Mailerlite tying me in knots, how about you?

[LilyBLily]

I have just wasted an entire day trying to get one simple automation on Mailerlite to work right. (After finally giving up and doing a live chat, I learned that--of course--I was doing it all wrong.)

In addition to my personal load of incomprehension, the site itself is doing weird stuff and pages won't build. I thought it was my adblocker, and initially it was, but now??? Anybody else having problems editing content? I'm using Firefox. In Chrome, I got a site message that Mailerlite's login is currently disabled for scheduled maintenance. Trying Firefox again without logging in, I got no such message.



I think I'll go soak my head.

[LilyBLily]

I talked to the Mailerlite rep again and he suggested using an incognito window in Chrome. Lo and behold, it worked.

This took up my entire day. 

[alhawke]

I use mailchimp. Is there a feature you prefer that's better with them? I could always switch in the future.

[LilyBLily]

The reason I use Mailerlite is they offer help at all levels and they are less expensive at the entry paid level. To get any help at all with Mailchimp one has to have a paid account. I found MailChimp just as confusing even though I only did very simple things with it. I still have my free account there because I still have books pointing to MailChimp--which is a good argument to use links one can alter without having to alter the link itself in a published book.

I have a paid account with Mailerlite, and basically I've had no problems with it other than my inability to comprehend their systems. What Mailerlite deems user friendly is not what I deem user friendly.

The fact is that there are too many systems I have to interface with as an author and I can't hop from one to another with mental agility. I'm afraid this is directly related to my ageing brain and could even be related to the dementia I expect to inevitably suffer a couple of decades from now. Then again, these companies do not produce as much clarity in their user interfaces as they imagine.

Over a lifetime, we master many, many systems, but I am not the master of every website with which I have to interface to do marketing. That part isn't even due to age. For example, many authors bemoan being unable to comprehend Facebook's bizarre ad system, or Amazon's, and so on. Some of us act very superior about it as if others do not understand the principles of marketing and the necessity of advertising, but that's actually not the issue. The issue is that what the programmer thinks is logical is not what the user understands readily as logical.   

Realistically, readers do not want me to send them a newsletter more often than once or twice a month. That is infrequent enough for me to have to relearn anything complex I do with the system. As someone used to comprehending my world with ease, not being able to understand something drives me crazy. And it's a huge waste of time, which also drives me crazy since like most people I have other stuff to do than stare at a website for hours in bafflement.

[notthatamanda]

I appreciate this thread because I thought I was the only one who was pretty defective when it came to dealing with this stuff. It is so stressful. I'll go looking for answers and you literally have hundreds of hits but unless you're lucky enough to find an example of the exact right version of what you are using, odds are they moved the thing you need, or changed the name of it completely and I just get lost. And none of it is intuitive to me. I can't count how many hours I've wasted clicking on every single tab available trying to find the words that look like what they are telling me to looking for to do what I want there.

I'm sorry I can't offer any advice but just know I know exactly how you feel.

[VanessaC]

I'm glad you got it sorted, LilyBLily.

I'm with Mailerlite too, and it took about three attempts to get my automatition sequence to flow properly. Although it's pretty user-friendly, with drag-and-drop, I also do not find it intuitive.

I now have an automation sequence that works (I think), and a couple of newsletter templates I'm happy with, so I just copy them and edit rather than going through the pain of starting from scratch!

[RBC]

Folks, don't expect to make everything work the first time. You're learning a new tool. It's normal to not get it and understand it. Doesn't mean you're stupid or inept or worse. It's just a new thing. Starting from zero is starting from zero. It makes everyone feel stupid while learning.

And if you only try to use the thing once a month, no wonder there are things forgotten. Only daily use makes it faster to be learned.

Don't be too hard on yourselves for learning. And don't expect perfection. Give yourself a break and learn to be learning. It's totally normal to suck at first. It's all part of the process.

[LilyBLily]

I didn't think it was possible for Mailerlite to confuse me even more, but tonight I discovered that my plan had run out a week ago and I had not received an invoice to renew (possibly my Thunderbird deciding it was spam?). How did I learn this? All the way at the bottom of the page as I was about to schedule a newsletter, there was language about a limit of 1,000 subscribers. Huh? Then I saw that it showed I only had a free account.

Then things got funky. I looked for a way to resubscribe, and the price for one year for 5k subscribers had jumped to an eye-watering $252. What? Backed away from that, wandered around the site, looked again to resubscribe and finally found the $84 per year I'm used to paying.

I don't know why there were two different pricing pages, but I do know that this is not a function of me being a beginner, or a learner, or whatever kind of newbie. This is just plain confusing.

Also, Mailerlite no longer works with my Firefox. Had to use Chrome. 

[Simon Haynes]

I use mailerlite with Firefox (did so yesterday)

Do you have any blocking-type firefox extensions installed? Might be something to do with that.

[LilyBLily]

I use mailerlite with Firefox (did so yesterday)

Do you have any blocking-type firefox extensions installed? Might be something to do with that.

I thought I had disabled them all, but there might be another lurking.

And as a P.S. to my prior post, when I looked at my billing record, it did not show that Mailerlite had ever billed me this year. Weird.