CleverReach is already ranked among the major do-it-yourself email marketing tools in the European market. Set up in Germany in 2007, the company claims that its newsletter software is now used by over 220,000 customers. And now it looks like it’s time to conquer the English-speaking market too…
The first thing worth mentioning is that CleverReach has some very interesting features, including A/B split testing, dynamic content blocks, RSS campaigns, and order reports for online stores.
With the Lite plan, you can send up to 1000 free emails to as many as 250 subscribers, although you do have to put up with some adverts. Then again, you can take advantage of email marketing automation and one-to-one support. Your other options are the Prepaid (pay as you go), Prepaid Monthly, Flat Rate, and High Volume plans.
We’ve taken a closer look at the tool to help you decide whether or not this provider could be the right choice for you.
CleverReach screenshots
CleverReach Pricing
Please note that monthly plans can be changed or canceled every month. Prepaid options are also available.
Pros and Cons
Use your own domain name for links:
You can use your own (sub-)domain name for tracking links without any extra costs, which is an advantage in terms of branding.
Excellent deliverability :
CleverReach has performed very well in our latest deliverability tests, scoring in the mid-nineties.
It's not cheap:
Looking at the competition you get a lot more bang for your buck than at CleverReach.
Rating details
| criterion | rating | comments |
|---|---|---|
Ease of Use |
| The tool has a neat and tidy layout with lots of help buttons offering explanations in a flash. |
Newsletter Creation | ||
Editor |
| The editor is based on a drag-and-drop system that is fairly decent for the most part. Having said that, there is definitely room for improvement. For instance, there is no “Undo” feature that applies to the editor as a whole. One thing that can be confusing is the parallel use of ‘pt’, ’em’ and ‘px’ for font sizes. This may cost you some extra time when you’re formatting text. |
Personalization | | There is a convenient if/then/else editor for dynamic text blocks like salutations. You can even target individual content blocks to specific segments of your user base. This way you are able to fully customize the content of your newsletters. |
Email types |
| Individual and regular campaigns, autoresponders, A/B split testing, RSS campaigns, and follow-up campaigns. |
Choice and Flexibility of Template Designs |
| There are around 60 ready-made template designs that are also responsive (“Design Templates” category). On top of these, you can also take your pick from several basic templates that you can use to put together your own designs (“Responsive” category). |
Email Marketing Automation |
| You can set up workflows using the THEA automation center, although these are sadly still separate from the standard campaigns. However, there are plenty of features, such as tagging and follow-up campaigns, and purchases can be incorporated into these workflows. |
List Management |
| There are a number of different options for importing lists and it is easy to divide them into segments. |
Registration Forms/ Opt-in & Opt-out- Process |
| The editor for forms used to register and unsubscribe is straightforward. There is the option of double opt-in. If you’re on the Free or Prepaid plan, you’ll have to put up with a CleverReach advertising button if you don’t host your own forms. |
Deliverability |
| CleverReach has clearly invested in this area in recent years, scoring in the mid-nineties in our latest deliverability tests. |
Reports and Analysis |
| Here you get everything you could ever wish for, including geographic and email client analysis. Google Analytics tracking strings are generated automatically. If you have an online store, you can monitor conversions and sales too. |
Languages |
| Available in English, German, Spanish, Dutch, French and Italian. Sending works with UTF-8 coding, which is compatible with any language of your choice. |
Further Features | ||
Spam- and Design-Testing |
| Tests are run to determine the risk of being caught by the main spam filters. There is also the option of testing how emails are displayed by standard email clients (via Litmus). Both of these tests incur a charge. |
Bounce Management | | Recipients are deactivated automatically after the third hard bounce. |
Blocklist | | Import and export facilities are provided. |
Storage available for data and images | 5MB - 1GB | The Free plan comes with 5 MB. Storage space of 1 GB is provided for users with monthly plans and prepaid usage. |
Pro Features | ||
Authentication | | SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM are supported. Compliance with GDPR is also guaranteed and the company is a member of the Certified Senders Alliance (CSA). |
Own Domain | | You can use your own (sub-)domain name for tracking links and you can set the sender email address as you wish. |
Different levels of account access | | Various users of CleverReach can be assigned different access rights. There is also an agency solution that allows you to grant access to customers or individual departments (within a larger enterprise). |
Integrations | | Zapier, WordPress, Shopify, Salesforce, Sage, SugarCRM, and many more. APIs are another option available. |
Landing Page Builder | | Landing pages have to be created externally. |
Customer Support |
4/5 | Ticket system and knowledge base: We found the level of email support offered during our tests to be reasonable. |
Overall rating |
3.7/5 | CleverReach offers a very decent range of features and excellent deliverability. It’s also really quick and easy for beginners to get to grips with the software. Prices are quite high, unfortunately. |
Conclusion
The wide range of features on offer makes CleverReach a decent choice for users sending both small and larger volumes of emails. On the whole, working with this newsletter tool is nice and straightforward.
There are a few things that clearly need improvement, like the forms that are not responsive and the fact that the editor can sometimes behave a bit clunky (although nothing too terrible). But probably the main criticism is CleverReach’s high prices compared to similar newsletter software.
On the other hand, the THEA email automation module is rather exciting, as it can be used to set up automated campaigns in a workflow view. We were also delighted to discover that CleverReach’s deliverability has improved, securing a top position in our most recent test.
About Robert Brandl
Latest Updates
04 Oct 2021 - Updated improved deliverability rates
26 Mar 2021 – Forms offer responsive templates now
07 Feb 2020 – All templates are responsive now
18 Nov 2019 – More limits on the free plan, which is now called Lite
26 Mar 2019 – Initial review
