SendFox Review: Great for Getting Started with Email Marketing

There's a new player entering the email marketing game: SendFox. SendFox is a product creatd by the Sumo family of companies who also run AppSumo (a great place to get lifetime deals on software), KingSumo, etc. 

With so many different (and fantastic) email marketing options out there, what could possibly make a new entry to the market worth checking out?

In this review I'm going to highlight why I'm switching many of my companies over to SendFox, and why you should definitely give it your attention.

SendFox Embraces Simplicity

SendFox is not trying to compete with MailChimp, ConvertKit, Aweber, etc., when it comes to their features. They've come right out and said they will not have the same features. Instead, SendFox is embracing what truly matters most: Content and growing your list.

Email Editor

While you can still embed beautiful images, there isn't an email designer. Right now there isn't even an HTML email editor. You have a WYSIWYG editor -- with the ability to paste in formatting from Word and Google Docs, etc., but otherwise it's a straight text editor.

SendFox Simplicity

Studies out there show that simple emails convert just as well as the over-the-top glossy and designed emails. Some of the biggest names out there in this space are sending simple text emails with a few graphics embedded. That's all you truly need.

If, however, you desire a drag-and-drop visual editor like MailChimp or Constant Contact, then SendFox is not the tool for you.

Interface

The interface in SendFox is, quite honestly, refreshing. Although I've come to be an expert in MailChimp and ConvertKit, the interfaces are still overwhelming. SendFox literally literally has 5 links at the top and they lead to 5 different things you can do. That's it! 

I really like how clean it looks. When I open SendFox I can go straight to writing my emails. I'm not distracted or overwhelmed. It's always a very pleasant experience.

Automation & Important Features

Though simple in its feature offering and design, SendFox is robust enough to give me everything I want from an email service provider.

Email Automation

Email automation is a really important feature to me. When someone joins a specific list from an opt-in, I want to send them a specific email. When they interact with something in that email, I'd like the ability to add them to another list and continue with sending them automated emails. SendFox can do all of those things! 

SendFox Drip Marketing

You can also created a series of emails that send at specified intervals. This is often referred to as 'drip marketing'. For example, someone signs up for a lead magnet on your website. You can have SendFox send the automated email reply with the lead magnet, then begin sending that user a series of on-boarding emails over the span of a few weeks.

SendFox does not have more advanced or robust features that you'd find in something like ConvertKit. You won't find any integrations with your website or monitor actions with cookies, etc. Automations are simply time or email-action (clicks, opens, etc) based.

Contacts Count Against Your Quota Only Once

In SendFox there's really only one way to tag, segment, or categorize a user and that's through adding them to lists. In some email providers, a contact counts against your quota of contacts multiple times if they are in multiple lists. In SendFox, a user can belong to any number of lists.

While this does technically satisfy my desire to segment my email list based on their interests, I would prefer to tag users and then email all of my users who are tagged. I think at this point it's purely semantics -- a list or a tag it makes no difference in functionality -- but my mind has an easier time wrapping around the idea of a tag.

Multiple Domains / Businesses in One Account

The biggest feature to push me over the edge and get me to swap over to SendFox is the ability to send from any number of domains. My SendFox account isn't just tied to Convology. I can have lists for my wife's business and my other businesses too! Each of the emails and automations are sent from whatever email I specify (and can validate those domains as well).

While not something I plan to do too extensively (because it would get crowded and confusing), it's still possible. And it's a heck of a lot cheaper than having multiple email marketing accounts with drip and automation.

SendFox Integrates with Zapier

While I don't use Zapier with any of my email services, you might! SendFox integrates with Zapier to do just about anything you'd want.

Landing Pages and Forms

Two features worth mentioning (as they are the only features beyond email sending) are the landing pages and forms you can create. They're simple, but get the job done. If you are a content creator exclusively on Youtube or Instagram, you may not have a website. That can pose a bit of a problem if you want to grow an email list, but not if you have SendFox. You can simply create a landing page branded entirely to you. 

sendfox landing pages

If you don't already have a way to gather leads on your website (like Thrive Leads), you can simply use the embeddable forms from SendFox. These can be completely customized with CSS. And YES, SendFox works great with Thrive Leads! (Look for a post real soon on this.)

Affordable, Life-time Offer

Right now SendFox has a LIFETIME deal going on AppSumo. For just $49 you can have up to 5,000 contacts across an unlimited number of lists. You can stack codes for more contacts. I bought the lifetime deal they had going back in Alpha/Beta of their product (months ago) and I haven't regretted that purchase once. As you can see, I'm quite fond of SendFox.

Stop spending $15, $75, $150 a month to send emails! That's one less subscription I have to worry about.

  • Diogo says:

    Hi
    Thanks a lot for this review, i use thrivecart as my payment / shopping solution and elementor, can i still integrate with sendfox?
    All the best

    • Doug says:

      Hi Diogo,

      I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to use SendFox. SendFox has all the API connection stuff needed. If there wasn’t a direct integration, you could do something with Zapier.

      • Diogo Castro says:

        Hi Doug 🙂

        Thanks for the reply, i mean, for example, custom fields for example, can we use them in sendfox?

        Best regards,
        Diogo

        • Doug says:

          Hi Diogo –
          I do not believe custom fields work in SendFox. I haven’t found a way to add any custom field data into a user’s contact information / profile.

  • Naomi says:

    Hi! Thanks so much for your reviews – very helpful! I wonder if you have any thoughts on deliverability with SendFox vs. others, like Mail Chimp? Do you notice any difference? Thank you again!

    • Doug says:

      Hi Naomi,

      I used Mailchimp and ConvertKit prior to using SendFox. I haven’t noticed any drop in deliverability. Very high and reliable.

    • It uses Sendgrid under the hood, so it will have whatever deliverability they have (which should be very good)

  • Bianca says:

    Thanks for this great review. I’ve been using Mailchimp’s free version, but was curious about the Sendfox deal. Now that my husband wants to start building an email list too, we’re thinking about getting a joined account on Sendfox. Your review made the differences much clearer to us ??

    • Doug says:

      Hi Bianca, glad to hear my review was helpful! Good luck with your joint email account! 🙂

  • Does it work on high volumes ie 5 million a month?

  • Boyce Eggert says:

    Can you use variables from a csv such as first name or company name? My lists are LinkedIn exports

    • Doug says:

      Right now SendFox only support Email, First Name, and Last Name. SendFox is meant to be a very accessible email marketing tool rather than a CRM. If you’re looking for a more robust email marketing / crm / funnel building tool then you’ll definitely want to check out ConvertKit.

  • Dave says:

    Hi Doug,

    Do you know if Send Fox can automatically remove someone from a list based on an action? For example if they make a purchase, so that would then remove them from a nurture/sales sequence for that product or service.

    • Doug says:

      Hey Dave,

      I can’t think of any easy way to do this. There’s a plugin that I recently saw in the WordPress plugin repository for SendFox (unofficial, I believe) that lets you push people from WordPress and WooCommerce into SendFox. You might check that out, but I have a feeling it’s just pushing people into tags. Removing people from lists based on being added to other lists is likely a level of automation you’ll have to use something like ConvertKit to find.

      • Dave says:

        Thanks Doug, whilst having a look on the AppSumo product page, I came across this answer from Dave at SendFox: “You can have as many automations as you want, you can move people to a secondary automation based on certain actions, you can remove people from an automation based on a certain action, and lots more.” That seems to say that you can, but I can’t find anyway of doing it. I’ve contacted their support to ask how. I’ll let you know if it’s possible when they reply.

        • Dave says:

          After a bit of back & forth to make myself understood, I’ve received this response:
          “…unfortunately, we don’t have a feature that allows you to removed contacts from an automation if they were added to your Buyers list. Sorry about this inconvenience.

          We don’t have this feature on the roadmap but I’ll make sure to add it to our feature request doc for the product team to consider adding in the future.

          Thanks for understanding and if there is anything else you need, please let me know.”

          Fingers crossed that it gets added in future. For now I can do it manually I guess. As my list isn’t large and sales aren’t that frequent.

          • Dave says:

            Hi Doug,

            Another update – I’ve resolved this issue and it’s actually thanks to you. I watched your videos on “How to use send fox with WishList Member” and the one about “Thrive Cart, WL-Member, Send Fox & Thrive Apprentice” stack – which is exactly what I’m using. Your explanation about connecting send fox and wl-member was the crucial one, as wl-member email integration has an option to add a new member to a send fox list and also remove from a different send fox list on the same settings page.

            I’ve tested this out now & it works perfectly well for my needs.

          • Doug says:

            That’s great, Dave! Glad to hear. I didn’t even think about using WLM to juggle lists for your particular use case. That’s awesome.

  • Sam says:

    Great review, I use Sendfox, and think it’s great at what it does. I like you can have multiple domains but… How do you handle the confirmation email coming from just one email address? I find this strange and confusing if you have multiple brands that are in no way related.

    Do you just have a super generic email setup for this? It’s the only thing I don’t like about it.

    • Doug says:

      In SendFox where I share the account, I actually don’t do double opt-in. If I did, I would find a way of linking a more generic domain name / email to it.

      • Krystal B says:

        This comment actually came up in Google search since I was trying to wrap my head around the same issue. I had to upgrade to turn off double opt-in. At least it was affordable.

  • Colin says:

    Is there a way to integrate sendfox in Joomla?

    • Doug says:

      Sorry Colin, I don’t use Joomla so I’m not sure.

  • Anthony says:

    Hi
    I signed up and started testing Sendfox. But it turns out to be incompatible with Thrive Ultimatum. Something about how Sendfox cloaks the links inside the email message prevents the [email] parameter from being read.
    As a result, the Ultimatum marketing campaign doesn’t trigger properly.

  • Andrew P says:

    Thank you for your reviews.

    I’m preparing to sign up for their $49 plan with 5,000 addresses, but I also have questions about this license.. Can I delete their logo in Outgoing Email? Please 🙏🏻

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