Pabbly Review: Features and Pricing 2021

Pabbly in a nutshell

What is Pabbly?

Pabbly is a platform used by marketers that need a solution with a dashboard filled with features as well as higher chances of their emails actually going where they should - the inbox - rather than the spam box.

This guarantee is thanks to the built-in server that makes your emails safer and more trustworthy. 

There are also many other features that add to the attractiveness of this email marketing tool, such as an analytics suite and an impressive list of integrations.

Pabbly Pros & Cons

PROS

• Intuitive Software: Pabbly’s software is highly intuitive and accompanied by an equally great dashboard. Using it is fairly straightforward and easy with no need for extensive or deep tech-related knowledge.
• Easy to Set Up: because Pabbly is so well-designed, getting everything set up is uncomplicated, for the most part. There are some things that aren’t as simplistic as they should be, getting started won’t take ages.
• Many Integrations: Pabbly has been made to integrate with more than 50 external SMTP servers in addition to its own. It also works well with other marketing platforms such as Asana, PayPal, Ohmylead, Dropbox, and more. 
• Affordable: Unlike many other email marketing platforms, Pabbly is very affordable and offers a free option to let you get to know some of the features and learn how to use them.

CONS

• SMTP Service Can Be Confusing: although Pabbly’s built-in SMTP service is a great selling point, it can be challenging to actually use. You must request approval to use it and your application may be rejected. 

If you do get approved, you’re limited to 500 emails initially. That number does increase, but this isn’t an ideal starting point for most marketers.

• No Mobile App: Pabbly offers users a powerful web app that is compatible with Mac and Windows, but strangely enough, there is no mobile app.

This means that many of the integration options that Pabbly has such as Zoom and Freshbooks offer no mobile benefit.

Who is Pabbly Good For?

• You want: to send bulk emails by connecting with an SMTP. Pabbly makes this easy, and you don’t have to use their in-built option though it does promise a 99% delivery rate.
• You’re looking to: schedule and automate your email marketing campaigns with Pabbly’s marketing features.

Pabbly Isn’t Recommended For:

• Companies that: have extensive lists of subscribers. Pabbly does offer the ability to send emails to up to one million subscribers, but if you have more than that you’ll have to ask for a custom package. I have found there are many other similar platforms that let you send to more people without ‘going custom’.

Deliverability rate and delivery by time zone (spam)

Rating:  4/5

Pabbly’s deliverability rate is decent, due to the addition of external SMTP Servers as well as the time-zone scheduling feature. These have generally proven to increase deliverability rates, and I was not disappointed by what Pabbly had to offer.

It’s possible to convert your sending hours dependent on where in the world your clients live

Pabbly Pricing 

Rating:  5/5

Pabbly is well priced, and regardless of the plan you subscribe to, you have full access to all the major features. Pricing is tiered according to the number of subscribers you email, and so the bigger you get, the more you pay. I give them a rating of 5 for their reasonable pricing.

Although all the major features are available without restrictions to all the paid packages, there are limits on the number of subscribers you can email. 

For example, if you want to send emails to more than 50,000 subscribers, you will have to pay more than $99 a month. For example, sending to 500,000 recipients will cost $829/month, and sending to one million costs $1,599/month.

If you want to go beyond one million, you have to contact Pabbly for a custom package.

Cancellation/Refund Policy

Pabbly will refund your purchase but only if you can argue that they stopped providing you with services for reasons that cannot be attributed to their Terms and Policies.

You will receive your refund within seven days of your purchase and no refund requests will be accepted beyond the 7th day.

Pabbly Features

Pabbly has a number of features that promise to increase email deliverability, improve your relationships with your customers, help you track your campaigns, and more.

·       External SMTP Servers

Rating:  4.5/5

Pabbly is proud of the built-in SMTP server that it has to offer, but if that doesn’t work for you, there are many external options for you to choose from. 

In fact, Pabbly gives you more than 50 choices to select from, such as SendGrid, Amazon SES, Mandrill, Pepipost, Sendinblue, Gmail, SMTP2GO, Mailjet, Postmark, and Mailgun.

·       Insights & Analytics 

Rating:  3/5

From what I could gather, the analytics features that Pabbly has are somewhat basic. It offers the kind of data that you would expect from this kind of tool, but nothing that stands out or makes it special.

You can expect analytics such as average open rate, average click rate, unsubscribe rate, and bounce rate.

·       Ease of Use

Rating:  4/5

Pabbly isn’t a very difficult platform to use but the company has thought of just about everything when it comes to making its tool as user-friendly as possible. The team behind Pabbly has even gone as far as creating more than 600 step-by-step automation tutorials.

If you can’t find the information you need in these tutorials, customer service should be able to give you the help you need.

This product is aimed at small businesses and even individuals, and as such, it ensures that its services are simple to navigate and utilize.

Drag and Drop Interface

The drag and drop email builder allows you to present your company how you’d like by helping even those with low competency to swiftly create their perfect email

Landing page creator 

You can use the drag and drop feature, along with templates, to simplify the creation of your landing page

Email templates 

Free and fully customizable templates allow you to personalize every element of your email

Sign up forms within newsletter tool (opt in-opt out process)

The form builder gives you simple control over the layout of any forms you might decide to use

·       Email Verification

Rating:  3.6/5

Pabbly knows the frustration of emails going to the wrong or an invalid email address. When this happens, your bounce rate is affected as well, which can mess up the accuracy of your analytics. 

That’s why the platform has Email Verification software that will authenticate the email addresses of leads and subscribers for you.

• Pabbly Automation

Rating: 3/5

Pabbly has a variety of options to help you automate various systems and functions, saving you precious time while managing your business. There are choices for computerized workflows and transfer of data, billing systems and you can use some of the many available apps to automate almost anything you choose.

With Pabbly’s Marketing Automation feature, you can automatically deliver emails on a predetermined schedule.

You can set up unique triggers for your emails so that they will only be sent once specific conditions have been met.

This feature helps you build automated workflows that will increase your campaign’s productivity.

·       Pabbly Integrations

Rating 4/5

Pabbly may not be a perfect tool, but it performs well when it comes to integrations. Pabbly Connect allows you to sync over 370 apps on its platforms.

From social media platforms to CRMs and video conferencing apps to payment web forms, Pabbly offers it all.

A few of the supported apps include Facebook, QuickBooks, Google Apps, and SalesForce. 

Pabbly also integrates well with other platforms such as PayPal, Stripe, Dropbox, ClickUp, Slack, and Shopify.

There's a variety of standard and optional integrations that can help further the success of your marketing campaign.

API integrations

There’s a wide number of API options using almost any development platform

CRM Integrations

There are dozens of CRM tools that come integrated as standard, like HubSpot

Social Media integrations

It’s possible to link your campaign up with the majority of major social media platforms

Apps 

Over 200 apps, like Convertful, come preloaded, with options to add many more

Plugins

WishPond is one of plenty of plugins and add ons to choose from

·       Form Builder

Rating 4/5

Another really nice feature of Pabbly’s that I admire is its Form Builder. You can build just about any form you can think of with it, including forms for lead capture, event registrations, and even payments.

These online forms can be created with ease and really quickly as well. The drag-and-drop editor adds to how easy it is to customize your form.

• Creating Email Campaigns and Managing 

Here are some of Pabbly’s features to help you make and control your email campaign. 

Emails sent/opened and links clicked

You can manage and peruse where emails have been sent and which links have been clicked with ease

Creating and importing email lists

Customer data can be imported via Stripe, CSV, or Single Click

Split tests and A/B tests

There’s no current option for testing

Personalization

You can customize most aspects of your campaign, including email appearance and delivery options

Pabbly Alternatives

Although Pabbly is a good email marketing option, it might not be ideal for everyone. If you’re not completely convinced, here are a few alternatives you could check out:

MailerLite - This is an email marketing software that has been growing in popularity over the past few years. You can build powerful and professional campaigns using MailerLite thanks to its intuitive design.

You can create custom popups, forms, and landing pages with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder. There are also many ready-made templates that will help you build lovely content.

It also offers good integration with the likes of WooCommerce, Zapier, WordPress, Shopify, and more.

ConstantContact- Another popular choice is ConstantContact, a marketing tool used by many non-profit organizations and small businesses. It lets you create good-looking and professional emails with ease.

You can also segment your lists and automate your emails for better campaign results. The eCommerce integrations that ConstantContact has to choose from are quite extensive as well.

AWeber- AWeber has been around for 23 years and has become known for being reliable and trustworthy. The platform makes it a breeze to create professional but beautiful emails and send them out to prospects.

The company works with over a thousand software solutions to help you create the best possible email marketing campaign, no matter what your goals. One of the best things about AWeber is that you don’t need any tech-savvy to make the most of all the features they have on offer.

Customer Service

Rating:  5/5

Pabbly’s support is available via email and live chat, and the responses are usually helpful and prompt, earning them a score of 5.

Live chat is available on weekdays between 10.00 am and 06.00 pm IST.

You can also email a query or concern to admin@pabbly.com.

Conclusion

Pabbly is a highly recommended platform for pushing your email marketing and subscription management activities to a new level. It is affordable, easy to use, and has many impressive features to help build brilliant email marketing campaigns.

Pabbly is a decent email marketing service that can help those with simple needs to personalize and automate many features relating to their advertising campaigns. It's easy to use, reasonably priced, and those with very little experience will still be able to use this service to customize their correspondence easily. However, there are cheaper options out there, and while it’s easy to use, this is due to its low-level features, and those with higher demands and more complex expectations may be left wanting more.

A better alternative may well be SendinBlue. This service also has free options and reasonably-priced alternatives, but the premium service, while cheaper, has options to suit even large businesses with high demands.