MailPoet Review – Is This WP Email Solution Right For You?

It’s no exaggeration to say WordPress powers the web. 35% of all sites on the internet use the popular CMS tool. In addition, more than 28% of all eCommerce goes through its sister company, WooCommerce. To put this number in perspective, the next most popular CMS,  Droopla, accounts for only 2.6% of the world’s total websites. 

There’s a lot to love about WP. It’s affordable, highly customizable, and can scale to meet whatever your needs are. 

But the best thing about WP is the plugins. With so many available, such as Link Whisper and Lasso, these plugins are what gives it such an edge over its competitors. From SEO to user management and more, plugins allow you to do so much all from your dashboard, and that includes email marketing campaigns. 

MailPoet is consistently among the top-ranked email plugins for WP. It’s not only easy-to-use but also affordable, with both a free plan and premium options starting from just $13/month. 

Compared to MailChimp or MailerLite, MailPoet doesn’t have as many features. But if you’re looking for a solid email outreach solution that anybody on your team can start using now, then it’s definitely worth checking out. Find out why in our review of MailPoet below.

What Is MailPoet?

MailPoet is the number one free email WordPress plugin. That means if you have 1000 subscribers or fewer, you can use it for free. After that, pricing is very reasonable, starting at $13/month, and working up slowly is 500-1000 subscriber increments. For example, 5000 subscribers costs $46/month compared to $75/month for the same number with MailChimp. 

MailPoet’s affordable pricing structure and solid functionality are the reasons why 400,000+ sites use it as their email solution of choice. 

We’re not just talking about small blogs here. MailPoet’s major corporate partners include DHL, the University of Alaska, TripAdvisor, and SAP. 

There’s a lot to love about it. You can put together attractive content in less than an hour—all without knowing a single line of code. In fact, MailPoet’s guiding philosophy is that if you can create together a blog post in WP, then you can make a great-looking email In no time. 

Here are some of the core MailPoet features 

• Email designer
• Template library 
• Social buttons 
• Responsive design 
• Track click rates 
• Free plan 
• Live demo 
• Email scheduling 
• Basic analytics 
• Drag and drop editor
• Segmentation 
• Integrations

Getting Started With MailPoet

There are a few different ways you can try out MailPoet. As mentioned, they do offer a free plan that includes up to 1000+ subscribers. Also, they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on any premium plans. To access either of these, simply create an account and download the plugin from their site. 

MailPoet also offers a really cool live demo you can play with that lets you see what MailPoet is like when it’s fully deployed on your site. Even if you’re certain that MailPoet is the email solution for you, it’s definitely worth checking this out to help you get a complete picture of what MailPoet looks like in action. 

MailPoet Pricing

MailPoet is among the most affordable email tools, but you should remember that it’s not a complete email marketing tool. It’s mainly designed for email newsletters. It can do a few other things that will explore below, but it likely won’t have enough features for an agency or larger-sized brands. 

Still, with an attractive price structure, it’s worth checking out even if you just use it for a portion of your audience. 

MailPoet has one plan that increases in price depending on your subscriber count. Whether you’re on the free plan or have 10,000+ subscribers you’ll have access to: 

• Unlimited emails 
• Unlimited lists
• Templates
• Welcome emails
• Stats
• Analytics 
• High deliverability 

How To Use MailPoet: Main Features

MailPoet prides itself on ease of use. Everything is integrated into your WP dashboard so you can both create email newsletter from there while directly pulling content from your site. 

Here are some of the main things MailPoet can do: 

1. Email Designer

You can assemble a professional-looking email in minutes with MailPoet. Begin by choosing your email type: 

From here, you select from the MailPoet template library, add your content, and choose who you want to send it to. 

MailPoet is fully customizable, so you can add your colors, backgrounds, and add your logo. And if you don’t want to use the template, you can create an email from scratch. 

2. MailPoet Sending Service 

Deliverability is the most integral part of email outreach. So how do you get your emails to arrive in the inbox instead of spam folders? The best way to do this is via third-party senders who can not only ensure high deliverability rates, but also improve accuracy, speed, and reliability. 

Each month MailPoet sends over 30 million emails with a 98% deliverability rate. How can you beat that? With MailPoet, you can do everything you need within WP without a third-party app or program, including sending emails via their servers. They even manage bounces to make sure your lists remain clean. 

3. Form Builder 

Forms encourage visitors to sign up to become subscribers of your email list. With MailPoet, you can easily create them and add them to any spot on your website. 

They’re not going to be the flashiest forms on the web, but they’re simple and effective enough. They also allow CSS input so you can really customize them if you have design skills or don’t mind navigating the MailPoet blog for CSS tips. 

4. WooCommerce Integration 

MailPoet also works directly with WooCommerce to take what you can do with it to the next level. This is where you can start to do advanced things like segmentation, automation, catching customers at checkout, abandoned cart notifications, and more. 

Once you send out emails, you’ll be able to check click rates, along with which customers opened your email, and even track invoices. 

The best feature, however, is having all this built-in to WordPress. You don’t have to go back and forth between apps and worry about something falling through the cracks because everything is under one dashboard. 

5. List Management 

List management is essential for ensuring your email campaigns stay on the right track. MailPoet makes this really easy to do. With it, you’ll be able to basic stats like unsubscribed, subscribed, and bounced to keep a close eye on list performance. 

You can also import and export subscribers in both CSV and Excel formats to make moving from your current email outreach provider a breeze. 

Who Should Use MailPoet? 

MailPoet is a great intro to email marketing tool. It’s easy to use, has a good selection of basic features, and is really affordable. This makes it perfect for solo marketers, small businesses, and bloggers. 

Anybody looking for an easy way to create a managed newsletter and basic email outreach can benefit from using MailPoet. That’s why it’s such a popular and highly-rated plugin. 

But its advanced features are sorely lacking and going to leave even small established brands along with agencies and large companies rather disappointed. Yes, it does offer basic segmentation and analytics, but it doesn’t go as far as most marketers need. 

And that doesn’t even account for the fact that the best tools are located in the WooCommerce section of the app. So if you have a regular WP site, you won’t even have access to 30% of the features we discussed above. 

The best example of MailPoet’s lack of depth is the opt-in form. Yes, they’re easy to create and deploy, but there’s no option for sticky bars, pop-ups, and exit intent ads that can really boost conversion. Likewise, there’s no option for split A/B testing, which is standard on nearly all digital marketing solutions nowadays. 

Is MailPoet Worth It? 

Maybe. If you’re sticking to a free or lower-tiered price plan, then it is definitely one of the more affordable options out there. The drag-and-drop editor is great, and it’s easy for anybody to create email newsletters. 

But once you start getting into higher subscriber counts, then it starts to be questionable how worth it MailPoet really is. We talked earlier about how you get 5,000 subscribers for $47/month with MailPoet vs. $75/month for MailChimp. 

That may be quite a price jump, but you also get way more functionality out of MailChimp that you can use to drive a higher ROI. For most marketers, it’s worth it to pay a little more to be able to do much more with your email marketing solution. 

The bottom line is that if you’re new to email marketing and want a built-in WP solution, then MailPoet is a solid choice. But, likely, you’ll quickly outgrow it and want a more robust option like MailChimp and MailerLite. 

Pros

• Direct WordPress plugin 
• Easy to use 
• Affordable 
• Template library 
• Unlimited lists and emails 
• High deliverability 
• Import and export lists from anywhere 
• Good option for eCommerce Sites 
• Responsive design 

Cons

• Lacks advance functionality 
• Forms are very basic 
• No split testing
• Only does basic automation 
• UI could use an update 
• Once you get to 10,000+ subscribers pricing isn’t as competitive

MailPoet Alternatives

The email marketing world is crowded with players large and small that span from the most advanced features and technologies to lightweight and simple options like MailPoet. 

While you’ll most often see comparisons of MailPoet to MailChimp, the best alternative to it is definitely MailerLite. 

What Is MailerLite? 

MailerLite is a complete email marketing solution targeted towards smaller businesses and agencies. It’s both feature-rich and easy to use, making it a fantastic complement to your current outreach strategies. 

MailerLite integrates with WordPress along with many other apps and includes split A/B testing, automation, analytics, a huge template library, pop-ups, exit intent ads, and much more. 

It’s also free for your first 1,000 subscribers with plans starting from $10. And, it beats MailPoet in the crucial next step in pricing with a $30/month plan for up to 5000 subscribers. On the other hand, MailPoet has a variety of pricing levels in between 2500-3500 subscribers, with plans jumping between $35-55/month. 

Ultimately both MailPoet and MailerLite have free trials, so check them out and see which is the best fit for you. But you’re likely not going to be disappointed with all the cool features of MailerLite that you can’t find in MailPoet. 

MailPoet: The Verdict

If you’re looking for a convenient and easy to use WordPress email plugin, then MailPoet is a great place to get started with your email outreach campaigns. But if you want advanced features, especially if you don’t have a WooCommerce site, then you might be better off going with one of its alternatives instead.