Moosend Review – A Great Option, but There’s a Catch [2024]

Moosend Is Just Normal, General Email Marketing (Yay!)

Ignore the quirky name and the cow in the logo – Moosend takes a pretty standard approach to email marketing. You import your contacts, choose your templates, and go. But it gets more complicated when you look at how well Moosend does those things.

I’ve been reviewing email marketing services for a little while now, and my goal (as ever) is to see how Moosend compares to the competition. I also want to help you figure out whether Moosend is right for you and your business. To that end, I signed up for the Pro plan and ran several tests.

The result? It’s pretty darned decent overall, and should suit most email marketing needs. However, I had some less-than-stellar things happen during my Moosend experience, and I think everyone should go in with their eyes wide open…

So, read on to find out whether Moosend is the cow-themed email marketing service you need in your life – or whether you should put it out to pasture.

Heh, I’m sorry. Let’s get on with the review.

Moosend Has Almost Everything You Need (But Only for Email)

I genuinely could find very little fault with Moosend’s feature set as a whole. It has just about everything you could want, with few exceptions that may or may not be important to you. What’s more, I was able to find most of the features I needed with very little clicking around, and my actual experience of using the app went very well.

It’s just, uh…some other stuff that bothered me a little. But I’ll get into that later.

If you want a solid email marketing experience for a reasonable price, then you really should have a look at Moosend. There’s a little something for almost everyone.

Email Campaigns, Templates, and Personalization

First, let’s discuss how email campaigns are handled. There’s no limit on the number of emails you can send, even on the free plan. You just pay for a set number of subscribers, and go.

You can also publish your newsletters and campaigns through SMS and social media, although this requires third-party apps, integrated with Moosend via Zapier.

Types of campaigns you can send out include:

• Regular email campaigns
• A/B split campaigns
• Repeatable HTML campaigns (which pull in content from a web page, and could be used for news sites)
• RSS campaigns (which pull in content from RSS feeds)

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The actual emails you send out can be in plain text (which I like for simplicity’s sake) or full-on HTML templates. Now, there’s some emphasis placed on the fact that you can create your own templates from scratch in the visual editor, which I like, because your emails should fit your branding whenever possible.

But if you want to use a premade template, Moosend has over 70 options, sorted by categories like Abstract, Corporate, E-Commerce, Real Estate, and many more. Most of these templates look decent-to-great, though there are a few that look a little dated. Still, all in all, it’s not a bad selection.

The email template editor is simple, and works just fine. It lets you use a variety of simple layouts to organize your content. From there, you can add images, text, buttons, article previews, social sharing and follow buttons, and more.

It’s really not the most complex visual email editor, but that just helps you write emails faster, right? You can also change the default spacing around items, default fonts styles and colors, and default backgrounds.

Note, however, that the font selection is small. I only found Windows system fonts. So… Mac users beware, I guess.

You can upload your own images, of course. This requires a bit more clicking around and repetition than it should, if you have multiple images to upload, but it works. You can also import your own images from services like Facebook, Google Drive, Dropbox, Instagram, and OneDrive.

If you don’t want to run around taking all your own stock photos, though, you can import third-party images from Unsplash, and .GIFs from Giphy, right in the email editor.

Extra note: you can use retina-quality images if you so choose. It’s a bit hard on the bandwidth, though.

You can also save blocks of content, so you can easily use them in other emails without having to redesign them every time.

Now, here comes one of those small flaws I talked about: there’s no support for right-to-left (RTL) languages such as Hebrew or Arabic. If you need to send out emails in either of those languages, you mostly just can’t. That might be a dealbreaker for some.

On the upside, all templates are mobile-friendly, and the editor comes with desktop and mobile previews.

You can personalize your emails by dropping in information like the subscriber’s name, email, or phone number via variables. You can also include links to unsubscribe, or update a subscriber’s profile information if you have that set up.

You can also show or hide content based on custom fields that you have assigned to your subscribers. So, if your subscriber has something like “Bought an air conditioner” in a custom field, you might choose to show them extra air conditioner deals.

Look, I live in Mexico. Air conditioners are what I think about for fun.

The last feature we come to is A/B testing. A/B testing (or split testing) is when you send one version of an email campaign to a bunch of people, and another version to a second group, and see which one performs better. Using this technique, you can find out what sort of writing style your customers prefer, what colors they like on the “sale” buttons, and so many other things.

Moosend has a great A/B testing system: you can test subject lines, campaign content, and even the “campaign sender” (the email address/name that shows up to the customer). This is fantastic, because even some of the bigger email marketing apps will only let you split test the subject line, and that’s just…not enough.

So yeah, point for Moosend. In general, the email feature set is pretty solid, and I like it. It’d be nice to have a few more templates to choose from, and RTL language support, but it’s pretty good overall.

Mailing Lists and Segmentation

Designing your emails is probably less than a third of the whole process.

A pretty large part of the whole process is acquiring subscribers, then managing and organizing their information. An organized subscriber list can actually mean happier subscribers, as it’s easier to send them things they might find interesting.

Importing your subscribers is easy enough with Moosend. You can add them individually, copy/paste your list, or import your list from a file. Supported file formats include good old CSV, text files, and Excel files. Oh, we do love Excel files…

You can also import your contacts from Google Contacts and Salesforce. There don’t seem to be many other integrations, but those are two of the biggest contact and customer relations platforms, respectively.

You can also, of course, copy members between mailing lists in the same Moosend account.

Note that, on import, you can (and kind of have to) map the data in the files to the fields in your mailing list. Fields like “Name”, and “Email” will be self-explanatory, but more complex information will need to go into the tags, or into custom fields.

Once you have a list of subscribers (and they all have to be in one list or another), you can sort them by name, email, and the aforementioned tags and custom fields, as well as the “source”. The source is where the email came from: importing from a list, direct subscriptions via forms, manual input, and what-have-you.

But what about when you want some advanced search functionality, or you want some lists that automatically sort themselves? That’s where segmentation comes in. It’s a system that allows you to set up conditions, and automatically filter contacts who meet those conditions into a dynamically updated list.

For example, if you wanted a list of people in Denmark who have opened your bakery-related emails in the last six months, you could do that. Moosend not only offers segmentation, but the implementation is decent, too.

Specifically, you can sort subscribers by criteria such as:

• The date their contact info was last added or updated
• Which browsers or email clients they use
• Whether they’ve opened or interacted with specific email campaigns, purchased specific products, and so much more.

Another way you need to sort your subscribers is by how likely they are to open your emails and interact with them. Having subscribers who don’t even touch your emails is bad, both for your business, and possibly for your Moosend account overall (more on that later).

That’s where “list hygiene” features come in. You need a way to make sure you’re only keeping the subscribers who want to hear from you. Moosend has a couple of tools that can help with this.

First, the mailing list section shows how many people on each list bounced off your emails.

The best way to do it, though, is with the aforementioned segmentation feature. You can set up segments to look for people who are not interacting with your email campaigns, and either try to re-engage them or just stop sending them emails.

However you get your list of people who aren’t opening your emails, you can then use segmentation, files, integrations, or good old copy/pasted emails to:

1. Archive list members – which is like a temporary suspension.
2. Unsubscribe list members – which does exactly what it says. You still keep all the data about said members, but they don’t get any emails.
3. Delete list members – which completely erases all data about the subscribers in question.

You could even automate this process (more on that below). Fun fact: archived and unsubscribed list members do not count towards the subscriber limit of your plan.

Lastly, every good email marketing platform needs a proper suppression list. This is a list that you will never, under any circumstances, send any more emails to. This can be used to prevent sending emails to spammy and generally risky email addresses.

More importantly, a suppression list can be used to ensure compliance with anti-spam laws in some countries, making sure that even if someone accidentally re-subscribes to your service, they won’t be bothered.

Moosend does have suppression lists, so you’re set and good to go.

Landing Pages

Want to make it easy for people to sign up to your newsletter, or get information on specific deals and sales? That’s where the landing page feature comes in.

I’d describe Moosend’s more than 30 landing page templates as pretty decent. Not amazing, but good.

They look generally clean and modern, trending toward flat design. This is pretty standard for these email marketing services, and generally, I like them.

The landing page editor is almost exactly like the email editor, only you can also add HTML blocks, countdown timers, videos, and forms. It’s not going to replace a site builder, like Wix, but it is sufficient for its purpose.

When you publish a page, you can automatically share it via Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, you can track how many people view your page, click links on it, or sign up through a signup form. If you want more advanced tracking, you can integrate your landing page with Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel.

Other notable features include the option to show a cookie consent banner, and to integrate your page with custom domains.

Unfortunately, as with the email editor, there is no support for RTL languages.

Automation

Okay, so manually keeping track of a huge subscriber database is complicated. You need to know who got which email campaigns already – not to mention whether they liked them, what products they might be interested in, and so on.

This is where automation comes in. It allows you to set up a bunch of email campaigns, and have them send automatically when certain conditions are met. So, you might have an automation that triggers when someone signs up to your newsletter, waits a day, then sends them a welcome email.

Then, if that subscriber clicks on a link in that email about your air conditioner deals (remember I said how much I love air con?), another automation could add the “Air Conditioner” tag to the subscriber’s profile on Moosend, and automatically send them more emails with deals on relevant products.

Well, an automation system is included in Moosend’s plans – and it’s fantastic. You can filter subscribers into (or out of) an automated workflow based on simple if/else conditions like their location, or by complex things like local weather conditions (I’ve literally never seen this before).

You can even “split” your automation to create custom (and more complex) A/B tests than a system normally allows. That’s… actually huge, and a welcome addition.

Based on the conditions in your workflow, you can send email campaigns, add subscribers to specific lists, unsubscribe them, add or remove tags on their profiles, and more. The actual interface works a lot like diagramming or mind-mapping software, and is very easy to learn.

And yes, you can set up abandoned cart emails to remind people to come back and buy stuff they may have forgotten about.

Moosend’s automation features can go toe-to-toe with any of the competition, even favorites like ActiveCampaign and GetResponse. That’s saying something.

Additional Features

Moosend also has several extra features that can make your life easier. For example, you can create newsletter sign-up forms and embed them in any web page. Or you can put them in the landing pages you make with Moosend.

There are also about 20 third-party integrations, which include services like Mailchimp, Zapier, WordPress, Drupal, and more. And then, of course, you can use Zapier to integrate Moosend with hundreds, if not thousands, of other services.

You can also track campaigns via Google Analytics, and Pro users get access to an SMTP server. This lets you send newsletters from just about any desktop or web-based email client that you like.

And if you really want to send your newsletter from Outlook, or something like it? You can.

Strong Deliverability Features Mean Your Email Will Probably Get There

Naturally, you want your email to get to your subscribers, and not end up in the junk or spam folders. Well, I can’t give you some number that says Moosend has “24%” deliverability, or anything like that. Getting the kind of data needed for an accurate estimate would require international travel, access to many servers, and other things that make it pretty impossible for me – or any reviewer – to work out. There are, however, some things we suggest you do to boost your email deliverability rate…

What I can tell you is whether Moosend implements a number of basic features to help your email get to where it’s going. And it does. Moosend actually does quite well on this front.

Okay, full disclosure: several of my emails went straight to the junk folders on some of my test accounts, but I hadn’t employed too many of the deliverability measures listed below. Frankly, my test email might have looked a bit like spam. This is not a reflection on Moosend as a service.

FIrst up, DKIM. That’s an encryption technology that tells email providers like Gmail and Outlook that your email really is coming from your domain name. That can help improve the trust and “reputation” given to your emails.

Moosend has DKIM available, and you can get it up and running with help from a handy guide in the knowledge base.

Next, we need to know how Moosend handles spam coming from its own platform. If your emails come from the same servers that deliver spam, you might find your emails blocked from email providers entirely, not even getting as far as the spam filter.

The short answer is that spam will not be tolerated on Moosend. Even fairly low rates of people unsubscribing, complaining, or bouncing off your emails can have your account suspended or terminated.

I also ran a test we like to do here at Website Planet. We take a list of intentionally gibberish and spammy-looking email addresses (or in my personal case, an actual list of spam emails I found on the internet), and upload it. This is to see if there’s any automated or manual review process in place to keep these email addresses from getting into your subscriber lists.

None of the spammy emails I submitted made it into Moosend. It passed the test flawlessly.

Speaking of spam (sort of), let’s talk about affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a valid business model and source of side income for some businesses. However, lots of people do spammy things in affiliate marketing programs, so it’s often treated like plain old spam. When email platforms allow affiliate marketing, there’s a risk that your email will be treated like spam, too.

Moosend does not allow affiliate marketing on its platform. Period.

Lastly, we come to private IP addresses. Having one of these means that your email is separated from all other emails coming out of the same servers, and thus stands on its own digital reputation. This is a fantastic feature for companies with large subscriber lists.

This is available on Moosend, but only for enterprise custom plans.

Moosend has every essential feature needed for basic email deliverability. Very few competitors have passed these checks this well.

Moosend Has Pretty Decent Reporting

So what’s next? Oh yes, actually seeing how well your emails perform. They need to perform well so that, for starters, you can make more money. But as I mentioned above, they also need to perform well so you can even keep your Moosend account. I honestly consider that a good thing.

Moosend’s built-in analytics and reports are fairly detailed. You can track hourly, daily, and weekly trends. You can see who opened which emails, and who clicked which links.

You can even see a visual map of which links in an email are the most popular, see overall activity by location, and keep an eye on which browsers and email clients are being used to open the emails you send. In short, you get most, if not all of the information you need.

It should be noted that Enterprise plans allow you to set up custom reports, which give you exactly the information you want, whenever you want it. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could get even more detail as well.

But, you know, that’s speculation.

Oh… Oh, This Made Me Sad

You know how it goes. You’re up and around, you’re happy, and the world is looking bright. And then something comes along that just drains a tiny bit of your soul. Maybe your cats make a huge mess of your new plants, or you just found out they’re going to “reboot” your favorite movie franchise.

The whole day isn’t completely ruined, and you’re okay. No one died… but that sparkle in your eye is gone.

I’m sorry to say that Moosend’s support experience was that little something. Seriously, this review was set to top the charts, right up until this point.

On paper at least, Moosend does a lot of things right. They have a big FAQ/help center with loads of knowledge, and a blog full of useful tutorials and guides. There are even some webinars.

Then, if you need to talk to a person, there’s an email form on the website, a combined chat and email system via Intercom, and phone support for anyone on the Pro plan on up.

None of those contact methods have schedules listed, but I did manage to contact the team at some weird hours of the day.

And that’s all well and good…until it actually comes time to talk to people.

Email (Via the Form)

So, I went to the “Contact Us” page and filled out the form. I wanted to know, “Do the email and landing page editors support RTL languages such as Hebrew and Arabic?”

Well, I never got a response, and I had to figure this one out myself, through plain old trial and error. Not getting a response at all is…not great. I don’t think I need to explain that any further.

Live Chat/Email

Live chat is the best option for talking to people on the support team. Hot tip for you desktop/laptop users: The live chat window was only available on the help site until I disabled my ad blocker. Then I could see it everywhere on Moosend.

My question was: “The pricing page says that the Pro plan comes with phone support. Where do I find the number for that?”

I got a response in minutes, with the appropriate phone number. I’m not thrilled that even logged in, as a Pro plan customer, this number wasn’t given to me automatically.

Later on, when I canceled my Moosend account, the support team responded just as quickly to my request, and got things done. Ten out of ten, no complaints here.

Phone

When I called the support line, I asked about refund and affiliate marketing policies. I asked about them because I found these things were a little difficult to find, and not clearly laid out.

The good news is that the support team answered quickly. But then I asked “Is this support for Moosend?” The response was “Yes and no.” Which I did not find promising.

The agent answered my questions, but actually chided me, saying that “Everything is on the website, you know?” He wasn’t mean, but he clearly felt as though I was wasting his time.

One thing I know from my time as a missionary, in sales, and in limited support roles is this: no matter how dumb you think the customer is being, as long as they’re polite, you should never try to make them feel dumb. You humor them. You help them.

I would not be asking if the information I needed was readily available.

So yeah, that phone call is seriously hurting the review score, along with the lack of a reply from the email form. I got an answer, but I also got condescended to, and I don’t need that in my life.

I Can’t Complain about the Prices at All, but There Are No Refunds

Moosend is genuinely one of the better options in the pricing department. Base prices are kept fairly low, and every plan is based on how many subscribers you have. There’s no limit to the number of emails you can send.

The free plan will let you send unlimited emails to up to 1,000 subscribers, gives you access to sign-up and subscription forms, and requires no credit card.

The cheapest version of the Pro plan is as low as $16.00 per month for up to 2,000 subscribers (or $8 per month if you pay annually). You can scale up this plan to 1,000,000 subscribers (yup, a full-on million) before you need to get a custom enterprise plan.

At that scale, the cost might be significant, but it’s a viable choice. Opting for the Pro plan provides you with access to landing pages, transactional emails, phone support, SMTP server access, and the capability to include up to 5 team members.

Enterprise-level custom plans (which don’t have a listed price) also get you custom reporting, a dedicated account manager, help with onboarding and migration from other services, and up to 10 team members.

If all that convinces you, most major credit cards and PayPal are accepted.

Cancellations and Refunds

There are no refunds, and this hurts the score a little bit. However, it doesn’t hurt the score that much, because the free plan is quite generous, and lets you try out most of the important features.

Frankly, I can do without the landing pages and the phone support.

If you want to cancel your account, you have to talk to the support team. When you confirm that you’re sure about cancelling, the process takes a couple of business days.