Category: Plugins

If you are looking for an easy way to send a newsletter and that too from your WordPress dashboard, then you have to rely on an email newsletter plugin.

Today, more than 34% people use email. That’s about 2.5 billion people.

Therefore in 2021, there is no denying the fact that email marketing is more important and effective than ever. It is a personal way to reach your targeted customers. It is more effective than social media, it’s economic and cost-effective, customizable, measurable, action-oriented, and more.

However, without an efficient email marketing solution, these are not possible. So, if you are still confused about whether or not to choose an email marketing solution, today we are going to do an in-depth MailPoet review, a popular email newsletter plugin for WordPress.

We are going to cover all the features, pros and cons, compare it with another popular email newsletter plugin so that you have all the right idea whether to choose an email marketing solution and that too MailPoet.

Role of An Email Newsletter Plugin & Features You Should Look For into It

Before jumping onto the MailPoet review, we will first talk about the role of an email newsletter plugin plays, along with what features you should look for before choosing a newsletter plugin.

Basically the main role of an email newsletter plugin is to help you collect email addresses from website visitors. You can create attractive sign-up forms that connect directly to your email marketing service. Also, this plugin helps you create email marketing campaigns through your WordPress site.

Now, there are many email marketing plugins out there. So, before choosing any of them you have to know what features these plugins should have in order to get the best service.

Any email marketing plugin should have,

• Drag n Drop editor
• Form customization
• Attractive built-in email templates
• Segmentation
• Managing subscriber’s list
• Detailed Reports and Analysis
• Reliability
• Integrations.

So, when you are choosing an email newsletter plugin, make sure your solution has all these features.

Basic Features & Functionalities of MailPoet

Now, let’s discuss the basic functionalities and features of MailPoet in this part of the MailPoet review article.

This email newsletter plugin lets you create and send an email newsletter right from your WordPress dashboard. The process is very simple and straightforward. As you are already using WordPress so you are already familiar with the interface. That’s not all, it has other features. Like,

Beautiful Email Templates

With MailPoet you can create professional-looking emails in minutes. All you have to do is select the email type, choose the right template, customize to your liking, and send. That’s it.

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. 

Built-in Signup Form Builder

The technique that most email marketers use to collect subscribers is signup forms. They put attractive yet simple signup forms to encourage customers to signup to their email newsletter.

MailPoet gives you the opportunity to create signup forms and you can put them anywhere in the website. Although, the forms might not be as complex like other form builders. But they are simple yet effective.

You can easily use CSS to customize the forms if you have design skills.

Subscriber List Segmentation

List segmentation is a crucial part of email marketing. You can categorize your subscribers into different groups based on their interests and behaviors. Then send them personalized emails.

With MailPoet, segmentation is easy. You can easily track the subscribed, unsubscribed, and bounced subscribers. You can also import and export subscribers in both CSV and Excel formats to make moving from your current email outreach provider a breeze. 

Google Analytics Integration

We all know about the importance of Google Analytics to track the performance of a website. MailPoet uses this feature to help you gain deep insights into your subscribers so you can leverage data to get better results with every email.

You can view your analytics by going to the ‘Emails’ section of MailPoet.

You can analyze your email campaigns’ performance and learn more about your subscribers.

You can track opens, clicks, and unsubscribers. You will also get an idea of how your newsletter is performing. That way you can rectify your mistakes and optimize them for better engagement.

WooCommerce Integration

MailPoet directly works with WooCommerce. You can do things like segmentation, automation, abandoned cart notifications. You can also 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 missing something because everything is under one dashboard.

These are the main features of MailPoet. However, it also has some basic features as well,

• Simple database import from spreadsheet or direct from MailChimp
• Database export as a CSV file or Excel file
• Easy-to-manage subscriber database
• Ability to manage multiple lists on one site
• Template import
• Drag-and-drop editor.

Advantages of Using MailPoet WordPress Plugin (Pros)

If you are looking for an easy way to manage email newsletters and basic email outreach, then you can benefit from using MailPoet. That’s why it’s such a popular and highly-rated plugin.

However, if you still want to know why you should choose MailPoet over other email marketing solutions, here are some advantages of using this plugin. 

• You can easily manage email marketing campaigns from start to finish, including analytics, within your WordPress dashboard
• High-quality design tools for signup forms and emails
• Pop-up and slide-in functionality for signup forms
• Automation for specific types of email marketing
• Easy subscriber import and export
• Well-organized subscriber database
• Ability to manage multiple lists on one site
• Segmentation capabilities
• High deliverability
• It is quite a good option for eCommerce sites.

Issues You May Face While Using MailPoet (Cons)

There is no software without glitch or issues in the world. MailPoet is no different. It has also some issues that you may face while using. These issues may put off many email marketers from using MailPoet. Here are the issues,

• MailPoet lacks advance functionality 
• Forms are very basic 
• No split testing
• Only does basic automation 
• UI could use an update 
• Limited scheduling functionality.

How Does MailPoet Actually Perform?

It’s one thing to know about a plugin’s features, advantages, and disadvantages. But it’s whole another thing to know how the plugin will affect the site. That’s why it is important to know the technical features of a plugin.

Otherwise, you will end up choosing a plugin that will lower the performance of your site. Although it has great features. Luckily, WP Hive does the trick.

WP Hive has multiple parts. One of them is a very powerful crawler. The crawler crawls all the plugin from WordPress.org, blindly activates it, and logs many crucial data such as page speed, memory usage, JavaScript issues, activations issues and more.

So, we are going to put MailPoet through WP Hive and see how it actually performs.

Initial Test

Now, if we see the initial results, you can see the plugin passes all the tests with flying colors. There is no PHP errors or JavaScript issues.

Memory Usage & Page Speed

If we see the use of memory for MailPoet, it is relatively high. It stands at 3430.56KB. That is more than almost 99% of the plugins. However, the page speed is much faster than 99% of the plugins.

Download & Other Stats

You can also view all the stats for MailPoet from the beginning of it’s release almost 4 years ago.

MailPoet Vs MailChimp: Head To Head Comparison

Mailchimp is one of the earliest email marketing solutions. So, you can easily understand the depth of its popularity. Mailchimp offers a lot of useful email marketing features, such as segmentation, social media integration, and eCommerce features (such as an abandoned cart, product recommendation, and order notification emails).

However, MailPoet holds it’s own for it’s unique features as well. That is why people have been calling it an alternative to Mailchimp in some level. But is it true?

Why don’t you see the below comparison and decide for yourself.

Our Verdict

Mailchimp has more advanced analytics and eCommerce based features in compare to MailPoet. What Mailchimp offers in its free plan, MailPoet offers in its premium plans. However, if you are looking for value for money then MailPoet is the right choice.

Mailchimp has inflexible pricing plans. MailPoet’s free plan supports sending more than 12,000 emails per month (which is Mailchimp’s limit). However, Mailchimp offers more pre-built templates and a more rewarding design interface.

So, we can say MailPoet can be a serious alternative to Mailchimp if you care about email deliverability. But if you had to pick one, then it’s up to you and your requirements. You need to keep in mind the budget as well.

Final Words

Thus we end our MailPoet review. We have tried to cover all the essential details and hopefully give you the necessary information regarding the MailPoet plugin.

So, if you are looking to start using a new email newsletter plugin, we hope this MailPoet review article will help you make the right choice.