Email Jeet [review]

Hey everyone Brett here and today Im taking a look at Email Jeet.

This one was a tough one for me. You see its being released by Radu Hahaianu and  Cyral Gupta. The problem is that I have worked with Radu before with me promoting for him and him promoting for me and I would really like to continue to do so. Also I respect him as a marketer and developer. I also respect Cyral as a developer and have really liked some of his other software.

I struggled with this review for several days. However as always my first loyalty has to be to my readers and I have to be totally honest and say exactly what I think. I just hope that Radu and Cyral will not take this review as a personal attack because it is not intended to be in any way.

Ok so what exactly is Email Jeet? Well its a desktop email software that the creators claim is better than using an auto responder for 3 main reasons. 1) No monthly fees like auto responders. 2) No down time 3) No restriction on list imports. In fact here is a cut out from a sales page preview I was given.

Ok so lets take each one these things first before we move on to looking at the software itself.

First no monthly fees: This is sort of true but not really. You see the software itself does not actually send emails. You have to use an outside service to send the emails. There are several options it supports such as MailGun, Amazon SES, SendGrid, PostMark and MailJet. It also supports SMTP so you can send emails from your own web server (if you have one).

Of these sending options only SMTP is free. The other options are all paid services that will charge you on a per email or monthly basis. Sometimes these fees may be lower but depending on the number of emails you send out you may actually pay more by using these services then if you just used a autoresponder. This is because these services charge on a per email basis not based on your list size.

For example: One of my lists has about 3,700 subscribers on it and I mail to it about 20 times a month. This means I send out  74000 emails per month to this list. Using MailChimp I pay $50 per month for the 2801-5000 subscribe tier with unlimited sends. However using Email Jeet with Mailjet I would need to pay per email and my monthly charges would be $51.49.

Now this is only a little more than my auto responder and in many cases, for many people the price will be lower than an auto responder cost. For example if your sending less number of times a month it will be lower. Also some of the other services have better pricing. For example in the scenario above Mailgun would charge me $32. The point though is that these services are in no way free and while it is technically not a monthly fee since your paying per email, if you plan on sending regularly to your list, you will in effect be paying monthly. The whole ‘no monthly fee’ part is misleading at best.

Now there is a option to send via SMTP on your own server / host. This is totally free. However there are problems that make this not really a viable option. You see since Email Jeet is a desktop software and not a web software it has no unsubscribe functionality built into it. The only unsubscribe functionality provided is the default functionality from using one of the paid services such as Mailgun. This does not exist with using SMTP and since it does not exist in the software either there is no way for people getting your emails to unsubscribe if you use SMTP. What this also means is that this option is not can spam compliant. In effect if you are using this option you are a spammer. Not good.

Second no restrictions on importing: This is true to a fault. You see since this is your own software running on your own computer there is no one to tell you that you cant import a list. Unfortunately this also means that its the only way to get a list onto your software. There is no API integration. You cant put a form on a squeeze page or your site for example and have it go onto your list automatically like you can with an autoresponder. You have to use some other 3rd party software that saves your signups to a .text file or .csv file and then manually add them to the software regularly. This is caused by the fact that this is desktop software and not web based software. Had it been web based they could have had an API or a form builder. But they chose to go the less desirable desktop route.

While we are on the subject of list importing we might as well also talk about list management with this software. Its terrible.  There is no way to even see the emails on your list. As I said the only way to add emails is to import. This is true if you even want to add a single subscriber. You have to put the email in a text file and import it into the software. If you want to delete a subscriber you have to put the email into a text file and import it with the delete option. Its terrible. Why could they not just let you see your subscriber list and have an input field to add a new subscriber to the list and perhaps a check box next to each subscriber to delete them from the list? Honestly I cant think of any valid reason why they chose to totally ignore list management.

Even worse than that there is no click or stat tracking built into the software. There is no email open tracking built into the software. The only tracking to be had is if you log into the sending service you are using and view it there. There is no info in the software itself. I found it very annoying that I have to use a desktop software to send my emails and then log in somewhere else to view the results of the send.

The third thing is no down time:  A while back there where some issues where a few of the well know autoresponders went down for short periods of time (30min – 1 hour and very rarely a little more). So what they are trying to do is play on that and say that using this software you never have to worry about down time. Well first of all the autoresponders rarely go down and the issues they had a bit ago was a rare occurrence. Second this software uses 3rd party services to do the sending. Even the SMTP option uses your host. Well those services can go down as well. There is no way that the creators of this product can say no down time when their product relies on a 3rd party integration which can go down. I mean they use computers that are subject to failure just like the autoresponders. This statement is silly and its a sly play on peoples fears to try to get sales.

Ok so now that we covered the claims that they make lets take a look at the software itself:

One of the first things I noticed about this software when I opened it is there is no help section build into the software. Im using Windows and I can honestly say I have never seen a Windows desktop software that has no help menu in it. Even something very basic like Notepad has a help menu in the header. The creators of this did tell me there is tutorials in the download area but really why do they need to be there and if they must be online why cant they have a help button or menu item that when clicked opens your browser and takes you to the online tutorials. Its a small thing but it shows a lack of attention to detail in the software’s overall design.

I already reported about the very poor list management functionality and the lack of any type of in software reporting so I wont repeat that again and will instead focus on the actual email editor.

This has the ability to send out HTML emails but the editor is not true WYSIWYG. You have to enter HTML code and then press the preview button to see what your email will look like. It would have been much better if the editor was split into two sections. The input section and the live preview that updates as you type. Also again there is a problem with this being desktop software in that any graphics you want to add to your email (such as a logo) must be hosted somewhere else, and you then enter the URL into the HTML code.

Perhaps the worst thing  about this editor though is there is no way to save a template. What I mean is that when sending out emails your likely to want them to be formatted similar with similar logo graphics, background etc. It would be great if you could use the HTML editor to make a template and then save it for later use so all you have to do is fill in the text content of your email. But there is no way to save a template at all. Not cool.

I spoke to Cyril a lot about this software and made several change suggestions. Now to his credit he did integrate some of them. But frankly there are to many problems with this software for him to make all the changes I suggested. One change he did integrate can be seen in the screenshot. At the very bottom you can see there is a throttling option when sending emails. This is required when using the SMTP option to prevent you from having problems with your hosting. It did not exit however until I pointed this out.

In the conversation it seems that he knew that SMTP would require throttling. So I have to wonder. Why didnt he include it in the first place without me and that other guy (who ever he is) having to ask for it?

While they want you to believe that buying this is going to save you the cost of paying an autoresponder the simple fact is that this comes with costs of its own and has such limited functionality that it is in no way a viable replacement for an autoresponder. In fact Cyril agrees with me that this is in no way a replacement for an autoresponder.

A supplement to your autoresponder? Thats just silly. Its like saying I should buy a bus pass when I own a car. Why would I buy a poorer quality service (that also has fees) when Im already paying for a better and more functional service anyway? Also if this is not a replacement for the autoresponder than why are they saying on the sales page:

Well why would they even ask you if your sick of paying autoresponder fees if by their own thinking this does not eliminate the need for an autoresponder? I just dont get it.

The simple fact is that because this is desktop software and not web based it is so limited that it is never going to replace a real autoresponder. Its only real use is if you happen to have a email list that you want to import and mail to. But even then MailChimp allows list imports without a double optin. They also have a totally free plan for anyone with under 2K subscribers and 12,000 email sends each month.

Besides the list import (which for most people is not a big problem) the only other use is if the autoresponders go down (but that rarely happens and this uses 3rd party services which can also go down). I guess it could be useful if your autoresponder bans you. But if they do ban you then your probably a spammer and not a marketer anyway. In which case this would be a good spamming tool.  But for the real email marketer this is not a very viable tool in my opinion.

Again I want to be clear that the major reason for its deficiencies is the fact that its desktop software. I think the concept of not using an autoresponder is a very good one but this is very limited in its functionality by the fact that its not web based.

Sorry Radu and Cyril. I have promoted for you before an I hope to do so again in the future. But this time I have to say:

 A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.

About the Author

Brett Rutecky

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Brett Rutecky is a full time online marketer, web developer, and entrepreneur. He has developed scores of Facebook apps, dozens of custom web sites and hundreds of scripts.

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