whats-best.ai

Email Marketing & Newsletter

rapidmail

EU-Made Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 3 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by rapidmail GmbH · www.rapidmail.de

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Deliverability Engineer

Weighted verdict

Cares about one number nobody publishes honestly: what reaches the inbox. Reads for authentication, IP and domain reputation, bounce discipline and sunsetting. Ignores every advertised delivery rate on principle — the infrastructure either is documented or it is not.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Deliverability Engineer

Campaigns & automation

How this is scored

Building the mail and the journey around it: editor, templates, segmentation, triggered sequences, A/B testing.

0 — One-off broadcasts from a fixed template; no segmentation and no automation of any kind.

3 — A drag-and-drop editor and simple list segmentation, but automation is a single welcome mail and there is no testing.

5 — Reusable templates, attribute and behaviour segmentation, multi-step automations on common triggers, and subject-line A/B testing.

8 — A visual journey builder with branching on behaviour and data, dynamic content per segment, send-time optimisation, and testing that reports significance rather than raw counts.

10 — Journeys treat the whole lifecycle: event-driven entry from other systems, branching on any attribute or event, holdout groups for measurement, and automations a marketer can read months later without a diagram.

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The Deliverability Engineer

There is a visual workflow builder with drag-and-drop editing, if/then branching, triggers on signup, recipient activity and date, unlimited steps per automation, free test sends before activation, and documented use-case templates. We found no public information on subject-line A/B testing, send-time optimisation or holdout groups, which keeps this short of the top band. 6 7 2

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Deliverability infrastructure

How this is scored

Whether the mail arrives — authentication, sending reputation, bounce and complaint handling — judged on what the vendor documents rather than the inbox rate it advertises.

0 — No documentation of authentication or bounce handling; deliverability appears only as a marketing number.

3 — SPF and DKIM setup documented, but no DMARC guidance, no stated bounce policy and shared sending only.

5 — SPF, DKIM and DMARC documented with a custom sending domain, automatic hard-bounce suppression, and complaint-loop handling stated.

8 — The above plus dedicated-IP options with a documented warm-up, seed or inbox-placement testing, engagement-based sunsetting, and published guidance on list hygiene.

10 — Deliverability is operated as a service: reputation monitoring surfaced to the customer, per-domain and per-ISP diagnostics, enforced authentication before first send, and postmaster or blocklist handling the vendor documents doing on the customer's behalf.

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The Deliverability Engineer

Authentication is documented properly: SPF via CNAME, DKIM for mailings and signup forms, and DMARC with policy guidance plus a status display and realistic verification timing — this is setup documentation, not a delivery-rate boast, so I count it. Beyond a list-quality review before accounts are activated and exportable bounce records, we found no public information on automatic hard-bounce suppression, complaint-loop handling, dedicated IP options with warm-up, or inbox-placement testing. 8 9 5 13 2

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List ownership, import & exit

How this is scored

Whether the list and its history remain the sender's: import with attributes intact, full export including engagement history, deletion that executes, and no metering that prices leaving out of reach.

0 — Export is addresses only; engagement history, segments and automations cannot leave.

3 — CSV import and export of subscriber fields, but engagement history and unsubscribe state are not exportable.

5 — Full subscriber export including custom attributes, subscription status and unsubscribe state, plus API access sufficient to sync elsewhere.

8 — Everything exportable in open formats — subscribers, engagement history, campaigns and templates — with documented deletion of a subscriber across all records, and no export throttling.

10 — Exit is a documented feature: full-fidelity export of the whole account, contractual data return, deletion that is evidenced rather than asserted, and migration tooling in both directions.

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The Deliverability Engineer

Recipient lists export as CSV or Excel including the opt-in record, per-recipient activity — opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes — is exportable per mailing, an API manages recipients for syncing elsewhere, and list backups can be restored. We found no public information on exporting campaigns or templates, on import with attributes intact, or on deletion that is evidenced rather than stated as GDPR-compliant. 12 13 10 14 5

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Integrations & API

How this is scored

The connection surface a newsletter lives on: shop and CRM systems, events in and out, webhooks, and an API somebody can build against without a partner agreement.

0 — No API and no named integrations; the list is maintained by CSV upload.

3 — A handful of native integrations and a read-mostly API, with no webhooks and no documented rate limits.

5 — Named integrations for common shop and CRM systems, a documented REST API with keys, and webhooks for the core subscriber events.

8 — Maintained bidirectional integrations with named systems including at least one major shop platform, event webhooks with retries, documented rate limits, and a sandbox.

10 — The tool is a component rather than a destination: transactional and marketing sending on one API, events flowing both directions, versioned API with a deprecation policy, and integrations the vendor maintains rather than lists.

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The Deliverability Engineer

There is a publicly documented API with a developer site that can send mailings and manage recipients — a write-capable surface, not a read-only one — plus native Plentymarkets and Shopware 6 connections. We found no public information on webhooks, documented rate limits, a sandbox, or CRM integrations beyond the two shop platforms. 14 15 2 3

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where subscriber data and behavioural tracking live, who the contracting entity is, and which subprocessors touch the send. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as this buyer weighs it — which in this category is heavily.

0 — US vendor and contracting entity, US hosting, subprocessors unnamed; subscriber behaviour leaves the EU with no stated basis.

3 — EU hosting offered as an option or for storage only, while sending, tracking or support access remains non-EU, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — sending infrastructure, analytics, support tooling — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU or DACH hosting with a named data-centre provider, EU contracting entity, complete subprocessor list published, and any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting, sending and every subprocessor in the EU, certification published, and no transfer that needs a Schrems II argument to survive.

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The Deliverability Engineer

The contracting entity is a German GmbH in Freiburg, hosting is in a German datacentre assured by the data-processing agreement and backed by an ISO 27001 certificate, backups are daily, encrypted and stored in Germany, and an external German data-protection officer is named. The data-centre operator itself is not named, a complete subprocessor list is not published, and the vendor's own website runs Google and HubSpot under standard contractual clauses — non-EU processing named with a legal basis, but not a fully evidenced chain. 3 5 11 4

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a sender can compute the real invoice for their list size and send volume — including overage, extra domains and automation limits — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A headline price per contact tier exists, but send limits, overage rates or the tier where automation begins are not stated.

5 — Contact-tier prices public with the billing period stated and send limits given, but at least one commonly needed capability sits in an unpriced tier or add-on.

8 — Every tier priced publicly with contact and volume limits, overage rates, feature boundaries and VAT treatment stated; only genuinely custom volume lacks a number.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator producing the annual invoice for a given list size and send frequency, including overage, additional domains and dedicated IPs.

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The Deliverability Engineer

Three tiers are priced publicly at up to 500 contacts with the monthly period stated, per-tier limits on automations, lists, sender addresses and users are spelled out, and a pay-as-you-go option of 1 x 500 emails for a total of 20,00 € with no contract term is listed. We found no public information on overage rates, VAT treatment, or prices for contact volumes beyond 500, so the invoice for a bigger list is not computable from these pages alone. 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

3 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency EU only ⚠ unverified 3/3 pts 4 Report an error
Subprocessors EU only ⚠ unverified 2/2 pts 5 Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

Sources (15)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage www.rapidmail.de Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing www.rapidmail.de Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Imprint www.rapidmail.de Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Privacy policy www.rapidmail.de Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Security / trust page www.rapidmail.de Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Campaigns & automation — found from sitemap help.rapidmail.de Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Campaigns & automation — found from sitemap www.rapidmail.de Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Deliverability infrastructure — found from sitemap www.rapidmail.de Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Deliverability infrastructure — found from sitemap help.rapidmail.de Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Consent, proof & tracking limits — found from sitemap help.rapidmail.de Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Consent, proof & tracking limits — found from sitemap help.rapidmail.de Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  12. 12 List ownership, import & exit — found from sitemap www.rapidmail.de Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  13. 13 List ownership, import & exit — found from sitemap www.rapidmail.de Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Integrations & API — found from sitemap www.rapidmail.de Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  15. 15 Integrations & API — found from sitemap help.rapidmail.de Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →