Marg SendinBlue

The features that Sendinblue touts as having, and supporting, are definitely awesome.

The GUI interface for builing marketing email automation workflows looks impressive on the website and in the demo material.

I was really hopeful and excited that this platform was going to allow us to manage our email automations much more easily, with it's API features and robust triggering system.

My experiences with this platform are mostly centered around the Automation and API features, with some additional limited experience with the one-off Campaign features.

Starting with the Automation features, I experienced many time-delays between when events were triggered via the javascript API and when the platform actually recognized those events being triggered. This led to a lot of wasted time, and frustration, trying to test and execute different Automation Workflows, as you couldn't rely on the interface or platform response as accurately reflecting the current state of your users within the workflow.

Additionally with the Automation features, I tried for several hours to kick-off an automation to a list of contact I was importing via CSV. Between importing the users, copying or moving them from one list to another, triggering events for each user individually (which needed programmer intervention to make happen, I could not get the automation to start for pre-existing users. This is a major problem as we're testing migrating from a different platform and already have a list segment that we wanted to try out this Automation platform with.

Moving on to the API, the "standard" API (that manages Campaigns, Lists, and Users seems to be managed completely separately from the Automation API. There are different API keys for both, and different server-side API libraries for both. This makes the platform feel incredibly amateur and poorly integrated from a user's perspective.

Furthermore, the documentation for the API leaves a lot to be desired. There are rudimentary examples for each endpoint with little explanation and description for each. The primary language of the documentation author(s is obviously not english, which makes the documentation that much more difficult to understand and refer to. There is no technical level of documentation on the API, which makes it very hard to write integration code to really make the most of your lists.

Regarding the Campaign features, there is a *ton* of confusion everywhere in the platform with scheduling. There is no indication of which timezone any of the timestamps are reported in, other than the setting to configure your own timezone for your account. Unfortunately, there is no prompt or notification for you to set your own timezone, and you just have to find it on your own. This causes major issues with campaign scheduling and deliverability, and it's really tough to discern whether a campaign failed to send due to a scheduling timezone issue, or a platform stability issue (see delays mentioned above.

Lastly, the entire user interface is incredibly confusing and clunky. The Automation Workflow configuration is about the only interface that is intuitive, but it still needs a lot of improvement. For a platform that claims to be as prestigious, reliable, and stable as Sendinblue does, they clearly do not prioritize user interface design or working to improve the learning curve required to help their users make the most out of their platform by investing in the user interface.

The features that are offered by Sendinblue are definitely top-notch. Unfortunately, however, the execution of those features is very poor, which makes them, in my own opinion, a middle of the road platform. There are many other options available that may not offer the same feature parity of Sendinblue, but the features they do offer are rock solid and the support they offer is top notch.

Unfortunately, I absolutely can not recommend Sendinblue as a first-choice for sending emails. I wish that wasn't the case, as I really wanted to like their platform and tried to champion it, and work around the shortcomings. However, at this point, we've wasted days trying to "trick" the platform into doing things it claims to support out of the box. It's time to move on.

Be prepared for a steep learning curve, and a lot of confusion and frustration, as you try to learn how the nuances of this platform and how to navigate the minefield of broken or poorly documented features.

I'm sending marketing emails to users who have exhibited interest with my product, and have engaged with me in recent history. I'm attempting to get them to re-engage and convert them to buyers by sending them targeted marketing emails. To provide a pleasant experience, I want to end the email campaign when they convert into a lead, or take some other action with me.

Sendinblue claims to have the features to do this, and if they worked - I think the platform would be a slam dunk. It's unfortunate that they're not working as advertised.

Nothing. It was cheap, but not worth it in the end of the day. I made huge losses as a consequence of the extremely poor service.

Your service in absolutely awful. Out of seven campaigns sent major problems with six of them. Emails strangely go into many subscribers spambox (which didn't happen with mailchimp. They never look at requests the same day and often responses are useless. They absolutely never answer their customer service phone (I tried about 50 times. Unbelievably unprofessional.

You also LIE to your customers by blocking the account for no reason and then try to to force to sell an IP address on people.

DO NOT USE THIS PROVIDER

AVOID IT

Newsletter

nothing! they are scammer!! please don't use their service!! It is my first time write a bad review for a company. I am filled with anger and upset!! I have to curse them to try to close my account and get my refund back!!!!

everything!!! terrible service. They are scam artist and provide nothing valuable. I have used constant contact and mailchimp! they are both great service provider and you can call and talk to someone!!! they are american company not a scammer from France!!!!!! terrible experience. All they do is automatically charge my credit card!!!!!

nothing. they give me more headache and solve nothing for me!!! they are just terrible terrible company to deal with! don't use this service! believe me. Please use mailchimp or constant contact!!

Really.... maybe the easy way to customise the look of the newsletters themselves but totally not worth it in my opinion.

Communication - incomplete info - it is SO hard to find the correct info.

I am no techno phobe - my assistant definitely is very capable too and even with using Google to search up what they could possibly mean, we still did not get it...

It was hard to import the list we had and then I had to prove we got them genuinely - we were trying to transfer over from Mailchimp. SO I totally get they need to check it but the way they went about it just made it out like we were assumed to be dodgy... We had to prove ourselves,, we were definitely NOT welcomed with open arms PLUS the terminology used in their communications; totally not user friendly

Then we had issues with credits because it turned out; when you have confirmation emails sent out on subscriber forms, you actually need credits... not that we could find CLEAR information about that AT ALL... we asked customer service and just got another crazy confusing reply.....

Now we are having issues with sending as the open rate or bounce rate or whatever rate was too low/too high.

It doesn't state anywhere what it needs to be.... and as I had stated to them before; we were just re-instating this list so we were bound to have some unsubscribers... But TBH I have no idea why our account has now been SUSPENDED!! until we BUY a dedicated IP that is.... yeah right...

Don't go there - you have to jump through SO many hoops! and then when you want to find more info to understand what they mean, it is either not there, it is not clear OR they try to push you into buying more... ridiculous

none as I am running from it as fast as I can

I like the free plan, I was tired of paying a monthly fee to another provider when I would only use the service 3-4 times a year. They limit that to 300 sends per day, but if I needed higher sends I could pay a one time fee for that campaign.

Run away from this company! I found out the hard way that they review your contact list at the moment you are launching your first campaign. So, like myself, you may literally spend hours and hours of your valuable time setting up contact lists and designing your first template....only to be told NO THANK YOU, your contact list is no good! This company is not being honest about the backward way they operate. If contact lists will be scrutinized and turned down, then Send in Blue needs to put blatant warning signs advising of the pitfalls of their ways. Absolutely terrible way of doing business, shame on you Send in Blue.

Avoid this place like the plague. You might spend hours and hours of your valuable time, setting up your contact lists and designing a template only to be told they believe your contact list is no good.....at the moment you try to launch your first campaign! The backwards way this company does things is just wrong. Fair warning people, they will literally send you an email saying, no thanks, we will pass on you, sorry. This company is not being honest about their procedures, they need to advise with large warning signs that your contact list can be turned down after hours of your advance design work.

Looking for a lower priced email marketing plan or one that allows me to send email campaigns on an as needed basis, rather than a monthly fee basis. I might go 9 or 10 months without the need for an email campaign. I saw the monthly fee with their competitor as a waste of dollars.