Recapture

Recapture is an email and SMS tool for online stores that started with abandoned cart recovery and grew into post-purchase, winback and broadcast email, popups and text messaging. The home page promises "5 Minutes From Now You Could Be Growing Your Store Revenue Through Email + SMS" and describes "An email marketing solution so simple, you won't need to read the manual!" It says it is "Best for stores making up to $10 million per year" and supports Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and more. The unusual part is the price: Recapture charges by the revenue it helps recover, not by contacts or sends.

What a sender actually gets

Cart recovery. The core product sends emails to abandoned carts and checkouts to bring shoppers back. Installation is the "Famous 5-minute install": the pricing FAQ says you install the extension, app or plugin, which "literally takes less than 5 minutes, even for non-technical users in most cases", and every new account comes with pre-built campaigns "with best practices already built in" that you only need to switch on. Abandoned cart texts can be mixed with the emails on the SMS plan.

Post-purchase and winback emails. After a purchase, Recapture sends welcome emails, upsell emails, review reminders and educational emails. One customer quoted on the pricing page says they use it "to gather TONS of product reviews". Winback emails invite previous customers to buy again.

Broadcasts and segments. The email plan adds broadcast emails for sales promotions, newsletters and product updates, and segmenting on customer properties, with examples such as "New Customers" or "Customers who Bought 3x".

Popups. Popup templates collect emails and mobile numbers, with custom backgrounds, personalization questions that gather first-party data such as interests and categories, and an Add to Cart popup that asks for an email, a mobile number or both when a shopper clicks the button. Popups can trigger on number of page views, scroll percentage, timers and coupon reveal. Sign-ups can receive a welcome series, and collected emails are synced back to the store's own list.

The editor. Emails are built in a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor that the site says is "Perfect for non-tech users, but capable for power users too", and custom HTML emails are supported. The home page makes a point of what it leaves out: "No complex workflows to map, visualize and understand here."

Coupons. Global coupon codes pull discounts already defined in the store, and unique single-use codes can be created per customer, for percent off, fixed amount or free shipping.

SMS. The SMS plan covers abandoned cart texts, order shipment notifications, winback texts and post-purchase texts, with pre-written SMS templates and an SMS Conversation Inbox for one-to-one replies. The pricing page states "Full TCPA Compliance" for texting.

Live Cart Feed. A real-time view of customers with their scheduled emails, cart contents and events, which the site claims no other service offers.

Reporting. Reports show revenue per email, opens, clicks and conversions for each campaign, customer lifetime value, and deliverability reports by campaign, by email type or for the whole store. Performance reports can be emailed daily, weekly or monthly.

Deliverability. Emails can go out from your own custom sender domain, and the pricing page says "We handle ALL the DKIM, SPF, DMARC and the other alphabet soup things you should, but don't have to, worry about."

Platforms and technology

The home page lists Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento 1 & 2, BigCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads. The pricing FAQ, dated "As of August 2022", names Shopify, Magento 2, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads for WordPress, plus two WordPress membership plugins, Restrict Content Pro and Paid Memberships Pro. Sending does not rely on the store's own server: the FAQ says the application is built on Amazon AWS using Node.js and a MongoDB backend, scales automatically, and that "Our uptime historically has been over 99.9%." It adds that the team has been building scalable ecommerce solutions for the past 15 years.

Plans and pricing

The pricing page leads with "Clear, upfront pricing. No contracts. No setup fees." It asks for the store's monthly sales volume and shows three plans:

• Cart Recovery: $39 per month on the page's display, covering abandoned cart recovery emails, post-purchase emails, winback emails, popups and analytics and reporting.
• Cart Recovery + Email: $58, adding email broadcasts and advanced segmenting.
• Cart Recovery + SMS: $59, adding abandoned cart texts, order notifications, winback texts and post-purchase texts.

The FAQ explains how the bill is set: "Recapture's pricing algorithm looks at the revenue that we helped recover through email and SMS over the last 30 days", and the store is charged at the matching recovery tier. Its worked example is a store with $20,000 in monthly sales where Recapture recovers 10%, or $2,000, which lands on "the base tier of $29/month". The company says it aims for "at least 10-20x ROI", and it claims to have recovered over $225,000,000 for merchants, with the average store increasing revenue by 10%. A custom plan or quote is available through Contact Us.

The trial is described as a "15 day full featured trial. No credit card required" on the pricing page and as a "risk-free, 14 day, no credit card required trial" on the home page. The FAQ also offers a guarantee: if you are not happy, Recapture will "refund the last 30 days of your service. No questions asked." Cancelling is a button on the Manage Subscription page.

Support and compliance

Support is by live chat, email or phone, and the FAQ recommends chat or email because the team can then send links and screenshots. Customer reviews on both pages name a team member who helped with setup tips. The footer links a GDPR Compliance page and a status page.

Who it suits and who it does not

Recapture suits small and mid-sized stores on Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento or Easy Digital Downloads that mainly want abandoned cart recovery, post-purchase and winback emails running within minutes, with the option to add broadcasts or SMS. Stores with large lists and modest recovery volume benefit most from pricing by recovered revenue rather than contacts, and owners who prefer a simple tool over a visual workflow builder are the audience the site writes for.

It is a poor fit for a business without an online store, such as a newsletter publisher or a B2B team. Brands above the $10 million a year range the site names, or marketers who want complex multi-branch automation, are outside what the product sets out to do.