BoltMail

What BoltMail is

BoltMail is an email marketing platform for campaigns, newsletters, autoresponders, surveys and transactional email, run by ChristopherBolt.Com Limited, a small company in Taranaki, New Zealand. The footer describes BoltMail as "a division of ChristopherBolt.Com," which also sells web hosting and custom web development. Its About page says the company was "founded by Chris Bolt in 2008" and that "BoltMail began life in 2006," when it was built to send email for the Paper Plus Group. Paper Plus used it to send "over 200,000 newsletters, product specials and event invitations" every month. BoltMail was opened to the general public in 2008.

The About page lists a few milestones. In 2010 BoltMail won the contract to provide email for the organizers of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, and it was used to send "as many as 300,000 emails per hour." In 2020 the company launched "a major overhaul of the BoltMail platform, the result of almost 7 years of development," which brought in the current drag-and-drop builder. The same year BoltMail was selected by IPSOS for a New Zealand patient experience survey run by the government's Health Quality & Safety Commission. The company says its customers now send "over 1 million" newsletters, specials, coupons, reviews, surveys and invitations every month.

The pitch is local. The home page says "Kiwis helping kiwis with email communication since 2006," and the platform is sold to New Zealand businesses, sports clubs, community groups and other organizations, although the pricing FAQ says "anyone can use BoltMail (except spammers)."

Building emails

The features page offers three ways to build a message. The drag-and-drop builder lets you place ready-made components (social media, images, video, buttons, text) and change colors, text and images. A rich text editor covers simpler emails with font formatting, links, images and tables. The third route is uploading a finished template from a design agency or a template store, or importing a page from your website.

All plans include a library of email templates you can adjust with a template design tool, a free stock image library of "over 1 million high quality images," and an image editor inside the campaign builder that adds effects, text and shapes and crops, resizes and rotates. Emails built in the drag-and-drop editor re-flow to fit mobile screens, and you can show different content to mobile and desktop readers. An artificial intelligence writing tool can fix spelling and grammar, expand or summarize text, rephrase it, or make it friendlier or more formal. Subject lines can carry emoji, and emails can include attachments and a "forward to a friend" link.

Sending, automation and personalization

Campaigns go out immediately or on a schedule. A feature called Timewarp sends in each subscriber's local time. You can set your own domain for link tracking, unsubscribe links and subscription forms, which keeps the BoltMail name out of your links.

Autoresponders send automatically when a contact joins a list, either at once or after a delay "such as 24 hours or 2 weeks," so you can build a welcome message or a series of weekly lessons. Mail merge pulls a contact's name, interests or any custom field into the email. BoltMail can also send a live countdown timer for an event, an update-profile form so contacts can correct their own details, and surveys and feedback forms linked from campaigns and autoresponders.

Lists, forms and compliance tools

Lists can be imported from a spreadsheet, a file or a remote SQL database, with custom fields created automatically from the columns. Custom fields hold anything you need, such as loyalty numbers, birthdays or company information. Segmentation filters contacts by attributes such as location or interests. Bulk tools split, copy and merge lists, and rules can move, add or remove contacts across lists when they subscribe or unsubscribe. Export works for whole lists, several lists or segments.

Sign-up forms go on your website as copied form code or as a hosted sign-up page, and a simple WordPress form plugin is available. Double opt-in can be switched on per list and form.

Unsubscribes and bounces are processed automatically, and BoltMail tracks bounces across all customer accounts so that known bad addresses are blacklisted for everyone. You also get a personal blacklist, as many suppression lists as you need, and complaint reports passed on from large mailbox providers. Your company contact details can be added to every footer.

Reporting, API and integrations

Reports show who opened a campaign, when, how often and from where; which links were clicked and by whom; who unsubscribed and any reason they gave; and which addresses bounced, with the provider's exact error message. Geo opens map where subscribers are. Google Analytics integration follows readers onto your website.

A REST API and developer SDK are offered for tying BoltMail to a website, CRM or app, with documentation at developer.boltmail.nz. Third-party integrations exist for WordPress forms and Facebook Lead Advertisements. The separate transactional email API sends single-recipient mail such as account notifications, order confirmations, receipts and password reminders, authenticated with an API key and shown with PHP example code. It "may only be used for sending transactional emails"; bulk mail goes through the campaigns API.

Plans and prices

The pricing page says "All plans include all features," including Timewarp and the countdown timer. Prices are in New Zealand dollars and exclude GST, which is charged to New Zealand customers only. There are three models.

Monthly by subscribers allows unlimited sends to your stored subscribers. The free plan covers up to 300 subscribers and is for New Zealand customers only. Paid tiers are $10 NZD for up to 500, $16 NZD for 1,000, $24 NZD for 1,500, $32 NZD for 2,500, $54 NZD for 5,000, $88 NZD for 10,000, $150 NZD for 20,000, $204 NZD for 30,000, $265 NZD for 40,000, $310 NZD for 50,000, $435 NZD for 75,000 and $580 NZD for 100,000. Larger lists are priced on enquiry. Bounced and unsubscribed addresses count toward the limit.

Monthly by emails sent stores unlimited subscribers and caps sends instead: $24 NZD for up to 2,500 emails, $46 NZD for 5,000, $80 NZD for 10,000, $122 NZD for 20,000, $170 NZD for 30,000, $212 NZD for 40,000, $256 NZD for 50,000, $356 NZD for 75,000 and $476 NZD for 100,000. You pay every month even if you send nothing.

Pay as you go costs an annual subscription fee of $220 NZD, which includes the first 2,500 emails each month. Months above that are invoiced by tier, from $10 NZD for the first tier above the included amount up to $740 NZD for the 200,000 tier, with bigger volumes on enquiry.

On subscriber plans, transactional email is included up to your subscriber limit and costs 1c per email beyond it; on the other plans it counts toward your email limit. Any plan can be canceled within 30 days for a full refund, and plans can be upgraded, downgraded or switched at any time. You need your own domain name to send.

Data, security and support

The site says "All data is securely stored within New Zealand in a data centre operated by Voyager Internet," and that your data "is subject to New Zealand's laws and regulations." Listed safeguards include two-factor authentication, encryption at rest and in transit, a web application firewall and real-time malware monitoring. Sending runs on Power MTA. Senders must follow the New Zealand Privacy Act and the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act.

Support comes through a billing and support portal, a knowledgebase and support tickets, and the company can be reached by phone or post from the contact details on its site.

Who it suits

BoltMail fits a New Zealand business, club or nonprofit that wants its subscriber data kept in the country, local pricing in NZD, and every feature on every plan. Small New Zealand lists can start on the free plan. The three billing models also suit organizations whose sending is irregular. It is less of a fit for a team that needs a large catalog of ready-made integrations, since the named ones are few, and overseas senders cannot use the free plan.