Moosend Email Marketing Automation Review 2023: Pricing, Key Features, Pros & Cons
Moosend is an email automation and marketing platform. Through the Moosend dashboard, users are able to customize striking email templates, send out multiple email campaigns and track conversion rates in real-time through detailed analytics— a beneficial addition for marketers who prefer the ease of use and their marketing strategy on autopilot.
Effectiveness
Moosend is awesome at executing emails focused on conversion, but template selection lacks just a little.
Price
Their free plan comes loaded with everything a beginner to an intermediate marketer would ever need, and paid plans are affordable.
User-friendliness
Ease of use is always the primary focus, and the drag-and-drop editor is a user favorite.
Service
Live chat and ticket submission options available. Resources are plentiful, but a handful of guides need to be updated.
Don’t let anyone ever tell you that email campaigns are no longer relevant.
And now more than ever, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced digital marketers (whether they are fans or not) to turn to emails to keep subscribers and customers informed.
Email open rates have increased from 17.6% last year to 21.2% in April 2020 this year. Click-through rates have also subsequently seen a boost in overall numbers, according to an analysis by Campaign Monitor.
With that being said, the need for all-in-one email management systems is evergreen.
And Moosend’s email marketing software is here to serve.
What is Moosend?
Image via Moosend
Moosend is an intuitive, easy-to-master email management system.
Solely cloud-based, Moosend’s ultimate goal is to create a wholly automated email marketing system—so that users spend less time worrying about the small stuff.
Mailing lists, newsletters, subscription forms, and more are all automated here. This makes it almost ideal for busy freelancers and small businesses to carry on with tracking analytics and doing more work.
Even though popular with small to medium businesses, Moosend has racked up a pretty outstanding portfolio of clients.
Try Vogue, Ogilvy, Sephora, Dominos, and other star-studded companies that all swear by its features.
Moosend isn’t really a software that’s big on press or bells and whistles (there’s not much to know about its history), but we do know that it was founded by Yannis Psarras and Panos Melissaropoulos.
After deciding that the email marketing world was missing a friendly interface that could still perform solid, real-time analytics and automation—Moosend was born in 2011.
What to consider before buying Moosend?
Given that each and every business will want something different from an email marketing system, be careful before considering Moosend a one-size-fits-all software.
Quite realistically, Moosend is still small fish compared to giants you’ve probably already heard of (like ConvertKit and Mailchimp)—which offer thorough, full-suite options for experts who need advanced features.
Regardless, Moosend doesn’t let that affect them from being ultimately powerful, thorough and by still prioritizing ease of use.
If you don’t want to waste any more time memorizing complicated email terms or to be potentially overloaded with too many features at a time—Moosend should definitely be on your must-try list.
Features and Benefits
1. Simple drag & drop options
Image via Moosend
Templates are cool and all, but let’s come clean. Drag and drop options give you so much more breathing room for 100% personalization and custom fields.
Moosend built its drag and drop user interface that would allow users to create, design, and further tweak forms of email content that are responsive. This means that they can also be perfectly optimized across mobile, desktop or tablet platforms.
Best part yet? You don’t need to know a lick of HTML or coding knowledge to make sure everything renders the right way.
Oh, but not to worry! If you’re a developer/designer/code guru—you can still go ahead and tweak the HTML. Moosend happily provides you with the option to modify the code (if you prefer to not use the visual builder), so you can create emails even that are more customized to your brand.
Moosend’s template selection is admirable, but we wouldn’t exactly call it plentiful.
For instance, they are fitted for quite the diverse category selection (F&B businesses, eCommerce, special holidays, etc).
Image via Moosend
Plus, you’ve got a pretty decent selection of lead forms, webinar funnels, and other layouts to choose from!
However, they only have 2-3 pages of these templates across newsletters, landing pages and subscription forms. All in all, about a hundred templates in total?
If you’re the type of marketer that doesn’t like to be overwhelmed with options, sure, we see this working for your business.
Regardless, there’s no denying that alternatives like GetResponse, for example -with 500+ existing templates and constant updates to add more- definitely overshadows Moosend in this aspect.
2. Uncomplicated campaign creation
When it comes to creating an email campaign, Moosend still puts ease of use over everything else.
Right now, Moosend provides you with two alternatives to campaign types. Those are:
- Creating a regular, basic campaign (one-off emails that are mass sent out to your subscriber list).
- An A/B Split Test campaign (compare which version of an email converts better, so you’d get to play around with copywriting, design, etc).
Once you’ve selected the type of campaign that you want to use, it’s time to create a newsletter. Of course, all of this is easily done by the drag-and-drop editor!
Alternatively, you can also use their “Campaign Creation Wizard” option. It makes things all that simpler -a step-by-step service that takes you through each element, button, and more, so you can immediately get things going.
Not directly related, but a super cool email campaign feature nonetheless is Moosend’s countdown emails.
Image via Moosend
They added this option just last year, and it’s since proven to significantly boost conversion rates!
3. Ultra-personalisation for subscribers
Successful email marketers understand by now that there’s no such thing as an email that’s going to appeal to everyone. Therefore, the ‘prowess’ of list segmentation is such a deciding factor in every email marketing automation software!
This time, we’re tipping our hats off to Moosend.
Although it’s relatively easy to use, Moosend doesn’t skimp on really, really powerful segmentation abilities.
Moosend allows marketers to collect extremely detailed data about their subscribers—all in the hopes of building super-targeted lists. Of course, this is then used to skyrocket personalization superpowers, so you’re able to emphasize on specific audiences at a time.
Image via Moosend
Right from the start, their sign up forms are all equipped with custom fields that are 100% responsive across all device platforms, can be micro-targeted to cities, and have secure anti-bot protection.
Once you’ve collected the data, you can apply it to sending personalized emails on your subscribers’ birthdays, target them based on opened/clicked emails and other user actions! Moosend shows you how to do it here.
Use this to your advantage, stay relevant, decrease unsubscription rates, create a list for private clients, etc. Your choices are now endless!
4. Easy to use automation
Moosend offers a substantial menu of automation offers. You can work around automating emails based on a certain trigger action, sequence, etc. Then when you feel like it, pause, customize, and resume whenever it’s convenient.
Because automation is Moosend’s lifeblood—they’ve even made this option 100% available in their free plan. All kinds of awesome, right?
Of course, you can choose your automation efforts (known on Moosend as “Recipes”) based on the templates and layouts provided.
Image via Moosend
At the moment of writing, they have 20 Recipes and automation prompts. You can find everything from the vital Welcome Email Sequence, Special Offer Reminder, Abandoned Cart Email, and a bunch more.
You’re also more than welcome to create these Recipes from scratch. This is done by using Moosend’s own builder to specify certain triggers (birthdays, etc.), start the automation (what is going to be sent out?) and then the action you want your subscribers to take.
We’re also a big fan of Moosend’s innovative ‘weather tracking’ emails.
Image via Moosend
You read that right. Moosend’s email campaigns provide you with the ability to filter weather conditions in a subscriber’s location and target them based on this information.
Do we need this feature desperately? Not at all.
Do we somehow find ourselves wanting it for no absolute reason? You bet.
Let’s say it’s a hot day where the chunk of your subscribers are. Moosend allows you to segment this particular group of people based on the sunny city, tell them to stay inside, beat the heat and shop with you!
Use relevant graphics and you’ve hammered home an extremely personal (and relevant) email.
5. Just ‘okay’ integrations
We might be a big fan of most of Moosend’s features. However, we don’t know how to feel about their integration abilities.
Image via Moosend
Sure, if you decide to connect Zapier or Piesync to your account, you’ll get access to hundreds of other apps.
Regardless, if we’re only talking about the ones native to Moosend—there are a mere 13 or so integrations.
We also don’t see Shopify (for some reason?) on their native integration list. WooCommerce and WordPress are there for everyone to see, but not Shopify. Strange, indeed.
Still, the MailChimp synchronizer works perfectly if you want to connect a previous account and sync it with the lists and information you’re working with on Moosend.
You’ll have access to Zapier and it’s 100+ integrations even on the free plan though, which admittedly, is decent enough of Moosend.
6. Complete Tracking & Analytics
Moosend describes their in-depth analytics as “Every Manager’s Dream”. Might be a little cliched, but they deserve the title.
Users are able to get a complete bird’s eye view on how their email campaigns are performing. All this is done with an intuitive, minimal dashboard that’s got the ease of use down to a tee!
Image via Moosend
As you can tell, information like open rates, clickthroughs, forwards, unsubscribes and other forms of subscriber behavior are laid out easily.
If you decide to click on each campaign individually, you can also see each individual activity, track the location an email was opened, and even on which platform.
Judging from the user interface of Moosend’s analytics dashboard, it’s very clear that they’re trying to make this as beginner-friendly as possible. And they nailed it!
At the end of the day, your overall email campaign reports can be sent off to colleagues, managers and other members in your team through ‘no-password’ links.
7. Helpful Customer Service
Moosend’s ready to help with all inquiries via live chat and opening a ticket through a form submission.
If you don’t particularly have a problem -and just want to learn more about navigating its user interface, Moosend provides ample resources for that too.
These include their:
A Moosend expert teaches you all you need to know on the many ways to create a landing page, automating your email sequence and more. You just need to enter in your email, and the free webinar is sent to you.
Not exactly a solution to anything, but rather a quick way to test the open rate and potential engagement of your email’s subject line. Moosend even provides you a few ways to improve it!
• Academy
Full, in-depth courses on how to improve user experience and learn essential email marketing tips.
Informative infographics that Moosend claims would add value to your emails. Keep in mind that most of these infographics are from the year 2018 though, so maybe you could just use them as a rough, personal guide.
8. Generous pricing plans
Image via Moosend
For an email marketing system with a healthy set of automation features and analytics—Moosend’s pricing remains to be one of their strongest suits.
As long as your small business has less than 1,000 subscribers, you’re allowed to use Moosend for totally free.
From there on out, you can also choose to upgrade to their Pro plan for $8 and get up to 2,000 subscribers. That, or adjust your preferences even more based on your subscriber base (this can go up to $608/month for 200k subscribers.
For larger businesses and enterprises, you can request to get a completely customized quote from Moosend’s sales team altogether.
All of Moosend’s plans come with an unlimited number of emails sent, full automation features, access to all basic templates, and real-time analytics.
Keep in mind that the free plan excludes features like the landing page channel and your own Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server.
There’s even a treat for occasional email senders! And in the form of buy-as-you-go credits. These credits don’t expire, so once you buy them—you can keep them and use only when absolutely necessary.
What Do Other People Say About Moosend?
Before you decide on making them your forever email system, we’ll take a look at some Moosend reviews from other users.
Overall, it’s safe to say that Moosend has a stellar reputation so far! They were rated a strong 4.7/5 (120+ reviews) on G2 and 4.8/5 (113 reviews) on Capterra.
Looking through user testimonials and reviews, it’s clear that a lot of people are in love with generous subscriber amounts (it’s ideal for freelancers, solopreneurs, small businesses), ease of use of the drag-and-drop editor and their tracking.
A handful of users still note some potential cons of Moosend, which are the limited templates and native integrations with popular SaaS apps.
Is Moosend right for you?
PROS
- Ease of use in terms of navigation, friendly user interface.
- Simple yet intuitive drag-and-drop editor.
- Easy campaign creation.
- Lots of personalization features (weather tracking, a specific city, etc).
- Real-time tracking.
- The free plan comes with lots of features.
CONS
- Template selection overshadowed by competitors like GetResponse and MailerLite.
- Native integrations still lacking.
What Are Some Moosend Alternatives?
Image via MailerLite
MailerLite and Moosend mirror each other in most of their features, namely, the drag-and-drop editor, an optimized user interface for beginners, similar segmentation methods and user triggers, etc.
Obviously so, since these two are basically competing for the same demographic of email marketers—fresh beginners who just don’t want to waste their time learning complicated marketing automation.
The significant difference lies in their plans!
While MailerLite’s free plan comes with the ability to create landing pages, it doesn’t allow you to access their newsletter templates in the $0 plan. There’s still the option to access their mobile-friendly newsletters, though.
On the other hand, Moosend allows you full access to their templates, but not landing pages.
At this point, it’s really about the exact features that you need—so choose wisely.
Image via GetResponse
There are no free plans for GetResponse; let’s just start with that. So although 30-day free trials are available, the cheapest plan you’re going to get is $15/month!
If need be, you can expand on your features with the $49 or $99/month subsequently or opt for the custom pricing (if your enterprise’s subscriber list breaks the 100k mark).
Regardless, we think the price is quite justified. That’s because GetResponse comes ready with the ability to create, edit, publish, and monitor Facebook and Instagram ads within the system itself.
Nothing is left out with GetResponse either, so you’ll be getting the full-suite of landing pages, webinar options, and opt-in forms.
So even for $15/month, GetResponse still gets a thumbs up in our books.
Moosend
Pricing:
• Free plan
• $8-$608
• Custom pricing
Number of subscribers allowed:
• 1,000 for free
• Extra is upgraded to a premium plan
Access to all templates:
Yes
Pricing:
• Free plan
• $10-$50
• Custom pricing
• Add-ons available
Number of subscribers allowed:
• 1,000 for free
• Paid plans start from $10-$50
Access to all templates:
• Not for the free plan, only mobile newsletters allowed
• Paid plans unlock full access
Pricing:
• Starting from $15, $49 and $99
• Custom pricing
Number of subscribers allowed:
• For $15, 1,000 subscribers allowed and pricing plan be added on from there
Access to all templates:
Yes
Conclusion
All things considered, Moosend has definitely earned its rave reviews and excellent star ratings.
Its unbeatable ease of use, customization efforts, report & tracking, and intuitive drag-and-drop editor makes it the perfect launchpad for entrepreneurs and newbie email marketers.
Throw in a superb free plan, and it’s got everything you even need to start a small business of your own! Even if you do decide to upgrade to a paid plan, it’s pricing is extremely competitive for the number of features it’s providing your entire email marketing strategy.
DISCLOSURE: The HUSTLR goal is to help readers navigate around the digital economy by learning digital skills to achieve their life goals. This blog post may contain affiliate link(s) and any purchase(s) made through such links will result in a small commission to HUSTLR (at no cost to you). However, this does not impact our reviews and comparisons. We try our best to keep things fair in order to help you make the best choice.
Jesslyn has been a senior content strategist and writer for personal finance and side hustles for the past 4 years. She believes in the power of an idea and breaking the rules whenever necessary. Above all, balance is everything. When she’s not writing up a mad scramble, she leans towards wine bars and yoga studios on the weekends.
