MailUp Review 2025: Tried & Tested Features, Cost, Pros & cons
MailUp is a powerful email marketing software for small businesses, enterprises, and agencies. Created in 2003, MailUp serves over 10,000 customers, including well-known brands like Xiaomi and Walmart. Email, SMS, and automation make it a solid choice for marketers to create multichannel campaigns.
Can MailUp be the tool to fuel your growth? In this MailUp review, we look at features, automation, integrations, customer support, and pricing to help you make the right decision.
MailUp email marketing software summary
Short on time? Here’s a quick rundown of what I found writing this MailUp review:
- Pricing is divided into email plans and SMS credits. Email plans start at €43/mo. All plans have unlimited contacts and email sending, great for high-volume senders. 1000 SMS credits cost €64.
- Run multichannel campaigns with Email and SMS.
- Easy to learn. The email and landing page editors are the same. They make it quick and easy to send campaigns and create pages.
- Over 200 good-looking email templates speed up your design.
- Support is available over email and phone (Plus and above). Reps are quick to respond.
MailUp: what I like the most
MailUp has been active for over 20 years, continuously developing the platform. The top features are:
- Drag and drop editor: MailUp integrated the Beefree editor, one of the best drag-and-drop editors out there.
- Email Templates: Choose from over 200 templates to quickly build emails. The templates are good-looking and mobile responsive.
- AB testing: Test up to 5 versions of the same email and see which performs better.
- Email and SMS automation: Combine both channels and create workflows with email and SMS messages.
- Integrations: Natively connect MailUp to 24 third-party services. This includes WordPress and Zapier to connect any lead generation, CRM, or eCommerce platform you use.
Get started with MailUp for free here
MailUp Email Marketing Platform Review
Let’s start this review by testing the core of the platform: email marketing. Then go on to SMS & email automation, integrations, and support, to give you all the information to make a decision on MailUp.
Creating and sending a newsletter with MailUp
MailUp has 6 ways to create emails:
- Using drag and drop templates: choose from up to 200 pre-built, responsive templates.
- From scratch: design an email from the ground up, using layouts and content blocks.
- From your HTML templates: Copy your HTML email design and edit it with the WYSIWYG editor.
- From a file: Upload ZIP files with HTML and images to send custom templates. Use the WYSIWYG editor to customize it inside MailUp.
- From a URL: MailUp creates an email based on an HTML page.
- Using RSS: Add an RSS feed in settings, and MailUp will automatically pull content so you can send updates.
6 ways to create emails in MailUp
Creating a newsletter with MailUp is incredibly straightforward. After choosing a template, I customize it with text, images, and dividers. MailUp has content blocks for:
- Titles
- Paragraphs
- Images
- Buttons
- Dividers
- Socials
- HTML
- Videos
- Icons
- Menu
- Text
- Stickers
- GIFs
The MailUp editor has an extensive library of fonts, colors, and icons that makes the design process flexible. Your editing is really WYSIWYG with a real-time preview, helping you get your emails just right before hitting send.
You can edit the text inline, with formatting options also available in a hover menu. I found it easy to move around my content blocks as well. When you hover over a block, you can drag it around by clicking on the bounding box.
Personalization is easy to add. Click on “Merge tags” in the toolbar to include fields that MailUp will replace with contact data when sending.
You can personalize emails even more with dynamic content. MailUp calls these “display conditions”. You can set any row in an email to be dynamically included or not. You can even use custom fields, and the dynamic content will display based on this field.
Another neat feature I liked is that you can view the structure of the email. When you click on the button, dotted lines appear around your email that serve as guiding boxes to help you design your layout.
The preview shows how my email looks on desktop and mobile. The editor also has a ‘history’ feature. The little icons on the bottom left of the screen let you revert changes or go back to a previous version of the email.
Once my email is ready to go, I add a subject line and preheader text. I like how you can add notes and tags to your emails. These are internal bits of information that you can use to remember important details about an email. For instance, if your email is part of a series or campaign.
MailUp has email review features to make sure your links aren’t broken, and there is nothing that is messing up your email design.
When the email is ready, choose your sender address and target list and press send. MailUp will show you a progress bar to tell you how many recipients are in the queue.
Email Templates in MailUp
Having a wide variety of email templates makes it easy to create attractive and engaging emails. From simple text-only designs to more visually striking HTML versions with images and video, MailUp has a full library of them.
With 200 responsive templates, you can create emails that look great on any device.
The templates cover a lot of use cases. There are templates for holidays, products, promotions, re-engagement, blogging, and transactions. 75% of the templates look really modern and professional, the rest could use a refresh.
Save time with Email and SMS Automation
Set up triggered emails or SMS messages according to user behaviors or preferences with MailUp’s automation tools. Like a welcome message when a new subscriber signs up, re-engagement emails when they haven’t interacted with your campaigns in a while, or personalized content based on their profile data.
When asked about the most popular automations, the MailUp team said these are:
- Welcome series
- Birthday series
- Event reminders
- And custom workflows based on interests or activities like purchases or signups
Automations are called Workflows in MailUp. When you create a new one, you can choose from pre-built workflows or create custom ones.
The Thanks for joining, Welcome series, and Onboarding templates are very similar. Only the triggers are different, and they all contain 1 email each.
I decided to test with a birthday automation. Setting up the workflow is easy. The first step is to fill out a few details like automation name, sender’s address, SMS sender number, and trigger event.
You can trigger automations based on contact fields or subscription events. In this case the trigger event is a recipient’s birthday. Next, you build the workflow. Sdd emails, text messages, and wait times between them.
Before putting the automation sequence together, you should create the content you want to add. In MailUp, you can’t edit the content from the automation editor. When the workflow ends, you can move the recipients to a different group or do nothing.
Then, you choose which contact groups to include or exclude. And apply filters for devices and operating systems. Select timezone settings, time and date restrictions. Thoughtful is the ‘Not during weekend’ checkbox. B2B companies, for instance, can disable automated messages for weekends with 1 click.
Finally, you’ll activate the workflow. Then when one of my subscribers has a birthday, they’ll receive a birthday email followed by an SMS with a shortcode to an offer.
I also made a thank you workflow with 2 emails and an SMS. It took me about 10 minutes to create this sequence.
You can build custom workflows too. Trigger it based on subscription, event date, field condition, or open/click activity.
MailUp doesn’t have conditions in the automation builder. But with “Recipient activity” you can trigger automations based on email and SMS activity to follow up with related offers.
Overall, I liked that MailUp’s automations combine email and SMS. The preset workflows and the time and date restrictions are also a nice touch. I missed conditions and a visual automation editor (canvas to drag and drop) for advanced workflows and see the logic behind them. It isn’t a very advanced automation builder but will do the job if you aren’t looking for too much.
Get started with MailUp for free here
Getting new leads with MailUp
MailUp makes it easy for businesses to get new leads with landing pages and forms.
To create a landing page, go to the Database Building menu. Then select from 42 templates and start customizing your content.
MailUp has the same editor for landing pages as emails. This makes it easy to learn and quickly design different content.
Customize a landing page using useful widgets like buttons, videos, menus, and more. Edit the layout, and change colors, fonts, and favicons. Stickers and GIFs are excellent little additions. You can search Giphy’s database to find relevant ones and make your landing page pop. MailUp has built-in integrations with Pexels and Pixabay to find free images.
Then follow up on your landing page by choosing subscription confirmation and welcome messages. You can add tracking codes to your landing page to sync it with your analytics software.
The second tool in your arsenal to collect leads is the opt-in form. MailUp has 4 types of forms. I created a popup form to see how it works.
Form creation is straightforward. You choose from styling, appearance, and behavior (when to display it). Choose which list to add subscribers to, and if you want to add them to the SMS channel, email, or both.
There are no form templates for popups, you can set universal styles for them in “Look & Feel”. Here you set the styles for all your forms to make them look consistent. These include company name, logo, fonts, and colors.
Once you’re happy with your design, copy the form code and paste it to your desired pages.
Embedded forms are more flexible. You can add elements like checkboxes, radio buttons, text fields, and a privacy policy checkbox with the drag-and-drop editor. But there are no templates. The global styles from “Look & Feel” will apply to these forms, too.
MailUp’s landing page editor is on par with standalone landing page builders. I also like that you can set up global styles which apply to your forms. But it’s missing pop-up and form templates.
Sending SMS with MailUp
82% of people will open every text they receive. It’s an effective marketing channel, but most email platforms don’t have SMS marketing tools. You need to connect a text marketing software to send SMS. Sending SMS marketing campaigns from your ESP means you don’t have to worry about setting up the integration. And managing email and SMS from the same platform makes it easier to manage and create multi-channel campaigns. Let’s see how SMS campaigns work in MailUp.
Creating a new SMS is super simple. Go to your Messages tab, select SMS, and create a new SMS.
Give your SMS a title, choose the sender, and add your text. You can also add tags to your SMS for internal management. Customize the SMS to include your promotions, discounts, or product updates.
Dynamic fields help you personalize messages based on personal information, interests, or behaviors. So you can deliver more targeted campaigns with personal discount codes and product recommendations.
You also get link tracking to measure how successful your SMS campaigns are. Filter SMS reports by campaign type or individual recipient. MailUp also has link shortening and a character counter. These are must-haves because SMS messages are limited to 160 characters (or 70 for Unicode). MailUp can chain up to 10 text messages to increase this limit to 1530 characters.
You can select specific groups and all subscribers or manually choose recipients. One cool feature is the ability to filter your recipients by device type and operating system. So if you have a campaign specific for iPhone users, you can filter out all other devices.
Managing and creating SMS campaigns is easy with MailUp. It’s great to have email and SMS under the same roof.
Managing contacts in MailUp
MailUp’s contact management features provide an easy way to store and manage customer data. You can add individual recipients; import CSV, TXT, XLS, and XML files; or paste emails and phone numbers.
When you import a new batch of contacts, MailUp asks if you want to add them to a current list, or a new one. Once the contacts are added, MailUp looks for syntax errors or typos in emails and gives you a report.
There are 28 contact fields MailUp has by default that you can edit. And you can have 39 custom fields altogether.
I like the filtering options in MailUp. I see all my subscribers, and I can quickly find subscribers based on emails, phone numbers, and subscription dates. Below, I can include or exclude groups, apply filters, or match fields. This filtering comes in handy to send targeted campaigns with precision and accuracy.
In MailUp, static segments are called groups. You add/remove contacts to a group from the contact list. Each landing page and form will have a default group. And you can select other groups to add subscribers to when they sign up, or when they finish an automation.
Filters are MailUp’s more advanced segmentation tools. These are based on conditions.
Start by choosing a filter category. When you add a filter to a category, it’s grouped with other similar filters, so they’re better organized and easy to find. You can create profile, activity, geolocation, and device filters. Inside a filter, you set up and/or conditions.
You can create your own filter categories for advanced filters, like CEOs in New York who opened your 5 last emails.
4 interesting audience management functions:
- Another helpful feature is Groups overlap. This lets you see how many subscribers from one list belong to another. Very handy when you want to separate communication for different groups, but don’t want to send any members double emails.
- MailUp tags all bounces with bounce codes. Those emails can be found under Recipients > Email > Bounces. Email scrubbing is key for a healthy list and effective campaigns.
- There are also two options for people to unsubscribe. They can either do so with a single click or confirm the unsubscription on a preference page linked in your emails.
- A cool feature in MailUp is Environments. These are profiles you can create for different types of lists and customers for different categories. To access environments, go to Settings>Account Settings>Lists.
From here, give your environment a name, choose timezones, the type of emails you’ll send, and the sender’s address. Each environment comes with its own subscribers, messages, statistics, settings, etc.
This is a nice feature for agencies and enterprises with departments that want to keep things separate.
MailUp Integrations
MailUp offers 20+ native integrations, or you can use Zapier to connect with 5000+ third-party apps.
These include eCommerce platforms, email builders, CRMs, and CMS services, like WooCommerce, Magento, Stripo, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Prestashop, WordPress, and Zapier.
I like how integrations are shown in lead generation tools. Below the built-in forms and welcome message, you’ll find integrations to generate and sync lead data.
There are ESPs with 200+ native integrations. Compared to those, MailUp has some ground to make up here. But it shouldn’t be a real problem, you can use Zapier or their API to connect it with 5000+ other apps.
MailUp Customer Support
MailUp customers can get help via email, ticket, or phone. Click on the question mark at the top right to open a ticket, and you’ll get a reply within 24 hours (usually sooner). The support team is amazing and helpful.
MailUp also has a help center with 100s of help articles broken down into categories. This includes a quick start guide and short videos to hit the ground running. Some of the articles are a bit outdated though, and more videos would be great.
What sets MailUp apart is its consultancy and training services. MailUp has 20 years of experience in email marketing. And they provide training for deliverability, onboarding, lead generation, data analysis, marketing automation, graphic design, and integrations. These services are paid. Get a quote by contacting their team.
MailUp pricing and plans
MailUp offers 4 pricing plans for email marketing. All plans have unlimited recipients with no sending limits. But sending speed is limited to 2K emails/hour on subscription plans. You can increase the speed for an additional 10-40%. Enterprise customers can send up to 5 million emails each hour.
SMS pricing is credit-based. 1754 text messages for the US costs $63.73.
MailUp Starter costs €43/month (billed annually) and includes 50 email templates, drag and drop builder, AB testing, 3 automation triggers, dynamic content, and inbox previews on 3 email clients. The Plus plan costs €98/mo, and the Premium is €243/mo if you commit for a year.
These higher plans have more email templates, inbox previews, and automation triggers. You get 100 email templates on Plus, 200 on Premium. And 76 clients for inbox previews and 100 automation triggers for both Plus and Premium.
MailUp SMS has a pay-as-you-go pricing model. There are zero fixed costs. You only pay for the amount of SMS you send.
The price of SMS varies from country to country. US prices start at $67 for 1754 SMS messages and go up to $1,089 for 35,088.
Get the 15-day free trial of the Plus plan to test the platform before committing to a paid plan.
MailUp Pros and Cons
My favorite things about MailUp:
- Excellent value for money with unlimited contacts and emails on each plan.
- Multichannel campaigns with email and SMS.
- The same easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor for emails and pages.
- Fast and responsive support.
Things I’d like to see improved:
- Takes a while to get used to the navigation.
- There aren’t any form templates.
- The free trial is great, but a free plan is always better.
MailUp: Is it the Email Marketing software for you?
If you’re a small business, an enterprise, or a marketing agency looking for email marketing software with SMS, MailUp is a good choice. It features an intuitive drag-and-drop editor for creating professional-looking emails quickly, analytics, flexible contact filtering, automated campaigns, web forms, and integrations with various eCommerce platforms and CRMs.
Ease of Use: 3.5 / 5
Value for Money: 4.5 / 5
Editor and templates: 4.5 / 5
Functionalities: 4 / 5
Email Automation: 3.5 / 5
Customer service: 4 / 5
Total score: 4 / 5
We gave MailUp 4/5 because of its easy-to-use email and page editors with 200 templates, unlimited contacts, and sending. The interface, navigation, and automation could use a refresh, but besides that, it’s solid email marketing software.
Get started MailUp for free here
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is MailUp for?
Is MailUp free?
Can I try out MailUp before buying?
All MailUp pricing plans have unlimited contacts and email sending. The basic plan costs €39/month and includes 50 email templates, drag and drop builder, AB testing, 3 automation triggers, dynamic content, and inbox previews on 3 email clients.
Try MailUp for free here
How do I get MailUp?
The free trial includes the drag-and-drop email builder, landing page builder, list customization options, and unlimited sends.
MailUp Alternatives
MailUp vs. MailChimp
The main difference between MailUp and Mailchimp is pricing. Both Mailchimp and MailUp are great for SMBs. Mailchimp offers some features you won’t find in MailUp in their higher tiers. You’ll find predictive segmentation, more advanced automation, ad campaigns, and more. But the Mailchimp plan that has these features starts at $300.
MailUp has no contact or email-sending limits on any plans. So if you’re looking for a comparatively simple, cheaper, yet powerful email marketing software, MailUp is the way to go.
Check out our review of more Mailchimp alternatives here
MailUp vs GetResponse
The main difference between MailUp and GetResponse is automation. GetResponse is more suited for advanced users who need advanced automation and funnels. MailUp recently acquired ContactLab, a marketing automation company. With the ContactLab integration, MailUp customers can create more advanced automations for an extra cost.
Another key difference is pricing. MailUp has unlimited contacts and emails for all pricing plans. While GetResponse pricing is based on the number of contacts you have. Consider if you have 10,000 subscribers and want automation features. MailUp will cost you €43/month compared to GetResponse’s €99/month.
Companies that require advanced automations or more integrations will find that GetResponse is a better option. Similarly, smaller businesses may prefer using MailUp because of its pricing.
Read our full GetResponse review