MailBluster

MailBluster is an email marketing tool for sending newsletters and promotional campaigns in bulk, and its About page is clear about who it is for: "companies with a large email list and low budget". The company says it focuses on the core of email marketing, getting mail into the right inbox, and cuts "the fancy stuff" to keep the price down. It was founded in 2015, is incorporated in Delaware, USA, and describes itself as 100% founder-owned. The product began as an in-house tool: in early 2015 the team's ThemeWagon startup crossed 100,000 subscribers and needed a cheaper way to send newsletters, built a first version, and later opened it to other senders. MailBluster says it is powered by Amazon SES and that its mission is to let customers "send the highest quality marketing emails and newsletters at the lowest possible cost".

How sending works

The defining choice on MailBluster is where your mail goes out from. There are two routes.

Bring your own SMTP. You connect MailBluster to a sending provider you already have an account with, and MailBluster supplies the campaign software on top. The supported providers named on the site are Amazon SES, Postmark, Mailgun and SMTP2GO, and the SMTP service page presents them as a way to spread sending across more than one provider, so you can switch if one goes down. You pay MailBluster for the software and the provider for delivery. The pricing FAQ warns that your provider must first grant production access: an Amazon SES account has to be moved out of the sandbox, and the other providers have similar approval steps.

Managed SMTP. MailBluster runs the sending infrastructure for you. The pricing FAQ says it "manages the sending infrastructure, deliverability monitoring, and sender reputation", so no separate provider account is needed and the SMTP cost is included in the plan. A brand that uses managed SMTP cannot use another SMTP provider at the same time.

What a sender gets

The campaign tools cover the core of list email without much extra.

• Editor and templates. A drag-and-drop email composer builds responsive HTML newsletters without code. The SMTP service page mentions a library of 150+ mobile-friendly, customizable templates, and you can adapt the built-in templates into your own gallery or build from scratch.
• Segmentation. The home page says you can "Target and re-target subscribers based on who opened (or didn't open) a specific email, clicked a certain link in an email or what products they bought."
• A/B testing. Two variations of one campaign are tested against each other for opens, clicks or conversions.
• Tracking and reports. Real-time tracking charts opens, clicks, bounces, complaints and ecommerce conversions, with a live dashboard for new leads and purchase activity.
• Double opt-in. Confirmation emails for new subscribers, which the site links to better lead quality and deliverability.
• List handling. Lead custom fields, personalized merge tags, tags for organizing leads, mass add, delete or unsubscribe, import without re-confirmation, and automatic handling of bounces, complaints and unsubscribes.
• Team and brands. Multiple brand users and roles, and customized campaign URLs.
• Automation. Automation is included from the Pro plan up, and the Executive plan adds unlimited automation workflows. The Managed plans list advanced automation.
• Developer side. API keys and a developer API on paid plans, with public API documentation and a public roadmap linked from the site.

Integrations are listed in the site menu: WordPress, WooCommerce, Salesforce, Zapier, Zoho, Make, Pabbly Connect, Integrately and Monkedo. A WordPress plugin is part of the Pro plan, and the company's blog post on white-label email says MailBluster "works with Shopify and WordPress". The same post notes that you can add your own logo and use your own domain so the service feels like your own, which is relevant to agencies sending for clients.

Plans and pricing

The pricing page splits into bring-your-own-SMTP plans and managed plans.

Starter (free). No credit card required. The pricing FAQ says it lets you "send up to 3,000 emails in total and includes MailBluster branding, making it suitable for testing the platform before upgrading". The 3,000 emails are a one-time allowance, not a monthly one, so this is a trial allowance in all but name.

Pro. $5 per month billed yearly, which the cost calculator states as $60 per year, plus $0.60 per 1,000 emails. It includes unlimited leads, unlimited emails, automation, custom fields, pro templates, export of leads and reports, no MailBluster branding, sender management, double opt-in, ecommerce support, API keys, the developer API and the WordPress plugin. The pricing FAQ gives a worked example: sending 100,000 emails a month on Pro costs $60.00 to MailBluster, and Amazon SES charges $16.00 on top.

Executive. $10 per month billed yearly, which the company's pricing comparison post puts at $120 per year. It adds dedicated one-to-one setup and support, 3 years of data retention, unlimited automation workflows and a 5% yearly reward on email sending.

On both bring-your-own plans, your provider bills delivery separately. With Amazon SES, MailBluster also uses Amazon's notification service for tracking events; the FAQ says the first 100,000 requests a month cost nothing and additional requests are $0.60 per million, a very small extra.

Managed. Monthly plans by email volume, with the SMTP cost included. The FAQ says they start at $17 per month for 10,000 emails, and the pricing page lists packs from 10,000 up to 1,000,000 emails a month, with the 10,000 pack shown at $15.30 a month billed yearly. Yearly billing saves 10%. If a campaign goes past the monthly allowance it keeps sending, and extra emails are charged at the plan's per-1,000 rate, which gets lower on bigger packs. Above 250,000 emails a month the company asks you to contact it. Managed plans include a 14-day free trial with no credit card, zero configuration, a dedicated account manager, IP blacklist monitoring, advanced automation, priority support and sender reputation management.

The pricing page also advertises a money-back guarantee: "Not satisfied? Get 100% refund!"

Scale and support

The home page reports 1,763,071,455 emails sent, 14,909,285 managed subscribers and 10,000 customers, and says 59,659 businesses and email marketers trust the product. The About page adds that the founding team's first version sent a couple of million emails with 99.8% successful delivery, and that ThemeWagon was saving over $2,150 a month in software fees at the time. Support comes through chat on the pricing page and by email, with dedicated setup on Executive and priority support plus an account manager on Managed plans.

Who it suits

MailBluster suits senders with big lists and tight budgets who are comfortable with a lean feature set. A developer or technical marketer who already runs Amazon SES, Postmark, Mailgun or SMTP2GO gets a campaign front end with unlimited leads for a small yearly fee plus a low per-email rate. A WordPress or WooCommerce site owner gets a plugin and a store integration, and an agency can put its own branding on the service. A sender who does not want to manage a provider account at all can use the Managed plans and let MailBluster handle delivery and reputation.

The caveats follow from the design. On bring-your-own plans you carry two bills and your own provider approval process, which is extra work for a non-technical team. And the product deliberately leaves out "the fancy stuff", so a team that wants a broad marketing suite in one place should check the feature list against its needs before moving a large list over.