Messaged

Messaged is an email marketing automation platform built for SaaS companies. Its homepage describes it as a platform with prebuilt lifecycle and marketing campaigns for SaaS companies to grow revenue and reduce churn. The core idea is that a subscription business already keeps its most useful customer data in its billing system, so Messaged connects to that system, pulls in contacts and their subscription details, and sends email when something changes there, without the team writing code.

What you actually send

Messaged covers newsletters, automated drip sequences and triggered emails based on your funnel. The site lists features for free trials, user onboarding and churn prevention out of the box, and a pricing-page FAQ sums up the workflow: connect the billing provider, and contacts, trials and plans flow into your email campaigns automatically.

The platform has dozens of prebuilt templates for welcome emails, onboarding emails, transactional emails, newsletters and more. Emails are designed in what the site calls its drag-and-drop editor and come out responsive. Sequences are built in a separate drag-and-drop campaign editor that handles complex drip sequences and segmentation logic, so one flow can treat a free-trial user differently from a paying customer on a higher plan.

Billing sync and events

Billing sync is what sets Messaged apart. The homepage says it automatically pulls contacts from your recurring billing provider, naming Stripe, Paddle, Recurly and Chargebee, along with each customer's sign-up date, plan and usage. The pricing FAQ describes the setup as connecting your subscription billing provider in one click, after which contacts, trials and plans are synced into your campaigns. For Stripe specifically the site says a single click connects the account.

Once connected, Messaged listens to billing events. The site names upgrades, downgrades and trial ends as examples of events that can start an email sequence, and it says syncing runs up to the minute, so an email can go out right when the event happens. A trial-ending reminder, a welcome sequence after an upgrade or a message after a downgrade can be set up without an engineer building webhooks.

Lists, deliverability and metrics

List management centers on segmentation, which the site frames as a way to send targeted, personal messages that improve both engagement and deliverability. Each contact can carry an unlimited number of attributes, which gives the segments plenty to work with.

For deliverability, Messaged offers inbox previews and consultations with its deliverability team to check that emails reach customers. Reporting is described as advanced metrics, with both aggregated and raw email metrics for making data-driven decisions while iterating on campaigns.

Onboarding and support

Messaged puts real weight on getting customers set up. A guided implementation wizard walks you through the practices the company says top SaaS companies use, so you send all the right lifecycle emails. On top of that, white-glove onboarding means its team of SaaS email marketing specialists helps design and implement your campaigns. The site banner invites new users to sign up for onboarding within 24 hours.

For questions, the site has a help center and separate contact forms for sales and support, and the pricing FAQ says you can always email the team, with a guaranteed 24-hour response time. A testimonial from the founder of Scraper API says the tool is everything he wished he had when he started building email marketing there.

Guides and resources

Messaged also publishes a library of guides that reads like a map of the lifecycle it wants to automate. The lifecycle email guides cover customer lifecycle email marketing, SaaS welcome emails, onboarding emails, nurture campaigns, NPS emails, transactional emails, and retention and dunning emails. Broader guides cover email marketing optimization and free email automation tools for startups, and the SaaS guides include email templates and examples, ways to reduce churn, and churn benchmarks and metrics. For a small team without a lifecycle marketer, these guides plus the onboarding wizard are much of the value.

Pricing and the free plan

The pricing page charges by contacts per month and includes free email verification and unlimited emails, broadcasts and sequences on every plan. It still describes the product as being in a free private beta and says the listed prices go into effect on March 15, 2022, under the heading Monthly Pricing for Beta Users. The tiers are:

• 0 to 500 contacts, free
• 501 to 1,000 contacts, $12
• 1,001 to 2,000 contacts, $20
• 2,001 to 5,000 contacts, $45
• 5,001 to 10,000 contacts, $80
• 10,001 to 15,000 contacts, $120
• 15,001 to 20,000 contacts, $150
• 20,001 to 25,000 contacts, $180
• 25,001 to 30,000 contacts, $210
• 30,001 to 40,000 contacts, $275
• 40,001 to 50,000 contacts, $360
• 50,001 to 70,000 contacts, $525
• 70,001 to 100,000 contacts, $700
• over 100,000 contacts, contact sales

A contact is each distinct email address, and you are not billed for contacts who have unsubscribed from your marketing emails. If you go over your tier with a payment method on file, you are moved up to the next plan automatically. Without one, you are asked to add a payment method, and sending continues for 7 days after you pass the limit. Paid plans start with a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, and the sales team can book a free demo.

Using it without billing data

Messaged does not require a billing provider on day one. The FAQ says many pre-revenue companies use it to manage waitlists and email marketing, then connect billing when they start taking payments. It can be used by non-SaaS businesses as a general email automation tool, but the company says it designed Messaged for SaaS and that other businesses may be better served elsewhere.

Who it suits

Messaged suits an early-stage or growing SaaS company on Stripe, Paddle, Recurly or Chargebee that wants onboarding, trial, upgrade and churn emails driven by billing data without building the integration itself. The free tier up to 500 contacts and the waitlist use case make it practical for pre-revenue founders, and the white-glove onboarding helps a team with no lifecycle email experience get the basics right.

A shop, publisher or nonprofit would use little of what makes it different, and the company says so itself. Buyers should also note that the pricing page is still written as beta pricing, so the tiers above are the company's published beta rates.