Benchmark Email Review

Pros

• Strong customer service
• Easy to use
• Advanced feature set
• Free plan available; no credit card required
• Unlimited sends on paid plans

Cons

• Occasional bugs reported
• Subscription costs tied to contact lists

What Is Benchmark?

Benchmark is email marketing software that includes easy-to-use guided workflows, making it easy for any business to connect with customers. And with a free plan that comes with newly boosted contact and send limits, Benchmark email marketing can fit nearly every budget, including enterprise-level businesses that want to leave limits behind.

And with 1,500+ available integrations, you’ll also find it easy to connect Benchmark with your other essential business platforms. Read on for a full Benchmark Email review to learn all about the software’s benefits and some of its drawbacks, too, so you can determine if this is a smart option for your small business’s email marketing needs.

Benchmark Pricing

Benchmark pricing has improved since our last Benchmark review in 2021, with increased limits on the number of emails and contacts allowed on different subscription levels. Even better, you can try out the Benchmark software and many of its features using the Free plan.

If you’re ready to unlock more features by upgrading to a paid subscription, pricing is based on the number of contacts you have. The prices listed are for monthly payments; you can save about 15% by paying for a year at a time.

Here’s an overview of Benchmark’s three subscription plans:

Free Plan

As the name implies, the Free plan costs $0/month and does not require a credit card. Users of the Free plan will have a little Benchmark logo at the bottom of their emails — a relatively small price to pay for access to free Benchmark email marketing. The Free plan includes:

• Up to 500 subscribers
• 3,500 emails per month
• Responsive email templates
• Drag-and-drop email builder
• 25 credits monthly for AI-based Smart Content
• RSS campaigns
• Lists management
• Basic segmentation
• Signup forms
• Polls and surveys
• Drip campaigns
• Delivery management
• Live engagement reports
• Opens-by-hour and by-device reports
• Click heatmap reports
• Google Analytics tracking
• 10 MB image gallery storage
• Unlimited video storage
• Integrations
• Online support

Pro Plan

If you want more contacts, sends, and features than the Free plan allows, you can upgrade to the Pro plan, where the number of contacts determines pricing, and you can send unlimited emails each month. Use Benchmark’s online calculator feature to determine your subscription costs, or get a feel for pricing with these samples:

• 1,000 contacts is $23/month
• 2,500 contacts is $35/month
• 5,000 contacts is $58/month
• 10,000 contacts is $89/month

Pro plan pricing continues in similar increments up to 100,000 contacts, which costs $499/month. Any size Pro plan includes everything on the Free plan, plus:

• 100 smart content credits/month
• One-time free list verification
• Behavior-based emails
• Advanced segmentation
• Website tracking
• Prebuilt customer journeys
• Landing pages
• Live chat and phone support

Enterprise

Businesses with lists with more than 125,000 contacts will need to use Benchmark’s Enterprise plan. Pricing varies by the number of contacts you have, starting at $611/month for up to 125,000 and going to $892 for 200,000. Custom pricing is available to meet your business’s needs. Recommended for those with more than 100,000 contacts, it includes everything in the Pro plan, plus:

• Email white-labeling
• Dedicated IP
• Priority support
• Inbox checkers (up to 200 tests)
• Managed account setup
• Deliverability monitoring
• Semi-annual health checkups

Extra Benchmark Costs & Fees

You can choose from several add-ons offered by Benchmark Email:

To summarize this pricing roundup, Benchmark delivers an exemplary value for the price, including a generous try-before-you-buy free plan (and with no credit card required). It provides a robust set of features to satisfy your marketing department. For these reasons, Benchmark earns a well-deserved Excellent rating in the pricing category.

Is Benchmark Easy To Use?

Signup and onboarding for a Benchmark account are straightforward and easy. After entering your name, email, phone number, and company name, you just need to confirm your email address. It’s worth mentioning again that you will not have to share any billing or credit card data with Benchmark before signing up and sending an email campaign.

Once I logged into my new account (using the free plan), I was greeted by an attractive UI that was easy to navigate, with clear directions on how to upload contacts and create my first email campaign and easy-to-find workflows based on my needs. Everything is intuitive and easy to navigate, with easily searchable FAQs and nice help options if I did have any questions. I can confidently say Benchmark is easy to use, even for someone who has little to no email marketing experience.

Benchmark Email Marketing Features

Screenshot of Benchmark Email webpage captured 2/17/2021

Benchmark features are robust, even on the Free plan, though some advanced features are limited to paid plans. This list highlights some of the more notable features but is in no way exhaustive. A few features may not be available on the free plan. Refer to our pricing section for a comprehensive list of what each plan includes.

Email Campaigns

Benchmark features make it easy to create and execute email marketing campaigns, whether you’re an expert or a rookie. Here’s what you’ll get:

• Drag-and-drop email builder
• HTML editor available, with live preview function
• RSS emails
• AI-based Smart Content content builder
•  Smart Sending technology to increase deliverability
• Email templates by type, industry, and holidays
• Customizable colors on templates
• Photo editing tools
• A/B testing
• Basic drip campaigns

Contact & Lead Management

Benchmark includes features to help you grow your audience, including these:

• Email delivery management Popup and embeddable signup forms
• Signup forms for your website, blog, and social pages
• Drag-and-drop landing page builder
• Contact import by .xls, .csv, and .txt files
• Integrated campaigns

Email Marketing

You’ll also find tools for saving time and boosting engagement, such as:

• Contact list automations
• Engagement automations
• Polls and surveys
• Segmentation by demographics, likes and dislikes, and more

Reporting & Analytics

Even on the Free plan, Benchmarks offers users impressive reporting capabilities, such as:

• Live engagement reports
• Opens-by-hour reports
• Click heatmap reports
• Opens-by-device reports
• Google Analytics tracking

Overall, compared to other email marketing platforms, Benchmark earns its Excellent rating in this category.

Benchmark Customer Service

Although Benchmark offers a wide range of support options, some are premium-level and available only on paid plans. Basic support options available for all plan levels, including the Free plan, are online support and the knowledgebase. Upgrade to the Pro plan, and you’ll add live chat and telephone support. At the Enterprise level, you’ll add managed account setup.

The response to Benchmark customer service on user review sites is overwhelmingly positive. For example, on G2, when I filtered user comments for customer service, about 80% of the comments were positive. One complaint I saw was about phone support being limited on the Free plan. It’s rare to find phone support with free software, however, and Benchmark does offer online support to Free users.

Benchmark Integrations

Benchmark offers its users access to 1,500+ integrations. That’s certainly above the industry average I’ve seen, and you should have no trouble finding what you need. That includes big-name integrations, such as Zapier, SurveyMonkey, Facebook, PayPal, Zendesk, Shopify, Zoho, WordPress, Freshbooks, and more. There’s also a RESTful API that you can use to fill in any gaps you find.

Furthermore, an API allows different software programs to communicate with one another without a formal plugin connection. In a nutshell, this allows them to perform three functions: manage contact lists, manage campaigns and campaign sending, and check statistics.

Benchmark Reviews

Benchmark has over half a million users, ranging from small businesses to international brands. The use of the brand logos on the site and fully named and attributed customer testimonials are great indicators that people are, in fact, satisfied with Benchmark.

Independent review sites back up this impression, with 4/5 stars based on 68 reviews on G2, 4.6/5 stars based on 160 Capterra reviews, and 7.3/10 on TrustRadius based on 25 reviews.

Let’s take a look at what these user reviews reveal.

Negative Reviews & Complaints

I was not able to find many people who disliked their overall Benchmark experience. In fact, among G2’s 68 user reviews, no one rated the software lower than 4.5/5, and among TrustRadius’s reviewers, 71% rated Benchmark at least 7/10 stars. However, I was able to find a couple of dings that showed up more than once:

• Expensive upgrades
• Restrictive email editor
• Basic automations only
• Limited signup form options

Positive Reviews & Testimonials

Users also mentioned the following things as pros on the three customer review sites I examined:

• User friendly
• Free plan
• Unlimited sends on paid plans
• Nicely designed templates
• Flexibility with custom coding
• Detailed tracking information on sent campaigns

Is Benchmark Secure?

Benchmark is compliant with GDPR, Trust Arc, Can-Spam, and Privacy Shield Framework. The company also recommends that users follow its best practices to keep their customers and companies secure from cyber threats.

Like all legitimate ESPs, Benchmark takes spam seriously and outlines a clear zero-tolerance policy for any of its users trying to engage in spam activities. The company is fully in compliance with the US CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Benchmark also takes measures to preserve its reputation as a spam-free provider.

The Final Verdict: Is Benchmark Email Marketing Worth It?

I found the Benchmark email marketing platform easy to use, observably open to innovation based on customer needs, and competitively priced for companies with mid-size lists. As far as free email marketing options, it may be the best in the business.

Benchmark is a fantastic option for anyone interested in email marketing — particularly small, local businesses. Benchmark is an excellent choice if you operate a small or even medium-sized business and are looking for a simple email marketing program with a host of great features. It offers a generous try-before-you-buy option and provides a lot for the money with its paid levels. It also gives excellent support, and the company appears to be sensitive to the needs of its users. You can’t ask for much more!

Benchmark may be the most affordable option for businesses with mid-sized lists. As an example, a business with 50,000 contacts will pay $237/month on a Benchmark annual plan that comes with unlimited sends. That same contact list size costs $359/month on Mailchimp, with a monthly limit of 600,000 sends. Less money for more sends sounds like a better bet, though you’ll want to look carefully at our Mailchimp review to see what that software offers you for the money.

Check out our comparison of the best free email marketing software options to see what other companies let you try before you buy and offer generous free plans. And when you need some tips on improving your email campaigns overall, check out our article on how to create a successful marketing strategy. Good luck!

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The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

Benchmark Email	Visit Site

After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Benchmark Email for yourself.

The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

Benchmark Email	Visit Site

After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Benchmark Email for yourself.