FluentCRM is a full marketing automation CRM that works right inside of Wordpress. It is my preferred solution for hosting your email list – and what I use personally.

Go To FluentCRM

My Rating:

5 / 5

Pros

  • Full-featured marketing automation CRM competes well with the “big boys” like Drip or ActiveCampaign
  • Integrates beautifully into a WordPress-focused tech stack.
  • Saves a ton of money over most hosted email list platforms

Cons

  • Not quite as much third-party integration available from hosted apps (although there is webhooks)
  • Can be just a bit nerdy to get SMTP set up to send emails
  • No built-in pre-designed email templates.

FluentCRM is a full marketing automation CRM that works right inside of Wordpress. It is what I myself use on this very site and, as such, I have written a fair amount about my own personal switch to FluentCRM:

One may think that running a marketing automation tool inside Wordpress couldn’t possibly compare well to robust hosted applications like Drip, ActiveCampaign or Keap. However, that is simply no longer true. Not only that, there is an inherent simplicity and power to having this functionality within your website.

FluentCRM naturally integrates with a ton of other tools because it is all already inside Wordpress. The team has done a great job of keeping in mind their target audience by building in tight integrations with tools like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, LearnDash and many more. This means you can visit their CRM profile and instantly see their sales history, courses they’re enrolled in, and much more. It is a unified profile and that’s much more difficult (if not impossible) to get with remotely hosted tools.

What about sending rates and deliverability? Well, you are not actually sending emails from your own server or web host. Instead, you are connecting Wordpress with a third-party SMTP service. I personally use AmazonSES which works very well and is highly affordable. In terms of comparison, many of the remotely hosted services you know are also using Amazon behind the scenes to deliver their email. So, in many cases, there’s essentially no difference in terms of deliverability.

FluentCRM works extremely well. It has full marketing automation and you can design those automations using a visual flow builder similar to ActiveCampaign or Drip.

It has native integrations with a TON of WordPress plugins and page builders, making it work seamlessly with a WordPress tech stack.

I no longer recommend any remotely hosted email CRM. It isn’t that they’re bad at all. I think Drip, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit and many others are all perfectly fine tools. However, my go-to recommendation is now FluentCRM.

It is what I use, so I am practicing what I preach.

In the end, FluentCRM gives you the power of the big, expensive CRMs but in a way that you can control in-house. Due to that, it is FAR more affordable and you will not be penalized with higher monthly fees as you grow your list. That’s important.