, create, automate, analytics, and connect. Let’s examine each one.

Manage Features

Custom Opt in Forms – create email sign up forms within Moosend and then copy and paste into your site with no coding required.
List Segmentation – you can segment your list according to your own custom fields, date added, name, email, campaigns a contact has clicked on before, links they have clicked, mobile vs. desktop users, operating system, what email client they use to open your emails, web browser, mobile browser, what subscribe method they used, and more. This gives you a lot of options to personalize emails and offers to very specific groups.
Custom Fields – collect all kinds of information from your users when they sign up to use in your segmentation

Create Features

Drag and Drop Editor – Moosend offers and easy to use drag and drop editor to build your emails. Check out a brief demo in this video.
Responsive Template Library – If you don’t want to design your own emails, just use one of the pre-existing templates.
Editing and Testing Helps – send a test email to any device to see how it looks, keep track of your email design history so you can revert to a prior version at any time, and design your own templates for reuse.
Campaign Scheduling – schedule emails to be sent on specific times and days.

Marketing Automation Features

OK, this is where I get really excited. If you are not familiar with marketing automation possibilities, get ready to have your mind blown because the possibilities with this technology are amazing. Here’s an overview video that gives you one sample of how automation can be used. We go into more details on the possibilities of this technology below.

There are two ways to set up marketing automations in Moosend: configure your own or use the pre-configured templates called recipes.

Here are some of the existing email marketing automation recipes you can quickly get set up with minimal effort:

Abandoned Cart – If a customer adds an item to their shopping cart but does not complete the purchase, Moosend can detect this and send an email reminder to finish the purchase. If the subscribers still doesn’t purchase or even open the email, you can send follow up emails after set times with more reminders, emails with more marketing points of why they should buy the product, or incentives like info on any existing discounts they can use or whatever else you think would encourage them to complete the purchase. This can really help drive down abandoned shopping cart rates.
Calendar Event – Whether it is the anniversary of when a visitor first signed up or purchased, a set amount of time since visiting your website, their birthday, or whatever you want, these time-based events can automatically trigger an email. These are great ways to send discounts, thank yous, incentives to re-engage with your website, tell them about what is new since their last visit, and so on.
Goal Completion – Emails can be triggered to send after a customer completes a certain goal. Goals can include a customer reaching a certain spending threshold, buying a certain number of products and so on. They can be then moved to a new email list segment, sent a special email with a reward or incentive to purchase more, or whatever you like. This is a great way to keep track of your very best customers or try to get first time customers to become repeat buyers.
Loyalty – Similar to goal completion, you can create loyalty based emails so that once a customer completes a certain number, amount, or type of purchase, you can send a loyalty based email with a reward, thank you, special pricing, and so on.
New Customer – If someone has just become a customer or has opted into your list, automatically send them a personalized email introducing them to your business, content, any loyalty programs, discounts, etc.
Onboarding – Help new users or products, services, or educational materials get trained up quickly with an onboarding series of emails. If the subscriber doesn’t open the initial emails, automated reminders can be sent until they enter your onboarding sequence.
Weather Based – This is crazy and really cool. Moosend can check the weather in a subscriber’s location and certain weather conditions can trigger emails. For instance, if it is rainy in a subscriber’s location, you could send offers for rain gear or shows to watch on rainy days. If it is snowing, send offers for snow tires, cold weather apparel, ski vacations, outdoor recreation ideas, etc. You can do whatever you want – get creative!
Recurring Subscription Reminder – If a specific date arrives and there is no purchase, a followup email can be sent to remind them it is time to buy again.
Special Offer – Moosend has the amazing ability to track what your subscribers do on your website and which pages they visit. If a customer arrives at a landing page you set up with a special offer and they don’t purchase, you can send them an email with the offer. This is very similar to ad retargeting but you don’t have to pay extra for it if they are your subscriber!
Content Based Trigger – Similar to the special offer recipe, if a visitor browses a particular page on your site, send a follow up email that is related to that specific content and their area of interest. I am really excited to try this feature out…
Custom Information Change Trigger – Let’s say a customer moves from one city to another and changes this information in a user account that interfaces with Moosend. You can then send an automated email with information based on that city (real estate info, city guides, shopping guides, restaurants, location based deals). This trigger can be set for any custom field you have set up and not just geographic changes. It could be an income level change, type of job or company position, favorite items, what they want to learn, etc. Think of the possibilities you could do with this!
Survey Buyers of Your Products – Automatically send a survey when someone buys a particular product and get their feedback on the product, your ordering system, general satisfaction, what else they might want to purchase etc. This is a great way to set up an automated customer feedback loop so you can be constantly listening to what your customers have to say.
Upsell or Cross Sell – When a customer purchases a product, automatically send them an email to purchase another product or service. Great way to encourage repeat business.

These are just the pre-configured automations that Moosend has set up and ready for you to use. There are some amazing possibilities here to highly personalize offers to your email list. This can greatly improve your email open rates and conversion rates for whatever you want to accomplish.

If you want more details on Moosend’s automations, you can read more about them on their site.

Analytics Features

Analytics are crucial for understanding the behavior of your email subscribers. Here is what Moosend offers:

Click Tracking – When you have multiple links in your emails, you can see exactly which links your subscriber’s clicked on and which ones they are ignoring. This can really help you refine the effectiveness of your email campaigns over time.
Email Clients and Devices – See what email programs your subscribers are using and what kind of device they are viewing on. This will help you design emails in formats that are most suited to your subscribers.
Individual Subscriber Stats – See what each unique subscriber is opening and clicking on.
Campaign Activity – Find out which days and times are getting the most opens and clicks to track campaign effectiveness
Location Stats – See where your subscribers are located and how your campaigns are doing in that particular region.

Connect Features

API – Moosend is made to connect to other applications and gives you all kinds of custom flexibility through their API
SMTP – SMTP services available for those who need it.
Integrations – Connect Moosend with lots of other software either directly or via integration software like Zapier.

Getting Started Costs Nothing and You Get Up to 1,000 Subscribers for Free

One really nice thing about Moosend is you can get started with no money, no credit card, and you get up to 1,000 subscribers before you need to move to a paid plan. You can try all the great automation features for free without a big financial commitment. Also, as we showed above, when you are ready to move to a paid plan, you can be assured that you are saving a whole lot of money compared to the other popular options.

Moosend is really exciting software. I’ve become a customer and I’m eager to give all the cool automations a shot. I am really glad I found them because I was ready to bite the bullet and pay for one of the more expensive options listed above (I won’t say which…). But I wasn’t feeling good about how expensive the program got over time if I grew my email list the way I wanted to. The price for email services can get really expensive over a year’s time. No reason to pay more than you have to.

If you want to get started, just go here and give it a shot without the need of a credit card or signing any kind of long term contract or a large deposit. Moosend does not penalize you or try to rope you into a commitment before knowing for sure the program is a great fit. As a customer, I love that.

I am really looking forward to sharing more about Moosend and how to use it strategically over time. Stay tuned.

Jim Rosenquist

Jim started earning a living online in 1999 and became a solo entrepreneur in 2001. He started Solo Intel in 2019 as a way to help solo entrepreneurs and small operators become more strategic with their online business.