StreamSend Review

StreamSend Pros

• Step-by-step email creation walkthrough
• WYSIWYG editor
• Autoresponder
• Unlimited image hosting
• Google Analytics integration

StreamSend Cons

• Only 14 templates
• No A/B testing
• No Live Chat support

StreamSend Conclusion

StreamSend is a great option for consumers who are new to email marketing. StreamSend's step-by-step process for creating an email makes it simple and easy to create a marketing campaign with little to no previous experience. Although creating an email campaign with StreamSend is easy, they do lack some of our market standard features seen in other email marketing companies such as A/B testing and a simple process for removing bounced email addresses.

StreamSend: Email Creation

Creating an email with StreamSend is an easy, step-by-step process, but you have a limited number of email templates to utilize. StreamSend’s online interface is set up as a step-by-step process, in which one step must be completed before you can move on to the next one. Some users may appreciate the streamlined step-by-step process, since each step is given greater attention and instruction than is typically given from an email marketing interface. The downside to creating an email with Stream Send is that you are a limited to only 14 templates. However, these templates are professionally designed and easily customizable via a WYSIWYG editor. StreamSend gives you unlimited image hosting, so you are able to upload images into your email campaigns to further customize the templates. The more tech-savvy users are able to manipulate the email templates through the HTML editor, import a template from the web, or upload a template from a file. In terms of automation, you can establish “triggers” which automatically send messages to subscribers depending on their actions. You are also able to remove the StreamSend logo from your emails, but you must contact customer service to request the removal.

StreamSend: Contact Management

Loading contacts into StreamSend is a straightforward process. You can either manually enter each email address, one by one, or import contacts using tab delimited text format. The difference between StreamSend and most other email marketing software providers is that StreamSend actually describes how to create a tab delimited text file from an Excel file, while most other providers give little to no direction on how to do so. Before sending an email campaign, you can designate which contact groups to include and/or select which ones to exclude. The list segmentation filter proved to be highly effective in creating extremely specific mailing lists from a large group of subscribers. One downside to this service is that it does not give you an easy method for removing email addresses which bounced that some other email marketing providers offer. You must delete each bounced email address one by one, and you cannot delete multiple addresses at one time. Undelieverable email addresses, however, are automatically removed. Also, if you wish to add a form that can import email addresses directly into StreamSend to your website, you must have some coding/API knowledge to be able to do so. StreamSend handles unsubscribes professionally, by sending recipients who click the unsubscribe link to a page where they can verify that their email address will be removed.

StreamSend: Email Deliverability

Email sent using StreamSend had a 100% deliverability rate to all major email servers that we tested. Emails can either be sent immediately or scheduled for a later time. In terms of spam checker, StreamSend does not provide a tool to help you check your emails for spam content, however, StreamSend requires that you check a box stating that you obtained the email addresses on your contacts list legitimately and not by purchasing them from a third party.

StreamSend: Analyzing Reports

StreamSend’s reports show all of the essential statistics on your email campaigns, but they lack a couple of features that may be important to some users. StreamSend shows you delivery reports, views, clicks, unsubscribes, bounces and forwards. You can view reports multiple ways via numerical data, graphs and pie charts, and you can export highly detailed reports that include contacts, totals views and the times when the emails were viewed. StreamSend integrates with Google Analytics, which is not a typical feature. However, StreamSend lacks live update functionality (Report information is not available until 24 hours after send time), as well as the ability to run A/B testing, which may be important for users who want to split-test subject lines and keywords.

StreamSend: Customer Support

StreamSend’s customer support was both knowledgeable and friendly. Their phone support representative answered all of the questions we posed, as well as searched for any answers he did not initially know. Their email support responded quickly, and the website had an in-depth FAQ section and Knowledgebase. Unfortunately, there is no live chat available, but their email support is available 24/7.

StreamSend: Pricing

StreamSend charges a monthly fee, based on the number of emails you send per month. They also charge an overage fee per additional 1,000 emails, which depends on the monthly pricing plan you choose. Users who want to send more than 100,000 emails per month can contact customer service for large volume pricing plans. If you sign up for the free trial, you can test all of StreamSend’s email marketing features for 30 days with a limit of 200 emails.