MailUp Review: Unlocking Multi-Channel Email & SMS Marketing

MailUp stands out as a robust email marketing software, catering to the diverse needs of small businesses, large enterprises, and agencies alike. Established in 2003, MailUp boasts a clientele of over 10,000 customers, including prominent names such as Xiaomi and Walmart. Its powerful combination of email, SMS, and automation features positions it as a strong contender for marketers aiming to execute comprehensive multichannel campaigns.

Could MailUp be the catalyst for your business growth? This in-depth MailUp review will explore its features, automation capabilities, integrations, customer support, and pricing, providing you with all the essential information to make an informed decision.

What We Love Most About MailUp

With over two decades of continuous platform development, MailUp has honed its offerings. Here are its top features:

• Advanced Drag-and-Drop Editor: MailUp integrates the renowned Beefree editor, widely regarded as one of the best drag-and-drop editors available.
• Rich Email Templates: Choose from over 200 visually appealing and mobile-responsive templates, allowing for quick and professional email creation.
• A/B Testing Capabilities: Optimize your campaigns by testing up to 5 different versions of the same email to identify the highest-performing content.
• Email and SMS Automation: Build sophisticated workflows that combine both email and SMS messages, triggered by specific user behaviors or preferences.
• Extensive Integrations: Connect MailUp natively with 24 third-party services, including popular platforms like WordPress and Zapier, enabling seamless connections with virtually any lead generation, CRM, or eCommerce platform.

MailUp Email Marketing Platform Review

This review will delve into the core functionalities of MailUp, starting with its email marketing capabilities, then moving on to SMS & email automation, integrations, and customer support, to provide a comprehensive understanding of the platform.

Creating and Sending a Newsletter with MailUp

MailUp offers a remarkable 6 distinct ways to craft your emails:

• Utilizing Drag-and-Drop Templates: Select from over 200 pre-designed, responsive templates for rapid email creation.
• Building From Scratch: Design emails from the ground up using customizable layouts and content blocks.
• Importing HTML Templates: Copy and paste your existing HTML email designs and refine them using the intuitive WYSIWYG editor.
• Uploading From a File: Upload ZIP files containing HTML and images to deploy custom templates, with further customization options available in the WYSIWYG editor.
• Generating From a URL: MailUp can automatically generate an email based on the content of an HTML page.
• Integrating RSS: Configure an RSS feed in your settings, and MailUp will automatically pull new content for effortless updates.

Creating a newsletter with MailUp is exceptionally straightforward. After selecting a template, you can easily customize it with text, images, and dividers. The MailUp editor provides a wide array of content blocks, including:

• Titles
• Paragraphs
• Images
• Buttons
• Dividers
• Socials
• HTML
• Videos
• Icons
• Menu
• Text
• Stickers
• GIFs

The MailUp editor boasts an extensive library of fonts, colors, and icons, offering significant design flexibility. The real-time WYSIWYG preview ensures your emails look exactly as intended before sending.

Inline text editing and formatting options are readily available via a hover menu. Moving content blocks is equally simple; hovering over a block reveals a bounding box, allowing for easy drag-and-drop rearrangement.

Personalization is seamlessly integrated. By clicking “Merge tags” in the toolbar, you can insert fields that MailUp will automatically populate with contact-specific data upon sending.

Further enhance personalization with dynamic content, which MailUp refers to as “display conditions.” You can set any row in an email to be dynamically included or excluded based on predefined criteria, even utilizing custom fields for highly targeted content display.

A notable feature is the ability to view the email’s structural layout. Clicking a dedicated button displays dotted lines around your email, providing guiding boxes to assist in precise layout design.

The preview function allows you to see how your email will render on both desktop and mobile devices. Additionally, the editor includes a ‘history’ feature, with icons at the bottom left enabling you to revert changes or return to previous email versions.

Once your email is ready, add a compelling subject line and preheader text. A practical feature is the ability to add internal notes and tags to emails, useful for tracking important details related to a series or campaign.

MailUp incorporates email review features to detect broken links and potential design issues, ensuring your campaigns are flawless before deployment.

With the email finalized, select your sender address and target list, then hit send. MailUp displays a progress bar, indicating the number of recipients in the queue.

Email Templates in MailUp

A diverse selection of email templates is crucial for creating appealing and engaging emails. MailUp provides a comprehensive library, ranging from simple text-only layouts to visually rich HTML versions incorporating images and video.

With 200 responsive templates, you can effortlessly craft emails that deliver an optimal viewing experience on any device.

The templates cover a broad spectrum of use cases, including designs for holidays, product launches, promotions, re-engagement campaigns, blogging updates, and transactional messages. Approximately 75% of these templates are modern and professional, while the remainder could benefit from a refresh.

Save Time with Email and SMS Automation

Leverage MailUp’s automation tools to set up triggered emails or SMS messages based on user behaviors or preferences. Examples include welcome messages for new subscribers, re-engagement emails for inactive contacts, or personalized content driven by profile data.

According to the MailUp team, the most frequently used automations are:

• Welcome series
• Birthday series
• Event reminders
• Custom workflows based on interests or activities like purchases or sign-ups

Automations are referred to as Workflows in MailUp. When creating a new workflow, you have the option to choose from pre-built templates or design custom ones.

The “Thanks for joining,” “Welcome series,” and “Onboarding” templates are quite similar, primarily differing in their triggers and each containing a single email.

We tested the birthday automation. Setting up the workflow is straightforward: the first step involves filling out details such as the automation name, sender’s address, SMS sender number, and the trigger event.

Automations can be triggered by contact fields or subscription events. For instance, a recipient’s birthday can serve as a trigger. The next step is to construct the workflow by adding emails, text messages, and setting wait times between each action.

It’s important to create your content before assembling the automation sequence, as MailUp does not allow content editing directly within the automation editor. Upon completion of the workflow, you can opt to move recipients to a different group or take no further action.

You then specify which contact groups to include or exclude, and apply filters for devices and operating systems. Timezone settings, and time and date restrictions are also configurable. A thoughtful inclusion is the ‘Not during weekend’ checkbox, allowing B2B companies, for example, to disable automated messages on weekends with a single click.

Finally, activate the workflow. When a subscriber’s birthday arrives, they will receive a birthday email followed by an SMS containing a shortcode for an exclusive offer.

We also created a “thank you” workflow comprising two emails and an SMS, which took approximately 10 minutes to set up.

Custom workflows can also be built, triggered by subscription, event date, field condition, or open/click activity.

While MailUp‘s automation builder lacks direct conditions, its “Recipient activity” feature allows you to trigger automations based on email and SMS engagement to follow up with relevant offers.

Overall, MailUp‘s automations effectively combine email and SMS, and the preset workflows alongside time and date restrictions are welcome additions. However, the absence of conditions and a visual automation editor (canvas for drag and drop) limits the creation of more advanced workflows and real-time logic visualization. While not the most sophisticated automation builder, it is perfectly capable for those not requiring overly complex sequences.

Getting New Leads with MailUp

MailUp simplifies lead generation for businesses through its intuitive landing page and form builders.

To create a landing page, navigate to the “Database Building” menu, select from 42 pre-designed templates, and begin customizing your content.

MailUp utilizes the same editor for landing pages as it does for emails, making it easy to learn and quickly design consistent, engaging content.

Customize your landing page using a variety of useful widgets such as buttons, videos, menus, and more. You can edit the layout, change colors, fonts, and favicons. The inclusion of stickers and GIFs, with direct integration to Giphy, adds a touch of personality to your landing pages. MailUp also integrates with Pexels and Pixabay for access to free stock images.

After designing your landing page, you can configure subscription confirmation and welcome messages. Tracking codes can be added to your landing page to sync data with your preferred analytics software.

The second essential tool for lead collection is the opt-in form. MailUp offers 4 types of forms. We explored the creation of a popup form to understand its functionality.

Form creation is straightforward, allowing you to configure styling, appearance, and behavior (when the form displays). You can choose which list to add new subscribers to and whether they should be added to the SMS channel, email channel, or both.

Currently, there are no specific form templates for popups; instead, universal styles can be set in the “Look & Feel” section. Here, you define global styles for all your forms, ensuring consistency in branding with options for company name, logo, fonts, and colors.

Once satisfied with your design, simply copy the generated form code and paste it onto your desired web pages.

Embedded forms offer greater flexibility, allowing you to add elements like checkboxes, radio buttons, text fields, and a privacy policy checkbox using the drag-and-drop editor. However, similar to pop-ups, embedded forms also lack dedicated templates, relying on the global styles set in “Look & Feel.”

MailUp’s landing page editor competes effectively with standalone landing page builders. The ability to set global styles for forms is also a valuable feature. However, the platform would benefit from the addition of pre-designed templates for pop-up and embedded forms.

Sending SMS with MailUp

82% of people open every text message they receive, making SMS an incredibly effective marketing channel. Many email platforms lack native SMS marketing tools, requiring integration with third-party software. MailUp’s integrated SMS functionality eliminates this need, simplifying multi-channel campaign management within a single platform. Let’s explore how SMS campaigns function within MailUp.

Creating a new SMS message is incredibly simple. Navigate to your Messages tab, select SMS, and then choose to create a new SMS.

Assign a title to your SMS, select the sender, and compose your message. You can also add tags for internal organization. Customize the SMS content to include promotions, discounts, or product updates.

Dynamic fields enable you to personalize messages with recipient-specific information, interests, or behaviors, facilitating more targeted campaigns with personalized discount codes and product recommendations.

Link tracking is available to measure the success of your SMS campaigns, with reports filterable by campaign type or individual recipient. MailUp also provides link shortening and a character counter, essential features given SMS messages are limited to 160 characters (or 70 for Unicode). MailUp can chain up to 10 text messages, extending the character limit to an impressive 1530 characters.

You can select specific groups, all subscribers, or manually choose recipients. A powerful feature is the ability to filter recipients by device type and operating system, allowing for highly targeted campaigns—for example, specifically reaching iPhone users.

Managing and creating SMS campaigns is streamlined with MailUp, providing the convenience of handling both email and SMS within a unified platform.

Managing Contacts in MailUp

MailUp’s contact management features offer a straightforward approach to storing and organizing customer data. You can add individual recipients, import contacts from CSV, TXT, XLS, and XML files, or simply paste emails and phone numbers.

When importing new contacts, MailUp prompts you to add them to an existing list or create a new one. Upon import, the platform automatically scans for syntax errors or typos in emails and generates a detailed report.

MailUp provides 28 default contact fields that are editable, and you can create up to 39 custom fields in total.

The filtering options in MailUp are robust. You can view all subscribers and quickly locate specific contacts based on emails, phone numbers, and subscription dates. Further refinement is possible by including or excluding groups, applying filters, or matching specific fields. This precise filtering capability is invaluable for sending highly targeted campaigns.

In MailUp, static segments are referred to as groups. Contacts can be added or removed from a group via the contact list. Each landing page and form will have a default group, and you can assign additional groups for subscribers to join upon sign-up or after completing an automation sequence.

Filters represent MailUp’s more advanced segmentation tools, built upon conditional logic.

Start by selecting a filter category. When a filter is added to a category, it is grouped with similar filters for improved organization and ease of retrieval. You can create four main types of filters:

• Profile filters
• Activity filters
• Geolocation filters
• Device filters

Within each filter, you can set up powerful “and/or” conditions.

For highly advanced segmentation, such as identifying “CEOs in New York who opened your last 5 emails,” you can create your own custom filter categories.

Here are 4 interesting audience management functions:

• Groups Overlap: This helpful feature allows you to visualize how many subscribers from one list also belong to another, preventing duplicate communications across different groups.
• Bounce Tagging: MailUp tags all bounces with specific bounce codes, making it easy to locate and manage these under Recipients > Email > Bounces. This is crucial for maintaining a healthy list and ensuring effective campaign delivery.
• Flexible Unsubscribe Options: Subscribers have two ways to opt-out: a single-click unsubscribe or confirming their unsubscription on a preference page, both linked in your emails.
• Environments: A unique feature in MailUp, Environments allow you to create distinct profiles for different types of lists and customers, categorizing them separately. Accessible via Settings > Account Settings > Lists, each environment can be named and configured with specific timezones, email types, and sender addresses. Each environment operates with its own set of subscribers, messages, statistics, and settings. This is particularly beneficial for agencies and enterprises with multiple departments or clients requiring separate operational spaces.

MailUp Integrations

MailUp provides over 20 native integrations, and for even broader connectivity, you can leverage Zapier to connect with more than 5000 third-party applications.

These integrations include essential services like Gmail, Outlook, and popular eCommerce and CMS platforms such as Magento, Shopify, PrestaShop, WooCommerce, SalesForce, Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM, WordPress, Zapier, and ContactLab.

It’s helpful how integrations are logically presented within lead generation tools. Below the built-in forms and welcome messages, you’ll find options for integrations to generate and synchronize lead data.

While some ESPs offer 200+ native integrations, MailUp has some ground to cover in this area. However, this is rarely a significant issue, as Zapier or their comprehensive API provides the flexibility to connect with virtually any other application.

MailUp Customer Support

MailUp customers have access to support via email, ticket submission, or phone. By clicking the question mark icon in the top right, you can open a ticket and expect a reply within 24 hours (often sooner). The support team is consistently praised for being helpful and responsive.

MailUp also maintains a comprehensive help center, featuring hundreds of articles organized into categories. This includes a quick start guide and short video tutorials to help users get up and running quickly. While beneficial, some articles could use updating, and more video content would be a valuable addition.

A distinctive offering from MailUp is its consultancy and training services. Leveraging 20 years of expertise in email marketing, they provide specialized training in areas such as:

• Deliverability
• Onboarding
• Lead generation
• Data analysis
• Marketing automation
• Graphic design
• Integrations

These services are paid and can be accessed by contacting their team for a personalized quote.

MailUp Pricing and Plans

MailUp offers two pricing models: subscription-based for email and credit-based for SMS. All email plans include unlimited recipients and no sending limits. However, sending speed is capped at 2,000 emails/hour on standard subscription plans, with options to increase speed by an additional 10-40%. Enterprise customers can achieve sending speeds of up to 5 million emails per hour.

SMS pricing is credit-based. For example, 1754 text messages in the US cost $63.73.

The MailUp Starter plan costs €43/month (billed annually) and includes 50 email templates, a drag-and-drop builder, A/B testing, 3 automation triggers, dynamic content, and inbox previews on 3 email clients. The Plus plan is €98/month, and the Premium plan is €243/month if committed for a year.

These higher-tier plans provide enhanced features:

• Email Templates: 100 templates on Plus, 200 on Premium.
• Inbox Previews: 76 clients for inbox previews on both Plus and Premium.
• Automation Triggers: 100 automation triggers available for both Plus and Premium.
• Sending Speed: Increased sending speeds on higher plans.

MailUp SMS operates on a pay-as-you-go pricing model with zero fixed costs; you only pay for the SMS messages you send.

SMS pricing varies by country. In the US, prices start at $67 for 1754 SMS messages and can go up to $1,089 for 35,088 messages.

You can try a free trial of the Plus plan to thoroughly test the platform before committing to a paid subscription.

MailUp Pros and Cons

MailUp: Is It the Email Marketing Software for You?

MailUp is a strong choice for small businesses, enterprises, or marketing agencies in search of comprehensive email marketing software with integrated SMS capabilities. It offers an intuitive drag-and-drop editor for quickly creating professional emails, robust analytics, flexible contact filtering, automated campaigns, versatile web forms, and integrations with various eCommerce platforms and CRMs.

Our Scoring Breakdown:

• Ease of Use: 3.5 / 5
• Value for Money: 4.5 / 5
• Editor and Templates: 4.5 / 5
• Functionalities: 4 / 5
• Email Automation: 3.5 / 5
• Customer Service: 4 / 5

Total Score: 4 / 5

We awarded MailUp a score of 4 out of 5 due to its user-friendly email and page editors, extensive library of 200 templates, and the unparalleled benefit of unlimited contacts and sending on all plans. While the interface, navigation, and automation features could benefit from a refresh, MailUp remains a solid and highly capable email marketing software.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

MailUp Alternatives

MailUp vs. Mailchimp

The primary distinction between MailUp and Mailchimp lies in their pricing structures and feature sets for advanced tiers. Both platforms are excellent for SMBs. Mailchimp offers features like predictive segmentation, more sophisticated automation, and ad campaigns in its higher-tier plans, which start around $300.

In contrast, MailUp provides unlimited contacts and email sending across all its plans. Therefore, if you are looking for a powerful, comparatively simpler, and more cost-effective email marketing software without contact or sending limitations, MailUp is often the preferred choice.

MailUp vs GetResponse

The main difference between MailUp and GetResponse centers on automation capabilities. GetResponse is generally better suited for advanced users requiring highly sophisticated automation and sales funnels. MailUp recently acquired ContactLab, a marketing automation company, and with this integration, MailUp customers can access more advanced automations, often at an additional cost.

Another key differentiator is pricing. MailUp maintains unlimited contacts and emails across all its pricing plans, whereas GetResponse’s pricing scales with the number of contacts you have. For example, if you have 10,000 subscribers and need automation features, MailUp would cost €43/month compared to GetResponse’s €99/month.

Companies requiring highly advanced automations or a broader range of native integrations may find that GetResponse is a better option. Conversely, smaller businesses, or those with large lists and a focus on core email/SMS, may prefer using MailUp due to its transparent and often more cost-effective pricing model.