MailPoet is the first option I suggest if you are looking for a newsletter plugin for WordPress. I have been using it since 2022 on WPPagebuilders. In this review post, I will share with you my experience of using the plugin.
I will also show you what set it apart between the free version and pro version so that you will have a better insight about the plugin before you spend your money.
Let’s start this post by getting to know more about MailPoet.
Shortcuts:
- What is MailPoet?
- MailPoet Features
- MailPoet Free vs Pro
- MailPoet Pricing
- MailPoet Pros and Cons
- The Verdict
🤔 What is MailPoet?
You will not love a product if you don’t know more about the product. Right?
So, what is MailPoet?
It is an email marketing plugin for WordPress. While its main functionality is to send email newsletters, you can also use it to create other email campaigns. If you have a WooCommerce-powered online store, for instance, you can send emails to notify your customers over their abandoned cart.
Or if you are a blogger (or content creator in general) building an email list, you can send a welcome email to your new subscribers, with or without a delay. You can even send a series of emails to keep the conversation going with your new subscribers.
You can use MailPoet as a replacement of MailChimp or other SaaS email marketing services like ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit if you want to migrate to WordPress for online business.
MailPoet itself has been around since 2011. WooCommerce acquired it in 2022. Technically, MailPoet is owned by Automattic as WooCommerce is a subsidiary of Automattic.
📚 What Features that MailPoet Offers?
I have tried several plugins similar to MailPoet. Including weMail and Mailster. I can say that MailPoet is the best in terms of features. Mainly because it has a built-in emal delivery service.
Most email newsletter plugins rely on third-party email deliver services like Mailgun and Mailjet.
MailPoet also comes with a built-in form builder feature to eliminate the need of a form builder installation to create an email subscription form.
Here are some key features that MailPoet offers:
# Built-in Email Delivery Service
This is the most crucial feature to look because without an email delivery service, you will not be able to send any single email to your subscribers.
As I have just mentioned, built-in email delivery service is one of the features available in MailPoet. With this feature, you don’t need to make a subscription on a third-party email delivery service, which is required if you use weMail or Mailster.
In case you already subscribed to an email delivery service, MailPoet allows you to use it. However, there are only two email delivery services it supports: SendGrid and Amazon SES.
Or if you have your own SMTP server, you can also use it.
To configure email delivery service, you can go to the Send With tab on the settings page.
# Built-in Form Builder
You need to build an email list before you can send your first email campaign with MailPoet. If you use a page builder plugin like Elementor, Breakdance or Divi, you can utilize its form builder element to create an email subscription form and then integrate it with MailPoet.
What if you don’t use a page builder?
Easy. MailPoet comes with a built-in form builder feature that you can use to create an email subscription form. Even if you use page builder plugin — or even a form builder plugin — you can still use the built-in form builder feature.
MailPoet utilizes Gutenberg to create and design a form. In addition to email field, you can also add other fields to your form. Such as name, checkbox, radio button, to text area. You can also add supporting elements like heading and image to your form.
To create a new form, you can start from a pre-made template or from scratch. Once the form is ready, you can display it as a modal popup, as a slide-in popup, and as a notification bar.
Want to display the form beneath post content? You can also do so.
Alternatively, you can manually display the form on a specific location using shortcode.
# Email Composer
MailPoet is not different to other email newsletter plugins in this area. It also uses its own email composer instead of utilizing Gutenberg.
In addition to standard elements like text, image, and button, you can also add other elements like spacer, divider, to social media buttons. There is also a Posts element which you can use to display content feed on your email.
Here is the list of elements available on the MailPoet email composer:
- Text
- Image
- Button
- Divider
- Spacer
- Social
- Posts
- Automatic Latest Conetent
- Header
- Footer
If you have no idea about the design of the email you want to send, there are several pre-made templates to assist you.
# Email Automations
While MailPoet is primarilty used to send email newsletters, you can also use it to send other email campaigns as well.
A simplest instance, you can automatically send a welcome email to a subscriber who has just subscribed to your email newsletter. If you have a good marketing instinct, you can utilize this feature to add a marketing material to the email body. A CTA button, for instance.
You can even send a series of emails (pro only), which you can use to build a better commucation before you offer something to your new subscribers.
To access the feature, you can go to MailPoet -> Automations on your WordPress dashboard. Clicking the Start with a template button will open all the email automation types you can send to your subscribers.
Currently, there are six email automation types that MailPoet supports, with two more are being developed.
- Welcome new subscribers
- Welcome series for new subscribers
- Welcome new WordPress users
- Welcome series for new WordPress series
- Celebrate first-time buyers
- Abandoned cart reminder
— More About WooCommerce Integration
As I mentioned in the intro section, WooCommerce acquired MailPoet in 2022. So, no wonder if MailPoet has a deep integration with WooCommerce.
The standard integration you can directly use without installing an extra plugin is email automation whereby you can automatically send an email to notify your customers over the abandoned shopping cart.
Also, you can send automated email to your customers over their first time-ever purchase on your store.
Another thing you can do with the MailPoet and WooCommerce integration is to send paid newsletter. However, it takes an extra plugin to so do. You can read this MailPost blog post to learn more.
MailPoet as an Email Customizer for WooCommerce
With MailPoet installed, you no longer need to install a dedicated WooCommece email customizer plugin like YayMail or WooMail. That’s because MailPoet can also function as an email customizer for WooCommerce.
You can use MailPoet to customize the following WooCommerce email templates:
- New account
- Processing order
- Completed order
- Customer note
There is an extra element you can add to your email body when customizing a certain email template: Coupon.
To use MailPoet to customize WooCommerce email templates, you can go to MailPoet settings page and click the WooCommerce tab (only visible when WooCommerce is installed and activated). Click the Open template editor button to open the MailPoet editor.
# Sign Up Confirmation
A huge number of email subscribers means nothing if the open rate is low. In MailPoet itself, open rate falls into three categories:
- Critical: Below 10%
- Good: Between 10% – 30%
- Excellent: Above 30%
In addition to open rate, there is another important metric in email marketing: CTR (Click-throug Rate).
MailPoet also categorizes CTR in three groups:
- Critical: Under 1%
- Good: Between 1% – 3%
- Excellent: Above 3%
What is the correlation between above metrics with sign up confirmation?
Sign up confirmation can help increasing the open rate and CTR of your email newsletters. By requiring new subscribers to confirm their email address, you can make sure that the email address they entered is still actively used.
To access this feature, you can go to the Sign-up Confirmation tab on the MailPoet settings page.
You can use the MailPoet editor to edit the confirmation page. Alternatively, you can create a dedicated confimation page using a page builder plugin of your choice.
# Stats
Built-in statistic feature is available to allow you to monitor the growth of your newlsetter. On the MailPoet homepage inside your WordPress dashboard, you will be greeted with weekly stats such as number of new subscribers, number of unscribers, etc.
You can also monitor the performance of individual emails. To do so, you can hover an email you want to monitor and click the Statistics link.
Some metrics you monitor are:
- Open rate
- CTR
- Bounce rate
# Subscribers Management
Of course, MailPoet allows you to manage your newsletter subscribers. To access the feature, you can go to MailPoet -> Subscribers on your WordPress dashboard.
There are two featues you can utilize to organize your subscribers:
- List
- Segment
What is the different between List and Segment.
A List is a static subscribers collection grouped based on a common preference. You can create multiple lists to target specific audiences. For instance, you can different lists for WooCommerce customers, blog subscribers, etc.
Meanwhile, a Segnment is a dynamic, automatically-updating filter you can apply to subscribers accross your lists or within a specific list. To filter them, you can use parameters like WooCommerce data, subscriber tags, subscribers action, custom fields, etc.
Be it List or Segment can be created by clicking on a dedicated menu under the MailPoet main menu.
Both List and Segment are extremely useful to send more targeted newsletters. Combining the two can significantly increase open rate as well sa CTR of your newsletters.
# The Ability to Personalize Emails
Instead of “hi there” or “hi friends”, it would be much better to mention your subscribers’ name on the greeting section on your email. This way, your subscribers will love it more as they feel you treat them as human.
You can add a personal touch to your emails by mentioning the your subscribers’ name. Be it the first name, last name, or even full name.
To mention your subscribers’ first name, you can simply add the shortcode [subscriber:firstname] to your email body.
To mention the last name, you can add the shortcode[subscriber:lastname]. You can visit this page to see the list of the shortcodes available in MailPoet.
🆚 MailPoet Free vs Pro: Comparison Table
MailPoet is released as a freemium plugin, with the free version is available on WordPress.org. All the basic features you need to send newsletter are available on the free version, including email delivery service.
The free version is limited to 1,000 subscribers. Also, you can only send the maximum of 5,000 per month.
Take a look at the following table to learn more the differences between MailPoet Free and Pro.
| Free | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Remove MailPoet branding | ❌ | ✅ |
| Number of subscribers | 1,000 | Depends on your plan |
| Emails per month | 5,000 | Unlimited |
| List | ✅ | ✅ |
| Segment | ❌ | ✅ |
| Stats | Basic | Advanced |
| Email series | ❌ | ✅ |
💰 How Much the Pro Cost?
For testing purpose, the free version of MailPoet is more than enough. But as you get more serious with your email newsletter, it is highly recommened to use the pro version.
Not only you can send more emails. But more importantly, you can remove the MailPoet branding, which is annoying enough.
The pro version of MailPoet is available in three plans. The prices varied depending on the number of subscribers you want to have.
For 5,000 subscribers, for instance, you need to pay $55 per month for a single website.
Here is the table of the pricing plans offered by MailPoet.
| Creator | Business | Agency | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $44/month | $55 | $165 |
| Emails per month | Depends on your choose email delivery service | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Number of websites | 1 | 1 | 50 |
| Email delivery service | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Learn More | Learn More | Learn More |
Note: The prices on the above table is based on 5,000 subscribers.
👍🏻👎🏻 Pros and Cons
Overall, MailPoet is a great plugin to run a newsletter in WordPress. It is one of the best options available out there. Better than Mailster and weMail.
However, MailPoet may is not the best option if your online business heavily relies on emails. Not just MailPoet, this also applies to all email newsletter plugins. As your email list grow bigger, the more resources it takes to keep the newsletter running. Especially if you are on a shared hosting plan, which typically has limited resources.
# Pros
MailPoet has all the required features to run a newsletter in WordPress. From email delivery service, form builder, email composer, to subscribers management. You don’t need to connect it with Mailgun or the similar services, which is quite important when building a newsletter in WordPress.
Without an email delivery feature, you will need make another subscription on Mailgun and the similar services.
Another crucial feature is form builder. With the feature, you don’t need to install an extra form builder or page builder plugin. You can integrate your form with any page thanks to the shortcode support.
MailPoet Pros:
- Deep integration with WordPress
- Built-in email delivery service
- Built-in form builder
- Email composer
- Advanced stats
- List and segment for more targetted emails
- Email automations
# Cons
Using MailPoet to run an email newsletter in WordPress requires sufficient resources. If you use a traditional sharing hosting service, I don’t recommend it. Instead, you can use an SaaS like MailerLite or ConverKit.
MailPoet adds new tables on your WordPress database. As your email list grow, the database comsuption is also bigger.
Also, MailPoet offers fewer elements on its email composer than other competitors. weMail in particular.
MailPoet Cons:
- Not a good option for hosting with limited resources
- Fewer elements in the email composer
- Has no built-in feature to run paid newsletter
- Doesn’t allow branding removal on the free version
📝 The Verdict: Do I Recommend MailPoet?
Short answer: yes.
Especially if you want to run a newsletter right from your WordPress dashboard. As I said a couple times. MailPoet is still the best option when compared to weMail, Mailster, and the similar plugins.
You don’t need to setup email delivery service, which is the key point when building a newsletter in WordPress. MailPoet is also extensible.
If you don’t mind spending extra money, you can install plugins like Woo Subscriptions or WooCommerce Memberships to run a paid newsletter.
MailPoet is a great option if you are:
- A blogger looking to build an email newsletter in WordPress
- A WooCommerce-based online store owner wanting to optimize email marketing
- A creator looking to build an email-based course
- An organization wanting to send weekly/monthly report via email
MailPoet is not a good option if you:
- Have limited hosting resources
- Want to run a paid newsletter, yet tired of managing extra plugins
