Alternatives to Zapier's Email service?
Hey All, I've been on a search for quite a while now for an email service that integrates with Zapier to the point where I can create dynamic emails from content collected in a previous step (like a form submission).
As far as I know, Email by Zapier does that, but it's very primitive looking. Is there a lightweight email service that'll let me populate contents of the email with dynamic data, that also looks decent, and maybe centrally-stored contacts?
I'm using Mailchimp now, but it's such massive overkill, and the email designer is kind of a pain to use. Looking for something simple and elegant.
Thanks for any suggestions!
Comments
7 comments
I like Campaign Monitor while getting started. It's cheap, $9/month and scales well for all of those needs you just mentioned (and more). They're who I use for all of my stuff.
Next in line, for me would be ConvertKit. It's more expensive, starting at $29/month but is a much more "pro" solution versus Campaign Monitor.
If you want a "very solid" solution that's a huge step up from Zapier's built-in email service, yet still free (with ample usage) I'd go with SendGrid. You get 100 transactional emails per day and some light marketing automation (comparable to Campaign Monitor). The downside is the cost once you move beyond the free tier.
We used MailerLite initially for Memberstack's customer-facing communication emails since they had a generous free tier and decent templates.
Check out https://www.autopilothq.com/.
Has a twilio integration for SMS.
We use Drip (www.drip.com). It seems to do the job generally. With various workflow things, at an affordable price.
Transactional email needs to be separated from mailing lists, they are totally different products and should not be mixed.
I also highly recommend MailerLite for mailing lists.
Postmark is the best in breed for transactional currently. Recommend using Integromat for integration rather than Zapier.
I second the recommendations for Postmark. Been using it for months. Great blend of powerful and accessible. Off the shelf templates. Easy to send in variables from previous steps in a Zap. Battle-tested - been around for years. Oh, and it starts at $10/mo.
I know I'm late to this convo, but I'd go Sendgrid for transactional. Not only is it fair priced (~$15/mo) I'd argue it's the most widely used native integration for nocode tools + you typically get to choose between plain text and html (I believe this is true in their zapier integration).
Why does that matter?
If you want a very simple plain text email (ex. "Your request has been received...) you can literally just type it, and when you want a fully designed HTML email with dynamic copy, you will:
Bonus tip:
These same steps can be used for bulk email marketing (like personalizing emails based on airtable data) with a tool like Parabola.
Hope that helps
Please sign in to leave a comment.