tinyAlbert vs Shopify Email
Which email app is right for you?
You run a Shopify store, so it makes sense to use the Shopify Email app, right?
Wrong.
Give me five minutes and read through this side-by-side comparison. You might come to the conclusion that tinyAlbert delivers much better value all around. If I'm right, those five minutes could help you avoid hours and hours of work unnecessary email marketing work down the road. That's a solid risk-to-read ratio, I'd say.
Here's my analysis. I present the facts as accurately as I can (if I get any facts wrong, let me know) regarding content usability, features, automations, and pricing.
Usability includes all the variables that make or break a user's experience and their ability to get email marketing out the door with minimal fuss. Based on the data in the table below, here's what I found.
Install the tinyAlbert app, and in a few minutes, your AI-powered marketing assistant will help you set up automations, write and schedule campaigns, and display a lead generation form on your Shopify store.
tinyAlbert has a higher customer rating than the Shopify Email app. The Shopify Email app is easy to install, but some users found it buggy. Many people reported a less-than-wonderful customer support experience.
tinyAlbert gets two thumbs up for satisfaction thanks to an easy-to-navigate UI, a short learning curve, and responsive customer support. Both options have good reporting dashboards.
* Scores checked on August 11, 2023.
The range of available features is far greater than I could possibly document here, so let me cover a few points: templates, AI subject line generation, and lead generation forms.
The Shopify Email campaign page has 40+ templates ready to explore.
After opening the tinyAlbert campaign page, it's clear this app is built for speed.
Every subject line for every Shopify Email campaign needs to be generated by the user.
tinyAlbert auto-generates a subject line for every campaign message. Even better, you can see the subject line in the Preview panel (which means you don't have to leave the campaign page and open the editor as you do with the Shopify Email app).
Both apps have automations that cover four essential e-commerce needs: abandoned cart, win-back, welcome series, and thank you for purchase.
Here's one feature that kind of bugs me. Some Shopify Email automations require store owners to sign up for a third-party app. These apps are based on the freemium model, which means some features are free, and others (usually the good ones) require payment to send the automation. The required app appears as an icon on the Automations main page.
The Shopify Email app has the lowest cost to send. That's great news for small store owners or anyone on a budget. But is that good value?
The Shopify Email list only includes people who subscribe to the store or made a purchase. It doesn't help you build a list of prospects, which is why store owners seek out other products, like the tinyAlbert app. Shopify Email fees are based on the number of sends and not the number of contacts. Charges apply when the number of sends in a month exceeds 10,000.
tinyAlbert calculates costs based on list size with no limits on sends (within reason, of course - we're always on guard for spamming). That's good value for store owners who want to maximize customer engagement.
* tinyAlbert fees are monthly subscription fees based on the number of contacts and not the number of sends.
I'm a big fan of Shopify, so I understand why the Shopify Email app might look good to people new to email marketing, but sometimes you have to measure price against value.
For me, there are three deal breakers when it comes to choosing an AI email marketing app. The first one is list building. Email marketers buy third-party apps like tinyAlbert because they know there's value in building a separate list of prospects outside their Shopify store's contact list.
The second one is branding. tinyAlbert auto-generates on-brand campaign messages by pulling in images from your store and generating copy based on your company/product descriptions in the AI tuning section. Shopify store owners can manually add their branding copy to generic templates, which means AI isn't really creating value.
The final deal breaker is speed. How much time do you really want to spend on generating campaigns and automations?
Shopify Email has a clean UI, but IMHO, the content generation process for campaigns is underwhelming. The user has very few decisions on the campaign page. It's almost like I'm trapped in a workflow of binary decisions. I have to commit to one template and then open the editor and then make changes, and then schedule a launch. The AI advantage isn't really apparent until you get to the subject line, and even then, the process feels unnecessarily repetitive.
In contrast, tinyAlbert is built for email marketers who want to activate four weeks of campaign messages before they finish their first cup of morning coffee. On the campaign page, tinyAlbert leverages AI to produce more options faster, and the intuitive UI helps marketers review and test messages with a few clicks - without leaving the page.
Hands down. tinyAlbert delivers greater value.