Mailerlite is a popular email marketing platform. In this article I review MailerLite and let you know if it is the right choice for your wellness business.
I have been a long time MailerLite user but I’ve also tried several other email marketing platforms so I have a pretty good idea of where MailerLite shines and where it is lacking.
What is an email marketing platform?
In a previous post I shared the benefits of using email marketing for your wellness business. An email marketing platform allows you to collect emails and automate your marketing to this list of people. It allows you to share your content, and free and paid offers with a group of people who want to hear what you have to say.
What are the benefits of MailerLite?
Generous free plan
MailerLite has the most generous free plan that I am aware of. You can have up to 1000 subscribers with the free plan and you can use most of the features that are available. This is different from platforms like ConvertKit and Mailchimp which both severely limit the free plans.
Having a free plan to get started really helps if your business is not bringing in very much revenue yet.
Very reasonable paid plans
And if the free plans don’t offer enough for you, the paid plans are very reasonably priced. The paid plans start at $10 per month or $84 per year. You can have a plan for up to 2500 subscribers for only $126 per year. The same number of subscribers will be $360 with Mailchimp, and approximately $500 with Active Campaign (Active Campaign gives me pricing in Canadian dollars and I am estimating the conversion rate).
So if you plan on growing your list quickly, then MailerLite will be the most cost effective option.
Landing page creation
Of course pricing isn’t the only benefit of MailerLite. You can also create some pretty amazing landing pages with MailerLite. This means you don’t need a separate tool for creating these pages.
They offer several landing page templates that can work for different scenarios and you can use the simple drag and drop editor to customize it.
Ease of use
When I started out I was using Mailchimp. But I found their interface and terminology confusing. MailerLite was intuitive and easy to set up and send out campaigns and automations. And I was quickly able to create beautiful, high converting landing pages.
That doesn’t mean you will find it as easy. Some of the comparisons I read before doing this article gave Mailchimp higher marks than MailerLite for usability. When I’ve taken ConvertKit for a test drive I found it’s interface very easy to use. If ease of use is what you are looking for then try out a few different options.
Automation features
MailerlLite offers several automation features in the free version that are only offered in paid versions of other products. You have several options for triggering an automation, the ability for conditions within your automation and even conditional content within emails. That means you can send a single email to your list, but change up what different subscribers receive. For instance if someone is already enrolled in a program, I wouldn’t include the paragraph where I provide a discount on the program.
Deliverability
Deliverability seems to change with the stars and it is often difficult to find reliable results. Mailerlite has had occasional blips of poor deliverability but for the most part, they have very good deliverability, meaning your emails will actually land in the subscriber’s inbox.
Note that with gmail accounts, your emails are more likely to end up in the promotions tab when using MailerLite than with some of the other platforms.
Support
I have never had an issue with MailerLite’s support, although I’m not one to reach out often. Their support on the free plan is more limited, but in line with other providers.
What could be improved with MailerLite
MailerLite is an awesome choice for many people in the wellness industry, but there are a few things that cause me to consider switching once in a while.
General look and feel
MailerLite uses the small editing window, big display window that can make editing emails seem confined. I’m always trying to type in the big display window. And the edit window doesn’t expand when I expand my browser window.
I also find that the automation display is difficult to use when automations get bigger than about 5 steps. An option to collapse and expand would be very nice.
Bugs
I often notice that the edit window does not look the same as the display window. Font sizes don’t change when you expect, the edit window shows a different alignment, or even something completely different.
Global customizations
I’ve used MailerLite for years, completed the fundamentals certification and have yet to discover a way to change settings globally. I would like all my content to use the same font and colours but that doesn’t seem to be an option.
More robust automations
Although MailerLite has the best automations for a free plan, they don’t compare to some of the paid email providers. You can’t create automations from segments so this makes setting up an inactive subscriber automation very difficult.
Other email platforms like Active Campaign allow an automation to start from two branches, MailerLite does not. It’s also missing several other automation features that are definitely nice to have.
Templates
MailerLite comes with some templates in the paid plan, but they don’t have automation templates. Many of the email templates and landing page templates seem geared towards a different audience and not in touch with best email practices. Although the latest look shows some improvement.
I’ve also found that using templates is not completely intuitive, but I think they changed the options to make it slightly better.
Speed
Perhaps because I’m using a 5 year old MacBook Pro, or because I tend to have multiple browser tabs open at once, but I find that I spend a lot of time in MailerLite waiting for things to open.
Platform evolution
It has seemed to me that MailerLite developers have been more interested in creating flashy landing pages and email templates than on creating things that are actually useful. I would like to see more evolution towards better email automation, bug fixes and general usability.
Should you choose MailerLite?
If you have a limited budget or are growing your email list quickly, then MailerLite is definitely the best choice. MailerLite has one of the best free plans around and is very cost effective. When you are starting out and even fairly deep into your business, MailerLite will provide you with a platform that can be used for a long time.
No platform is perfect, and MailerLite offers several benefits for wellness businesses, especially if you want a platform that can grow with you.
