Are you still on the fence about starting email marketing with Sendinblue and looking for a reliable Sendinblue review to make a sound decision?
Yeah… been there, done that!
We too had to deal with daunting questions like – Is Sendinblue reliable? Or, Is Sendinblue any good?
Obviously, the confusion about choosing Sendinblue as our platform’s email marketing service was too much. And, to add to our miseries, there were no guides or reliable reviews to help us decide.
But we won’t let this happen to you..!!
After using Sendinblue for quite a while now, we have curated an encyclopedic review of Sendinblue on the basis of –
- Ease of use
- Efficiency
- Value for money
We assure you, by the end of this Sendinblue review, you will be able to decide if is it really worth the hype.
Let’s dive straight in –
What is Sendinblue?
The obvious answer you and most of the people would have is that Sendinblue is an email marketing service.
In all fairness, this is true but that’s not the complete answer. And, because of this, you need this Sendinblue review more than ever.
Sendinblue has grown from just an email marketing service to an all-in-one marketing suite that offers better growth, sales, and engagement prospects.
So in simple terms, Sendinblue will now offer you –
- Email Marketing
- SMS Marketing
- Marketing Automation
- Live Chat
- CRM
- Facebook Ads
- Landing Pages
- Sign Up Forms
And third-party integrations.
Keeping email marketing in focus here’s a quick run-down of Sendinblue pricing plans –
Sendinblue Pricing
Plans | Emails/Month | Price |
---|---|---|
Free | 300 emails per day | $0 |
Lite | 20,000 emails/month 40,000 emails/month 65,000 emails/month 100,000 emails/month | $25/month $32/month $45/month $65/month |
Premium | 20,000 emails/month 40,000 emails/month 60,000 emails/month 100,000 emails/month 150,000 emails/month 250,000 emails/month 350,000 emails/month 500,000 emails/month 750,000 emails/month 1,000,000 emails/month | $65/month $79/month $94/month $124/month $169/month $229/month $289/month $379/month $499/month $599/month |
Enterprise | More than 1,000K emails | Custom Pricing |
Check Out Sendinblue Pricing Plans In Detail
We will cover the plans in the “Value For Money” segment but until then, you should know that all the advanced features like Facebook Ads, Landing page builder, etc. come under the “Premium” plan.
For now, let’s break down the Sendinblue review based on –
1. Ease Of Use
Since there are tons of exciting features available in Sendinblue, covering and explaining them in this Sendinblue review article will make it complicated.
Irrespective of this, we will be covering and analyzing the core components of Sendinblue that you will be needing the most.
1.1 Getting Started With Sendinblue
In order to get started with Sendinblue, we had to simply go to their Homepage and sign up for free.
We simply entered our Company Name, Email Address and set our Password.
And, meanwhile, when we were filling up the sign-up form, we also had the chance to quickly glance over some factors which makes it a popular choice.
This includes,
- No card or payment information required while signing up.
- A claim of 30 Million emails & SMS sent every day.
- A customer base of 50,000 customers.
- GDPR Compliance.
Once we had submitted the sign-up form, Sendinblue has sent us a verification email. This helped them confirm that we are real people, looking for a reliable email marketing service.
In the verification email, we were asked to click the big blue “Confirm My Email Address” button.
After this, we were redirected to the “Profile Set Up” page where we were asked about our Personal Information and Company Information.
Now, you can, of course, skip this and move ahead without completing it. But we would recommend you to go with the flow and submit it instantly.
Completing the Profile Set Up step also means that you are one step closer to validating your account.
Moving forward, we now had access to our Sendinblue Dashboard.
From here, we can now easily navigate to other modules like Importing Contacts, Creating an Email Template or Scheduling/Sending Emails.
Until here, signing up and starting a Sendinblue account has been very smooth and easy. And, we hope that you’d find the same.
Let’s move forward and try our hand in –
1.2 Importing Contacts
Contacts and email lists are one of the integral parts of an email marketing service. So it is logical to test the ease of “Importing Contacts” or creating an email list as well.
In order to do so, we go to the Contacts tab.
Here, we were presented with an option to either “Add A Contact” or “Import Contacts”.
But since we already know the importance of List Segmentation, we would rather create a list and then add/import contacts.
Again, to create a list, we went to Contacts → Lists → Add A New List
Here, at first, we only had to give our list a suitable name and create an empty list. And, then came the importing part.
Now, we were again given options to either “Add A Contact” or “Import Contacts”.
When we clicked the “Add A Contact” button, a pop-up appeared and asked us to fill the contact details like name, email, phone number, etc.
But when we clicked the “Import Contacts” button, we were given an option to upload our subscribers’ file in .CSV or .TXT format.
After this, all we had to do is map the data with their corresponding attributes.
We have successfully imported our Subscribers into our Sendinblue account.
Again, we are pretty much satisfied with the steps involved and easiness in importing our contacts.
Besides this, we were then very much excited to –
1.3 Create Email Templates
This review of Sendinblue would have been incomplete if we hadn’t taken the email builder out for a spin.
We all want our email templates to look professional, stunning and stand out to drive better conversions.
So to test the user-friendliness of Sendinblue’s Email Builder, we hopped on to the email creation step via Campaigns → Email → Create An Email Campaign
After clicking on the “Create An Email Campaign” button, we were asked to input data for Campaign Title, Subject, From Name, etc. A/B testing is also available at this junction.
Then we were taken to the email designing step.
Here, we had the option to choose the email builder i.e. –
- Drag & Drop Editor
- Rich Text Editor
- HTML Code Editor
Or, we could choose any of the 65 ready-made email templates from the Template Gallery.
We had selected an email template and opened it in the Drag & Drop Builder to check out the fluency of editing.
With no surprise at all, Sendinblue’s Drag & Drop Builder is extremely easy to use. The user interface is perfectly distributed among Elements, Builder Area and Designing Options.
Moreover, we could also test the responsiveness of the template in the builder itself.
Lastly, when we were satisfied with the design and editing, we clicked on the “Save & Quit” button.
After previewing the email template, just like us, you’d have to select the recipients. And then you have the option to either Send Instantly or Schedule your campaign.
Now comes the part where we get to know the deliverability of Sendinblue.
2. Efficiency
No matter how easy an email marketing service is or how beautiful your email templates look, it all comes down to email delivery efficiency.
Getting satisfactory open and click rates is solely dependent on your email marketing practice and email content.
But before this, in order to generate opens and clicks, we would want our emails to reach subscribers’ inboxes. And, that’s why we have tested Sendinblue’s deliverability.
Digital Marketing Tipsy’s Tip
In order to get better inboxing, it is advisable to verify your domain by adding Sendinblue’s SPF and DKIM records.
We had imported a small list of 100 subscribers who have their email addresses on Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, etc.
After sending the campaign, here are the key takeaway points –
- 78 subscribers said that they received the email in their inbox.
- 7 subscribers notified that they received in other folders (Promotions, etc.).
- A good chunk of subscribers i.e. 11 said that they have received the email in the Spam/Junk folder.
- And, 4 subscribers alerted us that they never received the email.
We have re-tested the deliverability with hopes to improve these stats but the outcome was almost identical.
So, it is safe to say that the Sendinblue email delivery is good but can be further improved.
Until now, we and hopefully you too are satisfied with the ease of use and efficiency.
Let’s move on to the final criteria i.e. –
3. Value For Money
After successfully testing the easiness and efficiency of Sendinblue, we move forward to see what more benefits we can extract from Sendinblue.
You’d be surprised to know that, unlike other Sendinblue alternatives, you get massive value for your money.
Here’s a brief rundown of value-packed characteristics –
3.1 Affordable Pricing Plans
It’s a known fact that Sendinblue is one of the cheapest email marketing and SMTP services. If you are just starting email marketing, its Free plan (send 9,000/month with 300 emails/day sending limit) would be perfect. But if you know the email marketing game, you can subscribe to its premium plans, starting at $25/month which is a lot cheaper than other email marketing services.
3.2 Solid SMS Marketing
If you have a database of your customers’ phone numbers then you can tap into the world of SMS marketing with the help of Sendinblue. Although it is a pay-as-you-go service, it still remains extremely affordable.
3.3 Top-Notch Marketing Automation
Would you be intrigued if we tell you that you can automatically send emails to your subscribers based on their actions? Well, it is possible through Sendinblue’s Marketing Automation where you could send a welcome email to your new subscribers, cart abandonment emails, or something different than these.
3.4 Insightful Reporting
Sendinblue offers all the required metrics in the reports and that too in real-time. Moreover, if you subscribe to its premium plans, you’d be able to check reports based on Geography and Heat Maps.
3.5 Lead Generation Modules
We all know how important it is to generate leads for our businesses. Hence, Sendinblue lends a hand in this area too with the help of Sign Up forms and Landing Page builder. The sign up forms are also included in the free plan.
3.6 Reach Larger Audience Through Facebook Ads
If you are looking to expand the reach of your business on the global level, Sendinblue also allows you to seamlessly create Facebook Ads (paid feature, available in the Premium plan). This would be a ground-breaking feature for businesses that are established.
Sendinblue Verdict
Now that we have thoroughly tried and tested Sendinblue, it’s time for us to tell you if Sendinblue is really worth the hype.
But we are quite sure that you already know the answer to this… Yes, Sendinblue definitely deserves to be one of the best and most value-packed email marketing services.
If you are a blogger, eCommerce business owner, SaaS, or someone who is just starting out, Sendinblue is your best bet. Just go with it.
However, in this Sendinblue review, we have mainly focused on the prime advantages of using Sendinblue. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t flawless.
You must also know that Sendinblue offers only 65 pre-built templates and integration options are also limited.
But in spite of this, Sendinblue is known to be easy to use and deliver results at a comprehensible low price.
Ease Of Use – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – 4/5 Stars
Efficiency – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – 4/5 Stars
Value For Money – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – 4/5 Stars
So we encourage you to take out Sendinblue for a test spin and let us know about your experience in the comments.
Here are some other articles about Sendinblue that you may find helpful –
- Best SMTP Services with high inboxing rates (features Sendinblue)
- Amazon SES Alternatives (features Sendinblue)
- eCommerce Email Marketing Tools (features Sendinblue)
- How to integrate RSS to email in Sendinblue.
Other Review Based Articles –
- Inboxroad Review – Does it offers better email delivery than other SMTPs?
- Canva Review – Find out if it is the best graphic design tool.