Mailchimp's pricing
mailchimp.com
mailchimp.com
You start on a free plan, and get 2000 users, you hit that limit, and are considering moving up, then realise that their lowest plan is actually below the number of users on the free plan - you have to go up to the 5th plan to actually get over 2000 users again. The limits are pretty low and the costs mount steeply, but the worst thing was not having a clear first step up from the free plan.
They also have an insane number of plans.
left in favor of? Mind sharing them?
I'm sounding like a shill, but I'm really not - just a very happy customer at the moment.
Sure, but it's only $30/month.
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 probably just going to use mandrill and hire a dev to help you out there.
3. For those customers that are spending larger amounrd (500-1000 bucks a month?), they're going to marketing managers at midsize businesses who would never get IT love and can easily justify the purchase against conversions to sales.
4. Lastly, most people who use mailchimp send more than 1 email a month, therefore, most of the commentary surrounding the pricing divided by one send a month isn't really accurate.
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 expensive, particularly in bulk.
4. If you're sending a few emails a month, that's not going to affect many of the calculations. Sure daily emails would affect these calculations, but that is very unusual for small businesses in my experience - around 1 or 2 a month is the norm for many, or customers get annoyed.
I'm sure Mailchimp will suit some customers with no tech team, small subscriber list, or daily emails to send, but they should sort out their pricing scheme - they are far too fine-grained, far too high at the top end, and with too big from free to the lowest level IMO.
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.
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.
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?
Thank you for signing up! I hope you find it useful.
Pardon the snark; This week I have to move a client off of MC because their WYSIWYG style editor is practically useless. Anyone with a recommended service?
501 - 1,000 $15 1,001 - 1,050 $20
5$ for 50 mails ..... 10 cent per email wow, I think you could get a better deal at the post office :)
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, you actually need to go about 5 levels to actually get over 2000 users! And it's not pretty cheap either. I mean $100k to send just emails? (Keep scrolling down)
I once used them when Feedburner bailed out on us, only to never look back at these monkeys (that's their trademarked mascot) and I rolled out my own basic solution on my VPS in just good old PHP (with Wordpress) and it worked well. And I definitely didn't spend $5 for 50 emails, just $20 for my basic Linode.
(That's sort of software-firm specific because that's who I typically sold that to. Let's see, what's a more prosaic option. Oh, OK: consider a small insurance company in Kansas which collects a meagre $20 million in premium income per year. There exists a non-technical marketing manager within that company who wishes that there was a way to email business customers a solicitation in December to pre-pay their premiums for the following year to book a current-year expense for tax purposes. She calculates that getting an extra 6 months of float on 20% of their $12 million in business policies is worth approximately $100,000. Can you imagine what you could sell her for $40,000?)
In related news: businesses pay serious money for things which make them money. Consider adapting one's behavior to optimize for this. You can use the resulting money to buy lots of fun things, including stupefyingly large amounts of MailChimp credits if that floats your boat.
However, one thing that I still haven't figured out is this: how would I find say, that small insurance company in Kansas who has $100k to spend on a solution I could offer to their problem? Where would I begin to look? Cold-contacting seems unscalable.
I know networking goes a long way toward such contacts, but it can't be just that. Is there a way to search for clients that's between cold-calling and a personal network contact?
Talk for an hour on how to solve business problems with email. After the hour is over, you're going to be mobbed with people who want to pick your brains about email. At that point you just continue teaching them things until you win the engagement.
This built Brennan Dunn's business (to a ~7 figures consultancy with 10ish FTEs if I recall correctly), in a very not-generally-associated-with-great -Rails-sales-environment part of the country. It was also, broadly speaking, a major portion of my lead generation when I was consulting. (I sold consulting services primarily to B2B software companies, so speaking at events likely to be attended by them was generally a win.)
n.b. "I follow your newsletters and get great value from them" a) Thanks, that really makes me happy and b) this points the way towards another option for you, since if the small insurance company in Kansas was saying that about your newsletter then you're pretty much made for pipeline.
Also, with regards to cold-calling: I've never done it, partly because it would give me stress hives and partly because I've never needed to do it, but I disagree that it is necessarily unscalable. After all, if you're selling $40k engagements, then adding ~10 qualified leads to the pipeline every month would easily sustain a small consultancy. That's not all that much calling. As your consultancy grows you tend to collect recurring engagements / referrals organically, but if you absolutely positively have to make e.g. $2 million this year to cover all employee salaries, that's still only one engagement a week, and if you're counting in the millions you have throw-money-at-this-problem options to being tired of all the talking on the phone.
* As Patrick mentioned, tap into your CoC's network of local businesses and offer to host a presentation. This will help you seed an audience - you'll later want to host your own events.
* Go to your local office supply store and get those folders with business card inserts. Print out your slides, and insert them and your business card into this folder.
* Hand folder out to each attendee, and include a strong call to action: "Want to learn more about how your business can best utilize email? Go to bit.ly/xyz and sign up for my FREE email course."
* Try to get everyone in attendance to opt-in to your course. Reinforce your email course during and after your presentation. (BTW, this is MUCH easier when you're running your own events and have some sort of registration system - you can then just auto opt-in everyone who attended.)
* Over the next month, teach them more about email via autoresponders.
* After your course completes, personally email each attendee and ask them point blank how they're planning on implementing the advice you taught them both at the live event and in the email course in their business. Tell them you want to buy them coffee and listen to their plan + give them some advice (note: this is a FOOLPROOF way of securing that first meeting.)
* The general takeaway from this meeting should be, "Wow! I now a LOT more about email marketing thanks to this guy. But hey, I'm busy running my business, and it's obvious this guy knows what he's doing, I trust him, and he's already delivered me an overwhelming amount of value."
* ...Profit
As soon as I get over the typical impostor syndrome and realize I have a lot to share in a newsletter, I'll follow your advice :) 'Tis true, "do stuff, tell people" is still the best advice.
One thing I'm still struggling with is how to explain and justify the (otherwise normal but perceived as) high cost of web development to a crowd that's anything but tech savvy. How do you justify your consulting fee? "Everybody charges that" doesn't sit well with me...
Although, I do see a point in making them do the math to figure out how much more they'd make by paying me, but I'm bearish on how many small business owners would actually do so.
Maybe I'm still thinking too small...
> I know networking goes a long way toward such contacts, but it can't be just that.
For me, it was literally "just that". However, understand that "networking" is a vague term. For me, networking was more than just showing up at social events and being nice to everyone, although that certainly counts. For example, I had a reputation for showing up at my clients' offices any time there was cake (birthdays, etc). It became a kind of running joke with everyone, and always got lots of laughs. But I digress.
Networking is the subtle combination of being present and expressing your value to those who are interested. This does not mean shouting your pitch at everyone you meet. Rather, it means listening to what people say, thinking about the challenges they're facing, then offering your advice on how technology could help them.
> One thing I'm still struggling with is how to explain and justify the (otherwise normal but perceived as) high cost of web development to a crowd that's anything but tech savvy. How do you justify your consulting fee? "Everybody charges that" doesn't sit well with me...
Maybe I'm just being narcissistic here, but my very favorite piece of advice for people in the technology field is "stop selling technology". The person you're selling to isn't interested in buying technology. The world is full of companies selling technology, and the buyer you're targeting doesn't understand any of it. The most successful sales pitches I've been a part of (and continue to be part of) are couched entirely in the language that the buyer uses, not the language I use.
Take a second and internalize that.
The small business owner doesn't have the time to become an expert in technology. They might even think that they do. For example, I would occasionally have a customer ask me what technology we used to build our websites. Some customers would ask about specific technologies: "Do you use 'pee-aych-pee'?" I would always deflect those questions tactfully by explaining that the technology that drives a website are nuts-and-bolts, which we can figure out once we really understand the problem the customer needs to solve. I would say something like:
"As a geek, I'd love to talk to you about PHP, Ruby, and ASP.NET, but I think that might be getting ahead of ourselves. I like to approach technology problems from the other direction. All of those technologies are great, but they're a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Let's talk about what problems you need to solve, then figure out what technology fits best."
If the client doesn't light up when you say that, then you're probably talking to the wrong client. It's very difficult to work with pseudo-experts. They end up meddling too much in the technology side of the work.
Back to the bigger picture, I don't think you're "thinking too small", although you might be thinking of this from the wrong direction. The best way to convince people to do business with you is to sound like them. Use their language. Put a lot of effort in to understanding them (their role, their challenges, etc). Resist the urge to jump right in to technology. A deep understanding of clients' problems will save you, even when/if you make a bad technology decision. If you do these things, you'll never have to justify your price. That doesn't mean that everyone will want to do business with you, but it acts as a natural selector for the types of clients you want to do business with.
You are selling a way for them to invoice their clients without Susie printing out 4 different Excel workbooks and walking them over to Accounting. You are selling a way for them to find customers that's more reliable than placing an ad in the yellow pages. You are selling a way for them to find which customers to upsell without Jeff the intern going into the basement and sorting through 5000 file folders.
And so on. Solve business problems, preferably ones that are pain points, and that have dollar signs attached. These are the key.
True, feelings sell best, business goals second to that. I guess it all comes down to having the leeway to 'fire' the wrong clients.
Sidenote: I noticed your blog mentions Vero Beach, FL. I'll be in the Palm Beach area in February, it'd be great to meet someone else in the SoFL startup scene!
Essentially, you identify the types of clients you work best with, create a process for finding them online, finding the right contact people at the company, finding their contact information, then reach out to them via email. It's scalable because you can hire someone on oDesk to follow the process you create. All you have to do then is set up a call with the incoming leads. Happy to answer any questions you have.
* You can just dump email addresses in it, and it'll keep eliminating ones that it's already seen that have unsubscribed/bounced/whatever.
* Analytics/tracking/stats.
* They work hard to make sure the emails get delivered/are not seen as spam.
* The system is fairly user friendly.
So... I've built similar systems in the past myself, but there's some value in doing it really well that I'm not sure I could "build in a weekend".
This can be _gold_.
I use Campaign Monitor much more than Mailchimp - and whenever I can, I always try to be on-hand when a client sends out at least one of their early/important mailouts, and I direct them to Campaign Monitors real-time map view of opens. You can see their eyes light up (and sometimes their heads explode) as they get a continuously updated view of people's names popping up in a map showing they've just opened the email - and even better when they're clicking on the links. If I possibly can, I try to be on-site so I csn open up one browser window with that Campaign Monitor view, and another with Google Analytics realtime report.
For me - that's usually one of the biggest "Oh, now I get it!" moments I can hand-feed to clients…
Note, I'm not affiliated in any way I just started to use it as I needed auto-responders and Mailchimp was too expensive for my use-case.
[0] http://sendy.co/
The plans are too exact to really be "plans". Is anyone thinking "I have exactly 52000 users right now"? I feel like bigger brackets or a sliding scale would be more appropriate.
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 them. It's got so bad that I've got special mail server rules that focus on just them.
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 we collected by hand.
I'm not impressed with the mailchimp WYSIWYG either. It's buggy with their templates and the plaintext is always absurd.
The A/B testing is nice, though.
I see a company that tries very hard to educate its customers and keep them on the straight and narrow.
Customers can add emails directly and check a box saying "yes this customer gave me permission".
Aweber uses double opt-in and there is no way around it. But that is a double edged sword when you've got a business to run.
0 - 500 $10 unlimited
501 - 1,000 $15
1,001 - 1,050 $20 // $5 = 50 emails
1,051 - 1,150 $25 //$5 = 100 emails
1,151 - 2,500 $30 //$5 = 1350 emails
2,501 - 2,600 $35 // $5 = 100 emails
- Does the price sound reasonable? - Have you tried our service before, if so what do you think of it? - Does it bother you our infrastructure is hosted in Europe?
$10 for 500 contacts $42 for 10,000 contacts
there's a lot of space between 500 and 10,000 !!
I run www.markdownmail.io it's very simple with very limited features, emails are composed in markdown and templated with mustache. Everything is sent using your ses account which allows us to keep prices very low.
Any questions drop me a line
antony@markdownmail.io p.s. you get a 30 day free trial.
postmark
mailgun
sendgrid
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.
We have 5000 subscribers, but only send 1 email every month or two. This costs $55. Compare this to someone that has 500 subscribers, and sends each of them 10 emails per month - that only costs $10 per month. It just doesn't add up.
I maintain an unlimited list and pricing is very reasonable. Also their affiliate program is very good.
I'm not a customer but curious about their rep, they have a flat(ish) pricing model at $1.5/1000 emails sent (and then lower for more)
Migration will no doubt be a hassle, but I'm looking to move to another service (soonish).