How many times have you sent an email and wondered if the recipient received it? Did he or she click on the links or open the attachments? Did it get lost in their inbox or go to spam?Worrying and wondering about whether or not the emails you send get lost in cyberspace can become a thing of the past with the right email tracking app. Click To Tweet
Email tracking apps allow you to see when recipients open, click or view your emails. They can help entrepreneurs, marketers and freelancers push through the crowded, competitive inbox environment. Many use these tools in their marketing strategies, however, there is a huge opportunity to use them with emails sent by sales teams too.
In this article, we will provide a brief review of the three best email tracking apps available today — namely HubSpot, SalesHandy, and Mailtrack — highlighting the different strengths and limitations of each.
With all of these tools, especially HubSpot (which boasts the most functionality), you can take advantage of the following features:
- Desktop notifications
- Track email replies
- Customized mute email notifications
- Email open rates
- Email templates
- Link tracking
- Document tracking
- Email tracking reports
- Mail merges
- Automated follow-ups
- Email scheduling
Top 3 email tracking apps: pros and cons
HubSpot is the first email tracking app on our list, which is fitting as it was one of the first and most helpful ones to come to market (and continues to be a leader in the digital marketing world). Known primarily for its highly robust sales and marketing platforms, HubSpot was actually the first to offer a stand-alone “HubSpot Sales” plugin for Gmail. This email plugin allows users to track and log emails, receive desktop notifications and also capture all email activity in HubSpot’s CRM.
For example, when tracking emails, HubSpot provides you with insights into the recipient’s activity, such as opens, clicks and responses. When recipients receive and open an email, you will get a pop-up notification on your desktop. This activity is then stored in your HubSpot CRM.
To access any email activity or history recorded with a specific contact, simply log into your HubSpot dashboard, navigate to “Contacts,” and search for the contact’s first or last name. The individual’s contact card will show all the activity recorded, such as email opens, clicks, responses and so on.
Furthermore, tracking and logging emails is easy by installing the HubSpot plugin for Gmail in seconds. When you are ready to send an email, you can simply check the “Track” prompt by HubSpot and click send.
As a leader in the digital marketing space, HubSpot is easy to set up and use. The company offers many tutorials, resources and courses to help its users manage their tools and systems successfully.
Email tracking and logging is simple and can be set up in a snap. Within minutes, you can begin logging and tracking emails for lead generation purposes, enhancing your lead gen and nurturing efforts.
Although HubSpot is certainly a reputable and robust tool, it comes with a cost. Some of their tracking features are available for free. However, like the other tools we will review, if you are looking for more, you will likely need to upgrade to the paid Sales Hub subscription, which is approximately $50 per month.
In order to take advantage of both HubSpot’s sales and marketing tools, it’ll cost upwards of $100 per month — a price that may seem high to the smallest of startups. All in all, however, HubSpot is the leader among the best email tracking apps, and so I encourage you to see this price as a reasonable one to bear.
SalesHandy is another popular and easy-to-use email tracking app. Although it is not as feature-rich as HubSpot, SalesHandy does integrate with other platforms not covered by HubSpot. It also provides unlimited email tracking features and scheduling for free.
Simply set up a free account to get started with SalesHandy. Similar to HubSpot, you can sign in using your Gmail account. There is also a Chrome extension available. Simply activate the extension when you are ready to send an email that you want SalesHandy to track.
Additionally, if you want to get a big-picture view of your email activity, you have the option to export an email analytics report of tracked emails in a CSV file.
While HubSpot focuses on providing integrations with the most-used applications, SalesHandy can be configured to track emails in several additional email clients with its SMTP configuration.
Other features we liked best about SalesHandy include the ability to schedule emails and automate follow-ups. This is especially useful for marketers or entrepreneurs who send the same emails every day. The time saved allows users to work on more important things, such as converting leads.
If you take a moment to read through some customer reviews online, you’ll see that SalesHandy has some bugs with their platform.
Additionally, despite a low price of only $9/month/user, others believe that SalesHandy is on the expensive end when considering that the Hubspot suite provides considerably greater functionality. That said, if you’re looking for an email tracking app that will integrate with off-brand email providers, which allow you to connect via SMTP, then SalesHandy is the one for you.
Out of the three email tracking apps in our lineup, Mailtrack is by far the simplest to use. Although Mailtrack is incredibly straightforward and affordable, this doesn’t mean that it is a low-quality tool; it tracks emails very well. This tool is best for marketers, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs or freelancers who want a simple email-tracking tool but who may not necessarily need all the bells and whistles you’d get with the more functional HubSpot.
The Mailtrack user interface is also very clean and sleek and works awesome with Gmail. It also tells you exactly when someone opened an email and from what type of device.
As we have already highlighted, Mailtrack is easy, straightforward and affordable. Mailtrack offers a free plan with unlimited tracking, which might be all that you need.
If you are looking for a simple tool but with notifications and other features, Mailtrack does offer paid plans: the Basic Plan is only $1.50 per user; Pro Plan is $2.49 per user; and a Team Plan (you have to contact one of their sales reps to get pricing for teams). The Team Plan is the best option for small teams who are emailing leads. It doesn’t get much cheaper than that!
The only disadvantage we discovered while reviewing Mailtrack is that it only works with Gmail. However, considering that Gmail has over 1.2 billion active users and 60 percent of mid-sized companies based in the United States use Gmail, this might not necessarily be a bad thing.
However, for companies that are pro Microsoft users and prefer to use Outlook, you might want to consider using another email tracking app.
And the best email tracking app is…
After reviewing these three apps, we admit that it was a tough call to determine the winner, as each maintains a unique offering to potential niches. However, HubSpot is our top pick for its ease of use, minimal set-up time and effort and the greatest level of functionality.
Even though we proclaimed HubSpot as the winner, SalesHandy and Mailtrack certainly have their own niches that they serve best. For example, if you are a solopreneur and only need email tracking, the basic offering of Mailtrack may fit you best. If you are a company that wants to make an SMTP connection for an odd email platform, then SalesHandy may work best for you. All in all, these email tracking apps are all great options, depending on your needs and business goals.
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