A closer look at EmailOctopus 🐙

(I like it... with caveats)  ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Hey, MailerLite’s price changes are starting to kick in– the first emails went out to users of the New platform this week (Classic users are spared… for now). This follows the hobbling of the free plan which I discussed last month. A lot of people have been talking about EmailOctopus as an alternative, so I decided to check it out. I like what I’ve see so far and I’m comfortable recommending it to those looking for a much more generous free plan than MailerLite, and a much cheaper service when you grow beyond that – although with a few caveats… which we’ll get into. But if you want to check out EmailOctopus right away, here is my affiliate link. Now let’s look at what has gotten authors so excited – on both free and paid plans – before we talk about some of the limitations, and then who this service is really aimed at. And the one thing that gives me pause. the free plan The free plan at EmailOctopus is pretty generous in terms of subscriber cap and features. MailerLite recently reduced its free plan to just 250 subscribers, which really harms authors ability to grow to a point where they can afford to pay for an email marketing service. It has been a hugely unpopular change – and a pretty dumb one by them, if you want my opinion. EmailOctopus lets you grow to 2,500 subscribers before it will begin charging, which is better than most alternatives. (The only one I can think of off the top of my head which has a higher free subscriber cap is Kit’s Newsletter plan which allows a whopping 10,000 subscribers… but that’s a much more complicated platform to use for beginners, and, as a premium service, much more expensive when you graduate to paid plans. I will be doing a full breakdown of Kit’s free plan in a future newsletter as it has some pretty interesting positives, and some unique quirks!) It also isn’t as restrictive as some providers when it comes to features on the free plan. EmailOctopus allows you to build three separate automations with up to five steps each. But note that you are restricted to one landing page, and one form on the free plan. MailerLite previously allowed more automations on the free plan, but users are being restricted to three separate automations from mid-August (so make sure to make any necessary changes before then or your automations and welcome sequences may stop running. Not only that, but it sounds like they will even disable email sending until you get back within the limits, so watch out!). You will have some EmailOctopus branding in your emails on the free plan (you can only remove this on paid plans) but that’s pretty typical across all providers. Access to segmentation etc. is available on free plans also but note that tags are limited to 10. Access to chat support is for the first 30 days only, but you will have full email Support by actual human beings after that on the free plan. This compares favorably to MailerLite who only provide chat and email support for 14 days and then leave you at the mercy of its robots and help pages after that. Overall, I think it’s a pretty generous free plan which compares favorably to the competition. You can try it without a credit card, so I recommend doing that and having a nose around because the onboarding experience is quite friendly. ​Check out the free plan on EmailOctopus out here. the paid plan Value is the watchword here because EmailOctopus is clearly pitched as a budget alternative to some of the major players – but the feature set is a little more basic. For beginners though, or anyone with a reduced budget, or those who don’t need advanced features or just want the entire experience to be a little less complicated, EmailOctopus might be a very attractive option indeed. The right tone is set from the start with the friendly onboarding experience which pulls in branding from your site and helps you create your own personalized, branded email templates right from the beginning – a stark contrast to pretty much every other service I’ve used. The pricing is very friendly too – plans start at just $9 a month (or £8 for those in the UK and €9 for those in Europe). To give a comparison with MailerLite, if you have 5,000 subscribers, EmailOctopus charges $28 a month and MailerLite $44.10 a month for the awkwardly named Comfort Plan, and $62.10 a month for the Power plan. That’s quite a difference, but there’s also a difference in feature sets – so let’s look at that. EmailOctopus has all the basic features you would expect: email templates which are pretty easy to use, producing nice, minimal emails (which I like). MailerLite's is more feature rich. And same goes for landing pages - although MailerLite doesn't just have more customization options here, it also has a nifty website builder, which is a nice value add for anyone who doesn't have their site set up yet. MailerLite definitely has more options when it comes to segmentation and tagging, but EmailOctopus does the basics. It's pretty similar when it comes to automations - EmailOctopus gets the job done but MailerLite offers more flexibility for those with advanced needs. Although for those who don't need all the options, customizations, and features, there's something to be said for a simpler interface. That said, there are some MailerLite features that authors might miss at EmailOctopus, like integrations, features for selling direct, and running surveys etc. MailerLite also has lots of flashy sounding features that EmailOctopus doesn’t - the kind that tend to be stressed in marketing comms: Subject Line Generator (not something I’d ever use, but here for those who want it) AI Writing Assistant (again, some might love this, but a hard non from me) Dynamic Emails (this is pretty cool actually – where you can show different versions of your email to different subscribers depending on what groups they are in). Smart Sending (the kind of AI use that makes more sense to me – deploying machine learning to determine the best time to send the email to your individual subscribers. Although I’d probably test it carefully first!) Those are all included on the Comfort Plan at MailerLite. The Power Plan doesn’t have much that I would see being of interest to most authors… except one rather critical thing. MailerLite has bumped Chat Support to the Pro tier – which is a negative move. It was always a feature of all paid plans in the past, and really should be, in my opinion. It’s crazy to me that you could be paying several hundred dollars a year and have an urgent issue but can’t access Chat support. But what do I know? EmailOctopus has none of the above fancy sounding features, but the real question is whether you would use them; you decide. But it does beat MailerLite on one key point: 24/7 Chat and Email support is available on its paid plan. It also doesn’t have the limits on landing pages and automations that MailerLite does, to create perceived value for the Pro plan, I guess, but I don’t think most authors will need more than 10 landing pages or 50 automations anyway. However, EmailOctopus does limit you to 50 tags on the paid plan, which might be a database limitation, I dunno, but something I’d be in danger of bumping up against, personally. (I do like a good tag.) You can check out the feature set at EmailOctopus here. the biggest question The big question – indeed, the biggest of questions, if you ask me – is one that I can’t answer right now. Well, I can answer it in relation to MailerLite: we know its deliverability is stellar. One of the best in the business and consistently so over the last several years. EmailOctopus is a bit of question mark there – and that makes me a little nervous. We don’t have any objective, independent data from third-party testers to benchmark the deliverability of EmailOctopus. At the rate it is growing, it will probably be included in these tests soon, but that is something I’m a little cautious about. Sometimes new services start out with good deliverability but then really struggle as they start to scale, or as bad actors flood the platform (two dangers with newer and cheaper service especially). And sometimes the deliverability just isn’t that great to begin with – but it takes a while for everyone to realize. There’s just no way of knowing for sure right now, but I will say that anecdotal reports have been positive. I’m going to do a little testing myself over the next month or two and I’ll let you know what I discover. (Not something that can be reliably done overnight, sorry!) who this is for If you are looking for a generous free plan, or a cheap service without advanced features that is easy to use, then EmailOctopus looks like an interesting alternative. For users on MailerLite’s Classic platform, there’s probably no reason to switch right now. So far, Classic users have been spared price increases. And while the Classic platform is getting a little creaky, as it’s not really being updated anymore, and while we will probably get shunted across to the New platform at some point, that hasn’t happened yet. I’m still on the Classic platform with one pen name and happy to remain there as I’m grandfathered in at a low price. Authors on the New platform, well, the choice gets a little more complicated. If you are faced with a price increase, and finding it harder and harder to justify, then EmailOctopus might be worth a look (I’d suggest signing up for free and taking a look – you can do that with no commitment or credit card.) But if you are happy enough, or if you prize deliverability above all, or lean on those more advanced features, or have more complicated automations, or have integrations you can’t do without, or simply can’t deal with the hassle of moving, then those are all valid reasons to stay where you are. Plenty of people are happy with MailerLite and email marketing still delivers the best bang for your marketing buck – even after these price increases. And there’s something to be said for reliability and longevity. However, if you are a newer author, or are on a restricted budget MailerLite’s Free plan is much harder to recommend now and it’s probably time to look elsewhere. A cap of 250 subscribers is risible. Authors in that position would almost certainly be better served looking at alternatives. I hope today’s newsletter gives you a little more information on one of them. (And do let me know if there's an aspect of EmailOctopus you would like me to dig into...) I’ll have a full breakdown on Kit’s Newsletter plan soon – a service I’ve been using for several years myself. That's all for now! Dave P.S. Writing music this week is The Coasters with Down in Mexico. Interesting Paths, Apartado 108, Loja CTT, Lagos, Faro 8601-902 ​Unsubscribe | Update your profile​