Buttondown vs. Omnisend

Omnisend began in 2014 as an email marketing platform called Soundest. Its mission from day one has been to put ecommerce marketers at the center of every decision it makes. At the time, that meant empowering marketers with simple yet impactful email marketing tools. Three years later, Omnisend expanded from an email service provider to an omnichannel marketing automation platform. Still, at its core, Omnisend is a one-stop solution for ecommerce businesses. This can be seen in its addition of SMS and web push notification features. Omnisend’s notable features include:

• Email template library 
• Pre-built ecommerce workflows and a drag-and-drop automation editor 
• Segmentation 
• Integrations 
• Reports 
• Drag-and-drop email builder
• AI-assisted customer lifecycle segmentation

Omnisend was built specifically with online stores in mind, providing specialized features that drive sales and improve customer retention. Using it can instantly impact the effectiveness of your email marketing, as its features are complex yet intuitive and don’t have a steep learning curve. Omnisend makes building emails fast and simple for users with its email template library. Templates are beneficial because they allow marketers to quickly put together eye-catching emails without needing to know how to code. Within its email builder feature, Omnisend offers an intuitive drag-and-drop feature. Users can customize their templates by rearranging content blocks to fit their personal design and style aesthetics. Like most of its features, this tool is ecommerce-focused by including built-in blocks like discount codes and recommended products.

Omnisend's segmentation tools allow you to segment customers by recent behavior and purchase history. Segmentation is crucial for email marketing campaigns because it helps you find out your subscribers' interests and behavior. These insights take away the guesswork because now, with this data, you know exactly what your subscribers like and what they want. Good use of segmentation features can boost open rates, revenue growth, and subscriber retention. In this case, Omnisend’s segmentation tool is made to filter your audience based on a variety of transactional events and purchase behaviors. Through this tool, you can generate detailed reports for all your email marketing campaigns. 

You need to monitor data to analyze the effectiveness of your campaign. Omnisend’s reporting feature documents sales, campaign, automation, and deliverability data. Within their advanced reporting, only available to Pro Plan customers, users can see channel trends. The channel trend showcases the same data but puts it all in one place to compare campaign performance. While they have improved their reporting, the data collection is not a standout among its competitors. 

Buttondown is built for everyone, including small, medium, and large businesses, nonprofits, bloggers, authors, and more! Whoever you are and whatever you do, Buttondown is here for your success. We offer powerful core email marketing features that encourage connection while at the same time utilizing automation and data to elevate your newsletter, at a fraction of the cost! Our plans begin at a low cost of $9/mo. Your newsletter will continuously benefit from our intuitive editor, marketing automation, analytics, integrations, surveys, and segmentation tools. 

We understand that personalization is key to standing out in an inbox. Our in-depth segmentation feature breaks down behavioral metrics such as platform usage, location, open rate, and click-through rates, making it simpler to drive conversions and engagement. By tailoring content to your audiences’ interests and preferences, you’re increasing engagement and nurturing relationships, which decreases unsubscriber rates. You can also monitor key performance insights with our powerful analytics feature to ensure that your campaigns are reaching their full potential.

Although Omnisend offers automation tools, many of the features are geared towards SMS--not ideal if you prioritize email, like us. Why do you need automation? Email automation makes marketing workflows a breeze. Automation creates workflows that eliminate manual repetitive tasks, like “welcome” emails. As a business owner or creator, your time is valuable and should be spent on other important tasks. Our automation tool allows you to create triggers. Triggers are a specific date, event, or contact’s activity that tells your system to send out a related message. Setting up triggers, such as deploying a “welcome” email for each new subscriber, contributes to improved engagement and relationships. Email automation also allows you to scale your strategy. With Buttondown, you can do more by doing less.

We offer what Omnisend doesn’t. Want to implement paid subscriptions with no service fees? You got it. You keep every dollar you earn. Want to keep your subscribers engaged? Use our comment feature to keep the conversation going and build community. Tempted to switch over, but don’t want to deal with moving your list? We will do it for you! No extra cost. Privacy is a top priority to us, which is why we will keep your and your subscribers' information to ourselves.

At Buttondown, we believe that the best campaigns come from a collaborative effort, which is why we offer teams! Teams is the easiest way for you to invite friends and collaborators to proofread your emails, manage your subscribers, and set up administrative details like webhooks and custom domains. Unlike the majority of ESPs, Buttondown makes it easy to own your brand by offering whitelabeling. We don't need to advertise ourselves in your newsletter. It's your newsletter, not our business. Plus, Buttondown’s deliverability is among the highest in the industry, and our spam protection is best-in-class!

We prefer to keep everything transparent and straightforward, especially our prices. Check out how we compare to Omnisend.

Omnisend wants email to be boring. At Buttondown, we aim to make building your newsletter easy, enjoyable, and affordable. Our biggest concern is your long-term satisfaction and success. You won’t find any other ESP more dedicated to your needs than Buttondown.