Why I Stopped Using Mailerlite as My Emailing Platform
If you've been in the small online business sphere long enough you've probably heard of an e-mail marketing platform called Mailerlite.
It's renowned for its ease of use, being reasonably priced and being full of all the features you need at the free plan level making it ideal for business startups who want to reduce costs and don't have a following yet.
So I tried it.
And while I agree it's--fairly easy to use--maybe not as easy if you aren' the most tech savvy person out there. And it's got a full array of features that are beneficial for starting up which is great for the complete beginner.
Here's what I personally didn't like:
I didn't like the difficulty of integrating it with my existing website. Perhaps I'm just incompetent but compared to other email platforms Mailerlite was honestly one of the most complicated to connect properly. And I'm not saying it was "hard" it was just a lot of unnecessary extra steps that no other mailing platform really requires but for some reason mailerlite did. Again, this could have had something to do with Squarespace being my platform for website hosting and potentially that could have contributed to it--I honestly don't know. But either way it was a major turn off.
I didn't like the actual email writing process. It was...okay. But I write a lot of content on a regular basis and I'm particular about how I format, how I write and the ease of getting into it. For some of you--and especially if you are just starting out--this won't matter. But if you are coming from another platform or have shut down and recently reopened your business (as was the case with me) then this could make a difference. If you aren't huge on writing this may also not affect you.
Sign up Forms Didn't Integrate well with Squarespace. Again, this could have been a me thing. But I've used other e-mailing platforms in the past and have never had an issue using code and embedding the form into Squarespace. Until Mailerlite. Mailerlite and more specific the newer version of Mailerlite that you are automatically on now when you sign up doesn't embed well into Squarespace. The formatting is all off, there's huge gaps above and below the sign up form that you can't really get rid of which results in massive gaps between your form and content above and footer below. If I didn't have a website that was the main point of traffic and I was just using it for sending e-mails separate from a website then that would be fine and I'd have no issues. But with a website no matter how I embedded the code it just didn't work.
I just didn't find it actually that intuitive. Listen. I'm not the most tech savvy person on the planet. I don't code, I didn't grow up with technology and I'm not from the technology boom era really. In short, compared to many people within my age range I grew up under a rock. Which is fine. But it also means that I need things to be simple, easy, fast and intuitive. And Mailerlite for me...wasn't. Simple.
But now lets talk about some things that I liked for those of you that might be considering Mailerlite as an option and don't have the same needs or struggles that I do.
I liked the set up of the Mailerlite dashboard. Honestly it was straight to the point, you could see everything you wanted to see right there. It was clean and it was simple. No doo dads. No fancy shenanigans just clean and crisp--which is how I like it.
I liked how easy it was to get a form or landing page created. They have A LOT of templates to choose from. And there really is something for everyone. It was simple to input the information you wanted to input and then you immediately had a link that you could connect to whatever social media you already had. Nice and streamless.
I liked the variety of templates to choose from. Specifically, again, with landing pages and forms. And especially on the free version that you get. Many places only provide 3 or 4 different options that really fit the average person's needs and that's it. It limits the creativity and limits the expression of the business or person. Mailerlite doesn't do that. There's many options to choose from that are free and even more if you are willing to spend some money for it. Either way it's quite inclusive.
In conclusion, I don't have anything against Mailerlite as a platform and 100% recommend that you check it out if you are starting up a business or even just a mailing list on social media. I just found that personally it wasn't for me and wasn't what I really enjoyed.