Price does not equal quality for email marketing software
It turns out that a high price is not a good signal of quality for email marketing software. In fact, our independent review of 19 leading web-based email marketing solutions found an inverse relationship between price and quality.
Yes, you heard right. The higher the rating, the lower the price …even though price was just one of ten factors we considered. See the graph below for a summary of average price by star rating for the solutions reviewed.
This finding is great news for small and mid-sized businesses who want to get started with (or ramp up) their permission-based email marketing. You can rest assured that there are great solutions out there at a very affordable price. However, it also means you need to choose carefully as price, functionality & usability vary considerably.
For example, looking at the scenario of a business sending 5000 emails per month to a list of 2500 subscribers, the products given five-star ratings cost an average of $31 per month, compared to over $166 per month for the two-star products. The most expensive solution in our list cost a remarkable 17 times more than the most affordable, but was actually much less useful. Ouch!
Launch of our Email Marketing Software Review Pack
The findings above are based on the reviews in our new Email Marketing Software Review Pack, which we’re pleased to officially launch today.
This comprehensive 33 page report contains detailed independent reviews of 19 leading web-based email marketing solutions, including AWeber, Benchmark, Campaign Monitor, Campaigner, Constant Contact, Email Brain, Ennect Mail, GetResponse, GraphicMail, iContact, inwise, JangoMail, MailChimp, newzapp, Savicom, SimplyCast, Streamsend, Vertical Response, and Vision 6.
Buy the Review Pack
You can purchase the Review Pack on Software Shortlist and download the report immediately.
Win a Review Pack!
To celebrate the launch of the Review Pack, we will be giving away 2 free copies.
For your chance to win, simply complete our email marketing software survey, including the final question about the challenges you’ve faced in choosing email marketing software and why you want to win the Review Pack. We’ll choose two (2) winners based on how interesting & insightful your answers are. Entries close 31st March 2010. For full terms & conditions, see the survey.
Previous Winner: Congratulations to David M. from Australia. He completed our February survey about email marketing software and his answer was judged to be the best by Software Shortlist staff. David will be receiving his free copy of the Email Marketing Software Review Pack today.
15. June 2010 at 12:54 pm :
Great post. Unfortunately, it seems all too common for businesses to choose the most expensive software just because they think price = value (which obviously isn’t true).
Have you noticed a similar inverse relationship between price and value in other types of software you’ve reviewed? I’m wondering if there’s a reason that some industries have this weird pricing/value gap? Maybe there are warning signs.
16. June 2010 at 4:10 pm :
Interesting and nice article. I have always been curious about the difference between functionality and usability of a software product. I would really like to get this confusion cleared up and would like to see posts clarifying this question.
16. June 2010 at 4:54 pm :
Thanks for the suggestion re future posts. It is interesting that some many products compete on the level of features, when usability is often the difference between the success or failure of a software implementation. Presumably this comes down to features being tangible elements you can point to (and put in a brochure) whereas usability needs to be experienced to be believed.
16. June 2010 at 5:38 pm :
Hi xavier. Thanks for the reply. It’s making some sense and an example or two from the real world/based on your experience would REALLY help me clear up with the rest of the confusion (feature versus usability).
16. June 2010 at 5:47 pm :
Xavier, I couldn’t agree more about how usability should be the focus of competition rather than features. I actually wrote a post about this exact topic: http://www.lessannoyingsoftware.com/blog/2010/04/65/Don't+let+features+distract+you+from+the+real+product
Ormard, my favorite example of the functionality/usability is the difference between Microsoft Outlook and Gmail. I realize that not everyone agrees with me, but I much prefer Gmail to Outlook. I think it’s faster, easier, and much more powerful once you get the hang of it. However, if you compare features, Outlook does tons of stuff Gmail can’t do (HTML email sigs, third party plugins, desktop notifications, default offline access, etc). But despite all the features Outlook has, I just *like* gmail better so I consider it much more usable.
Another example is Facebook/Twitter. Facebook can do absolutely everything Twitter can and waaaaay more, but a lot of people prefer Twitter’s simplicity. It’s not as functional, but the user experience is better (for some people – I actually prefer Facebook myself).
17. June 2010 at 1:15 am :
Awesome examples and they have cleared all the ambiguity. Thanks
Thanks for the blog link. I’ll check it out.