Customer.io

Modern marketing automation platform with powerful data integration capabilities

Pros:

As a SaaS company, product data integration was a key decision factor when picking our MAP. Customer.io was by far the best at leveraging product data in emails and became a key part of our workflow to detect and activate leads from Product.

Cons:

The initial setup was quite complex because of what we wanted to do, but the Customer Success rep was very helpful.

Alternatives Considered: HubSpot Marketing Hub and ActiveCampaign

Reasons for Choosing Customer.io: We wanted to go for a "best of breed" approach and did not need most Hubspot for Marketing capabilities. Also, data integration.

Switched From: HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io: Data integration capabilities and a pricing structure that worked with our metrics.

Our go-to automation software

Comments: Overall my team is very happy with the software and we would recommend it.

Pros:

It's very easy to use and does 90% of what you'd need to automate your marketing.

Cons:

Some of the UI choices over time have become worst, like elements covering crucial elements (eg. minimap when editing an email), and their push to become more of a CDP than a marketing software has made the platform more cluttered for those who, like me, want to use it for marketing automation. Lastly, but possibly most importantly, the fact that we still can't DUPLICATE a campaign is absurd. Having to re-create campaign settings each time is such a time waste, for a seemingly obvious (And simple) feature.

Alternatives Considered: ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo

Reasons for Choosing Customer.io: Customer.io is much more capable of managing multi-channel campaigns, with complex segmentation.

Switched From: Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io: Price and ease-of-use.

Good service, interface somehow difficult and less user friendly than other systems

Comments: Good

Pros:

Great and quick customer service, broadcast function works well

Cons:

The data functions and the somehow difficult interface of campaigns and flow-building

The best email marketing tool for SaaS but expensive

Pros:

Customer.io is the Klavyo of email marketing sequences but for SaaS businesses in my opinion. We had a great experience with the software and it brought us great open rates once you have set up custom domain tracking. It's very easy to use as well for how complex the software is.

Cons:

Frankly everything was great except the pricing which is a bit expensive when you're starting out. They have a free plan for 6 months but then it's a big jump from free to paid, wish they had an intermediate plan at the time. It made us considering other choices.

Alternatives Considered: SendGrid

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io: I chose Customer.io because it was more adapted to SaaS softwares.

Complete feature-set and excellent support

Pros:

Even though at first it might have a longer learning curve (because there are several functionalities we can make use of), I think it compensates having the ability to create complex workflows for email campaigns: there are several functionalities available, and we're always able to create the flows we ideate. I particularly like the “draft” option to test campaigns I've just set up and made live and that we're able to integrate with other data platforms, that enrich our trigger and filter capabilities.Excellent customer support. Even though we're not on the Premium plan, any of the queries we submit are answered within 24 hours and have detailed explanations or workarounds for the issues presented.They also have interesting webinars from time to time, with quite specific topics and tips.

Cons:

Unfortunately, we're unable to move a contact manually within a workflow; which is particularly important for exceptional cases that we might want to override the rules because of a human or sync error. Another feature I'd like to have (but also seems to be missing from most similar tools), is the ability to have custom reports – though I wouldn't need this very often, thus it's not a dealbreaker at this point.The pricing is somewhat expensive, and we're not able to temporarily downgrade the plan (if by any chance our business has a seasonality).

Alternatives Considered: ActiveCampaign, Sender, SALESmanago Marketing Automation, SendGrid, Drip, GetResponse, Omnisend, Mailchimp, Mailjet and Intercom

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io: Customer.io had more functionalities and/or better deliverability rate than GetResponse, Sender, Omnisend and Drip. It had also much better support than Sendgrid. It was less expensive than Salesmanago, Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign, though these options seemed also very complete and with excellent support. Mailjet was close when taking the final decision, as it also served well our needs and would be cheaper; that would be most likely our plan B. Finally, Intercom was also considered, but we ended up discarding the option as there was no specific email marketing plan. The functionality is available, but ends up not having a competitive price at all.