You might be a small business owner, new to email marketing, or looking for an more affordable and user-friendly solution. You might have heard of MailerLite as a popular option, but is it the right tool for you? In this comprehensive MailerLite review, we will walk you through its features, strengths, and weaknesses, so you can decide whether it’s the perfect tool to boost your email marketing game.
As a quick note: we looked into Mailerlite as an alternative to Mailchimp given Mailchimp seem to continue to increase their prices 😬
Key Takeaways
MailerLite is an affordable, user-friendly email marketing platform suitable for small businesses and beginners.
It offers a range of features including automation, landing page building and certification courses with good deliverability rates.
MailerLite provides excellent customer support services, as well as additional resources such as Academy and Community to ensure high quality experiences.
Introduction to MailerLite
MailerLite is an email marketing service that offers a range of services such as email campaigns, automation, landing page building and hosting. It’s an ideal choice for small businesses and those who are just starting out with email marketing tools. As a beginner-friendly platform, MailerLite provides users with the opportunity to become certified email marketing experts through their free courses. These are all features included in their email marketing software. However, some users have reported dissatisfaction with their policies and customer service, but MailerLite offers a custom HTML editor for more advanced users.
This review intends to test the claims made by MailerLite by evaluating their features. We aim to provide you with an unbiased evaluation of their platform, covering everything from their unique selling points to their customer support experience. Let’s examine MailerLite and determine if it lives up to its reputation.
MailerLite’s Unique Selling Points
MailerLite stands out with its ease of use, affordability, and generous free plan, making it an attractive option for those starting out in email marketing or with limited budgets. The platform offers a comprehensive range of marketing features, a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor, and helpful guidance throughout the content creation process. They also enable seamless connection of your marketing tools by providing 140 integrations with popular third-party apps like WordPress, Shopify, Stripe, and social media networks.
In terms of pricing, MailerLite is one of the more cost-effective email providers on the market, and there is an additional discount available for those who register for a new account and initiate their free trial through a particular page. Their free plan offers up to 1,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails per month, along with single trigger automation workflows, a landing page builder, and survey maker, making subscriber management easy for small businesses.
However, while MailerLite’s pricing and user-friendliness give it a competitive edge, it may not offer features as advanced as those found in other email marketing platforms. This review will continue to test these claims and evaluate if MailerLite’s offerings meet the expectations.
Setting Up with MailerLite
Setting up an account with MailerLite is relatively simple, requiring basic information and domain verification. Nevertheless, the approval process to establish a MailerLite account, which requires domain verification before accessing the email editor, could be comprehensive and time-consuming. This comprehensive approval process may not be ideal for professionals who require a swift start or those who are evaluating multiple tools, including other email marketing platforms, to identify the most suitable option for their business.
Once your account is approved, adding subscribers to MailerLite is a breeze. You can add subscribers through:
Manual entry
Uploading a CSV/TXT file
Copying and pasting from Excel
Importing from a linked Mailchimp database
You can also use MailerLite’s root domain for landing pages and websites if you don’t have a website on your custom domain.
MailerLite’s form builder is designed with the user in mind. It’s user-friendly, requires minimal learning effort and offers numerous design choices for crafting pop-ups and embedded forms. It also includes advanced features for more experienced users. With a variety of registration forms, fields, and features available, MailerLite ensures that you can customize your forms to suit your needs while remaining compliant with data protection regulations.
The Look and Feel of MailerLite
One of the standout features of MailerLite is its clean and intuitive interface, which is highly regarded for its user-friendliness among other email marketing services. The platform’s interface design is characterized by:
A clear and organized layout
A user-friendly interface
Drag-and-drop functionality for creating campaigns
Prebuilt campaign templates
Email designers
Merge tags
A/B testing
Insightful analytical reports
Arrows, lines, pointing fingers, and images incorporated in the interface contribute to its modern design, simplifying navigation and creation of visually appealing email campaigns.
The colors featured in MailerLite’s interface primarily consist of various shades of blue, white, and black. These colors, coupled with an intuitive layout and visually pleasing design elements, enhance the user experience by simplifying access to features and tools, and making navigation through the platform effortless.
Navigating Through MailerLite
A neat design and a left-side menu make navigating through MailerLite’s dashboard easy, facilitating access to various applications and builders, and customization of themes. The platform offers speedy and effortless navigation, granting a consistent user experience for all. Users have the option to toggle between light and dark modes or set their dashboard to auto mode, adjusting the interface according to their default preferences.
In terms of list management, MailerLite enables segmentation of audiences by establishing parameters such as location or signup source, and utilizing tags created during the importation of subscribers. Users can further refine their subscriber lists by combining filters and creating more precise subsets of subscribers. Saving a segment in MailerLite makes it easy to utilize the segment in other areas of the platform, ensuring efficient subscriber management.
MailerLite’s dashboard and navigation features simplify the management of email campaigns, lists, and automations, enabling users to concentrate on crafting engaging content and reaching their target audience.
MailerLite’s Email Editor
When it comes to creating email campaigns, MailerLite’s drag and drop builder offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, providing a variety of content blocks and customizable templates for a seamless email design experience. However, mobile design editing is not supported in MailerLite’s email editor, which means users can only preview how an email will appear on mobile devices, but cannot specifically edit the design for mobile.
MailerLite enables users to:
Personalize subject lines
Add dynamic content blocks for more specific offers
Provide a variety of email-building options including eCommerce offers with countdown timers and product blocks, surveys, quizzes
Incorporate Instagram and Facebook posts directly into email campaigns.
Although the platform offers a variety of templates, users have the option to create and save their own templates for future use. This flexibility allows users to tailor their email campaigns to their brand and audience, ensuring a consistent and engaging experience for their subscribers.
Even without mobile design editing, MailerLite’s email editor excels at providing a user-friendly experience, simplifying the creation of visually appealing and personalized email campaigns without requiring advanced technical skills or a separate website builder.
Testing MailerLite’s Features
At the time we tested MailerLite’s features, it was found that the platform performs well in email campaign creation, marketing automation, and list management. The drag-and-drop editor, customizable templates, and personalization options make it easy for users to create engaging email campaigns. Additionally, MailerLite’s automation feature is a little lacking compared to Mailchimp, and certainly not as advanced as ActiveCampaign.
Nevertheless, some limitations were noted in advanced personalization and reporting. MailerLite offers basic personalization capabilities but does not support if/then/else logic for more advanced personalization options. The platform’s reporting features also lack comprehensiveness. While users can view list growth, average open and click rate, and unsubscribe metrics, more advanced reporting options may not be available.
In terms of deliverability, MailerLite has consistently demonstrated excellent performance in deliverability tests and has often achieved the top ranking. This is an important factor for email marketers, as high deliverability rates ensure that your emails reach your subscribers’ inboxes.
Compared to other email marketing tools, MailerLite balances user-friendliness and functionality, making it a suitable choice for small businesses and email marketing beginners. While it may not have all the advanced features found in some competitor platforms, it provides a solid foundation for those looking to grow their email marketing efforts without breaking the bank.
MailerLite’s Deliverability
Deliverability, which ensures your emails reach your subscribers’ inboxes, is a key factor to consider when choosing an email marketing service. MailerLite boasts high deliverability rates, having achieved the highest score in the last three tests conducted. The platform’s email verification system helps guarantee a valid email list, decreasing bounce-back rates and enhancing deliverability.
In addition to its high deliverability rates, MailerLite offers a domain alignment feature to further improve deliverability. This feature ensures that all links in campaigns and confirmation emails display your domain instead of the MailerLite domain, lending credibility to your emails and increasing the likelihood of them reaching your subscribers’ inboxes.
When compared to other email marketing tools, MailerLite’s deliverability performance is commendable, ensuring that your carefully crafted email campaigns reach their intended audience. This is a significant factor in assessing the value of an email marketing service, and MailerLite performs well in this regard.
Customer Support Experience
MailerLite provides 24/7 email support for users on their free plan and live chat support for those on paid plans. However, the absence of phone support might be a disadvantage for some users who prefer more personal support channels. MailerLite has received highly favourable reviews for their customer support. On average, they scored a 4.2 out of 5..
For users needing extra support or quicker response times, MailerLite provides a service called MailerPro for an additional monthly fee of $100. This service provides faster responses via email and live chat, as well as a dedicated MailerLite manager to assist with performance analysis and campaign creation.
To assist users with finding answers to their questions, MailerLite provides a knowledge base, Academy, and Community. These resources provide useful guidance and information, assisting users to maximize their platform experience and resolve any issues they might encounter.
Is MailerLite Worth It?
Given its balance between affordability and functionality, MailerLite is a superb choice for small businesses and beginners in email marketing. The platform offers a range of features catering to the needs of most small businesses’ email marketing initiatives, as well as a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to create and manage email campaigns. Additionally, MailerLite provides a ‘Forever Free’ plan suitable for those with fewer than 1,000 subscribers, as well as custom pricing plans for enterprises with over 100K contacts.
Comparing MailerLite to Mailchimp, MailerLite’s free options seems to be a lot more generous. The following is Mailchimp’s pricing taken at the time of writing.
However, due to its lack of essential professional features like advanced automations and reporting, MailerLite might not be the best option for rapidly growing businesses or larger entities. In such cases, MailerPro or other more advanced email marketing platforms may be a better choice to meet their more complex needs.
In this MailerLite review summary, we find that it presents a compelling mix of user-friendliness, affordability, and essential features beneficial for small businesses and beginners in email marketing. While it may not be the perfect fit for larger enterprises or those with more complex needs, it provides an excellent starting point for those looking to grow their email marketing efforts without spending a fortune.
The Roundup
In this comprehensive MailerLite review, we’ve examined the platform’s features, strengths, and weaknesses, providing you with the information needed to decide if it’s the right tool for your email marketing needs. With its user-friendly interface, affordable pricing, and generous free plan, MailerLite is an ideal choice for small businesses and beginners in email marketing. However, the platform’s limitations in advanced personalization and reporting, along with the lack of phone support, may not make it the best fit for everyone.
As you consider your options for an email marketing service, it’s essential to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of each platform to find the one that best suits your business’s unique needs. With its balance of affordability and functionality, MailerLite may be the perfect solution to help you grow your email marketing efforts and achieve success in the digital marketing world.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the limitations of MailerLite?
MailerLite lacks the ability to provide newsletter or landing page templates on the free plan and is missing some essential pro features such as detailed email reporting, spam/design testing, or advanced automation.
Is MailerLite safe to use?
MailerLite is a legitimate and secure email marketing platform, with all customer data safely stored on its servers. It has a strict policy of never renting, selling or sharing your data with any third parties, while reserving the right to monitor the lists, content and response data for compliance with their Terms of Use and Anti-spam policy. All in all, MailerLite is safe to use.
What is MailerLite good for?
MailerLite is perfect for creating advanced campaigns, automations and surveys to effectively engage with an audience. It’s also seamlessly integrated with a number of different platforms and tools.
What is the target audience for MailerLite?
MailerLite is perfect for small businesses and those new to email marketing. It offers an easy-to-use platform that helps them increase their engagement and conversions.
Does MailerLite offer phone support?
No, MailerLite does not offer phone support; they provide 24/7 email support on their free plan and live chat support on their paid plans.
Can you Integrate MailerLite with Facebook Lead Ads
LeadSync has a MailerLite integration so that you can send leads from a Facebook (Meta) lead ad campaign to a MailerLite list.
Luke is the founder of LeadSync and, as a Digital Marketer, has been helping businesses run lead generation campaigns since 2016.