How We Test

Trust is earned. Here's exactly how FigFroot evaluates email marketing tools, so you can judge our judgments.

The process

1. Real signup. We register like a customer: real domain, real business details, the same onboarding you'd go through.

2. Real setup. We verify SPF/DKIM, connect a domain, import a test list, and build the automations a small business actually needs (welcome sequence, abandoned cart, newsletter).

3. Real sending. We run live broadcasts to seed addresses for a minimum of 30 days, watching deliverability, not just dashboards.

4. Real pricing math. We price each tool at 500, 2,500, and 10,000 contacts and note exactly where the price jumps.

What we score

• Ease of use — can a non-technical owner do the basics in an afternoon?
• Automation depth — do the workflows cover real small-biz scenarios without workarounds?
• Deliverability — do test emails reach the inbox across Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo?
• Pricing fairness — is the price predictable as the list grows, or full of traps?
• Support quality — we contact support with a real question and time the answer.

What we don't score

• Enterprise features small businesses will never touch.
• Vanity metrics (template counts, "AI" labels) without a real use case.

Independence rules

• No vendor sees a review before publication.
• No vendor can pay for placement, a better verdict, or removal of criticism.
• Affiliate relationships are disclosed on every commercial page — see our Marketing Disclosure.
• If a tool gets worse after we review it, we update the review and note the change with a date.

Corrections

Found an error? Email [email protected]. We fix factual errors fast and note the correction on the article.