MailBluster vs EmailOctopus; both MailBluster and EmailOctopus provides bulk newsletter sending service via AmazonSES. They offer many identical sounding features, and they are both free up to a certain threshold. In this article, we will make a detailed comparison of the following key features of MailBluster and EmailOctopus:
- Number of Subscribers
- List Segmentation
- Drag & Drop Email Builder
- A/B Testing
- Time-Warp Delivery
- Real-Time Tracking & Reporting
- Integration
- Pricing
Now, let’s jump right into the nook & cranny and reach the decisive point.
Number of subscribers
MailBluster charges you nothing for your growing subscriber list. The sky’s the limit for you always when it comes to the number of subscribers. Moreover, it is probably the only newsletter-sending tool in the world that does not charge you based on your number of subscribers.
Having said that, EmailOctopus has settled its pricing issue on the basis of the number of subscribers. It is limiting its users to 2500 subscribers. If it crosses that magic figure then the user has to upgrade the plan and buy its premium packages to manage their subscribers.
List Segmentation
MailBluster has a supercharged segmentation tool. You can target and re-target the subscribers based on their activity, like whether they clicked on a specific email or not, location, purchase history, and more. It will help the marketers to focus on the most potential leads and convert them gradually.
Contrarily, EmailOctopus is not providing the List Segmentation solution. Despite that, EmailOctopus is presenting the Drip-feed emails to your subscribers using automation tools. The automation is based upon lists and time. The list is editable anytime and able to send emails to the listed subscriber at a scheduled time. This feature significantly affects onboarding experiences.
Drag & Drop Email Builder
MailBluster features Drag & Drop Email Builder that lets users create email templates easily and simply by WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) composer. Users can incorporate their pre-built HTML codes into it as it has a code editor too! There are options to create customized texts, buttons, titles, and layouts if you don’t want to write code, just drag and drop. It’s easy and fun!
On a happier note, EmailOctopus also has the feature of creating basic emails for non-coders with a simple Drag & Drop Email Builder. You can put HTML code as well into it by simply doing copy and paste.
A/B Testing
A/B testing is undoubtedly the most effective method to test, learn and maximize the output of a marketing campaign. With MailBluster, you can send multiple variations of a campaign by slicing the subscribers to A/B testing slices. It will help you to get the best opens, clicks and conversions from a specific email marketing campaign.
On
Time-Warp Delivery
Timewrap delivery is what assures your subscribers are not getting the right email at a wrong time, which generally creates an adverse effect on the email marketing campaign. For example, If you send from New York and schedule delivery for 9 am, your west coast subscribers would generally get the email at 6 am PST. Timewarp would delay sending to anyone until it’s 9 am in their time zone. Time-warp delivery can boost your conversation by several folds. It is one of the best features you can get out of MailBluster.
Although EmailOctopus is not coming up with Time-Wrap Delivery, it is allowing you to create list and set time interval to send that campaign using an automation tool.
Real-Time Tracking & Report
It is the point where both MailBluster and EmailOctopus come with a similar feature. They both allow you to see real-time reports and analytics after sending the marketing emails.
MailBluster tracks all opened, bounced, clicked and ecommerce conversions and picturizes them with charts and data tables for you to understand them easily. It is quite impressive and helpful while sending out the campaigns.
Though EmailOctopus can not track ecommerce conversions, it has real-time tracking for metrics like open rates, click rates, bounce and unsubscribes.
Integration
MailBluster allows integration with popular services like Facebook, Gmail, Instagram, Google Sheets, Dropbox, etc., via Integromat, a third-party service. Integromat is free to use up to 1,000 operations, 100 MB data transfer, and 15 minutes minimum intervals per month.
Here you can see in detail how to connect other apps with mailbluster via Integromat.
For EmailOctopus, everything is almost the same about integration, except for using zapier as an alternative to integromat. The cost of zapier is a bit higher than integromat. You can compare between integromat and zapier here.
Pricing
MailBluster provides you with two pricing plans; Starter and Pro.
In the Starter plan, you can send up to 3000 emails per account for free with the Starter subscription, which also includes MailBluster branding on all outgoing emails and unsubscribe pages. It is limited to a single usage, though. However, there is no cost to begin using MailBluster. You can use this free plan without adding a billing card as well.
The MailBluster paid plan is called the Pro package. The annual subscription fee is $60. By entering your billing card information, you can utilize this paid plan. MailBluster will let you send unlimited emails starting with $0.60 for 1,000 emails you send. Each month, you will receive a bill based on your usage. Additionally, you can use all of the pro capabilities, including the Automation tool, and remove the MailBluster branding from all outgoing emails by subscribing to MailBluster’s subscription plan.
[Please Note: In order to send emails using MailBluster, you must connect your verified, authorized, and active AWS account to MailBluster. Additionally, keep in mind that MailBluster’s and AWS’s billing are distinct from one another. A validated AWS account is still required whether you utilize MailBluster’s Free or Paid subscription.]
EmailOctopus also has a free plan for you but with some bars and limitations. For example- it will cost you $0 forever, but the number of subscribers is limited to 2500 only.
If your subscriber list is growing, then you must upgrade the plan where the pricing increases with the number of subscribers. There are more limitations with the free plan like statistics won’t be available after 30 days, you have to send campaign emails only, EmailOctopus brand will be included in the email, etc.
Let’s only compare the pricing plans of both the email marketing software in a table to make it clear to you.
Assuming we are sending one campaign per month and here’s how it looks:
| Number of Subscribers | MailBluster | EmailOctopus |
| Up to 5000 | $3 | $ 28 |
| 10,000 | $6 | $ 40 |
| 20,000 | $12 | $ 70 |
| 35,000 | $21 | $ 115 |
| 50,000 | $30 | $ 160 |
| 70,000 | $42 | $ 220 |
| 85,000 | $51 | $ 265 |
| 100,000 | $60 | $ 310 |
| 200,000 | $120 | $ 560 |
| 500,000 | $300 | $ 1330 |
[Note: MailBluster’s Pro plan will cost $60 yearly as an annual subscription fee. And the given pricing of EmailOctopus is without connecting Amazon SES]
It’s clearly seen that MailBluster pricing is way less than EmailOctopus pricing, which indicates that MailBluster wins over EmailOctopus. Now, it’s time to act! Choose the one that better suits your business! Click here to Start sending with MailBluster.
Common features
It’s not like they do not have anything in common. Both have some features in common like the following:
- Great deliverability (via amazonSES)
- Bounce handling
- Unsubscribe handling
- Developer API
- Analytics
- Cloud-hosted
- Drag and drop and WYSIWYG email Editor
Wrapping Up
If you are just starting to roll with a few hundred subscribers, Both MailBluster and EmailOctopus can give you almost the same value. But when you grow, or if you already have a lot of subscribers, MailBluster will give you the power to get the most out of email marketing with the least cost.
Let’s compare MailBluster and EmailOctopus more straightly on a point-based comparison. Each argument is equal to a point, and the total of that will decide which one is worth going with. The arguments are as follows-
Arguments for MailBluster
- No subscription fee for the Starter plan
- No subscriber limits
- 3K emails free (one time)
- Drag & drop email builder
- Advanced list segmentation
- Automation feature
- Time-warp delivery (Schedules emails based on subscriber’s local time zone)
- A/B testing features to analyze and scrutinize a campaign
- Developer API for better integration with other systems
- Real-time tracking & reporting
- Uses Integromat to integrate with other services
- Custom fields
Arguments for EmailOctopus
- Campaign Automation
- Drag & drop email builder
- Unlimited number of emails
- Real-time statistics
- Uses Zapier to integrate with other systems
As you can see, MailBluster has more points than EmailOctopus. Now, you choose wisely which one suits you better.
Happy Sending!
Contents
