Based in San Francisco, California, USA, Vertical Response

was founded in 2001 and was acquired by Deluxe Corporation in 2013. More than 1.5 million businesses have used their services.

Features: 3 out of 5

Vertical Response offers most features that are needed for running successful email campaigns. Features include drag and drop email editor (with free stock images and hosting), automation, online surveys, landing pages, pop up forms, API, integration with several apps and tools like Salesforce, Joomla, WordPress, Magento, Optimonk, Zapier etc. Inbox preview lets you preview your message in several email clients and providers. Regular tracking tools are available with easy to view formats and also Google Analytics. Sharing your message with social media (FB and Twitter) is available. Split testing and segmentation let you experiment with your campaigns to determine which would works better.

Hosted form offered by VR. You can only link to it on your website.

Signup forms offer two choices: embeddable or hosted. Embeddable forms offer no templates but a simple form with black and white fields. Hosted version provides some templates but you must provide a link to it or a button on your website. Pop ups is a good option to get visitors to sign up when they are leaving your website. Landing pages let you create a dedicated page to sign up your visitors to your newsletter. You can customize the landing page using drag and drop editor however there isn’t much choice with templates. There are about 15 templates available. There is no iPhone or Android app offered by VR. Automation offers basic flows. There are no flow charts type programs that you can use to customize your automation series. If you are looking for advanced automation, then you will need to try another provider. Email archives option is not available. Price: 3 out of 5 Vertical Response pricing is relatively higher compared with others. They offer two options: Basic and Pro. Basic option does not include advanced reporting, delivery rate review and split testing. Here is how they compare with the basic plan of Getresponse that offers everything that is offered by VerticalResponse basic plan: 2500 subscribers: Getresponse: $25; Vertical Response: $33 10,000 subscribers: Getresponse: $65; Vertical Response: $83 25,000 subscribers: Getresponse: $145; Vertical Response: $160 Vertical Response offers a generous plan for Non-Profit organizations i.e. 10K emails free per month and if they buy more, a 15% discount is also available for high volume senders. Pay as you go option is also available. Deliverability: 5 out of 5 This score will give you an idea about whether your messages will make it to the inbox if your subscribers. The higher the score, the better are the chances. Based on the our investigation after checking 100 IP addresses of Vertical Response, we have rated their deliverability as excellent. Here is a snapshot of some of their IP addresses based on our ratings.

Deliverability Ratings of Some of Vertical Response IP Addresses

Email Editor: 3 out of 5

Vertical Response offers an easy to use email editor. There are only 12 templates that you can choose from. This is beyond our comprehension as to why they would provide only a few templates. However, you can easily customize any template and add your own images from their free stock photo library or your own. You can store your own images online. At this time, they haven’t set up any limit on the storage. The editor is a bit slow and took some time to load the templates when we tested it. The templates are responsive – which means they will display well on desktop as well as mobile devices. You can preview your newsletter on desktop, mobile and tablet – a very helpful feature. You can send yourself a test message to find out how your email looks like before sending it out to your subscribers. If you sync your social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter), you can also post a link to your message on them, however it must be done on the preview screen as it is not done automatically. When we tested it, a link was posted on Twitter but Facebook gave an error message. Messages can be sent instantly or at a later date and time. A follow up email can be created easily after sending our the first one, which can act as a reminder in case a subscriber missed reading your first message.

Vertical Response Email Editor

You can easily customize your preview text i.e. text that can be previewed in Gmail etc. below the email subject. You can also add an Emoji which can be displayed with the email subject line and/or preview text. Your message is stored online where it can be viewed and you can get a link to it but there are no email archives where all of your email newsletters can be stored together. There is no option to spell check or get a spam score of your message. There is an inbox preview feature which lets you see how your email will look like email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook etc. This feature is paid for Basic plan and for Pro plan, you get 10 test kit credits free per month.

Vertical Response Preview Email Feature

Ease of Use: 4 out of 5 Vertical Response has an easy to use interface and you may have to go through a few tutorials in case you are having troubles understanding something.

Support: 3 out of 5

Vertical Response offers phone, email support, and live chat. Phone support and live is available Mon to Fri (6am to 5pm PST). There is no support during the weekends. Email support will respond to your within 24-48 hours.

Overall Score: 3.5 out of 5 (Average)

Conclusion: CONS:

- Automated spam check, spell check not available
- Online archive of all emails together is not available
- No Android, iPhone app
- Handful of templates for messages and hosted webforms
- Price plans more expensive than competitors

Basic automation only
Facebook integration did not work

PROS:

Inbox preview to view your message in various email clients
Excellent Deliverability
Preview text can be customized
Free stock images
Google analytics integration available

Vertical Response provides an easy to use basic tool for sending email broadcasts and offers most of the features that are needed. There is a lack of variety with their templates which can be a discouraging factor other than pricing. If you want to customize your messages yourself and don’t need advanced automation, this may be the right tool for you provided pricing is not an issue for you. Features

Price

Deliverability

Email Editor

Ease of Use

Support

Average

Vertical Response Review

Features: 3 out of 5

Support: 3 out of 5

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