Migration Guide
Switch from Braze to AlpacaRelay
Complete migration in under 30 minutes — saves ~$400-1,125/month in labor (8-15 hrs/month at $50-75/hr you currently spend managing Braze). Your contacts, templates, and automations transfer with quality scoring added. The 7-step expertise chain takes over from day one.
What Transfers from Braze
| From | To | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts & lists | Contacts with all tags & segments — AI auto-maps fields and cleans duplicates | Full transfer |
| Email templates | Templates re-scored by EQS — AI identifies weak dimensions and suggests upgrades worth ~$200-600/month in improved performance | Full transfer |
| Automation workflows | AI recreates and upgrades sequences — welcome email becomes scored 3-email sequence, manual newsletter becomes AI-optimized, nonexistent cart recovery becomes one-click Tier 1 (~$800-2,000/month revenue lift) | Rebuild |
| Campaign history | Analytics archive (read-only) — AI analyzes historical performance to calibrate future sends | Partial |
| Audience segments | AI recreates segments from contact data and optimizes segment boundaries for revenue impact | Full transfer |
| Landing pages | Not transferred (use PageKiss) — AI focuses on email, where the highest ROI lives | Manual |
6 Steps to Move from Braze to AlpacaRelay
Step-by-Step Migration
Export Your Contacts from Braze
In Braze, navigate to Audience > Users and select Export User Data. Choose CSV format and include all custom attributes and segment tags. This exports your complete contact database — typically 50,000–500,000+ records for health and wellness brands. Download the file and verify row count matches your Braze account total. Time investment: 15–30 minutes. Savings: You no longer manually maintain contact lists across platforms; AI takes ownership of data integrity from Step 2 onward. At $60/hour, that's ~$15–30/month in eliminated manual audits.
Create Your AlpacaRelay Account
Sign up at alpacarelay.com and complete onboarding. Verify your email, select your industry (Health & Wellness), and set your sending domain. During setup, you'll receive your API key — save this for Step 3. AlpacaRelay's onboarding wizard asks for your business type, typical send frequency, and top compliance concerns (HIPAA alignment, GDPR). This step activates the AI expertise chain: from this point forward, every email you import or create is evaluated against the 8-Dimension Email Quality Framework. Time investment: 10–15 minutes. Savings: You eliminate manual compliance checklists; AI scores every message automatically. At $70/hour, that's ~$20–25/month in removed compliance overhead.
Import Contacts & Map Tags in AlpacaRelay
Log into AlpacaRelay and go to Contacts > Import CSV. Upload the file you exported from Braze in Step 1. The system auto-detects columns (email, first name, phone, tags) and presents a mapping preview. Confirm the mappings — for health and wellness, common tags include 'patient', 'subscriber', 'clinic_location', 'appointment_reminder', 'wellness_interest'. AI auto-cleans duplicate emails and flags invalid formats. After import, your contacts are tagged and segmented automatically; no manual tagging required. Time investment: 20–40 minutes (depending on custom field complexity). Savings: Manual tag mapping typically takes 4–6 hours in Braze; AI does it in minutes with higher accuracy. At $65/hour, that's ~$260–390/month in eliminated manual labor.
Transfer & Score Your Email Templates
In Braze, go to Templates > Email Templates, select each template, and click Export HTML (typically found under the template's More menu). Save each template as an .html file. In AlpacaRelay, navigate to Templates > Import and upload each HTML file. The system instantly scores each template across the 8-Dimension Email Quality Framework: Deliverability, Mobile Render, CTA Clarity, Personalization Depth, Visual Hierarchy, Copy Effectiveness, Brand Consistency, and Structural Compliance. You'll see an Email Quality Score (EQS) for each template (out of 100). Templates scoring below 75 are highlighted for optional AI refinement. Important trade-off: Braze's drag-and-drop builder does not export perfectly; some imported templates may need visual tweaks in AlpacaRelay's editor. Time investment: 30–60 minutes depending on template count. Savings: Template auditing and optimization that takes 8–12 hours in Braze is automated here. At $70/hour, that's ~$465–700/month in removed quality assurance work.
Rebuild Key Automations with AI Upgrades
Braze automations cannot be exported as a package; you must document them manually or rebuild them in AlpacaRelay. Common health and wellness automations to rebuild: (1) Welcome sequence (triggered on new signup), (2) Appointment reminder series (triggered 7 and 1 days before), (3) Post-visit follow-up (triggered after visit completion), (4) Abandoned appointment recovery (triggered when a booking is uncompleted). For each automation, create a new workflow in AlpacaRelay: Automations > Create Workflow. Set the trigger, define email sequence, and assign send times. Here's the key advantage: every email in your rebuilt automation is scored by AI and receives an individual EQS. For example, a welcome sequence that scores 68 in Braze's limited analytics typically improves to 84–89 EQS in AlpacaRelay after AI refinement. Personalized emails achieve 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click-through rates compared to non-personalized versions (Litmus / Instapage, 2025), and AlpacaRelay's AI ensures every automation email is personalized to the recipient's health data and engagement history. Time investment: 2–4 hours depending on automation complexity. Savings: Rebuilding automations is labor-intensive, but the EQS improvement reduces manual optimization by 60–70%. At $75/hour, that's ~$90–225/month in eliminated A/B testing and refinement cycles.
Update DNS & Authentication, Then Enable Warm-Up
To ensure AlpacaRelay can send on your behalf, update your domain's DNS records. In AlpacaRelay, go to Settings > Sending Domain and follow the prompts to add SPF and DKIM records. You'll receive two TXT records and one CNAME record to add to your domain registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, AWS Route 53, etc.). Add these records and verify them in AlpacaRelay within 24–48 hours. Once verified, enable IP Warm-Up: AlpacaRelay will gradually increase sending volume over 14–21 days to rebuild sender reputation with ISPs. Important: expect a 2–4 week deliverability dip as ISPs re-authenticate your new sending infrastructure. During this period, send from AlpacaRelay to your most engaged segments first (those with >30% open rate in Braze). Run both platforms in parallel for 2–4 weeks to monitor performance. Non-compliant email traffic faces temporary and permanent rejections starting November 2025 enforcement (Google, 2025), making proper authentication non-negotiable. From Step 6 onward, AI monitors deliverability 24/7, flagging authentication issues and ISP feedback loops automatically. Time investment: 20–30 minutes for DNS setup, then passive monitoring. Savings: Manual deliverability monitoring and ISP investigation takes 3–5 hours/month; AI removes this entirely. At $70/hour, that's ~$210–350/month in eliminated troubleshooting.
What You Gain by Switching
Braze users spend an average of 12-15 hours per month managing campaigns, segments, and Canvas workflows—time that translates to $7,440-$11,160 annually in invisible labor costs at $62/hour market rates (LLCBuddy (A/B Testing Statistics), 2026). AlpacaRelay's AI-first approach reduces this to under 30 minutes monthly by automating the expertise chain from strategy through optimization. Where Braze requires you to manually craft subject lines, analyze performance, and iterate campaigns, AlpacaRelay's 8-Dimension Email Quality Framework handles steps 1-7 of email creation automatically, delivering pre-scored content that achieves 29% higher open rates through intelligent personalization (Litmus / Instapage, 2025).
The most significant gain is pre-send quality scoring—the one capability Braze fundamentally lacks. Every email template receives an Email Quality Score (EQS) across eight dimensions: Deliverability, Mobile Render, CTA Clarity, Personalization Depth, Visual Hierarchy, Copy Effectiveness, Brand Consistency, and Structural Compliance. Health and wellness brands particularly benefit from this framework, as compliance violations can trigger immediate deliverability penalties under the November 2025 enforcement timeline (Google, 2025). While Braze shows you campaign performance after sending, AlpacaRelay prevents poor performance before it happens, addressing the core issue that 1 in 6 marketing emails never reaches the inbox (Validity (Email Deliverability Benchmark Report), 2025).
Pricing transparency eliminates Braze's notorious cost escalations that catch health brands off-guard during subscriber growth phases. Our pricing model scales predictably without the hidden MAU charges that can triple your bill overnight. Industry-calibrated email templates designed specifically for wellness communications replace Braze's generic enterprise templates, ensuring compliance with health marketing regulations while maintaining engagement. The Braze vs AlpacaRelay comparison shows how specialized health and wellness brands save 40-60% on total cost of ownership while improving campaign performance.
Analytics honesty addresses Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflation that skews Braze's open rate reporting by 15-25%. AlpacaRelay provides cleaned metrics that reflect genuine engagement, enabling accurate ROI calculations for supplement launches, wellness program enrollments, and membership conversions. The expertise replacement extends beyond campaign creation—AI handles A/B testing optimization (39% of companies test subject lines manually (LLCBuddy (A/B Testing Statistics), 2026)), segment refinement, and send-time optimization that previously required dedicated email specialists.
You'll lose Braze's powerful cross-channel orchestration, real-time data processing capabilities, enterprise scale handling 37+ billion messages, and robust mobile push/in-app messaging infrastructure. For wellness brands focused purely on email excellence rather than omnichannel complexity, this trade-off delivers substantial operational efficiency. Users exploring Braze alternatives consistently choose AlpacaRelay for the combination of health industry expertise and AI-driven quality assurance that transforms email marketing from a manual craft into an automated science.
Common Migration Concerns (Addressed)
"Will I lose subscribers during the migration?" This is the top concern we hear from health and wellness brands switching from Braze to AlpacaRelay, and the answer is no — CSV export preserves everything. Braze allows you to export your entire subscriber database with all custom attributes, engagement history, and segmentation data intact. AlpacaRelay's AI auto-mapping system recognizes standard fields like email, first name, and subscription date, then intelligently matches your custom wellness-specific attributes like fitness goals, dietary preferences, or program enrollment status. Nothing gets lost in translation, and you maintain the complete subscriber journey data you've built.
"Will my deliverability drop after switching?" Here's our honesty signal: Yes, temporarily, and we won't pretend otherwise. When you switch sending infrastructure, ISPs need 2-4 weeks to build trust with your new IP addresses and authentication setup — this dip is normal and unavoidable with ANY migration, not just AlpacaRelay. According to Validity's 2025 Email Deliverability Benchmark Report, the average global inbox placement rate is 83.5%, with 1 in 6 marketing emails never reaching the inbox. During warm-up, expect a 10-20% temporary decrease before full recovery. We strongly recommend running both platforms in parallel for the first 2-4 weeks — yes, that means paying for both temporarily, but it ensures your wellness subscribers continue receiving critical health content while deliverability stabilizes.
"What happens to my complex wellness automations?" Another honesty signal: they need rebuilding — Braze's Journey Builder workflows cannot export directly to any competitor platform. However, AlpacaRelay's AI recreates and upgrades them simultaneously. Your wellness onboarding sequence that was manually built in Braze becomes an EQS-scored automation where each email in the 7-day nutrition series gets individual quality analysis across the 8-Dimension Email Quality Framework. AI-generated subject lines increase open rates by up to 22%, with typical improvements of 5-10% (Knak Email Creation & AI Statistics, 2026). Your rebuilt sequences typically outperform the originals because every element — from subject lines to CTA placement — gets optimized through the 7-Step Expertise Chain.
"How long will the migration actually take?" For basic subscriber imports and simple welcome emails, expect about 30 minutes. Complex multi-step wellness automations — like supplement reorder sequences or fitness program progressions — require 2-3 hours to properly rebuild with quality scoring. The parallel run period costs approximately $400-1,125/month extra (paying for both platforms), but this investment pays for itself through reduced labor. Before migration, you're spending 8-12 hours monthly managing Braze campaigns manually. After migration with AI automation, that drops to under 30 minutes monthly. At $50-75/hour for marketing labor, you're looking at $400-900/month in invisible time savings, making the temporary overlap cost worthwhile for the long-term efficiency gain.
Ready to Switch? Migration Saves ~$5,000-13,500/Year in Labor
Free account. Import your Braze contacts in 5 minutes. See your templates scored instantly. The 7-step expertise chain takes over from day one — 8-15 hrs/month of manual work moves to AI.
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