Aurea List Manager vs. Twilio SendGrid

Lyris LM is suited well with an organization or group that have several lists, as virtual list hosting is not represented by any other hosting company as far as I can tell.

Twilio SendGrid is well suited for those organizations who need to send mass emails very often to their prospects and customers and thus may be wary of a reliable tool that can do that without affecting domain reputation. It may be less suited for organizations which do not have say more than 10,000 target prospects and thus may rely only on 1:few ABM for sending emails.

Incentivized

• Reports: extensive reporting on mailings and membership. Pre-built reports/charts include Mailings, Members, Server Performance, Web site, Purchases, Interest and Surveys. If Aurea ListManager doesn't have the built-in chart needed, you can easily create your own.
• Easy to analyze mailings: Completed mailing can be analyzed quickly. Options include viewing any errors that may have resulted, and checking list performance, evaluating recipient actions, ( opens, click-troughs). Details can be seen on a per-recipient basis, allowing you to see exactly what happened with each message sent.
• Discussion Lists. There are numerous list setting to customize each list.

Incentivized

• Managing email lists / audiences is easy with features like groups and segments.
• They provide pre-built email templates that are very easy to modify. It is also super easy to create new email templates with their drag-and-drop email builder.
• Provides clear / easy-to-read analytics of email campaigns.
• I can easily import large email contact lists all at once or add a user manually one-at-a-time, when needed.

Incentivized

• Tech support is limited for standard users, especially during non business hours even for critical errors
• Installation/upgrade is often complicated
• Version releases are too frequent

Incentivized

• Not necessarily their Email API but their email in general - they are currently in beta for automated email sequences but are still bare bones. Much more work is needed before it can be used mainstream and be able to convert everything to SendGrid.
• Helping with warming up our dedicated IP for the best-sending score.
• We seem to hit the promotions folder a decent amount (maybe the IP problem above) and even a lot of their emails hit my spam or promotions folder (whether they be transactional or marketing) which isn't a great sign when trusting an ESP.
• Transactional email sequences would be a huge plus.
• Now that Twilio owns SenGrid, having an integrated platform where you could see all our transactional emails together.
• Better reporting and split reporting between transactional and marketing emails.

Incentivized

We will most likely not use Lyris LM for much longer. We have recently been offered to utilize a different software that better meets our needs, is current, user friendly, and has fantastic reporting capabilities.

It has the potential to be really cool. However, it feels as if it was created by developers for developers (and I work with developers, yet even for me the instrument was somewhat not easy to use - just read SendGrid's help manuals...) However, if you are into data and your way of thinking is more mathematical rather than lyrical, you'll enjoy this instrument

Incentivized

I have not needed to utilize customer support during my use of Lyris LM.

Twilio SendGrid Email API is everything we want it to be, and we have no reason to look for any other solution. Features and pricing match exactly what we need. As developers for SaaS products, Twilio SendGrid Email API provides a great service. I hope that they stay this way and don't inflate the service with too many marketing oriented features, because there are other tools for that and Twilio SendGrid Email API is a API for sending email first and foremost.

Incentivized

I was not part of the implementation process.

We selected Lyris LM based on cost, the fact that we can create custom reports and the way that they handle bounced emails just to name a few, It is easy to use and we have control of who can and cannot use. With a virtual list I can create a list or take a list down at any given time without filling out a form or contact with my provider and my list looks as if it is coming from my own server @museum.com.

Sendgrid has a lot of features that other providers have and a few more - like the dynamic template builder, which AWS SES doesn't have. We choose the provider based on the scenario of use and the provider we're using. If we're going to be making regular changes to a template, then we'd go with Sendgrid, as the changes will be easier to make and don't necessarily require developer intervention.

Incentivized

• Aurea as a company is mediocre with support. The former LM staff was better informed about the product.
• LM can do almost anything you need. it's complete.
• ROI has suffered as Aurea has not updated the product, charges a considerable amount for renewals, promises with no results.

Incentivized

• As it was cheaper than the transactional service we previously used, it saved costs.
• The API was relatively easy to work with so it helped us ship the service and test it quickly.
• We still use the transactional email service, even though we recognize its limits as it meets our immediate needs.

Incentivized