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Mailchimp's pricing

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Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#61

Post by contextual »

alextingle wrote: post #23

MailChimp are just spam enablers. The vast majority of e-mail I get from them is to e-mail addresses that definitely never ever signed up for anything. They claim they use double opt in, but that's just a damn dirty lie. Furthermore, they are past masters at helping their spammers craft their spam to defeat SpamAssassin and baysian filters, so the spam that actually makes it to my inbox is disproportionately from the…

Disagree. Although I'm looking to move away from Mailchimp, it's not because of spam issues. They adhere rigorously to CAN-SPAM laws.

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#62

Post by alextingle »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #31
alextingle wrote: post #23

MailChimp are just spam enablers. The vast majority of e-mail I get from them is to e-mail addresses that definitely never ever signed up for anything. They claim they use double opt in, but that's just a damn dirty lie. Furthermore, they are past masters at helping their spammers craft their spam to defeat SpamAssassin and baysian filters, so the spam that actually makes it to my inbox is disproportionately from the…

If you saw it from the other end, in the eyes of a legitimate customer, you'd realise how laughable that is. MailChimp discourages spam to the extent that it's actually difficult to send email to your own customers! I can assure you that they use double opt-in, unless a customer has imported a list which they are trusted to only do legitimately. FWIW, I cannot remember having ever received any spam from MailChimp.

I honestly think they use legitimate customers as cover for their spam operation. I'm seeing dozens of e-mails a week from them to addresses that were plainly stolen from LinkedIn during their recent break-in.

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#63

Post by qnickmans »

disclaimer : I'm involved with www.mailjet.com.

Mailjet is "merging" transactional and marketing email services. Transactional via API and on top of our APIs we build web interfaces for marketers to manage contact list, html and stats pages.

We charge per email send, whatever its "origin".

One need to know that managing marketing emails and transactional emails is not the same in daily operations. Marketing emails are send to "lists" and there is an important effort a reliable provider needs to put in place to avoid spammers come on your platform. Lists need to be double opt-in etc. and a lot of marketeers don't follow these strict rules. The provider (here Mailjet.com or Mailchimp) has to develop and invest in a lot of work to detect 'spammers' before and even during the sending process, interact with its support teams to educate customers, etc. Their job is to guarantee to ISPs only high quality, opt-in messages are send out. That's the only long term battle a provider needs to fight for.

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#64

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

aquadrop wrote: post #40
grey-area wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have a tiny number of subscribers, I think someone charging by emails sent is better value, but even without that, the step between 2000 on a list free, and 500 on a list paid for, seems somewhat bizarre, they should eliminate that.

Not tiny number of subscribers but large emails/subscribers ratio. If you have 1000 subscribers and some daily news, you'll end up with much less price at MailChimp than SendGrid. And main thing about step from free account is unlimited number of emails vs 12000 limit. In the end, it's just a matter of thinking and finding the best tool for your specific situation.

This could barely be closer to our exact use-case, so I'm glad you used it as an example - nice to have the decision seconded! We ran for almost a month on the free plan, but were just about to exceed the 'total number of emails sent' limit, so upgraded. MailChimp's pricing automatically adjusts to the appropriate band depending on your current number of subscribers, so although the pricing is convoluted, I don't really need to worry about it. Even for a small business, £30/month (~ 5,000 subscribers) is very little, and for the peace of mind that comes with a solid offering such as MailChimp, it's well worth it.

I'm sounding like a shill, but I'm really not - just a very happy customer at the moment.

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#65

Post by CD1212 »

orliesaurus wrote: post #57
CD1212 wrote: post #25

Sorry for the shameless plug: I have been developing my own email marketing platform, primarily because I felt that the editor to create emails of some large providers was not easy enough for many people to use. I haven't posted it to HN before, and so far have only shown it to friends and clients. Please sign up (free trial) and see what you think? https://emailhamster.com/

You're using mailgun right? I just registered but the email arrived from mailgun's servers :O

Yes, for a new project setting up a custom delivery infrastructure seemed pointless. This is something I would like to remedy in the future though.

Thank you for signing up! I hope you find it useful.

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#67

Post by nemesisj »

grey-area wrote: post #47
nemesisj wrote: post #27

A few things here that I think most are missing: 1. Mailchimp is targeted (and priced for) the small business. Most small businesses aren't going to have lists more than a few thousand, which means most of Mailchimp's customers are going to be paying less than 50ish bucks a month. 2. If you've got thousands and thousands of emails to send, and are paying multiple thousands of dollars to mailchimp each month, you're p…

A few things here that I think most are missing: We left mailchimp after trying them out, and didn't miss any of these points, they're all quite obvious if you have priced out email. 1. Small startups definitely will 2. If you've got thousands of emails to send, you can send them for $10 with competitors 3. For customers spending a larger amount, again they could be spending a lot less with competitors, email is not…

For your second point, again, I think the point of MailChimp pricing is you may have thousands of emails to send, but you won't be sending to thousands of email addresses. This makes most of their customers start on the free plan, then graduate to something that's not a huge cost.

Simplicity and familiarity are the bread and butter for most of these customers. They're not marketing to tech people. They're marketing to the flower shop on the corner who has a list of 1,500 people and ads 2 email addresses a week.

So, I think maybe we're in violent agreement here :)?

Lastly - the key thing about MailChimp pricing is that you move up and down on their pricing plans automatically. It's unbelievably low friction. Most of the time when you move up or down, it's because you've just imported new people and have a new email to send. So you don't care. You just get on with it and then forget about it later.

I don't even know why I'm carrying so much water for MailChimp, other than I think people are missing the point of what and who they target.

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#68

Post by neya »

patio11 wrote: post #20
neya wrote: post #13

I think I would much rather roll out my own solution using Mailgun/Amazon's API with a basic RoR/Golang prototype than use these shady monkeys. It's their business and they have every right to price it the way they see it fit, but when there's something deceptive going on, as an end user I think I have every reason to point it out. For example, when you start with a free plan and you decide to upgrade to a paid plan,…

If you're capable of banging out basic RoR/Golang prototypes which can be used by non-technical email marketers, this skill alone can get you $20k+ engagements to build them with a bit of company-specific secret sauce in them. The sauce doesn't have to be that complicated at all -- for example, "I wish there was a way to send people an email on day N of their trial if their account had less than X objects in it... an…

Thanks :D

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#69

Post by grey-area »

nemesisj wrote: post #67
grey-area wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things here that I think most are missing: We left mailchimp after trying them out, and didn't miss any of these points, they're all quite obvious if you have priced out email. 1. Small startups definitely will 2. If you've got thousands of emails to send, you can send them for $10 with competitors 3. For customers spending a larger amount, again they could be spending a lot less with competitors, email is not…

For your second point, again, I think the point of MailChimp pricing is you may have thousands of emails to send, but you won't be sending to thousands of email addresses. This makes most of their customers start on the free plan, then graduate to something that's not a huge cost. Simplicity and familiarity are the bread and butter for most of these customers. They're not marketing to tech people. They're marketing t…

So, I think maybe we're in violent agreement here :)?

I think so yes :)

I suppose it comes down to which businesses you have worked with. I haven't encountered many businesses which have very few customers/prospects and send loads of mail, but there definitely will be some, which would be a better fit for mailchimp (like a florist as you say). For those who have lots of users, it's not such a good choice.

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#70

Post by adyus »

sachingulaya wrote: post #52
alextingle wrote: post #23

MailChimp are just spam enablers. The vast majority of e-mail I get from them is to e-mail addresses that definitely never ever signed up for anything. They claim they use double opt in, but that's just a damn dirty lie. Furthermore, they are past masters at helping their spammers craft their spam to defeat SpamAssassin and baysian filters, so the spam that actually makes it to my inbox is disproportionately from the…

Double opt-in exists...but their API, rightfully, allows for some rule bending. Mailchimp trusts at least one of its integrations to confirm the subscription. One thing that is hugely bothersome is that it's not possible for us to collect email lists at conventions and send to then through mailchimp. Bad handwriting and/or fake email addresses resulted in a warning from mailchimp about a 22% bounce rate from a list w…

Have you taken a look at http://blog.mailchimp.com/mailchimp-ipad-app-is-live-chimpad...
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