Why I Switched to Self-Hosted Email Marketing with MailPoet: More Privacy, Less Cost

If you’re looking for a self-hosted email marketing tool that puts you in control of your data, integrates with WooCommerce, and costs less, stick around. I’m going to tell you why I ditched Mailchimp for MailPoet.

I’ll also tell you how the migration went, the challenges involved, and MailPoet’s pros and cons.

As promised, here are links to the plugins mentioned in the video:

• MailPoet – a self-hosted email marketing system
• AutomateWoo – more marketing automation
• OptimizePress – a drag and drop page and funnel-builder (and more)

NOTE: Some links are affiliate links, which means that I get a commission should you buy. I use these plugins myself, though…

Personalized Coupons & Protecting Customer Data

I’ve been dreaming about changing to a new email marketing provider for years. However, switching providers is difficult and expensive. Transferring the subscribers list is only the first part of the process. You need to recreate all of you lists, tags, signup forms and email sequences to the new system.

That’s a huge task, which is why the level of pain has to be pretty big. up till now, it was a bridge too far.

So, what triggered this change? Why now?

Well, I wanted to be able to send customers and subscribers personalized coupons. MailChimp can’t do that, at least not without bending over backward and performing all sorts of mind-bending stunts. It’s not easy on most other platforms to.

Then I discovered MailPoet. Unlike other services, MailPoet runs on your own WordPress website. Since it runs on the same server as WooCommerce, it’s able to generate personalized coupons on-the-fly.

It comes with other benefits that I care about too. For example, I never liked how I had to share my subscriber and customer data with MailChimp’s servers. I value privacy, and prefer to keep a tight control over my data, including my customer’s data. Well, MailPoet runs on my servers, so it can access and store customer and subscriber data without any of it ever having to leave the privacy of my own servers. Nice!

As an added bonus, it costs less too. A lot less.

So, I get to generate personalized coupons, keep my subscriber and customer’s data private, and save money at the same time.

Sounds like a great deal…

Migrating from MailChimp to MailPoet

Of course, I still had to go through the pain of switching, but with enough motivation, I got started.

Exporting the subscriber list from MailChimp, and importing it to MailPoet is relatively straightforward. They have clear instructions for that (link).

Switching the signup forms also wasn’t too bad. That’s partially because I use OptimizePress, and it has MailPoet integration. So, switching OptimizePress forms was a simple matter of switching the form from MailChimp, to MailPoet, and selecting the right lists to add new subscribers too. Non-OptimizePress forms had to be replaced, either using OptimizePress. Or using MailPoet’s built-in forms.

The next task was recreating the email sequences in MailPoet. I’m grateful that I didn’t have too many of those, because this is a 100% manual process.

Here’s where I hit some annoyances with MailPoet. For starters, MailPoet doesn’t allow you to set a common email footer for all emails. So I was redoing the footer repeatedly. MailPoet’s saving grace here, is that you can create your own email templates including the footer. So, after creating your own templates, this problem goes away.

I found upgrading to the paid plan a bit messy. I had to install the pro plugin, and then it still took a few minutes before my server gave me access to all the pro features.

Next, the automation templates are pretty limited. For example, they don’t have a basic abandoned cart template. The few templates they had were all geared to specific markets. Also, the abandoned cart emails are unable to provide a direct link to the actual cart. So, if they went shopping on one device, and then read the email on another, then they get sent to an empty cart. In the end, I used a different plugin called AutomateWoo for this.

Conclusion

There are lots of other niggling little limitations, some of which are already on MailPoet’s roadmap. So, they will disappear over time. In a way I’m trading MailChimp’s quirks and annoyances for a new set of quirks and limitations.

On the balance of things, MailPoet is the better choice for my needs. It gives me:

• The personalized coupon feature, amongst other things
• I get to keep my subscriber and customer data private
• And it costs less

Migrating was a lot of work, spanning multiple days. I’m glad that it’s done, and that I don’t have to do it again.

Switching to MailPoet is part of a larger project to improve my website and email. I’ll tell you about the next phase in another video…