Benchmark Email vs. Gist

Their free option has no time limit and accepts an email list of 2,000 contacts. That's generous considering that some similar software have free trials limited to a month or less and will allow only about 1,000 contact lists, if not less. With that 2,000 contact space available for free on Benchmark email, I can gather 2,000 leads or buyers into my email program without paying. Thus, Benchmark Email is suited for profitability, especially for a start-up business.

Gist is perfect for SaaS I'd say, and perfect for long sales cycles with lots of lead nurturing involved, and for scenarios where you re-market via FB ads, because there's FB custom audience integration built into the workflows. Perfect for customer service and support. Really outstanding there. It's a little less suited to ecom but they're hammering out the finishing touches to make ecom cart recovery easier.

Incentivized

• They have the option to incorporate email automation.
• HTML is available if you want to use your own templates.
• They give you the ability to edit some HTML on their drag and drop version.

Incentivized

• Gist provides endless ways of interacting with customers. I can chat and email with them, track their usage on my site, qualify them, add tags and other profile information, and so much more.
• There is even an awesome live view that lets me spy on visitors to see how they're using the site.
• The tools are powerful, easy to use, and constantly getting improvements. It seems like every week there is another update being rolled out that substantially extends the functionality or usability of the features in Gist.

• Glitchy editor - powerful drag and drop features, but precise formatting can have issues.
• Stagnant platform - few notable features or fixes over the past two years.
• Delivery Success - anecdotal customer reports suggest high percent of emails are diverted by spam filters.

Incentivized

• Free plan limits are too low.
• Chatbots should work not only for Gist's native online chat, but also for the other chat-based channels such as Facebook. (instead of having to use another software for that purpose)
• Pricing structure - Support bot should not be an add-on but a core feature.

Incentivized

Gist is a quite reliable service with a lot of added values. We don't need to pay for different Saas for these important features. If I had an issue the team was super responsive and helpful, that is essential for every business. The email delivery is great, so virtually no email has landed into spam folder

Incentivized

Gist does pretty much anything you want it to when it comes to managing your contacts. Sometimes I wish it updated faster, but wait a few beats and it gets there. I really love that I can show a colleague how to use the chat messenger and they understand it right away. Very user friendly!

Incentivized

I have communicated with their team multiple times and every time they have been very responsive, knowledgeable, and polite. They work to make sure you are happy and informed of what is going on. Better their team keeps up to date with their app, giving you new features, and keeping you notified and educated about what they are and how to use them. A+

At the time of the decision, we anticipated a larger audience and a high potential cost of MailChimp. We also believed that Benchmark Email would be less complex and therefore quicker to implement and learn. Given the current needs and pricing, I believe MailChimp may be competitive and provide a more refined UI

Incentivized

They both seem to have parity with each other with each having their own small advantages. I went with Gist because it was more affordable. Infusionsoft customer for almost 5 years and it seemed I was always working more on getting it to work instead of getting work done. Gist is so intuitive I had it setting up and running the basics in a few hours.

Incentivized

• We were able to reduce recurring costs by 20% per year by buying an extended contract plan.
• Benchmark is more robust than our previous software, and we've been able to increase newsletter sales by about 10% per year.
• We were able to introduce split a/b testing into our newsletter mix, as it's a native feature of Benchmark.

Incentivized

• Our ROI has increased significantly because of Gist's chat and app integration into our website. Contact forms are great but a real-time conversation means you can be more effective in meeting your customer's needs.
• The additional features in the recent upgrade mean we can use Gist for more. They have always been effective for email campaigns, but the addition of the knowledge base and more effective workflows means we can automate more. This has saved us from buying more software.