Best WordPress Newsletter Solutions for 2025
Stay ahead of the curve with our curated list of the best newsletter plugins for 2025. Engage your audience like never before.
Are you ready to elevate your email marketing game in 2025? Join us as we explore the best newsletter plugins to enhance your communication with subscribers. We cover essential features, integrations, and user experiences to ensure you choose the right tool. Stay ahead of the curve and learn how these plugins boost engagement rates. Click to watch the video and transform your newsletter strategy.
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:21.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 110. In this episode, we will discuss the best newsletter plugins for your membership website. If you’re using WordPress in 2025, it should be a great show. We should have great insights and go through some of the best solutions. Newsletters Letters are a great way of building up your subscribers, who you can turn into, hopefully, members of your membership website. So it’s an important subject. I’ve got my great co-host, Nicole, with me. She’s going to be asking… Oh, thank you, Nicole. So, how’s your week been, Nicole?
[00:01:23.040] – Nicole Ouellette
Oh, it’s good. How have you been?
[00:01:26.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, not too bad, Nicole. It’s just flown by, and I can’t believe it’s Thursday. It’s just a blink of the eye, dealing with clients, hosting, and technical issues. It’s all good stuff. So, aren’t you excited to discuss the newsletter?
[00:01:47.930] – Nicole Ouellette
I am, and initially, those people who don’t read our emails don’t know that there was only supposed to be one episode. Still, there was a clear line of demarcation that Jonathan and I realized pretty much at the exact moment, so we emailed each other. So, if you were going to summarize what’s different about this episode from the last episode, where we covered fewer WordPress-specific email options, Is there anything else that you feel is different with this group of websites and software options we’re going to discuss today?
[00:02:22.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Last week’s episodes were SaaS, Software as a Service solution. With even subcategories because we discussed some new players. What’s a good sign, our beloved listeners and viewers is that Nicole and I seem to be on the same wavelength. And we’ve both been using or trying out Beehive, and we’ll probably have a follow-up episode in the next few weeks about our experiences. But- Buz, buzz. Pardon?
[00:03:02.570] – Nicole Ouellette
I said, Buz, buzz.
[00:03:04.470] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, oh, God. Oh, Jesus. Oh, dear. So I I really don’t know what to say to that. Sorry. Yes, we looked at the SaaS solutions, but there’s some new players, so there’s even subcategories. In this episode, we’re going to be talking native solutions on WordPress, because there’s even a fair bit of overlap here, folks, because the reality is a lot of the SaaS solutions provide WordPress plugins, and depending. Some have a high degree of integration with the WordPress platform. Others don’t. It really depends on the focus of the SaaS platform and how important WordPress is to them. That varies enormously. But the majority there is a little bit of SaaS in this episode. As we go through what you need to know, that will become more clearer. But the majority of the solutions we’re going to be looking at are what I call native solutions. Basically, they integrate very tightly with the WordPress platform. So it should be an interesting show. But before we go into the meat and potatoes, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments. Three, two, one. Coming back. And by the way, we’ve got a great newsletter that we have just launched that will go through all the latest news, technologies, and marketing tips and insights that you are looking for if you’re thinking of launching your membership website in 2025 to get this great newsletter, plus a created list of plugins and other free goodies.
[00:05:21.180] – Jonathan Denwood
All you have to do is go over to wp-tonic. Com/newsletter. Wp-tonic. Com/newsletter, and it’s totally free, and you’ll get a copy in your inbox. What more could you ask for my beloved membership, entrepreneurs? I don’t actually know. So let’s start off because, Nico, the way I see this, one of the reasons that people struggle with sending newsletters and marketing, optimization solution on WordPress. And until about three, four years ago, it was something that wasn’t really dealt with very well natively on WordPress. You really did have to use a SaaS solution, and you utilized the plugin or Zappia to get your WordPress website to work with this SaaS solution. They weren’t many native good solutions. Over the last four to three years, that has dramatically changed. And now, in my opinion, there are some WordPress native solutions that are the equal, or in my opinion, better than a lot of the native SaaS solutions out there. But one of the problems, Nicole, is it’s a It’s unlike just signing up for a SaaS solution. Like I say, recently, I signed up with Beehive, and yes, it’s got a nice interface, but if you want a custom domain and some other features, you do have to jump through some loops.
[00:07:21.790] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s a nice simplistic interface, but I There are loops that you have to read the technical notes, watch some videos to get that set up. There’s a little bit more work to get your newsletter sent out natively on WordPress, but it’s only a little bit more work, in my opinion, and it’s three stages. First of all, obviously, you need a hosting provider. Now, most hosting providers, you cannot utilize their email functionality to send out a newsletter. Why? Well, they put restrictions. They put a quota of how many email that you can send out per day. Most of them is between 100 to 300 200 email per day that you can physically send out. They do not want you to utilize the email functionality that’s inbuilt with most WordPress hosting providers to send out newsletters. Why? Because they have a load of spammers. If they did offer that, and they used to be less restrictive on on this. But they found that they were being utilized as a spam gateway, and that got them blacklisted, got their IPs blocked by companies that handle email like Microsoft, like Google, like Yahoo. They got on black lists, and the normal email that they want to send out or their customers want to send out, we’re getting blocked.
[00:09:36.270] – Jonathan Denwood
They don’t want you sending out a thousand email, 2,000 email, 5,000 email plus per day from their servers, so they restrict it tightly. You need a third party engine to send out these emails. But for your hosting provider, where you got your WordPress website hosted, there is a… I’ve just forgotten the word, a mechanism that communicates with the WordPress website to the people to the service. That’s the email sending engine. There’s a protocol. That’s the word I was looking for, a protocol that communicates your WordPress website with these services. And that protocol is called SMTP. And Every WordPress website, if you’re going to utilize a third-party email sending service, you’re going to have to get a SMTP plugin that will communicate communicate your WordPress website with this service. Is that making sense, Nicole?
[00:11:06.070] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, well, and the thing is, I’ve also used SMTP plugins to… When someone has a contact form or something like that, and something’s not delivering, it seems to also help.
[00:11:18.710] – Jonathan Denwood
It does.
[00:11:18.880] – Nicole Ouellette
To help if you… Because basically, when you think about someone submitting a form, that has to get email to you so that you know that someone submitted it. It seems to… I didn’t realize that SMTP, I guess, worked in both directions like that. That’s cool.
[00:11:36.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Makes sense. Yes, because it does help with delivery because there’s various email is an enormous protocol. A protocol has a communication back and forth between the receiver and the sender, and it’s a complicated protocol email. It’s old technology. It’s got a little bit more complicated because of the attempts to stop spamming. There’s more security elements of this large protocol that are around identifying digitally who is sending out the email, and does their domain match up to the business details that should be linked to their domain registration This is all about stopping spamming, mass spamming, basically, which is the bug bearer of all email providers. You do need a Like I say, you do need a SMTP plugin, and you got to install it for your forms and for connecting to the newsletter or the marketing optimization that you plan to do. The good news is there are some paid ones, but the main one I recommend, which is fluentsmtp. Com. They do do, I think a paid version, but the free version is all that you need. I actually do think that is one of the best ones on the market, and it really works with some of the other products that the parent company that we’re going to be talking about in this podcast, and it’s free.
[00:13:36.310] – Jonathan Denwood
There are some others that are around $50. One is called EasyWP. Another really popular one is WP Mel SMTP, that’s just slightly under $50. But really, like I said, the free version of Flune SMTP is the one that I recommend. But hopefully, so that’s stage one. You need to install one of these plugins. And if you don’t do it, you’re going to be scratching your head. So do you think I’ve done a reasonable job?
[00:14:12.760] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, no, I think that that’s great. There are… Yeah, I think you’ll probably notice, too, even if you’re listening to this and you’re like, well, I’ve noticed that my particular email sender, even if it’s a SAS one, has started requiring that I use domain email to send my marketing emails now. That’s something that’s appeared in the last year, because I have clients who were using a random Gmail address or something like that. Now it’s like, no, for your marketing emails, you have to have one that matches your domain now. And that makes sense to me why you would have to take this step on your WordPress website, too.
[00:14:51.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s a great point. They’re tightening up on the SaaS side as well, because they There’s whole communities, there’s whole YouTube channels, there’s a whole subculture about sending out mass spam email, and they move from one provider to the other. The road is ending for them because almost like they moved to ZOO Mel, which is a subprovider, then they moved to Microsoft They’re totally booted out from Google’s products, and they move from one provider to the other. If you’re in the big sending out a lot of email, some people look at Amazon. Amazon, if you’re a new account, you will be put into a sandbox probably for three months, and they are unremorsively aggraved with the aggressive in finding and booting out spammers, and you get barred from Amazon and you’ll never be allowed back. They don’t mess around.
[00:16:11.160] – Nicole Ouellette
That’s good. I’m glad. That sounds like we’re all going to get less spam now. That’s great.
[00:16:15.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Probably not because they move offshore. Yeah, that’s true. Yes, there’s about three to four gateways into the US, and they are constantly watching these external, not native US providers, but it’s a consistent ongoing war. I think it will have some effect, hopefully. On to the next. You’ve installed this plugin, like I say, because of the restrictions that hosting providers put on, that between 50 to 300 It might be, you might find some hosting providers have a higher limit, but generally this is the limit of, I can say, 50 to 300 emails per day. You’re going to need somebody to send out the email, the engine, as I put it. And there’s about three that I would recommend. A lot of them, one of them like send We utilize Sendgrid because we actually, as part of our hosting package at WP Tonic, because we specialize in membership and buddy boss and fluent community-focused websites, Because these websites are like e-commerce, they’re going to send out a fair number of transactional and marketing email. We actually, part of our hosting package, we provide email Functionality is part of our package because of what we’re specializing in. Our engine partner is Sendgrid.
[00:18:11.310] – Jonathan Denwood
We have a partnership level set up with them. But there’s three here that I would recommend. There’s one called Postmark, there’s Sendgrid, and there’s Mailgun. Sendgrid and Mailgun have a free Both have free accounts, but they only allow you to send out about 100 emails per day. So really, they’re only worth to actually test the platform, test the service with. Almost all of them have a starter plan, and most of them, it’s between 15 to $20 for the starter plan. And that normally gives you between 50,000 to 100,000 email per month. And I would say for 90 % of user bases, that well covers them. So we’re looking between 15 to $20 Normally, from these three providers, you have a limit of 50 to 100,000 emails. I don’t think they have limits on the subscribers. Some of the SaaS platforms, they are very confusing pricing models because some of them based on how many email you’re sending out per month, others, how many subscribers you’ve got, and some have a combination of how many subscribers and emails you’re sending out. So a lot of these SaaS providers that we discussed last week, their pricing structure is truly confusing.
[00:19:57.330] – Jonathan Denwood
So that’s how How that works. And these three… You’re probably going to ask me which one to recommend. Well, like I said, we use Sendgrid. Also, there’s a bit of overlap from the next range of products we’re going to be talking about, because a lot of these three providers, I don’t think Postmark do. I think they’re pure sending out engine and management. I think with Sendgrid and Mailgun, they do provide an editor. You can actually edit and send it out.
[00:20:36.210] – Nicole Ouellette
I use Sendgrid for my co-working spaces, and it’s a drag and drop editor. I’m not saying sometimes it’s the most intuitive thing in the world, but it definitely works. It definitely allows you to design, upload your logo, layout columns, and all the stuff that you’re used to do in whatever email design software you’ve ever used.
[00:20:57.330] – Jonathan Denwood
The native newsletter, there’s going to be two, which we’re going to discuss probably in the second half of the show. But if you’re utilizing, especially Gutenberg, which is the new native technology that WordPress is based on when it comes to the front-end editor, the editor for your web pages, your posts. A lot of the native newsletter marketing optimization solution solutions. They use Gutenberg blocks. If you’re using block technology to outline your posts and your pages, it’s helpful for you to utilize utilize the same technology to make your newsletters and that, which probably, like you said, Seengrid is providing a basic editor. It’s not something that they really in my opinion, really concentrate on. They just have that service as a tick box on the list of functionality, the features they provide. Have you got any questions about what I’ve said so far?
[00:22:14.140] – Nicole Ouellette
No, But it’s super clear. It makes sense to me- Because I’m worried I’ve lost half our audience already. No. So here’s what I think might be an advantage, and tell me if I’m wrong, to laying out using Gutenberg, which is the drag and drop editor within WordPress, to lay out your email and then use one of these sending engines to send it, is one of the benefits that you could… If you wanted to have a newsletter archive that sat on your website, obviously it could be a page on your website versus… Or would another benefit also be that because you’re managing your membership, people who are at different membership levels and things like that on your website that you could customize their experience of the content because it’s tied in? Are those the two benefits of laying it on the site?
[00:23:11.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. There are clear benefits doing it natively rather than you’re going to have more tight. Because a lot of the products we’re going to be talking about in the second half have a lot of integration with the leading learning management systems that I recommend that if you’re building a membership that you should use instead of a membership plugin. There’s a lot of overlap between the leading membership plugins and learning management system plugins. But with learning management, they have more focus about providing a learning experience to the student. They provide quiz, other assessments, all the functionality that you would probably want as part of your membership course, and they cost no more than the membership plugins, so I really don’t see the point. You might as well utilize a learning management system plugin, and There’s about three main ones. There’s Lifter LMS, there’s LearnDash, and there’s Tudor LMS. They all really work tightly, or they make sure they do, with the leading editors and marketing optimization solutions that we’re going to talk about in the second half of the show. There definitely is benefits of being, as I call it, native, being with solutions that really utilize Gutenberg with tight integration.
[00:24:51.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Does that make sense, Nicole?
[00:24:52.940] – Nicole Ouellette
It does, yeah. And I see that David left a comment about a new SMTP plugin that just came out called SureMail that works with Yeah, he probably works for them.
[00:25:01.870] – Jonathan Denwood
You know what, David? You plug your plug in, David.
[00:25:06.760] – Nicole Ouellette
No, no.
[00:25:07.640] – Jonathan Denwood
No shame there. There’s an influencer called Adam Presler of WP Crafter, and he’s got one of the biggest YouTube channels. Adam’s a friend of mine. I think I’m still a friend of his. And that’s He’s got a great YouTube channel. He doesn’t make as many videos as he used to because he’s a very busy guy in it because he runs one of the biggest plugin companies in the WordPress space. He’s a cold director, but he still got one of the biggest YouTube channels. They seem to love Adam, not as much as me, but there we go. You just got to accept your place in life every year.
[00:26:01.670] – Nicole Ouellette
Some of us are Adams, and some of us are our Adam’s friends, and that’s okay. It’s a place for all of us here.
[00:26:11.950] – Jonathan Denwood
I try to be friendly to most people in the WordPress community. There’s a few people that don’t particularly like my English humor? They think I’m an actual total dickhead, but you can’t please everybody, can you, Nicole?
[00:26:24.120] – Nicole Ouellette
You really can’t. I’m a woman on the internet. I understand you cannot please everybody.
[00:26:29.330] – Jonathan Denwood
Trust me Lisa, I’m not selling Bitcoin to the President of Argentina. Why? This is it. There we go. That’s less of my English sarcasm. I think this is a good spot for us to have our break. When we come back, we’re going to be looking at some of the front-end newsletter editors and also some of the leading marketing optimization plugins on the market at the present moment. We will be back in a few moments, folks. We’re coming back. We’ve had a feast, a feast of WordPress and newsletter the googly goût. Hopefully I made some sense. But before we go into the second half, I want to throw it over to Nicole to explain her FAB, Social Media SaaS solution that will save you a load of time. Over to you, Nicole.
[00:27:32.210] – Nicole Ouellette
Absolutely. Are you tired of the dumpster fire that is now social media? Do you understand that you have to make videos for your content to be seen, and the idea of making even one more video makes you want to gouge your own eyes out? Don’t worry. I have a solution. Trenddescend. Com. I have a spreadsheet that is hundreds of lines. When I show it to people, they’re like, wow, that is an intense spreadsheet. And I’m like, I’m an intense person. So what I do is I have a spreadsheet and I’m tracking tracking trends across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. I find two a week. So on Mondays and on Wednesdays, I send out a text message. I’m like, here’s the trend. I show an example, and then I link to the trend on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok so people can add the audio, attach the audio so that it is more visible on that platform, and also a fun video idea. So if you want to do more video marketing, but don’t want to spend a ton of time on it, check out trenddesend. Com, and it starts at 49 bucks a month, and you get me twice a week in your text messages.
[00:28:38.880] – Nicole Ouellette
So what more could you want?
[00:28:42.410] – Jonathan Denwood
What more could you ask for? It’s a fab service. And you could be a little bit intense, but you’re pretty easygoing as well.
[00:28:51.660] – Nicole Ouellette
I’ve enjoyed. Oh, I mean, I’m not apologizing for the intensity. I’m just acknowledging it, because when I show people this spreadsheet, they’re like, whoa. You’re efficient I am. You’re very efficient. I love it. I love a spreadsheet. What can I say? Tell me about this next category of stuff that we’re learning.
[00:29:10.830] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s the front-end editor, if you want to make a newsletter a visually nice-looking newsletter rather than… There’s two ways to go here, folks. There’s a more plain-looking text with the odd picture orientated that has dominated the scene for a few years, mostly due that if you had a lot of images and a lot of text, it was supposed to trigger off Google spam engine, so your email didn’t get into the inbox. Now they’ve got the dreaded marketing folder, where all All email. I don’t actually… I do use Google, their domain, and I do have a Gmail account, but I always link it to a operating system, a Mel app. I’m a Mac person, so I’m using Mac Mel, so I don’t use a web-based inbox agent. So There we go. That was a bit of news that you probably didn’t want to know, but there we are. And so off we go. So the two are front-end editors, and one of the biggest, and we do offer this We do offer this as part of our hosting package, is Mel Poet. Now Mel Poet was bought… It’s a French company, I won’t hold that against them.
[00:30:57.930] – Jonathan Denwood
I got a duo rarity for the French. I love them, but I also hate them.
[00:31:04.340] – Nicole Ouellette
Because I’m English- You know that I’m French-Canadian, right? I do.
[00:31:10.110] – Jonathan Denwood
I love the French language, but you know. So Mel Poet, it’s owned by Automatic now, and they have a hybrid because they can also be the engine. They can actually send out. But you can also just use it as the editor and link it with the free engine sending services that we mentioned in the first part of the show. We are using Sendgrid at WP Tonic. So we offer Mel Poet if you want to build a nice visual newsletter with loads of branding, but it’s sent out or Sendgrid our partner. Nice. But Mel Poet does have their own ability to send it out. Now, the price I’ve given is just for the editor. It gets more, especially if you get over more than a couple of thousand emails per month, and you’re using Mailpoets sending engine, it can get pricey. But if you’re just using the editor, it’s It’s $96 a year. But if you host with WP Tonic, you get it for free, as long as you keep hosting with WP Tonic, right? And it works I use it, I’m going to be using Beefhide for some of mine, but I’ve got a old list, and I’ve got my newsletter all set up.
[00:32:54.210] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s drag and drop, and it’s a really nice editor, and it’s really easy to use, and you can really produce some really nice-looking, in design terms, newsletter templates, and it gives you some good analytics as well, and it’s a good solution, Nicole.
[00:33:14.010] – Nicole Ouellette
Nice. How do these solutions… So obviously, WordPress has the Gutenberg editor that you can drag and drop things into. There’s a certain amount of branding and stuff that you can do. But these solutions that we’re we’re going to be talking about, including Mail poet that you were just mentioning, how does it work within WordPress in terms of what is the WordPress tie in? Am I logging into Mail poet to design my newsletter, or is it integrated into my site?
[00:33:48.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s another great question, because you have a native solution, but some of these plugins take over the whole screen. Others integrate with the normal interface of WordPress. I think Mel Poey does a good job, where it takes a bit… It gives you an editor. Funny enough, it is drag and drop, and it’s an easy to use editor, and they give you… But it’s not utilizing pure Gutenberg blocks. It’s using… Even though it’s owned by automatic, they haven’t really done anything about the editor. I don’t hold that against them because the editor really works well and it has these drag and drop sections, and you can build something really very attractive. And actually the interface works. It’s not lacking in power, but it’s not overwhelming to use. So they found a good balance. So that’s probably why they’ve kept And it’s a nice system. The next one, which is the newsletter plugin, that uses Gutenberg blocks. So you’re going to get the normal Gutenberg editor that you’re utilizing, if you’re using Gutenberg, or a third party platform that’s based on Gutenberg technology. You’re going to get the blog screen that you are used to when you’re making your blog posts or your pages.
[00:35:40.580] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re going to get a very similar editor, which you don’t get with MailPoet. But you get a very similar interface, and they add newsletter blocks to this normal Gutenberg environment, which you can drag and build your newsletter. And it also So it also works really well. And once again, they don’t provide a third party email sending engine. You’ve got to set up it with something like Mailgun, Sendgrid, or postmark. But once again, it’s $69 a year, so it won’t bankrupt your kitty, will it, Nicole?
[00:36:22.750] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah. So how does the… Because I know when you send a marketing email, it has to be CanSpam compliant, so there has to be like a way to unsubscribe, and there has to typically be an address for the company in the mail. Does that compliance come in with these design solutions, or does that come in at the sending level? Does it slap that on the bottom with the sending engine?
[00:36:51.570] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s on both sides. See, with Mailpoet- Oh, perfect. With Mailpoet, because it’s a hybrid and it can also be the engine and also the editor, they provide a lot more functionality to set all those back up if you’re going to use their engine, or it will coexist with Sendgrid on to the other engines I mentioned. Then you put some of the detail. It senses that you’re using a third party. It has a list of third party email sending services that it will work All three, I don’t know for sure, but I’d be amazed if they’re not on the list that work with Mel Poet. It has a drop down and you select, you’re not utilizing their native sending engine. You’re going to use one of these. And then it provides the fields that you’ve mentioned. Oh, that’s awesome. I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty confident that the newsletter plugin would be the same, Nicole.
[00:37:57.210] – Nicole Ouellette
Nice. It seems like it would be in this in the design editor, but I wasn’t sure.
[00:38:02.770] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s in the setting.
[00:38:03.600] – Nicole Ouellette
It’s in the setting. There’s the SMV, the sending engine, and then the designer, the design program.
[00:38:09.780] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s the three stage.
[00:38:10.690] – Nicole Ouellette
I was thinking it as the three stages. I was just curious with them at what point that got inserted in because I’m obviously more familiar with the SaaS options that have existed for the years.
[00:38:22.100] – Jonathan Denwood
But if you’re not using something like WP tonic, if you’re using something like more rentable emails, web hosting like Kintster, WPEngine, Rocket. Net, they’re the free hosting providers I would recommend, especially if you got a membership or community focus, because you’re going to need decent hosting. They all provide starter plans around $30 to $40 a month at WP Tonic. We provide all the email and all these plugins and everything for 35. If you go annual, if you go month to month, we are a little bit more expensive. We’re 55, but we provide a lot more value in our opinion. But it’s not that difficult. You just need the SMTP plugin. You choose one of these sending services, you set up your account, and then you install one of these editors, and it will ask you, it will ask you for your username and password, or it will just use modern API key to link. You get the API key from Mel Gunn or Sendgrid, and you just put the API key in Mel Poet or newsletter, and then they communicate together. It’s not that hard, actually, Nicole.
[00:40:00.160] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, it’s not that hard for you, but if somebody’s ever done it before, right? But you do have services where you help people set this up, right?
[00:40:06.390] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s part of your value. We provide it. On to the next thing. So Mel Poet, and there’s a number of others out there, for the price, these two solutions are outlined that rock solid, in my opinion, and I experience with them. Now, there’s a whole different level here. There’s the whole level of marketing optimization. What do I mean by that? Well, that’s when you got a landing page and you got a lead magnet, and you’re asking somebody to sign up to get the lead magnet because you want their name and email. Then you’re going to send a series of email to that person, offering, hopefully, more value that induces them maybe to buy a course or a digital product that you’re selling. Very legitimate, as long as you’re offering value and you’re totally clear about what you’re doing, right? Now, this was the area, like I said, in the first half, where WordPress was really lacking. You really had to use a SaaS service. This has completely changed now over the last few years. They are now, and I’m only point now, too. There’s about another free services out there, but they’re all owned by one company, and that company, I’m not going to mention them by name, but they offer good solutions, but the actual company business practices I’m not very eager on.
[00:42:05.180] – Jonathan Denwood
And what I mean by this is they offer a very deep discount for the first year, and then it doubles when the following year.
[00:42:17.090] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, I hate that.
[00:42:19.010] – Jonathan Denwood
But unfortunately, because of this company’s success, a lot of other plugin providers in the WordPress platform have adopted this form of marketing and price structure. I’m totally against it. My understanding that there’s about half a dozen to eight states in America where it’s actually illegal to do this. But unfortunately, they don’t… Because this company is not doing business in these states, that they get away with it. That’s my understanding.
[00:42:59.280] – Nicole Ouellette
Interesting.
[00:43:00.690] – Jonathan Denwood
But the two that I’m going to talk about don’t engage in this practice to the extent. Another element is the leading membership plugin, which I don’t recommend that you use a membership plugin this company owns. And they did something that was really outrageous. If your subscription runs out on this plugin, you choose not to renew, you can’t log in the membership plugin, so you can’t have access to your students, to your subscribers. You can only get access to it if you resubscribe. I’ve never known that. Normally, if you don’t renew a plugin, it will keep on working until there’s some updates, some security update or something, and then it might stop working because that’s what you’re really paying for, support and updates. Well, Well, they went, If you stop paying, you can’t even log in to your own data.
[00:44:06.220] – Nicole Ouellette
It’s so gross.
[00:44:07.680] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m not very eager on this company.
[00:44:10.090] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, I’m not eager on… I know what company you’re talking about, and I’m not eager on them either.
[00:44:14.690] – Jonathan Denwood
No. But these two are fine. I think both that I’ve chosen here, they provide a level of marketing interface and optimization that’s the equivalent or better than Active Campaign. I think you would agree that active campaign is still seen as one of the leaders in the SaaS marketing optimization area. Would you agree with that?
[00:44:42.280] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, for sure.
[00:44:44.550] – Jonathan Denwood
There’s some others. There’s Keep. I would not recommend Keep as a SaaS. It’s based on the same company as Confusionsoft, as I call them, Infusionsoft. Diaborical company, in my opinion. And there’s companies like Drip and some others that really are more focused on e-commerce market. They work with Shopify or WuCommerce. But These two are going to talk about, I think, there’s a lot more competition for active campaign, but I think ActiveCampaign has a dominance in the SaaS marketing optimization. It’s a great company. They have put their prices up considerably over the last 18 months, considerably. I’ve known a few people that were using Active Campaign and have moved to these two that we’re going to be talking about because of the price savings people are making. Let’s start off with the first one that we highly recommend, and that’s Fluent CRM. It’s from the company that does the Fluent SMTP free plugin, and they do have a dominance. It comes with a very similar interface in building your marketing optimizations that what Active Campaign use. They also got a newsletter section where you can build a newsletter, and it does work. I don’t think it’s not as intuitive as Mel Poet or newsletter plugin.
[00:46:33.920] – Jonathan Denwood
And I think they added it because people said, Well, we don’t want to jump out. We got used to this. Can’t you provide it? And it works fine. And you can build a nice… It’s not as polished. But the same thing could be said about active campaign. Active Campaign. Active Campaign in building your marketing optimization works well. They also added a newsletter, and it’s not the greatest.
[00:47:02.220] – Nicole Ouellette
I feel like when I get an email from Active Campaign, I can tell just by looking at it that it’s from Active Campaign. I feel like they have a certain look to them. That feels a little, I don’t know, like those long sales pages or something. It has a similar vibe to me.
[00:47:20.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think with Active Campaign, it’s really meant for people that are text-based news letter with some images. They’re not built, they’re not… I think we’ve had a furry friend join us. We’ve had one of Nicole’s. I saw a tail. You must watch the video, folks. Go over to the WP Tonic YouTube channel.
[00:47:42.760] – Nicole Ouellette
The tail’s been going back a little bit.
[00:47:44.880] – Jonathan Denwood
And watch the furry friends join us. It’s very entertaining. You see the odd tell appearing from nowhere. It’s a very strong product from a really good team, and it’s not a ridiculous You do need to set it up with one of these engines that was talking about Sendgrid, Mailgun, or Mailgun, Sendgrid, or Postmark. They don’t provide a sending service. You got to link it. They provide the front-end. They provide the building editor to build the optimizations. It’s a really good visual engine that they’re a visual platform. A one-site license is $103. I’m going to repeat myself again. We provide this as part of WP Tonics hosting. You get this as part of our hosting package, so you don’t have to cough up 103 per year, but it’s a great product. Any questions, Nicole?
[00:48:53.270] – Nicole Ouellette
No, no. It makes sense to me.
[00:48:55.670] – Jonathan Denwood
On to the next one. And this is another Actually, when it comes to actual interface UX design, I actually think it’s actually a little bit better than Fluent CRM. But where Fluent is, that Fluent is really rock solid, and it has a lot of the other plugins in the WordPress platform. They have made sure that they work with Fluent CRM, and it’s got about seven to eight years, no, from six years, and it’s really rock solid. But this one, other one, WP Funnel, the actual UX interface, I actually think is more polished than Fluent. It’s actually better when it comes to UX design than active campaign. I think Fluent CRM is the equivalent when it comes to interface design to active campaign. But I actually think WP Funnel has a better interface to actually build your marketing optimization. What they didn’t provide, they chose, and I understood why they did it. The reason why they did it, Nicole, first of all, what did they do? They added a newsletter builder, but they added it as a as a different product. When you go to the WP Funnel, you have one price for WP Funnel, and then you have a price for another product called Melmint.
[00:50:43.290] – Jonathan Denwood
You can buy both singly or you can buy both the two together. That’s a bit confusing, isn’t it, Nicole?
[00:50:51.880] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, is Mailment, is it serving as the engine versus the builder? No, it isn’t.
[00:50:56.510] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s just the visual newsletter builder. They provide a very large library, really nice-looking template. Why did they do this? Well, when they were launching it and trying to get traction, they did a massive marketing deal with AppSumma. And a load of people bought, but it was only for WP Funnel. And they have on it, it was a lifetime deal. And they’ve honored it. They haven’t welched on… They got a load of WordPress developers to buy in. And I think they chose to do… I’m only surmising this, it’s only my opinion. They added the newsletter and they didn’t want to provide it as part of the lifetime deal that they had provided through AppSuma, so they decided to do it as a separate product. At WP Tonic, you get both We provide both. I did a special deal with them, and they gave me a lifetime license for both products, and if you want to choose that. If you got both, a single site would cost you almost $200, and you get that totally free if you host with WP tonic. Like I say, the marketing optimization interface and the newsletter builder are both very polished, Nicole.
[00:52:30.100] – Jonathan Denwood
They’ve done a really excellent job. So either of these would do a great job. Any questions, Nicole?
[00:52:40.630] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, okay, so I understand the two marketing automations you mentioned which I think are universal for any business listening to this, which is like when someone signs up for a free thing, for it to automatically email them the link to the free thing, and then an onboarding series of emails. Do you feel like there is a certain like, automation or email sequence that membership companies or sites should be taking advantage of that they’re not. That might be helpful.
[00:53:10.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you both integrate, both have tight integrations with the free learning management systems that I mentioned, Lifter LMS, LearnDash, and Tuta LMS. Both these have pre-built, or you can use an add-on which they’ve freely that we give you access to that will communicate with these free leading learning management plugins. When somebody finishes a course, they’re sent a Gratcha certificate and they can also be sent other things. A lot of these learning management systems, they have certain triggers that sends out transactional email in built into them, but you can switch those off, and then it will work with one of these two tools that I’ve outlined, and you can do a lot more sophisticated sub-list. Also, you can do when a student has only finished a certain and seems not to be finishing the course, you can send them a… You can do a lot more sophisticated email marketing by switching off the inbuilt optimizations that most of these learning management plugins provide and utilize one of the two of these two specific tools that I’ve mentioned. But yes, they are tightly integrated with these leading learning management system plugins, Nicole.
[00:54:45.940] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, yeah, and I guess what I was wondering, and I didn’t ask it well, is like, so, for example, maybe there’s an automation where if somebody hasn’t logged into the course in a week, you can send a check-in email or something. Is there Is there membership automizations, I can say it, that you feel like- You haven’t been drinking either, have you? No, just coffee. But are there these automizations that you feel like An example, one that you feel like a membership website.
[00:55:21.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Actually, I can’t, actually, because you got me on the spot there. One doesn’t come to mind. Oh, yeah, no problem. But I tell you that if you’re using Fluent CRM and also WP Funnelz. I felt both. What the great thing is that the founders, the actual owners of both these are their Facebook groups. And if you have a problem, I don’t know how they find the time, especially the owner Jules is his first name. Both these companies are based in India or Pakistan or Bangladesh. I But they are all very friendly, and they all have Facebook groups that are totally free. And you can put in a ticket, not a ticket, but a suggestion or a general problem. And a lot of the times you get the founder of the company and fluent As the company is a very large, he has over, I think he’s almost got from 300 to 500 employees, and he’s the nicest guy possible. And the people at WP Funnelz, I found very responsive. And I’ve suggested a marketing optimization. We got a request from a client, and they’ve actually done it for us, and they’ve been built into the system.
[00:56:41.330] – Jonathan Denwood
You would never, never get that with ActiveCampaign.
[00:56:45.610] – Nicole Ouellette
Never.
[00:56:46.870] – Jonathan Denwood
So that’s one of the attractive things of utilizing the native solution. I didn’t add it to the list, but the final product, which is a bit of a high bread is a solution called WP Fusion. It’s quite an expensive plugin. For a single site, I think it starts at around 300 plus. You get that also as part of your hosting package at WP tonic. The developer, the founder of WP Fusion, is a fantastic developer, Jack, and he’s a friend of mine. He’s just a fantastic developer, and he’s built a very strong business. What does WP Fusion does? It does work with the two native solutions I’ve outlined, and it adds even more power. But where it really works is it communicates with WordPress, with SaaS-based marketing optimization solutions, like Active Campaign, like Keep, like Drip, and some of them more higher, like Salesforce HubSpot. So if you got a WordPress website for your association, nonprofit or medium to semi-large company, and you got a WordPress website, and you want… When people do certain actions on the WordPress website, but you’re invested in something like active campaign HubSpot or Salesforce, and you want your forms on your website to really work with these external SaaS marketing optimization platforms, and you need a rock solid communication solution, that’s what WP Fusion provides, and it’s rock solid.
[00:58:51.560] – Jonathan Denwood
And so it means that you don’t have to… Because what the problem is, a lot HubSpot… Actually HubSpot provides It’s one of the better WordPress plugins. But I found even with HubSpot, and especially with Salesforce or a number of these other SaaS-based marketing optimization platforms, they’re Their WordPress plugins aren’t updated very regular, and they’re very low down on the priority scale of most of these SaaS companies. You’re better off using WP diffusion if making sure that optimizations that start on your WordPress website and you’re committed to a SaaS solution. Let’s face it, HubSpot and Salesforce are very popular. You have a rock solid solution. Have I explained? Do you think I’ve explained that?
[00:59:50.660] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, no, I think it’s great. I’m looking at their site now and it’s like there’s trigger points of registration, and then you can tag them as a member, and the lesson completed, and you can tag them as an active learner. That’s a cool… It makes sense.
[01:00:05.750] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Well, that’s the other… Just to finish off, that’s the other thing. We flew in CRM and WP Funnel, they give you the option to be list-based or tag-based. And the tagging solution, it’s best to go tag solution rather than list-based. What I mean is to have sublists. It can get very limiting on the marketing optimization you can do. If you’re list-based, it’s best to be tag-based. So you give a person a specific tag, and that individual in your database could have a number of tags, and depending on which tag or mixture of tags they’ve got could trigger off a marketing optimization. Sequence. So it’s best. With WP Fusion, the tagging system that comes native with both these solutions is pretty good. But if you add, even if you’re using these native solutions, if you add WP Fusion to the mixture, it puts the tagging power on steroids. It actually triples the amount of possible tags and the functionality you have available. But it’s only worthwhile if If you’ve got a sizable list and you’re doing very sophisticated marketing optimizations that really do show that they have a return on the investment of time and energy.
[01:01:42.570] – Jonathan Denwood
A lot of people get sucked into this whole world too soon and they spend too much time on it, and the return on the investment really isn’t there, but it’s interesting, and they’re into WordPress and they love all this technology and they really get sucked into it. But when you’re building your membership website, it’s great that you got all this, but you really want to do it gradually and not get sucked in too early. But the amount of power by utilizing these solutions on WordPress now, in my opinion, outmatches even the most sophisticated SaaS solutions out there. Absolutely.
[01:02:29.090] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, and if you think When you think about tagging a subscriber, right? Either the subscriber has to tag themselves, they fill out a form and they check some boxes, which tags them a certain way. You have to go in and tag them, or something has to trigger a tag being created. And I think asking the user to do it is asking them to make longer, asking you to do it. At first, I think it’s It’s good for you to do it because before you automate it, it’s really important that you understand how you want to organize people, and you might change that as you’re building your list. But ultimately, as your list, as you, like you said, as you get bigger and start thinking about automation, something like this is great.
[01:03:19.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, fluent is pretty flexible. You can start with a list and then move to tag. But I think to get your head from the start, it’s best to use tags. But I’m saying this: I’ve got a straightforward system, and it’s list-based, but I’ve got a very… But if I got into marketing optimization, I’d be doing reasonably well with WP-Tonic but not getting thousands of inquiries every week. Sure, yes. I get a dozen every week, and half of them turn into hosting clients. But we are a boutique hosting provider. I’m not trying to become GoDaddy, or I’m just trying to build a… But Bonnie and people that sign up with us usually stay with us, so we don’t have a lot of people… We’re not a leaky bucket. So I think- Well, right. Any last questions?
[01:04:27.840] – Nicole Ouellette
No, I think it’s nice to know that there’s a solution that will grow with you if your needs change. So you can start with something like this and know, even if you’re not ready for a WP Fusion crazy tagging system, that it exists when you are prepared for it.
[01:04:47.310] – Jonathan Denwood
They also provide by utilizing the tagging system, WP Fusion with Lifter or LearnDash; you get micro-accessibility control. All these learning management systems have access control rules. But if you combine it with WP Fusion, you get micro control and micro-accessibility. So you can have one bit of your course accessible at a certain level. This comes into play when you’ve got sub-trainers, you’re selling packages to third-party companies, and you’re selling so many seats, giving them so much access to certain parts of pre-established core structures, and they have increased access. But this is more business-to-business, requires more corporate training, and requires micro-assessability control. But you can get that by combining the free learning management systems with WP Fusion. That’s cool. Blimey, I’m burnt out. I’ve been talking too much, am I, Nick? No, no. I learned- It’s been relaxing for you, isn’t it, Nicole?
[01:06:18.410] – Nicole Ouellette
No, I’ve learned things, and I’ve had fun. So that’s all we can ask.
[01:06:23.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Hopefully, I haven’t lost too many of the people. I’ve tried to keep it understandable. I think I’ve been reasonably successful. Nicole, what’s the best way for people to learn more about you and what you’re up to?
[01:06:37.650] – Nicole Ouellette
You can visit my website for technical support. Com. I also provide technical support to Nicole, N-I-C-O-L-E, across various social media channels.
[01:06:49.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and think about signing up for the newsletter, folks. It’s a great resource. Also, join the Facebook Group and the Membership Machine show, but sign up for the newsletter, which you can get at Wp-tonic. Com/newsletter. We’ll be back next week with more knowledge, more marketing, WordPress, SaaS, and anything we think will help you build a thriving, membership, community-focused website. In 2025, we will be back next week. See you soon, folks. Bye. Bye.. Bye. Bye.
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