Quick Robly Review
Overall, our Robly review scores the platform quite highly. For the right real estate agents, it’s an excellent option with great features, reasonable pricing, and satisfied clients. They have a few features unique to their platform which are especially powerful, including the Robly AI and OpenGen features.
Overall Rating
4.4
Personally, I find their template designs on the mediocre side, although creating your own branded graphics can solve this issue to a high degree. You can also import HTML for completely custom designs, but this is a bit labor-intensive. Sometimes the drag-and-drop editor requires some troubleshooting.
In the nine years of their existence, Robly has encountered some issues, but they also seem to take them seriously and create solutions. For example, there have been a significant amount of complaints from people on Robly’s own contact list who have been flooded with spam emails.
Obviously, this is disencouraging. However, the amount of negative Robly reviews on this topic have dropped off, suggesting they fixed whatever security issues they had.
Most Robly reviews from actual clients are very positive and satisfied, and I would include myself among that group. They generally score higher ratings than the majority of email marketing platforms. As I mentioned, it really comes down to whether Robly is right for you. I discuss that in-depth towards the end of the article.
Finally, they have a support team of three people: Brennan, Daniel, and Quandra. I have opened many support tickets with all three. Two have been exceptional across the board, and one has been occasionally moody and unhelpful. Overall, my experience has been quite positive with very quick responses, often within an hour or two.
Review From An Expert Robly User
My company InboundREM builds SEO-focused websites for real estate agents, as well as providing other core services like hyperlocal (Google Business Profile) campaigns and email marketing campaigns.
Full disclosure, I’ve happily used Robly for years, for myself and clients. The platform suits our business needs well, and I’ve leveraged it extremely well according to niche market standards.
For instance, most email marketers strive for about a 25-30% open rate and a 2-4% click rate. Those working within companies offering marketing services may strive for better conversion rates.
In my case, I finished 2023 with a 50.4% open rate and a 8.8% click rate, partially due to Robly’s unique features.
While Robly has worked well for me, I’m not a biased fanboy. This Robly review will concentrate on which kinds and sizes of business should invest in the platform and provide strong alternatives for everyone else.
Robly Pricing Plans
Robly has four main tiers of pricing, but every plan includes all the features. The only difference in pricing comes from the size of your email contact list.
Complete Robly Pricing Plan
| Number of Email Contacts | Monthly Price (Paid Annually) | Monthly Price (Paid Annually) |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 500 | $15 | $19 |
| 501-2500 | $29 | $35 |
| 2501-5000 | $49 | $58 |
| 10K | $79 | $92 |
| 25K | $149 | $175 |
| 50K | $229 | $270 |
| 75K | $349 | $410 |
| 100K | $449 | $529 |
| 150K | $649 | $764 |
| 200K | $849 | $999 |
| 250K | $999 | $1175 |
| 350K | $1349 | $1589 |
| 550K | $1659 | $1940 |
| 750K | $1899 | $2570 |
| 1 Million | $2712 | $3190 |
As an experienced email marketer with a business dedicated to being client-first, I find Robly’s pricing structure reasonable and even commendable. The majority of business will find themselves in the bolded price range.
I like that even basic users get the full functionality of the platform, especially because most features are highly beneficial to every user. This differs from most email marketing platforms that offer different tiers of functionality.
The average size of their client’s email lists is about 2500. They could have created some sort of upsell strategy around that mark, but instead they find it better to let Robly clients with smaller email lists use the entire platform. Thumbs up.
While paying $2500+ each month for a platform that sends emails may seem expensive, enterprises at that level can leverage Robly features to make an extraordinary ROI.
Additionally, less robust platforms like Mailchimp charge $1600/month for 200,000 contacts, which is well above Robly’s pricing of $849/month. Constant Contact charges $340/month for 25,000 contacts, also well above Robly’s pricing of $149/month.
Accordingly, I would say that Robly’s pricing is exceptionally reasonable and worthwhile across the board.
Robly Features
Dashboard
As you can see above, the Robly Dashboard is pretty straightforward and intuitive. It contains basically all the data and metrics you want to monitor over time.
OpenGen
In my opinion, the automated OpenGen feature is basically Robly’s claim to fame. Other providers do offer this capability, but you’ll have to do it manually. Robly makes the process effortless with a single click.
In addition, Robly combines this feature with its AI scheduling. That means that it sends those emails at the optimal time for different contacts. As you can imagine, that’s a powerful 1-2 punch.
Robly A.I.
The A.I. scheduling feature essentially tracks when your contacts open your emails. With this information, it recommends the best times to send emails based on past data.
To some degree, you will need to interpret this data and make adjustments. For example, your open rates close to holidays will probably not be the best indicator of when to send emails the following week.
Robly also tracks this information globally, based on all of the data they receive from the millions of subscribers belonging to their clients. So if you don’t have enough information from your own subscribers, you can follow global trends.
Even cooler, the scheduling feature means that you can choose a window between 3 and 23 hours to send emails. Each individual subscriber will receive your email at the exact moment they are most likely to check their inbox within that window. As you can imagine, that’s amazing and highly effective technology.
Segmentation
This is a standard feature across email marketing platforms. Robly does a fine job, and it doesn’t take long to figure it out.
The greatest part about Robly’s segmentation is that it automatically creates “Engaged” and “Unengaged” lists.
The simplest way to use this feature is sending all your content to engaged contacts and saving your best content to send to everyone. This lowers your unsubscribe rates. It’s another area of great functionality.
Email Builder
The Drag and Drop Editor has a simple interface. It’s easy to understand how it works. Complications can arise when you preview your email for both desktop and mobile. Sometimes you have to play with the design to format it well for both.
Occasionally I’ve had situations where I just can’t get the formatting perfect. It’s a minor issue for most businesses, but could be a major issue for those who want stunning branding.
A/B Testing
This is another standard feature that works well with Robly. My only complaint is that you must choose whether you will create A/B emails at the beginning of the process. If you decide to change your mind, you’ll have to start over and copy/paste your work.
Customer Support
As far as I know, the Robly Support team consists of three people: Brennan, Daniel, and Quandra. Over the last couple of years, I’ve opened 30-40 support tickets. In almost all cases, the support team member was helpful, communicative, and quick to respond.
I did have one issue, where we had issues importing contacts onto our client’s Robly account. I emailed one team member back and forth most days for a week without a good solution. In the end, the solution was extremely easy, but I had to figure it out myself.
The customer support member in question got a bit snippy in the end. However, that situation was an exception.
Generally speaking, I’ve had a very positive experience and expect you will too.
Robly Reviews and Testimonials
Overall Robly has strong client reviews across the board. Most platforms collecting Robly customer reviews average between 4.2 and 4.6 stars.
Positive Reviews
Positive Robly reviews center around the OpenGen feature, Robly AI scheduling feature, cost-effectiveness, and strong results, like boosted open rates and click rates.
Positive Client Testimonials
Negative Robly Reviews
Most negative Robly reviews center around these issues:
- Robly subscribers receiving spammy emails
- Platform down from overuse
- Issues with design and platform updates
- Emails going to spam folders
As I mentioned earlier, the first issue is a big deal but seems to be mostly solved. It also applies to Robly subscribers, rather than clients. Does Robly deserve the negative reviews for breaches in their security? Yes. Will it be an issue for your contacts if you use Robly? I haven’t heard any reports of this.
Similarly, the platform being down from overuse seems to be solved. Personally, I never encountered this issue.
The third issue, problems with the design elements and platform updates, does make sense to me. There are lots of little problems I’ve had trying to get a template formatted properly. I’d say this is a fair complaint that’s still relevant.
When it comes to emails going to spam folders, I’m not sure how much this has to do with Robly. Email platforms, like Gmail, have an algorithm for sorting emails to spam.
If you do something dumb, like put “Free” in the subject line, it’s going to have consequences no matter what platform you use. The more mistakes you make, the lower your trust score, which results in more emails going to spam. Just educate yourself, and you should be fine.
Negative Cliest Testimonials
Who Should Use Robly
1. Those with High Commissions
For example, I recommend Robly to real estate agents because a single transaction can pay for a decade of Robly subscriptions. The OpenGen and AI scheduling features really boost your open rates and click rates. That means more face time with your prospects, and more converted leads.
2. Those with Decent Marketing Budgets
While some complain that Robly is too expensive, I think they are just misinformed. Many email marketing tools cost the same or more than Robly. Yes, they may have more features and better design for the same cost.
However, Robly’s features are very powerful, especially for optimizing your lead funnel. That should be the main goal of almost all email campaigns.
In general, email marketing is one of the cheapest lead generation strategies across all online marketing. No matter what your niche or industry is, there are probably much better areas to save money.
Who Shouldn’t Use Robly
1. Those Uncommitted to Email Campaigns
There’s no reason to invest in a robust email marketing platform if you’re not going to send at least one email per month. If you do only send one email per month, it should be an excellent and in-depth real estate newsletter.
2. Those with Less Than 500 (Or 1000) Contacts
There are plenty of email marketing platforms with free basic plans that will work just as well until you reach 500, or maybe 1000, contacts. Of course, these options will come with drawbacks.
Mailchimp is quite limited and will include their branding on your emails. Hubspot is great, but there will be a bigger learning curve, which is annoying if you plan to switch providers. MailerLite doesn’t provide any free templates. And so on.
3. Those Whose Priority is Branding
The design aspect of Robly is too simple and sometimes clunky for businesses who care a lot about branding. For this reason, Robly might not be best for luxury real estate agents.
4. Those Who Want a Full Suite of Features
This may be the biggest group of marketers that shouldn’t use Robly. Other platforms allow for things like surveys/polls, advanced digital ads, behavior-based targeted emails, AI creative assistants, and more advanced drag-and-drop editors.
For that reason, large businesses and eCommerce businesses should consider other platforms better suited to their needs.
Note: This article contains affiliate links. To be honest, I don’t care much if you use them because that’s not why I wrote this article. Robly does have a generous affiliate marketing plan, giving marketers 30% commission for every month you use it.
So if one of you has a Fortune 500 company that will give me thousands in commissions every month, I’m not going to be the fool that misses out on that opportunity.
I wrote this article because InboundREM is committed to providing real estate agents with unbiased reviews of real estate technology. It’s just part of how we do business.
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