eMailChef Review

Email marketing is a pretty crowded industry, dominated by a few incumbents who for years have set a high level of expectations about the features that we should expect from such services. Any new business entering the market has two options: they can either build the typical MVP (minimum viable product) and add features over time, aiming for a core that will attract users for different reasons than those services that already exist; or they can try to match immediately the functionality of the incumbents.

eMailChef aims for the middle ground, making its debut with all the features you can expect from a professional email marketing service and putting aside some hard-core features for the future. We think it’s a smart move that will pay well in the short term.

Usability

eMailChef’s ease of use and design choices are details that greatly impressed us from the start.  User can set up an account with just a few simple and clear steps. The software’s designers borrowed heavily from Google’s Material design, and that’s a good choice: eMailChef appearance feels unique among other email marketing services, with vivid colors and a simple, squared interface in which you can’t get lost during the set-up process.

From the Dashboard you can access everything you need, from lists to campaigns to reports to account management. Every box in your dashboard can be reordered or deleted as you wish: there’s no fixed visualization. eMailChef guides you through every procedure with an intelligent and prompt copy, even those parts of your campaign you haven’t yet used.

Features

eMailChef looks like a typical email marketing service of choice: it offers you the ability to manage mailing lists, send email campaigns and analyze their performance over time, create templates for campaigns, build registration forms and set automatic emails that are triggered only by specific actions or conditions. Pro users can prove themselves with autoresponders and automate communications in few steps. You can target autoresponders to segments, instead of lists only.

The lists segmentation feature stands out for ease of use. We appreciated all the steps eMailChef took to make sure every user complies with the CAN-SPAM Act. They’re just complying with US and EU regulations, but they’re doing it proactively and timely, and we like it very much.

Support

eMailChef’s support comes in the form of multi-lingual knowledge-base and FAQs and it’s very thorough. Like its competitors, eMailChef fills the site with how-to guides and tips for a better email creation. Support tickets are also in place. A “News & Updates” is available on the Dashboard and provides updates on the service performances.

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Pricing

eMailChef has a remarkable entry-level price that’s much lower than other services. You can sign up for free for a fully functional demo account. Every monthly plan has a food-related name: for example the $10/month option is “breakfast” and the priciest option ($440) is a “gala dinner”. If you sign up for yearly plan, you can receive a discount on your subscription charge.

A “pay as you go” option is also available.  If you don’t need instant delivery, then the brand new “All you can eat” plan is the right solution. Choosing this plan you will be able to manage unlimited contacts and send all the emails you want, at the standard rate of 1,000 relays per hour.