Smaily Review – Intentionally beta?

Ahhh…fishing in Zapier’s Explore app lists. There always a new email app to find, with a clever wordplay name (Smiley mail sending XP, see?) and a Grand Promise™.

This time – the Grand Promise™ is that the tool is ‘Intentionally Simple’. I like simple, so let’s give it a go.

Smaily offers a freemium model that is very generous – potentially problematic for attracting spammers and polluting deliverability. The starting price is also more than welcoming. Smaily is an inexpensive, startup-budget friendly tool. And as you can see, you can prepay for on-hold, vegetative projects.

First impression – is kinda’ meh.

Now let’s see if their approach to being intentionally simple holds up.

The setup process was simple and straightforward. However, the dashboard tends to load a bit slowly. I was watching this loading icon for some 20 seconds.

Templates

Smaily works around templates, but not as skins you can apply to your copy (preferred way) but as built presets you’ll then need to adjust.

While the library is lengthy, the templates don’t look too good.

Previewing doesn’t seem to work, all I see is an empty blank page.

Subscribers

You can build forms in the landing pages section to capture subscribers; here you can add them manually.

The entire contact management section feels unfinished with dead ends and limited options.

For example, you can search subscribers by tags, but it’s unclear where you can set these tags.

Then, if you add subscribers manually, there are no further fields to set than email and birthday(?). Given that the tool is centered around custom fields (as we’ll see later in the automations section) this is odd.

I’m still looking for where to set tags. There is a ‘manage custom fields’ part, but it is blank empty with no function.

As for contact management, you can only erase people. And while that might arouse some (you freaks) there is still no hint about setting tags or fields.

Landing Pages

Using the landing page feature feels like watching those Barbarians and Sorceresses movies from the 80s.

It has a distinctive Windows 2000s vibe. The design options are extremely limited — you can’t even round the edges for the elements, for example.

That’s the form. Out of the box. And since you can’t really adjust much – the edited version too.

Automations

Smaily uses visual workflows, MailerLite vibe.

First the triggers for the automations were somewhat obscure, but then I figured it out. It’s wasn’t clear what one is opting into or how to define specific triggers, such as clicking a link in an email.

It turned out, that you can filter afterwards, but everything works through custom fields – that you can’t edit elsewhere, and there is no sign of tags.

However, the delays are well-made and versatile.

You can create parallel paths with the plus sign on the side, and while it’s a bit tricky, by adding two filters, you can create a condition.

For sending emails from automations, you need to write them in advance in the templates.

Campaigns

There isn’t much to say about campaigns. There is an A/B testing option, but other than that, it’s the same process—working from templates. The segmentation is limited to custom fields, with no lists or tags available.

The Editor

Before we go elbow deep in the mud with the drag-n-drop, Smaily has a simple text editor. Could benefit from a facelift (and some sleep). Reminds me of Ms Word 98.

But it’s fine. Write in iA Writer – paste here – send – run. Except….

Except…You can’t add personalization? It. Doesn’t work. No surprise given that you can’t set the custom fields anywhere. But still. Really?

I think I’ll have to switch to

“The Best Drag n’ Drop Editor on the Planet”

This is what we have.

They didn’t specify which planet.

It’s not the worst…like a bit less painfully sh*t than Klavyo’s or Beefree. But it’s certainly less good than MailChimp’s or Drip’s.

And to be honest the whole ‘best drag n’ drop’ thing is like saying the “most enjoyable gastric lavage you ever had”.

Drag and drop editors are not pleasant to work with. You can’t paste long copy as one, and it takes forever to adjust the individual blocks. Particularly if they look this bad by default.

And in this case, no matter how much you are tweaking it, it won’t look modern or elegant. You can’t add radius to the edges for example.

Ok. Let’s add an image.

WTF?

Windows98!! Yaaay – told you!

– and for an authentic Microsoft experience… it doesn’t even work.

Fuck’s sake.

Conclusion

From Not Yet to Already Not

Yeah, that’s me using the owen.
Before it’s ready it’s already unsavable.

Smaily is technically incomplete. Key functions are missing, making it borderline unfit to do the very job it is meant to do.

You may end up just subscribing people by email, dropping all personalization and run manual broadcasts after a brief welcome.

But then, why suffer the badly made email editor that is already going in the wrong direction?

There are some great examples of “Intentionally simple”, Buttondown, a minimalist newsletter publisher is a good direction. Simple only makes sense if it’s joyful and fast to work with.

Simple only works if you – the developer – know what you don’t want.

The truth is you, that you don’t need multi-column rows for high-converting emails.

Text, header, image, button—maybe a countdown. You can achieve a lot with that.

Audienceful is another splendid example of something intentionally (and cleverly) simple, although I’d love to see it a bit lower priced.

Both Aweber and Convertkit have intentionally developed inline editors, going against the trends because they know better.

As for the missing elements … while I’m empathetic to bootstrapped startups and I understand that you have to cut corners, and roll out with a beta stage to stay afloat of the costs…

But there is workable beta and then there is not ready to be useful. Smaily is the latter. And as it stands I didn’t see a single idea that promises that even if they fix the missing things, it would stand out.

Anyway, this is what I’d fix if I were them.

What to Fix

1. Contact Management: Develop a workable custom field management and segmentation function, with bulk editing options. Consider adding tags too.
2. Editor: Ditch the drag-and-drop Win 98′ editor altogether. It will never be good. Switch to a simple but stylish Notion-like inline editor. A clean, welcoming interface with only a few functions. If you add AI proof-editing, that’s a bonus. (These are not out of reach these days.)
3. Forms: Ditch the 100 ugly templates. Don’t try to serve webshops; you can’t compete with specialized eCommerce mailers. Build a Paperform-like simple form editor, using the same inline page editor that the emails use, and create a nice scrolling, question-by-question form experience. Why? Because the completion rates in those are far better than in the classic admin-style forms, and no email tool does it. Both Typeform & Paperform are expensive. That alone would put you on the map.
4. Automations: The workflow builder they have is ok. However, for an “intentionally simple” tool, Trigger-Action Rules would be sufficient, with Sequences. Fast and easy to work with. Exactly what Highlevel retired a couple of months ago (wrongfully in my opinion).
5. UX: make the tool modern and pretty. Better fonts, better buttons, lines, more ergonomic organization of settings. There are plenty of great examples.