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Email Marketing · head to head

Ortto vs Sailthru

Ortto logo

Ortto

Email Marketing

Australian marketing automation with a customer data platform and analytics included rather than sold separately

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Sailthru logo

Sailthru

Email Marketing

Retail and publisher email personalisation, now one product inside the Marigold portfolio

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Ortto contact-based pricing counts everyone stored, including unsubscribed and long-inactive records, so the bill rises with list decay unless someone owns a pruning routine.; Sailthru the product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
  • They diverge on capability: Ortto covers Customer data platform, Sailthru covers Interest profiles.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Ortto and Sailthru actually diverge.

Attributes where Ortto and Sailthru differ
AttributeOrttoSailthru

Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), free tier (No), platforms (Web, REST API), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Email Marketing).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Ortto

  • Customer data platform
  • Journeys
  • Talk
  • Dashboards and reports
  • Playbooks
  • Capture

Only in Sailthru

  • Interest profiles
  • Personalisation engine
  • Prediction Manager
  • Site personalisation
  • Zephyr templating
  • Lifecycle optimiser

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Ortto

  • A SaaS company that wants trial and onboarding lifecycle plus product analytics without buying two toolsnot Sailthru
  • A small team replacing a stack of email tool, chat widget and dashboard product with one subscriptionnot Sailthru
  • Reporting on revenue by campaign and cohort without exporting events to a warehouse firstnot Sailthru
  • Teams already on Autopilot that need a supported migration path rather than a replatform to a US vendornot Sailthru

Sailthru

  • A publisher sending a personalised daily newsletter assembled per reader from a content cataloguenot Ortto
  • A retailer that wants email and on-site recommendations driven by the same affinity modelnot Ortto
  • High-cadence sending where per-recipient content assembly matters more than journey branchingnot Ortto
  • Teams that want churn and lifetime value scores available as native campaign conditions rather than imported fieldsnot Ortto

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Ortto

  • Contact-based pricing counts everyone stored, including unsubscribed and long-inactive records, so the bill rises with list decay unless someone owns a pruning routine.
  • Each bundled component is shallower than the specialist it replaces, and the email template editor in particular is behind the ecommerce-focused competitors.
  • Deliverability guidance and reputation tooling are thinner than at dedicated email providers, which matters most in the first months of a sending domain.
  • The partner and agency ecosystem outside Australia and New Zealand is small, so hiring contractors with real Ortto experience is harder than for the larger platforms.
  • Support hours follow Australian business time, so European and American teams often wait a working day for a substantive answer on complex issues.

Sailthru

  • The product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
  • Pricing counts stored profiles, so retained inactive readers keep costing money long after they stopped opening anything.
  • On-site personalisation requires a developer to implement the JavaScript and maintain the content feed, which puts the highest-value feature behind engineering time.
  • Zephyr is a proprietary templating language, so template maintenance skills are scarce compared with the Liquid syntax used by most competitors.
  • It is built for high-cadence content and retail sending, and B2B lifecycle programmes with long sales cycles sit poorly on the model.

Pricing, plan by plan

Ortto

On request
  • Ortto$undefined/month
    • Priced by number of contacts held, with separate email and SMS send allowances
    • Talk live chat and additional seats charged separately
    • Monthly and annual terms available

Sailthru

On request
  • Sailthru$undefined/year
    • Priced on stored profiles and send volume
    • Site personalisation and prediction features licensed by module
    • Annual contract through Marigold

Which should you pick?

Choose Ortto if

  • You need customer data platform.
  • You work on Web, REST API.
  • You also want journeys.
Ortto review

Choose Sailthru if

  • You need interest profiles.
  • You work on Web, REST API.
  • You also want personalisation engine.
Sailthru review

Questions people ask

Is Ortto or Sailthru better?
Neither clearly leads. Ortto starts at On request and Sailthru at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Ortto or Sailthru?
Ortto starts at On request and Sailthru at On request.
Does Ortto or Sailthru run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, REST API, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
What is Ortto best used for?
Ortto is most often used for a saas company that wants trial and onboarding lifecycle plus product analytics without buying two tools, a small team replacing a stack of email tool, chat widget and dashboard product with one subscription, reporting on revenue by campaign and cohort without exporting events to a warehouse first, teams already on autopilot that need a supported migration path rather than a replatform to a us vendor. Of those, a saas company that wants trial and onboarding lifecycle plus product analytics without buying two tools and a small team replacing a stack of email tool, chat widget and dashboard product with one subscription are not what Sailthru is typically brought in for.
What can Ortto do that Sailthru cannot?
Ortto covers Customer data platform, Journeys, Talk, Dashboards and reports. Sailthru covers Interest profiles, Personalisation engine, Prediction Manager, Site personalisation.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Ortto: Is Ortto the same product as Autopilot?

It is the successor from the same company, rebranded in 2022 and substantially rebuilt. Older Autopilot tutorials no longer match the interface.

Sailthru: Who owns Sailthru now?

Marigold, formerly CM Group, which also owns Campaign Monitor, Emma, Selligent, Liveclicker and Cheetah Digital.

Ortto: Do inactive contacts cost money?

Yes. Pricing counts contacts stored, so unsubscribed and dormant records consume allowance until they are deleted.

Sailthru: Does that affect the roadmap?

It can. Overlapping products in one portfolio compete for investment, so ask which platform is the strategic one for your segment before signing multi-year.

Ortto: Can it replace a BI tool?

For campaign, funnel and cohort reporting on its own event data, usually yes. For joins against finance or support data it cannot.

Sailthru: Is it worth it just for newsletters?

For personalised daily newsletters at publisher scale it remains one of the strongest options. For simple broadcast sending it is heavily over-specified.

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