Email Octopus Alternative: Email Octopus vs. Bento Comparison Breakdown

Hey friend,

In the early days of Bento, we focused on one thing: being the best tool to track online marketing.

We helped our customers monitor their ads, work out if they were profitable, and help answer the hardest questions that online marketers find themselves asking every single day but can't pull from their existing tooling.

→ How can I be sure that my ads are actually profitable?
→ How can I see the identities of those that converted?
→ How many true conversions did a guest post generate us?
→ How much revenue is an affiliate generating for us?
→ How long does it take for a cohort to become profitable?
→ How can I know when to spend more on my ads?

No matter how challenging the question, we'd tackle it together with our customers. Obsessing about getting the answer, and getting it fast within a few clicks.

Then something changed. Our customers started to ask us for new feature requests that were different to our normal ones.

They wanted to use Bento to talk directly to their users.

It turned out that the data we were collecting on their users, from the moment they visited their sites anonymously, could be leveraged to send powerful, automated messaging to their customers. They didn't want to sticky tape an integration together to push the data into their email marketing provider, they wanted to just do it in Bento.

So, we listened and began building.

That led us to build out a powerful suite of email marketing tools including broadcasts and email sequences. Customers loved it as they could create perfect, highly targeted segments, and all the data from the emails (opens, clicks, view-throughs) were tracked perfectly inside Bento. Just like ads, they could track their emails to the same degree of accuracy.

Next, we had customers want to respond to the replies coming in from their email marketing and start a conversation with their users. This was new, so we built a different kind of support tool, focused on two-way marketing, to facilitate that. Now, Bento customers could send an email broadcast and have all the replies get forwarded back into their account to respond. This meant customer support teams wouldn't ever be overwhelmed when marketers were making their noise.

After that, for our pro users, we created a set of tooling to allow them to dynamically insert their user's information right inside the website itself meaning they could achieve highly targeted messaging on any landing page that would adapt to the user's behaviour. About 10% of our users get to this stage, but those that do, create magic.

Then lastly, we pulled it all together with a marketing automation tool that allows you to more or less pull off any marketing interaction you want with the drag of your mouse. Whether you want to send an abandon cart email, send an SMS message post-purchase, ping a user on live chat when they visit a page, or dynamically update their profile based on behaviour you can do it in Bento.

It's been a long journey but we're making progress and moving forward, fast, every single day.

We believe that having all your data in one place has made a difference to us, our customers, and has made us all better marketers - with happier customers.

If you're in the market for any of the tools that Bento offers please give us a go and stay in touch. I can't wait to see what you do with it.

- Jesse Hanley, Creator of Bento.

P.S. If you want to try Bento or get a free demo just schedule one below. I personally do all the calls and am available for any Bento customer.

Email Octopus is a fantastic piece of software that we're proud to call a competitor — but you're looking for options which is why you've landed here.

Bento is the definitive alternative to Email Octopus

Why? Well, for starters, Bento has been carefully designed for small, nimble marketing focused teams who work in online business like eCommerce and SaaS — those who need to move fast without their tooling getting in their way.

Email Octopus, on the otherhand, was originally designed for marketers who were looking to save money and cut costs. It was originally just an email broadcasting tool without anything else but grew into doing a little bit more.

EmailOctopus is a great tool for sending broadcast emails, but it lacks some of the most important features that you need when you're growing your online business — specifically features surrounding event driven automations, live chat, and tracking.

We find most brands switch from Email Octopus because they want more power, for around the same cost.

Below is a short breakdown of the features in both products. We ask you to compare yourself.

Breakdown

Bento

Email Octopus

Price per contact, per month

$0.01

Not Listed

Track user behaviour

Send email broadcasts

Send email sequences

Send SMS

Capture emails with pop-ups

Capture emails with forms

Talk to customers on live chat

Talk to customers over email

Talk to customers over social media

Run surveys

Personalize your website

Track ad performance

Report on customer lifetime value

Build custom dashboards

Visualize your data