Sidekick

SideKick by Hubspot is an email marketing, management and tracking software online. I've signed up for the free account and began using it immediately. The free account synced right to my Gmail in a few seconds after I installed the Google Chrome extension. There is a SideKick tab now in my Gmail which links externally to various data available about my email messages sent such as opens and clicks. It's always nice to receive free value and there is a lot of it in SideKick free version. It shows you a contact profile in your Gmail inbox when you receive mail that has been tracked which is a powerful free feature. They will also offer the email scheduling feature in the free plan in the near future I've read on the site which would be a great addition. But I'd like the premium version which currently doesn't have the pricing available the on the site. You're to arrange for a sales rep to learn more which means it's probably quite costly, or meant to suit thriving small businesses and larger. I'm a start up and will seek it out again as a premium user again in the future as Hubspot is truly one of my favorite digital marketing companies. The premium version features email templating and reports, email automation, file sharing, prospecting and phone capabilities right from your CRM. I find Hubspot's tools to all feature very clean and straightforward UI's and SideKick is included. I can only imagine power in the premium account though I've seen similar in other available software in the market, I'm very confident it's cleanly laid out and very user friendly as well. I would love to have the feature to learn about businesses by utilizing there Connections feature. And the integrations with the SalesForce CRM would be a huge time saver.

As far as free email tracking goes it's always a premium value service when you can get it. It has it's limitations but it's a great starting point considering the price point. SideKick free plan is quite obviously a lead generation tool for Hubspot in that it clearly points to upgrading your account to unlock the real power of this software. Yesware used to have a free email tracking option for up to one hundred emails sent per month and it included the email templating system so this was to be my recommendation but their pricing structure has changed and it's a limited time trial for free now with plans starting at $12 per month, per user. Which is up from $9 as well. The fact it only integrates with SalesForce CRM tool is unfortunate. It's a decent CRM but I believe there are many better CRM's than this and at least some choices other than SalesForce exclusively seems like a smart idea to me but I'm sure HubSpot has their reasons. There is a big jump in pricing from their $10 Pro plan to the next level which is $50 per month, per user with a minimum of two seats. Their is a larger ROI to be had from the Business plan as it is a full blown email marketing software, not just tracking, so this makes sense. It seems like a big jump but perhaps it's because I've not seen this business model before with free tracking, premium tracking and then a email marketing suite as the business product. Usually deeper or more robust analytics are the premium aspect but not in this case. This is unique to Hubspot in my research so far.

SideKick is a great free tool and worth installing via Chrome and Gmail to learn how fast and seamlessly this type of email tracking can work. The free plan has enterprise level functionality but is very limited in options. Yet still worth the insight into opens and clicks for up to two hundred emails per month, I believe. And while you're learning about whether the entire platform is for you or not, you can learn from some real time data which I like a lot.