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Email marketing consistently delivers a better ROI than any other marketing channel. Plus, it's brilliant for community building and engaging with your customers on what feels like a one-on-one level. But if you don't have the right infrastructure in place to handle your email marketing, you're not going to be able to reach your subscribers and customers in the way you need to encourage engagement, build those important relationships, generate more leads, and increase sales. That's why we've put together this list of the top email marketing platforms on the market right now. Each of the email marketing platforms on this list offers a unique set of features to explore so you can find the perfect email marketing platform to get the results you need.
Top Email Marketing Software & Platforms
To create and execute your email marketing strategy successfully, you'll need to find the best email marketing software platform for your business. Here’s a look at the best 31 email marketing software platforms and what makes each a good pick.
1. Campaigner
Best for: Small to midsize businesses
If you’re searching for a tool to help you with marketing across multiple channels, be sure to check out Campaigner. Included in its powerful list of features is advanced email marketing automation. You can use it to create email workflows, track conversions, nurture prospects, and personalize every aspect of your emails.
If you simply need help with designing your email, it offers hundreds of ready-made, responsive templates. Most email marketing platforms offer a decent selection of templates so this isn’t really a unique selling proposition, but where Campaigner offers extra value is it includes a sophisticated template management system with restricted access and tagging features to organize your templates, especially useful if you’re working as part of a bigger team. Another area where it takes it one step further is by including a built-in image editing tool. This way, you can customize your visual assets without having to switch to another editing tool.
Its reporting features also deserve special mention. Included in its comprehensive reports are the standard things like open and click rates, but it also includes geolocation reporting that lets you zoom in on how your email marketing campaigns are performing per location.
Simbiox, an Ecuador-based media company, leveraged Campaigner for email marketing, distinguishing their clients in a digitally saturated market. With Campaigner’s tools, they achieved higher engagement, notably improving open and conversion rates. Their four-year partnership with Campaigner was enhanced by responsive, Spanish-speaking support, crucial for their team’s needs.
Pros and Cons:
- ? A generous 30-day full-featured trial (access to over 60 advanced features)
- ? Diverse array of features for email and SMS marketing
- ? Intuitive
- ? No free plan and trial difficult to access
- ? Navigating templates tricky
Key Features:
- Email templates
- Triggered campaigns
- A/B testing
- Sign-up forms
Pricing: Pricing starts up at $59 per month for up to 5,000 contacts.
2. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)
Best for: Small businesses
Brevo is an all-in-one platform covering many business communications types, including email, SMS, Facebook, chat, CRM, and more. The company’s mission is to help businesses meet their customers. They help you to focus on the important tasks and put the rest on autopilot with automation. You can create professional-looking emails in no time, using its email builder, but the magic is in the platform’s combination of features. With chat, SMS marketing, inbox, CRM and automations, you’ll find it easy to piece together smarter and more compelling email campaigns. Facebook Ads functionality is built-in, making it possible to retarget contacts and attract new leads.
For example, when Group22, a digital agency, searched for a more intuitive tool that could deliver loads of functionality, they decided on Brevo. As they provide marketing services, accurate reporting that they could trust was a dealbreaker. Brevo’s reporting capabilities have given Group22 the confidence to get on with their own business.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Great contact management and customer interactions tracking
- ? Advanced automation
- ? Limited drag-and-drop functionality
- ? Customer support slow at times
Key Features:
- A shared inbox
- 60+ responsive email templates
- Built-in CRM
- Built-in SMS and chat
- Contact segmentation
- Facebook Ads for lead generation
Pricing: Brevo is free for up to 300 emails per day to unlimited contacts. Pricing starts at $25 per month for up to 20,000 monthly emails.
3. SMTP
Best for: Small to midsize businesses
SMTP’s solutions are more focused than many of the other email tools on our list. Instead of offering you several features that will help with the visual aspects of creating marketing emails, it’s all about delivery.
In short, SMTP offers reasonably priced SMTP relay (short for simple mail transfer protocol – the standard communication protocol for sending emails) and email delivery services that you can count on to send and track high-volume emails. Each month it sends out billions of emails using their secure and reliable email delivery platform, helping to ensure that the emails actually get delivered. After all, that should be any email marketing campaign’s main goal, right? It’s also a great tool for transactional emails. It will trigger transactional and automated emails super fast.
When Retirement Jobs needed to scale their email marketing while ensuring high deliverability, they turned to SMTP.com. CEO Tim Driver highlighted the platform’s ease of setup, robust security, and comprehensive analytics. With SMTP.com, they successfully increased their email volume from under 1 million to over 5 million per month, maintaining a strong sender reputation and avoiding ISP blacklists, thanks to SMTP’s reliable infrastructure and detailed reporting.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Great reputation among mailbox providers
- ? Superior inbox delivery (delivery rate of 98%)
- ? No free plan and more expensive than other tools
- ? Cheapest plan doesn’t offer a dedicated IP
Key Features:
- Superior delivery rates
- An optional Reputation Defender that will keep tabs on the health of your email list proactively by suppressing invalid email addresses
- Various transactional emails like password resets, privacy policy updates, receipts, and account updates
- Plug-and-play integration with marketing tools
- Detailed reporting
Pricing: Pricing starts at $25 per month for up to 50,000 monthly emails.
4. Omnisend
Best for: eCommerce marketers
Omnisend is an all-in-one email marketing automation platform that also caters to eCommerce brands. It enables you to expand on your newsletters and boost sales with automated emails, segmentation, and the added potential of SMS. It includes pre-built automations for cart abandonment, welcome series, transactional emails to help deliver streamlined buyer engagements.
It doesn’t take long to get set up (or see results). Organic Aromas, for example, needed only one hour to boost their newsletter signups by 150%.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Nice-looking templates
- ? Great customer service
- ? Easy to track performance of newsletters and automations
- ? No RSS feature
- ? Customer support can be slow
Key Features:
- A library of templates
- An Automations Library with pre-built workflows for every step of your customer journey
- Segmented targeting
- Pop-ups and forms
- Reports and analytics track sales and identify winning campaigns
Pricing: Omnisend is free for up to 250 contacts and 500 monthly emails. For the ability to send more monthly emails, pricing starts at $16 per month.
5. EmailOctopus
Best for: Small businesses
EmailOctopus is a popular email marketing software platform that has a mission to provide email marketing that’s simpler, more intuitive, and better value than the competition. It offers templates you can customize in a drag-and-drop editor, or you can begin your emails from scratch. The app also includes a landing page builder with everything you need to generate leads and grow your email list. Integrations are a drawcard for agile brands. Many of your existing tools, including Shopify, Gravity Forms, and WordPress, easily pair with EmailOctopus and make it an attractive tool, especially for brands with ambitious goals.
All in all, its price makes it a great tool for individuals and small businesses and Folksy can attest to that. Their biggest challenge was that they’re a small team with a limited budget which means that they need to think extra carefully about which tools to add to their tech stack. They wanted to grow their audience without having to spend loads, which Mailchimp didn’t allow them to do. Being able to send more, even if it meant that they would not have all the features that Mailchimp offers, made sense for their business, a move they don’t regret.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Affordable pricing plans
- ? Great customer service
- ? Limited segmentation
Key Features:
- Customizable website forms
- Predesigned templates
- Insights and data for segmentation
- Reporting
Pricing: EmailOctopus offers a free plan for up to 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails per month. Paid plans start at $8 per month.
6. Convertkit
Best for: Creators
ConvertKit is a great fit for both eCommerce businesses and creators. Its clean interface makes for an enjoyable experience, and it’s feature rich. It includes features like opt-in forms, landing pages, email workflows, tagging systems, data management and list segmentation, personalization, automation, and a lot more. ConvertKit also comes with helpful integrations with other platforms creators are accustomed to like WooCommerce, PayPal, Stripe, and WordPress.
For example, it’s helped a full-time farmer to automate her email process, while still keeping the authenticity of her business. With ConvertKit, she managed to grow her email program by 25% year-on-year. What’s more, one of the emails in her sequence generates up to $2,500 in sales per week.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Comprehensive forms
- ? Flexible list management
- ? Analytics and templates a bit basic
Key Features:
- Landing pages and forms
- An audience management system to streamline segmentation
- Great deliverability
- Prebuilt automation templates
- Integration with third-party eCommerce tools
Pricing: ConvertKit offers a free plan for up to 1,000 subscribers. Paid plans start at $9 per month.
7. GetResponse
Best for: Small and large companies
GetResponse is one of our favorite email marketing platforms and it’s widely used by marketers across industries. It includes email automation, email templates, segmentation, and personalization. There’s also a neat Auto Funnel feature that provides a ready-made marketing funnel for email marketing campaigns. Altogether, GetResponse packs a set of powerful features geared toward brand growth. From A/B testing to a comprehensive analytics tool that tracks email campaign performance.
It’s their A/B testing feature and detailed email analytics that have helped Submission Technology, a lead generation agency, to increase engagement. They carefully segmented their contact list to identify the most active members. Then, using GetResponse’s click reports they uncovered which content delivered the best results and created their future content based on these findings. The results — an open rate of 31.14% and click-through rate of 7.31%.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Advanced automation features
- ? Great list management
- ? Poor deliverability rates
Key Features:
- Autoresponders to send welcome emails, followups, educational series, and nurture leads automatically
- One-click integration to run powerful retargeting campaigns using Facebook Pixel
- Website visitor tracking
- An AI email and campaign generator
- Signup forms and popups
Pricing: After a free 30-day trial, pricing starts at $19 per month.
8. EngageBay
Best for: Small to midsize businesses
Apart from a standalone Service Bay product (covering activities such as live chat, helpdesk reports, tickets, and more), EngageBay offers three products:
- Marketing Bay
- CRM & Sales Bay
- All-in-One Suite
Email marketing is included in both the Marketing Bay and the All-in-One Suite, although CRM email integration is part of the CRM & Sales Bay. Their email marketing system includes rich text formatting, a landing page builder, email marketing templates, free email automation, and more.
If you opt for the All-in-one Suite, you just might be able to replace other tools currently in your MarTech stack. That’s what one of their clients, A+ Test Prep and Tutoring, managed to do. Not only did EngageBay replace six different standalone tools, but they also accelerated their growth. Applicant conversions increased by six times!
Pros and Cons:
- ? A responsive customer support team
- ? Interactive emails are easy to design
- ? Limited landing page templates
Key Features:
- Marketing automation
- Email marketing
- Email sequences
- Landing pages
- Web forms
- SMS marketing
- Inbound marketing
- Site messaging
- Push notifications
- Contact segmentation
- Email templates
- Bulk SMS marketing
Pricing: EngageBay is free for up to 250 contacts. Pricing for their All-in-One Suite starts at $12.74 per user per month.
9. AWeber
Best for: Businesses of all sizes
AWeber is a great email marketing platform for teams, small businesses, and entrepreneurs. It includes a drag-and-drop email editor, templates, automation and workflows, A/B testing, segmentation, autoresponders, and tons of integrations. Like others on our list, AWeber offers a landing page builder. It’s clean with drag-and-drop functionality, making it easy to use for anyone who needs to quickly build and deploy a landing page along with an email campaign.
As for the type of results you can expect, AWeber has helped content creators to increase their number of subscribers by anything between 75% and 300%. For example, when a US-based photographer used AWeber’s sign-up forms, which he added along with lead magnets to his website, his newsletter subscribers grew by 300%. Plus, it took him only about 10 minutes to set up.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Loads of templates and integrations
- ? Intuitive drag-and-drop editor
- ? Automations are basic
Key Features:
- An easy-to-use, drag-and-drop builder
- Prebuilt autoresponders
- A/B split testing
- Advanced message analytics
Pricing: AWeber is free for up to 500 subscribers. Pricing starts at $14.99 per month.
10. ActiveCampaign
Best for: Beginner to advanced marketers
ActiveCampaign is an affordable email marketing platform, making it great for small marketing teams and creators. It includes all the features you’d expect like automation, segmentation, triggered emails, email funnels, autoresponders, A/B testing, and scheduling. It also includes more advanced features like conditional content, geotracking, managed deliverability, and multi-user editing. For example, geotracking shows you where your subscribers are from, and you also get managed deliverability, and multi-user editing (update multiple fields in an email with subscriber information).
For example, it has helped Alclair, a manufacturer of in-ear monitors, to drown out the noise and speak to their target audience directly at the right time and place. Their previous email marketing tool lacked the ability to personalize communication, but with ActiveCampaign they could use tagging, segmentation, and conditional content blocks to reach their contacts at the best time. These features, along with its intuitive automations, contributed to a two-digit increase for both lead conversions and the click-through rate.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Great email deliverability
- ? Good selection of integrations
- ? Advanced features come with a learning curve
Key Features:
- Segmentation and dynamic content
- Built-in landing page builder
- A drag-and-drop email designer
- Over 150 email templates
- Site, link and event tracking
- Automation and campaign reports
Pricing: Pricing starts at $39 per month.
11. Drip
Best for: eCommerce brands
Drip is one of the more advanced email marketing platforms on our list and is the perfect option for eCommerce businesses because of its seamless integration with eCommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. You can use eCommerce CRM data to create personalized marketing, segmenting your email list based on any number of criteria like clicks, purchase history, email opens, and more.
Drip also integrates SMS marketing, elevating it into a sphere few email marketing platforms play. Text messages can be sent for a range of engagements, from abandoned cart reminders to promotional deals.
Realizing that the growing eCommerce market means you have to find a way to stand out, Y-Verge, a digital marketing agency, turned to Drip. By using personalized buying journeys and creating better customer experiences, they could stay top of mind. Drip also helped them to cut down on manual work and at least 80% is now streamlined.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Powerful automations
- ? Loads of integrations
- ? A/B testing is challenging
- ? Reporting is a bit confusing
Key Features:
- SMS automation to drive engagement with buyers
- Segmentation and reporting on email campaigns
- A/B testing
- Dynamic product blocks
Pricing: After a free 14-day trial, pricing starts at $39 per month for up to 2,500 subscribers.
12. MailerLite
Best for: Beginners and small businesses
MailerLite is a strong competitor in the creators and small-medium business bracket. It includes the basics you need for successful email marketing like surveys, automation, popups, and landing pages. MailerLite also integrates with dozens of eCommerce platforms and marketing tools you’re probably already using.
At a glance, it appears to be one of the more understated platforms, and this is largely due to its clean design. But that’s also what makes it powerful. Everything about the platform is geared towards growth, from eCommerce campaign functionality to automation, segmentation, promotional pop-ups, and the ability to create landing pages.
For example, it has helped The Mental Health Update, a weekly newsletter, to improve its own list health. Both deliverability and engagement rates increased significantly after signing up for MailerLite and the newsletter landing page is now also converting at 40+%.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Powerful automations
- ? Loads of integrations
- ? A/B testing is challenging
- ? Reporting is a bit confusing
Key Features:
- A website builder and landing page builder for quick web asset builds
- Pop-ups and embedded forms
- Advanced marketing workflows
- Three different types of editors and an AI email generator
- A free image library
Pricing: MailerLite is free for up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month. For the ability to send unlimited monthly emails, pricing starts at $10 per month.
13. Keap
Best for: Entrepreneurs and medium-sized businesses
Keap is technically a customer relationship management service, but it has robust email marketing, automation, and sales tools, earning it a spot on our list of the best email marketing platforms. It includes automation and workflows, templates for emails, quotes, invoices, and proposals, and it integrates with your other favorite business tools and apps. The true power of this platform is its automation and CRM. These help you turn current customers into repeat customers, and they are easy to navigate. Keap also integrates with your other favorite business tools and apps, making it a smart move for small eCommerce brands with a growing MarTech stack.
It has, for example, helped SimpleGrowth, a lawncare business, also to enjoy the growth they help their customers to unlock. However, with business growth came more work and the founder of SimpleGrowth simply couldn’t keep up with all the business processes that he handled manually. With Keap, he refined and automated outdated systems, used automation to close holes in the sales funnel, and customized his communication to different stages of the customer lifecycle. Not only did he get back his life, but also enjoyed a year-on-year growth of about 40%.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Custom reporting and visualization
- ? Good lead nurturing and list management
- ? It’s more expensive
- ? Setting up integrations not as intuitive
Key Features:
- Advanced marketing and sales automation, customizable campaigns, and app integration to power growth
- Revenue reports and analytics
- Modern and branded landing pages
- A customizable dashboard
Pricing: After a free 14-day trial, pricing starts at $159 per month.
14. Constant Contact
Best for: Beginners and small businesses
Constant Contact helps you create email marketing campaigns like a pro. It includes a smart email editor that makes it easy to customize and design great-looking emails that stand out on every device. Other features that make it a catch for smaller brands and non-profits include automation, social marketing for lead generation, and the ability to build websites and landing pages. Constant Contact also has specialized email marketing for eCommerce tools to help your online store grow. You can upload contact lists from Excel, Outlook, Salesforce or wherever you store your contacts.
It has helped their clients to grow their email lists by hundreds, if not thousands. With a bigger email list, they could also increase their sales as was the case for Lady Black Tie. The online fashion store saw a significant increase in sales and expanded to a global audience. The analytics tools, drag-and-drop editor, A/B testing and customer service in particular helped Lady Black Tie to get dressed for success.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Easy to use
- ? Good deliverability
- ? Some email templates are outdated
- ? The customer support can be better
Key Features:
- A smart email editor to design professional and aesthetically pleasing emails
- Website and landing page builder
- Social marketing for posting ads, scheduling content and tracking performance
- Customer list management
- Website signup forms
Pricing: Constant Contact offers a free 14-day trial. Pricing is available upon request.
15. Mailchimp
Best for: Small, medium, and large businesses
Mailchimp is one of the most established email marketing platforms out there. It’s particularly well-suited for beginners and startups and offers tools like email automation, data segmentation, templates, personalization, A/B testing, lead capture forms, and integration with CRMs.
While it started as a purely email-focused solution, the platform offers much more today. You can build a free website, buy a domain, create paid ads and landing pages, publish social media posts, and send printed postcards to any destination in the world.
It’s Mailchimp’s segmentation feature that has helped Earl of East, a lifestyle brand, to share value-added content with their audience. With this approach, they could create a higher than average return rate, evidence that their authentic content is appreciated.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Detailed reporting tools
- ? Intuitive email editor
- ? Plans can get expensive
Key Features:
- Predictive insights about your contacts so you can personalize your marketing
- Personalized customer journeys using conditional logic and branching points
- A/B testing to identify high-converting messages
- Website and landing page builder
Pricing: Mailchimp offers a free plan for up to 500 subscribers. Paid plans start $13 per month for up to 500 contacts and 5,000 monthly email sends.
16. SendX
Best for: Small to midsize businesses
SendX by SendWorks is one of the cheaper email marketing software solutions, making it a great option for smaller businesses. You can use it to send campaigns, grow your list, and automate a number of your marketing tasks.
Features like its drag-and-drop editor and huge email template library make it easy to get started. Then, once you’re ready to improve your email marketing strategy, you use its analytics, A/B testing and heatmaps.
Not only does its intuitive tools mean that you’ll get set up quickly, but you also won’t have to wait too long before you see real results. For example, an eCommerce sporting brand managed to increase their qualified leads by 250% in 60 days with the help of SendX’s tagging and segmentation features.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Affordable pricing
- ? Easy to manage subscriber lists
- ? Customer support can be better
Key Features:
- A/B testing
- A deliverability booster
- Email web forms, popups, and landing pages
- Drip campaigns
Pricing: Pricing starts at $7.49 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers and unlimited emails.
17. SendPulse
Best for: Large businesses
SendPulse is a multi-channel email and messenger marketing platform built for sending emails, SMS, and creating chatbots for Facebook and Telegram. It may seem like a mouthful, but together, these features can help brands drive strong and more engaging brand experiences for buyers.
SendPulse lets you send different types of messages separately or combine them with Automation 360. It includes a suite of email marketing tools, helping you to collect users’ contact information, create responsive templates, and set up automated flows.
The platform has helped marketers and email experts to create and launch an email marketing campaign from scratch for one of the biggest Ukrainian charitable foundations, KOLO. In just over six months, the campaign already raised more than $38 million. The first email alone already raised thousands of dollars. What’s more, nearly half of their subscribers opened each email.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Intuitive user interface
- ? Affordable pricing
- ? Limited templates
Key Features:
- A drag-and-drop editor to create responsive emails without any HTML knowledge
- Trigger emails to nurture leads in every stage of your sales funnel
- A form builder
- SMS and web push notifications for lead generation
- Built-in landing page creator
- Built-in CRM
Pricing: SendPulse is free for up to 15,000 monthly emails to 500 subscribers. Pricing starts at $5.20 per month.
18. Freshmarketer
Best for: Marketing teams
Freshmarketer is a full-featured marketing automation solution for your business that includes email marketing. It has tools for you to engage and convert your audience from subscribers into paying customers with email campaigns, so you can provide relevant information at the right time and deliver integrated campaigns that improve conversions.
Admittingly, this is a CRM first, but that’s what makes it a powerful platform. Its CRM functionality helps brands gather in-depth customer insights, making marketing campaigns all the more stronger. Automation also powers lead generation and nurturing, and can send invoices or help generate recurring revenue via email reminders to subscribers.
All in all, it’s a tool that marketers can look at more closely. For example, it has helped GoTo Marketers, a full-service marketing agency, to improve the conversion rate of their clients. Using Freshmarketer’s heatmaps, they can improve the information architecture which, in some cases, translates to an increase of nearly 15% for contact form submissions.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Easy to set up
- ? Intuitive A/B testing
- ? Automated email responses can be better
Key Features:
- An easy-to-use, drag-and-drop editor
- A vast collection of templates
- Automate welcome emails, invoices, reminders, and more
- Personalization and segmentation
Pricing: Freshmarketer offers a free 21-day trial. Pricing is available upon request.
19. Bitrix24
Best for: Small businesses
Bitrix24 aims to replace many services and apps with a single ecosystem for your business to work in. Its tools cover communications, tasks and projects, CRM, contact center, and website. Bitrix24’s email platform comes with webforms, SMS and instant messaging marketing, and Facebook, Instagram and Google paid advertising functionality.
Yes, this makes Bitrix24 sound like a large and clunky tool, but it’s far from it. It has a relatively easy-to-navigate interface, and with features like a built-in CRM, creating powerful email marketing campaigns is a goal well within reach.
For over 8 years, mobilblitz, led by CEOs Jörg Geißler and René Ulrich, has used Bitrix24 to connect their 40 branches. This versatile platform has streamlined internal communication, customer interactions via social media, project management, employee training, and file storage, enhancing efficiency and collaboration across the company.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Easy to use
- ? Navigation not as intuitive
Key Features:
- Google Ads remarketing capabilities
- Loads of integrations
- Landing pages
- Web forms
- Flexible access rights
- Triggered emails, email sequences
- List segmentation
Pricing: Bitrix24 offers a limited free plan and free 15-day trial. Plans start at $49 per month.
20. User.com
Best for: Businesses of all sizes
User.com is a single workspace providing you with easy-to-use, yet very robust, tools for marketing, sales, management, and support teams. Marketing teams can use it to upgrade their brand’s communication across channels, planning various paths for multiple customer segments and let automation take over the job. User.com offers personalized and tailored emails, sending the right email to the right receiver at the right moment.
For example, LG Electronics Poland, used User.com for GDPR compliance, crucial for a global brand like them. User.com exceeded their expectations and even in their early campaigns they already saw double the results anticipated.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Easy to set up and use
- ? Loads of features
- ? Customer service can be better
- ? Reporting a bit basic
Key Features:
- Defined snippet tags to make your message more specific to the person
- Unified subscriber data for smarter campaigns
- Easy-to-use reports and data exportation
- Analytics
- A drag-and-drop editor
Pricing: Pricing is available upon request.
21. Direct Mail
Best for: Businesses of all sizes using Mac
Direct Mail for Mac enables you to create and send great-looking email newsletters. You can use it to compose, grow, track, send, collaborate, and automate your emails. Whether your emails are newsletters, announcements, or promotions, Direct Mail is confident you will find the perfect template, and you can customize up to 18 fields. It includes a built-in image editor, a Design Test feature to see pixel-perfect screenshots of your message rendered in over 50+ email clients and live previews that update as you type.
When Xio needed an efficient way to reach their client base with custom emails, they discovered an app that surpassed all expectations. Its simplicity and short learning curve allowed them to quickly create and send attractive, personalized emails. The straightforwardness and effectiveness of the app have made it an indispensable tool for their business, earning Xio’s high recommendation.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Easy to use
- ? Email lists can be improved
Key Features:
- Autoresponders that are highly customizable and easy to use
- Reports on campaign performance
- A gallery with various types of templates
- Personalization and dynamic content
- Polls and surveys
- Professional typography
- Sign-up forms
- Loads of integrations
Pricing: Direct Mail for Mac is free for up to 150 monthly emails. Plans start at $15 per month.
22. Emercury
Best for: Entrepreneurs
Emercury is a strong contender in the small-to-medium bracket. It’s packed with a host of features that push it north of the spectrum. It offers an easy-to-use HTML editor and a drag-and-drop template editor to personalize messages, forms and an autoresponder. Automation is available in the form of Emercury’s Journey Builder, a tool that helps you nurture leads using triggers. Emercury also enables you to sync your data with over 2,000 sales and marketing tools, teamwork apps, forms, customer support platforms, social media, and more.
When Kirk W., Director of Operations in Investment Management, needed reliable email deliverability and expert guidance, he chose Emercury. Their seasoned experts not only enhanced engagement and deliverability but also offered proactive solutions to protect his IP reputation. Emercury’s email automation and personalized support transformed Kirk’s approach to email marketing, ensuring stability and efficiency in his operations.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Highly customizable features
- ? User-friendly interface
- ? Steep learning curve
- ?Limited reporting
Key Features:
- Automated lead nurture campaigns
- A/B testing
- Email tracking and analytics
- Six months reporting retention
- Advanced segmentation
- A dynamic HTML and template editor
- Delivery optimization tools
Pricing: A limited free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails. Pricing starts at $227 per month.
23. HubSpot
Best for: Small to midsize businesses
With HubSpot, you don’t need any design skills to create personalized, professional-looking emails. One of its most attractive features is that as it’s also powered by HubSpot’s CRM, you have access to accurate customer data that you can use to customize your emails. To customize your emails further, you can also turn to its marketplace where you’ll find templates that are proven to convert. You can then use its drag-and-drop editor to change the layout and elements like calls to action.
Its intuitiveness has helped a brand like DoorDash that knows only too well about the importance of delivery times to shorten the period needed to create email campaigns by three days. That’s like being told your parcel will be delivered to your door within five days only to receive it on the second day. The team at DoorDash praised HubSpot’s email automation features. Previously all their email campaigns were one-off, but now about 80% of their emails exist within workflows.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Personalized email sequences
- ? Comprehensive set of features
- ?Plans can get expensive quickly
Key Features:
- A/B testing to create the best email messaging
- A drag-and-drop template editor
- An analytics dashboard
- Email sequences
- Smart send times
- Customizable reports
Pricing: HubSpot offers a number of free tools to get you started and a number of paid products. Pricing starts at $18 per month.
24. Moosend
Best for: Small businesses
Moosend is a great solution for smaller businesses. It’s also one of the better choices if you want to implement personalization. With it, you can segment your email lists based on different customer behavior. This way, your emails will be very relevant to your subscribers which will help you to stand out.
It can also be useful if you want to grow your email list as it offers custom sign-up forms. Once you have a substantial list, you can take advantage of its email marketing automation features and create workflows so that your emails are sent at the optimal time.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Intuitive drag-and-drop functionality
- ? Good value for money
- ? Software bugs have been reported from time to time
Key Features:
- A/B testing to measure engagement
- Data analytics to track unsubscribes, opens, clicks, social shares, etc.
- More than 40 free responsive templates
- Prebuilt automation templates
- Tracking
- Real-time reporting and analytics
Pricing: After a free 30-day trial, pricing starts at $9 per month for up to 500 subscribers and unlimited emails.
25. Campaign Monitor
Best for: Small to midsize businesses
Two things that stand out about Campaign Monitor are its beautiful email marketing templates and customer service. With its email builder, you can customize elements like color schemes and fonts to ensure brand consistency. You can also get access to millions of free photos via Unsplash to let your emails stand out even further.
It’s also a great choice if segmentation is key to your email marketing strategy. You use the customer data that you’ve already collected to create hyper-targeted segments and personalized emails.
Used by businesses across various industries, it’s Campaign Monitor’s attention to esthetics that stand out. This has made it easier for Drake Hotel Properties to create email newsletters that are trendy and exclusive. Not too exclusive, though… Thanks to the platform, they could increase subscribers by over 60%.
Pros and Cons:
- ?Great reporting and analytics
- ? Reliable performance
- ? Email lists can be improved
- ? Integrations can be better
Key Features:
- Link Review tool that will automatically search your email for hyperlinks that might be broken or outdated
- A visual journey designer to create more timely emails
- A full analytics suite and actionable insights
- Seamless integration with hundreds of third-party apps
- Sign-up forms
Pricing: Pricing starts at $11 per month.
26. SendGrid by Twilio
Best for: Businesses of all sizes
SendGrid offers unique solutions for every stage of your brand’s growth, making it a great platform for businesses of all sizes. Trusted by more than 80,000 brands, including names like Airbnb, Uber, and Spotify, they offer a wide range of email marketing features that include design, automation, testing, and statistics.
To help you get started, you can browse their library with responsive templates (or import existing ones). Once you’ve found a template that you like, you can refine the design to align with your branding with drag-and-drop tools (but you’re also free to start completely from scratch).
In addition to simplifying the email design process, it also makes engaging with your contacts much easier. You can use automated, recurring emails and segment your subscriber list to send more personal messages.
And, to make sure that all your emails are flawless, it also includes integrated email testing and inbox render tests. So, you can rest assured knowing that spammy content was eliminated and any broken links or buttons were fixed before sending your emails, while the inbox render tests will show you how your message will display in various inboxes.
SendGrid has transformed how eBay approaches email marketing. Before SendGrid, eBay resorted to “batch-and-blast” emails. However, with SendGrid, they could increase the standard and incorporate personalization to include up-to-the-minute offers. Thanks to SendGrid’s deliverability, it has also become much easier for eBay to grow their email program.
Pros and Cons:
- ?Powerful features
- ? Good for high-volume sending
- ? Lack of billing transparency
- ? Slow customer service
Key Features:
- Pre-built email templates
- Built-in calls to action
- Automation triggers
- Sign-up forms
- Email testing and statistics
Pricing: It offers a free plan for up to 100 daily emails. Pricing starts at $15 per month for up to 7,000 contacts and 15,000 monthly emails.
27. Salesforce
Best for: Large businesses
Included in Salesforce’s list of products is an email marketing platform named Email Studio. It can help you with different phases of the email marketing process like targeting your audience, creating the actual message, and automating your messages.
Before you build your email, you can use its drag-and-drop segmentation tools to refine your list of subscribers and intelligence to identify content that will resonate to boost conversions. Once your list has been optimized, you can turn your attention to building high-converting emails. You can use customizable templates that were created by professionals to create emails that will engage subscribers along every stage of their journey.
The last piece of the puzzle is to send the emails at the right time. To help you with this, it lets you create a delivery schedule which also helps to reduce the workload of your marketing team. All in all, it might not be as feature-rich as some of the other tools, but if you’re already a Salesforce user it might make more sense to use their email marketing solutions instead of adding another third-party tool to your arsenal.
Salesforce, for example, has helped a global car manufacturer like Ford to make their communication more proactive, which is no mean feat. Now, customers can receive real-time updates about their vehicle including personalized banners, eliminating the number of phone calls.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Customizable features
- ? Convenient dashboard
- ? Reporting limited
- ? Expensive for smaller businesses
Key Features:
- Drag-and-drop segmentation tools
- Templates
- A/B testing
- Tracking
Pricing: Pricing starts at about $1,400 per month.
28. Benchmark
Best for: Businesses of all sizes
If you’re searching for a simple tool that can help you to send personalized messages at scale, you can check out Benchmark. Whether you want to create an automated welcome series or follow up with potential customers who’ve abandoned their shopping carts, it can help you to reduce manual work while at the same time helping you to drive more revenue.
Included in its list of features are dozens of free responsive HTML email templates for every occasion, landing pages and forms to grow your subscriber list, and various tools to test the performance of your campaigns.
One feature that deserves special mention is its Inbox Checker. This feature is powered by Litmus and lets you preview your email in various environments before you send it to rule out and fix any possible issues with rendering.
It’s the multiple lists feature that’s the owner and CEO of Rice General’s favorite feature. They have over 1,000 on their email list, helping them to respond better to their customers’ unique needs.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Great A/B testing
- ? Easy to use
- ? Limited integrations
- ? Deliverability not that great
Key Features:
- Drag-and-drop builder and HTML editor
- 50+ pre-built email templates
- A/B testing
- An AI writing tool
- Photo editing via its email editor
Pricing: It offers a free plan for up to 500 contacts and 3,500 monthly emails. For the ability to send more emails, pricing starts at $13 per month.
29. Zoho Campaigns
Best for: Smaller businesses
Zoho Campaigns offers a suite of cloud-based solutions at competitive prices. Marketers can easily create emails in minutes using pre-designed templates, embed sign-up forms on a landing page, and automate information tracking.
Zoho Campaigns uses dynamic and customizable templates to help send personalized messages, while A/B testing keeps you informed on which design, subject line and style work best for your specific audience. You won’t waste time preparing effective emails because the software has all the features to make email marketing as efficient as possible.
Another key advantage of Zoho Campaigns is its interoperability; you can create workflows using a third-party CRM such as Zoho CRM to monitor the campaigns closely. While the user interface isn’t as clean or seamless as other software tools like MailChimp, Zoho Campaigns is a viable and affordable option with all the crucial email marketing features you need.
It’s the affordability that has motivated Oryx Doors and Windows, one of Zoho’s users, to switch from HubSpot. Combine that with its templates and overall ease of use and Zoho Campaigns has become their go-to email marketing platform. For another client, SMD Technologies, that upgraded from Microsoft Word templates and Excel sheets, the move proved equally cost-effective, helping them to reach more than double the number of recipients.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Easy to use
- ? Cheap plans
- ? A/B testing can be better
- ? Clunky interface
Key Features:
- Drag-and-drop segmentation tools
- A/B testing
- Analytics reports
- Customizable email templates
- Seamless integration with third-party apps
- Send-time optimization
Pricing: It offers a free plan for up to 2,000 contacts and 6,000 monthly emails. For the ability to send unlimited emails, pricing starts at $4 per month.
30. Litmus
Best for: Marketing teams
Litmus is another solid option as it delivers an all-in-one solution in a single platform. Litmus provides email personalization and collaboration so marketers can get the highest ROI for their campaigns. This software program includes strong capabilities, such as pre-send campaign development, A/B testing, and AI-content recommendations via the proprietary Litmus Personalize.
Regardless of your team members’ existing email knowledge, Litmus is a low-code software that even non-technical members can use effectively. Each email is on-brand, guaranteed error-free, and aligns with optimizing goals for opens and conversions.
The software solves content challenges for weekly campaigns—they work with Kickdynamic to provide content recommendations that can be optimized to keep customer engagement. Marketers can conduct testing, collaborate on large volumes of emails, segment according to campaigns, and scale these personalized messages according to a brand’s contact size.
Litmus has worked with different industries, from U.S. banks to advertising agencies and eCommerce. For example, it has helped Epsilon, a global ad and marketing tech company, to save more than 1,000 hours per month. Now they can test their emails within in a matter of seconds across more than 100 apps and devices.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Email testing
- ? Easy to use
- ? Plans are expensive (and free trial is short)
Key Features:
- Pre-designed templates
- Email building collaboration
- A/B testing
- ROI analytics
- Integration with Google Drive and Slack
- A design library to centralize brand assets
Pricing: After a free seven-day trial, pricing starts at $99 per month.
31. Robly
Best for: Businesses of all sizes
Robly is an email service provider that leverages proprietary technologies to boost email marketing engagement and conversion. The software has been a staple across industries, including non-profits, educational institutions, charities, and others.
What makes Robly a great choice is the AI technology. It is the only email marketing software that offers RoblyID, a unique way to grow your email leads ten times over the usual. RoblyID analyzes website traffic and then adds contact records automatically to your email list. It is CAN-SPAM compliant, which means it aligns with information protection policies.
Aside from RoblyID, the software has more open-generating features, namely OpenGen, RoblyAI, and RoblyENGAGE. These technologies help time your emails when subscribers are most likely to open them, automatically conduct retargeting, and protect sender status by segmenting and suppressing unengaged contacts. Your emails will not bombard contacts unnecessarily.
It is a comprehensive platform, but the software is harder to master compared to others. While the learning curve is a little higher, once your marketing team surpasses that stage, it will be a valuable tool to keep the campaigns automated and more likely to boost ROI.
That’s what Relectric Supply Company experienced. Leveraging Robly’s AI features, the company generated an incremental of over $22,000 of net profit on their very first campaign.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Competitive pricing
- ? AI functionality
- ? Customer support can be better
- ? Low email deliverability
Key Features:
- Proprietary AI open-generating features
- Pre-designed, mobile-responsive templates
- Real-time traffic monitoring
- A/B testing
- Analytics
- Contact segmentation
Pricing: Pricing starts at $19 per month for up to 500 contacts and unlimited emails.
Why Does Email Marketing Matter?
As we've already mentioned, email marketing has one of the best ROI of any marketing channel. Despite the fact that email marketing has been around for decades, it still earns an ROI of 4200%—for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you have the potential to earn back $42 in return. Some reports even put email marketing ROI closer to 54%! When you consider that about 4 billion people around the world use email (Statista), this isn't a surprise. With such a large audience spread across different demographics, it would be shocking if email marketing didn't have a great ROI. ROI aside, email marketing helps you reach more customers and subscribers, increase your sales, and improve brand recognition.
No matter your industry, email marketing will help you get your marketing message out to the right people and gives you a way to stay connected with your target audience after they've left your website. Here are a few more reasons why your brand should be using email marketing:
- Loyalty. Email gives you the chance to get website visitors back to your site again and again. And people who come back to your website are more likely to become customers than those visiting your site for the first time.
- Returning visitors. About 97% of the people who visit and leave your website will never come back. That's a sobering statistic for most online businesses. However, by building an email list, you can encourage repeat visitors (and increase our first bullet point, loyalty).
- Increased revenue. Email marketing gets excellent conversion rates. Barilliance reports that the average conversion rates for email marketing in 2022 were 8.17%. Plus, purchases resulting from email marketing campaigns tend to be larger.
What's an Email Marketing Platform?
Now that you're convinced email marketing is worth it, you're probably wondering what an email marketing platform actually is and why using one matters. An email marketing platform is a software that lets you create and manage your email marketing campaigns. Simple enough, right?
Email marketing platforms are typically SaaS (Software as a Service) tools that are cloud-based. A high-quality email marketing platform makes it easy for you to send out any email communication, from email newsletters to promotional emails to abandoned cart recovery emails.
What Should Email Marketing Platforms Do?
Your email marketing platform should ultimately make your life easier, helping you automate your emails and marketing campaigns and making it easy to create beautiful and engaging emails to send to your customers and subscribers. We recommend looking for the following features when choosing the best email marketing platform for your brand:
User interface
Email marketing platforms are supposed to make the life of an email marketer easier. Look for an email marketing platform that has an easy-to-use interface with a low learning curve to ensure that you're able to utilize all the features you need quickly and easily.
A drag-and-drop email editor is a wonderful feature to have. And, if you have email designers, you'll want to choose a platform that allows for HTML email templates. If you don't have people to design your emails, make sure that the email marketing platform you choose has a collection of templates you can customize to create emails that showcase your brand.
Segmentation
Email segmentation is one of the top email marketing strategies and dramatically increases the ROI of your email campaigns. You can create targeted marketing campaigns and promotional emails for the specific audiences that will be most interested in them based on demographics, location, behavior, and more. Some email marketing platforms even operate on AI and machine learning so the software can evaluate user behavior in real-time and fine-tune your email campaigns on the fly.
Personalization
Segmentation is important if you want to personalize your email marketing campaigns. And you definitely want to personalize your email marketing campaigns. Find an email marketing platform that includes merge tags to make it easy to personalize your email subject lines as well as the email copy. There are even some email marketing platforms that use dynamic content so you can create and send a single email that automatically includes certain content depending on the segment the email is being sent to.
Automation
Email marketing has a lot of moving parts, many of which are manual, repetitive tasks. Fortunately, many of the best email marketing platforms include automation features that can help you save tons of time. Email automation includes things like email scheduling, delivery receipts, engagement tracking, text analytics, role-based account access for your marketing team, and even intelligent segmentation/re-segmentation based on response to your email marketing campaigns.
Testing
One of the most important steps to take to ensure that your email marketing campaigns are getting the best ROI is testing. Many of the top email marketing platforms include A/B and split testing functionality that lets you test different elements of your marketing emails against one another to ensure that you have the best possible combination of subject lines, copy, calls to action, email design, and format.
Reports and analytics
There are several email marketing benchmarks you'll want to track to ensure that your email marketing is meeting your goals. However, tracking this information manually can be a full-time job. Choose an email marketing platform that includes reporting and analytics so you can track open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and more.
Extra features available today
Basic functionality aside, there’s a new wave of features that are becoming increasingly available. When added to email marketing software, these features transform platforms from email marketing platforms and into enhanced marketing communications solutions. There’s also a good chance that you’ve seen them promoted before. These features are:
SMS marketing
SMS services woven into email marketing allow brands to engage buyers at different points in the buyer’s journey. As a permission-based promotional tool, SMS marketing is also highly effective. SMS open rates can be as high as 98%, are shorter and easier to reply to, and 75% of consumers are comfortable with the idea of receiving text messages.
When SMS is paired with a strong email marketing campaign, brands can create a well-orchestrated and layered communications strategy.
Website and landing page builders
Website and landing pages are a quintessential component of online marketing. They’re necessary for promoting products, services, and building email lists. And while there are third-party tools that can integrate with email marketing platforms via plugins and scripts, using one tool that does email and can build and host landing pages is better. Today, most email marketing platforms offer landing page builders that are easy to use and altogether cheaper than spending money on a third-party tool.
Built-in CRM
CRMs have always been more of a sales tool but that’s changing. As the lines between sales and marketing blur, brands have started paying attention to all the data CRMs can collect. Using enriched profiles, marketers can deliver personalized emails and content, something consumers want more of.
Website personalization
Website personalization allows marketers to deliver unique buyer experiences. And this is critical today. As much as 88% of marketers have seen improvements in customer experience from personalization, while 72% of consumers will only engage with personalized messaging.
Website personalization allows brands to deliver buyer-specific content in the moment. From the right blog post to help buyers along their journey, to a discount coupon for those ready to make a purchase, you can present buyers with targeted marketing engagements that increase conversions.
Digital advertising
Paid ad creation tools streamline marketing tasks. Like built-in CRM landing page and website builders, paid ad creation tools make it easier to track and measure conversions in one platform. Today, email marketing platforms allow you to create ads for social media and search engine platforms.
Chat and chatbot functionality
Chat isn’t a new technology but it’s transforming the way brands engage buyers. As the idea of conversational marketing grows, integrating chat into an email marketing platform doesn’t seem farfetched. With chat, brands open a door to interested buyers, and with smart email automation, those buyers can be guided along a path to a sale much quicker.
Which Platform Should You Choose?
There’s much to consider when picking a platform. To help, we’ve identified a list of 14 categories. They cover small, medium and enterprise recommendations. We also dive into which platforms are best suited for eCommerce brands, which are easiest to use, deliverability numbers, and more.
1. Recommended Email Marketing Platforms for Creators and Small Business
Small businesses often have to balance affordability and functionality more than most. But that doesn’t mean you have to lose out on functionality. To strike a balance between both, here are three platforms we’ve found to be the best for small businesses and soloprenuers.
Each platform allows you to send personalized emails, build landing pages, is easy to use, comes at a great price, and allows you to scale as your brand grows:
- ConvertKit - Perfect for driving engagement and sales
- Mailchimp - Ideal for small businesses, creators and rolling out paid ads
- Aweber - A smart choice for small businesses that want reliability and a clean platform to work in and automation
Here’s a snapshot of key features platforms in this segment offer:
| Feature | ConvertKit | MailChimp | Aweber |
| Email Builder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Landing Page Builder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Campaign Builder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Autoresponder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Price* | $9/mo | $13/mo | $14.99/mo |
2. Medium Business Email Marketing Platforms to Use
Our research points to medium-sized businesses wanting greater reliability, functionality, and that pricing isn’t a major drawback if these requirements are met.
These platforms make our list of the best for medium businesses along with features that make them good choices:
- Drip - A powerful solution for small-medium eCommerce businesses, offering SMS, segmentation functionality, and revenue attribution
- Keap - Smart automations and CRM functionality allows email personalization based on CRM fields
- SendX - Advanced email sequences and a click heatmap
In addition to all features offered by platforms in the small business segment, here’s a snapshot of key features platforms in the medium business segment offer:
| Feature | Drip | Keap | SendX |
| Built-in CRM or integration) | Integration | Built-in | Built-in |
| Click Heat Map | No | No | Yes |
| CRM Profile-Based Personalization | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Revenue Attribution | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Price* | $39/mo | $159/mo | $7.49/mo |
3. Enterprise Email Marketing Platforms Worth Testing
Larger brands require reliability, especially as they run multiple campaigns. While most platforms offer similar features, those targeted at large businesses are more robust and offer advanced features.
Here are three platforms best suited for large businesses:
- SendPulse - Includes multi-channel integrations and automation that allows for better buyer engagement
- User.com - Built with user engagement as a core function and enables personalization based in unified CRM data
- ActiveCampaign - Powerful for segmenting lists and using dynamic content to customize emails
4. Recommended for eCommerce
eCommerce email marketing is still email marketing, but brands rely on a collection of connected features. Here’s our list of essential features and the platforms that we recommend for eCommerce brands.
| Feature | Drip | Omnisend | MailerLite |
| Landing Page Builder | No | Yes | Yes |
| Campaign Builder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Autoresponder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Segmentation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| A/B Split Testing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Revenue Attribution | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Price* | $39/mo | $16/mo | $10/mo |
5. Best Overall Integrations
We live in a world where apps have to talk to each other. These email platforms offer the best overall integration and platform experience:
| Email Marketing Platform | No. of Native Integrations | Type | App Integerations |
| ActiveCampaign | 384 | Free | View |
| Drip | 108 | Free | View |
| ConvertKit | 107 | Free | View |
6. Top Retargeting Platforms
Retargeting isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when considering which platforms to choose, but it’s a powerful feature. Email marketing platforms have begun to offer pixels for major platforms to help brands remarket to subscribers. Here are platforms with the best retargeting options:
- GetResponce offers a social media platform ad creation tool. It’s an extension of Facebook and Google’s platforms, allowing you to create ads for both platforms (including Instagram), and provides retargetting options.
- Bitrix allows Google, Facebook and Instagram ad creation. These options are integrations using GA Connector. You can leverage Facebook and Instagram Lead Ads, and create Google Search Ads. Remarketing capabilities are available for each ad platform.
- Mailchimp provides a tool that mirrors Facebook and Google’s ad creation platform. With it, you can develop ads and pixels for remarketing opportunities.
7. Best Survey Tools
Surveys are a quintessential tool for businesses. Put them together with email and you’ve got an almost perfect combo for finding out what your buyers think and want. While few platforms offer built-in survey tools, we’ve found that integrations are your best bet right now. Integrations with more advanced survey apps allow for a wider, bug-free feature set.
Here’s our list of the best email platforms with survey tools:
| Survey Functionality | Mailchimp | MailerLite | Brevo* |
| Built-in or Integration | Built-in &Integration | Built-in | SurveySparrow |
| Polls | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Conversational Forms | Yes w/Integration | Yes | Yes |
| Embedded Surveys | Yes | Yes | Yes |
8. Best Templates and Builder Functionality
Great UI and UX are critical today. Our top three make the list for overall experience when building emails and working with templates. They each offer a clean and intuitive feel, and you’ll never wonder off or get frustrated trying to get stuff done. Here’s a look at what the best email marketing platforms offer in the line of templates and builder functionality:
| Builder Features | ConvertKit | MailerLite | ActiveCampaign |
| Type of builder | Drag-and-Drop | Drag-and-Drop | Drag-and-Drop |
| Number of Templates | 9 | 47 | 125+ |
| Customizable | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HTML& CSS Access | Yes | Yes | Yes |
9. Best List Management
List management best practices often provide a great deal of value. But when in your platform, you need features to help identify who you’re emailing to generate positive results. While not all platforms listed include features like predictive commerce insights and predicted demographics, they make the list for their ease of use and functionality.
It’s also worth noting that while segmentation includes segmentation by demography, features like predicted demographics and predictive commerce insights differ. The former relates to pooled data via a large audience across an email platform’s base. The latter offers predictive insights on future purchase behavior.
| List Management Features | Mailchimp | Omnisend | MailerLite |
| Tags | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Segmentation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Behavioral Targeting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Predictive Commerce Insights | Yes | No | No |
| Predicted Demographics | Yes | No | No |
10. Easiest to Use
UI and UX make or break products. Email marketing platforms balance a collection of features, and often, the more they offer, the more complex it is to make a platform easy to use. We’ve found the following three platforms to be the easiest to use with a feature that stands out for us. They aren’t just intuitive, they’re also easy to use if you get stuck and need help from an online knowledge base.
- Mailchimp: Easy to navigate through all features and gives you access to specific tools on your account home page.
- Omnisend: Offers a clean email and campaign builder.
- SendPulse: Provides an easy-to-use drag and drop campaign builder.
11. Value for Money
Affordability is subjective. Sure, you could opt for the cheapest solution with the most features, but your choice may not do everything you need it to do well. We’ve stacked all platforms and here are three we think offer the best value for money in each segment:
- Creators: ConvertKit - Flexible and built with all you need to grow your business
- Small business: MailerLite - Feature rich and intuitive. From $10/mo.
- Medium Business: Mailchimp - Easy to use and scale with your brand. From $9.99/mo
- Large businesses: SendPulse - Powerful feature set and robust platform. From $8/mo
eCommerce (small, medium and large businesses): Drip - Best revenue attribution and offers SMS marketing to drive campaign engagement. From $19/mo
Email Marketing Software Cost Estimator
How frequent do you send newsletters
Key Metrics
New Subscribers
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in 12 Months
Total Subscribers
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in 12 Months
Emails Sent
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in 12 Months
12. Best Analytics and Reporting
The best email marketing campaigns are derived from actionable data. Today, that data changes fast. Email marketing platforms need to be able to not only gather data but also present it all in a way that’s easy to understand and use. Platforms we’ve found to offer the best analytics and reporting are:
- ActiveCampaign: Provides clean and clear results, giving you fast insights on campaign performance
- Mailchimp: Offers predictive analytics on commerce customers
- MailerLite: Provides all you need to track performance down to email clients your subscribers use
13. Best Onboarding and Support
While most platforms are not complex, some require hand-holding to get started. Good onboarding makes you want to learn more and succeed with your choice. These platforms offer the best combination of support we’ve found.
| Service | ActiveCampaign | ConvertKit | Keap |
| Onboarding | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Dedicated Account Manager | Yes | No | Yes |
| On-Demand Training | ActiveCampaign University | Free Course Library | Customer & Resource Webinars, Events |
| Telephonic Support | Yes | Yes | No |
| Email Support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Chat Support | Yes | No | Yes |
| Online Knowledge Base | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| User Community | Yes | Yes | Yes |
14. Top Picks for CRM and Email Automation
Email automation is a given today and offered by almost every platform. What makes these stand out is how other key features compliment automation. CRM integration helps with personalization, and segmentation makes for smarter, more targeted marketing, powered by drip email marketing. Add tagging and revenue attribution, and you can pinpoint how much customers spend.
Here are our top picks for automation along with why:
- ConvertKit is the perfect tool for creators who need to quickly create campaigns and let automation do the rest
- Drip’s revenue attribution and eCommerce-first platform design and integrations with eComm platforms makes it a powerful tool for eCommerce brands.
Keap is powered by Infusionsoft, making it a strong automation platform. You can handle everything from payments to tracking sales via a pipeline.
| Feature | ConvertKit | Drip | Keap |
| CRM Integration | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Segmentation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Tagging | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Revenue Attribution | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Drip Campaigns | Yes | Yes | Yes |
How to Choose the Best Email Marketing Software Platform
Picking the right tool can be a little daunting. As you can tell, there’s a lot to consider when shopping for your email platform. A smarter way to pick your next platform is to create a list of what your brand needs and wants to accomplish with email marketing.
To help, we’ve created this framework you can use:
Establish your goals
Email marketing is part of a larger goal: marketing success. Finding a tool that will help get you there is better done by identifying your goals. Here are the most common goals marketers aim for:
- Increase open rates
- Improve click rates
- Leverage automation
- Drive site traffic
- Create more personalized customer journeys
- Integrate email with CRM for enriched profiles
- Nurture leads
- Increase leads and sales conversions
- In-depth analytics with revenue attribution
Match features to goals
With an idea of what you want to achieve, it’s time to find platforms that offer what you’re looking for. There are hundreds of platforms out there and the only way to develop actionable intelligence is by gathering data. Create a spreadsheet with what you want and add platforms you find to it.
For example, if your goal is to save time, look for a platform that offers as many automation features as possible. On the other hand, if you’re more concerned about nurturing leads, investing in a platform that makes it easy to grow your subscriber list and send engaging newsletters will be the way forward. In this case, features like a landing page builder, forms, and newsletter templates will come in handy.
Ask your network
Basically everyone uses email. If you’re not using it to consume info, you’re the one behind the campaign. Other users will give you a better understanding of the finer nuances of a specific platform that a list of features can’t quite encapsulate.
Your direct competitors might not want to share their tech stack, but a digital marketing agency will be more willing to recommend tools. You can also ask on professional networks like LinkedIn. In addition to asking your own contacts, reading case studies and online reviews will also shed more light on what the user experience and customer support are really like.
Sign up for a free trial first
Most email marketing platforms offer some type of free trial. The standard is usually 14 days, but in some cases it can be as long as 30 days. Only rarely does a tool restrict it to only a week or offer no trial whatsoever.
Even if it’s only seven days, use it. Not to save money, but to try out the features before you “buy”. It will give you a good idea of ease of use and capabilities.
Plus, you can also use this trial as an opportunity to test their customer support. Did they respond quickly? Were they knowledgeable? Was there a language or time zone barrier? These are the types of questions you can get answered for real during your trial.
Pick the right plan
Email marketing plans include a few common elements. Here’s a look at what to expect when aligning your budget to your tool of choice:
Pricing options
Typically email platform pricing comes in two options: monthly and annual. Monthly pricing is also typically based on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning no fixed contracts, and you can cancel at any time.
Annual plans require a little more attention. These come with discounted monthly pricing and are paid for upfront. A word of advice: where possible, test your new platform before committing to an annual plan. Demos are great, but, as mentioned earlier, we recommend trials that offer all functionality you need. This way, limitations are identified before you’re locked into a year-long commitment.
Subscriber counts
Plans are also often based on how many subscribers you have. As a transactional business, email marketing platforms use the number of subscribers and emails you’ll send as a measure of how much to bill you for access to features and functionality.
Methodology
There are hundreds of email marketing software solutions available on the market. So, this is by no means an exhaustive list of tools that you can check out. However, it’s a good place to start and, what we believe, the best ones at the moment.
This belief is based on first-hand experience. Combining the interactions that our team has had with the software with the personal experiences of other users, we could highlight pros and cons of each platform and make suggestions for which tool would be best suited for which use case.
Basically, you can think of this list as a summary of all the thousands of online reviews.
As the email marketing software category grows, so too will this list. So, be sure to bookmark this article and refer back to it from time to time to see which new tools you can check out and which new features established players have introduced.
Key Takeaways
By the looks of it, email marketing isn’t going to fade anytime soon. It’s still one of the most cost-effective, convenient, and user-friendly platforms. With the right approach, you can create a list of engaged followers. Plus, with some effort and strategy, you can continuously grow that list.
Hence, the need to add a robust email marketing platform to your martech stack. You’ll be using it for many years to come. Email isn’t like some of those social media apps that turned out to be more of a failed social experiment. From baby boomers to Gen Zers, basically everyone has an email account.
You know you get those people that aren’t on Facebook or Instagram. Well, they still use email.
The point is that there’s a massive audience that you can reach via email. Though, to do so effectively, you need to use one of these email marketing platforms.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a list of email marketing software?
Yes. This blog post includes a list of 31 platforms with a collection of key features for each.
What is email marketing software?
Email marketing software is software used by marketers for a variety of purposes. These include designing and producing custom email messages, growing subscriber lists, generating revenue, tracking email campaign performance, and more.
Should I use on-premise email marketing software?
On-premise email marketing software can be more expensive than cloud-based email marketing software. On-premise solutions come with hardware and software costs, and the overhead of technical staff to maintain both. Cloud solutions are priced for a set fee that’s more affordable and does not come with the added overhead.
Which email software is the best?
Email software platforms are designed to provide a range of features. From eCommerce promotions to list building, some platforms are also better suited according to business size. To find the best solution for your business, see our section titled “How to Choose an Email Marketing Platform”.
How does email marketing software work?
Email marketing software allows brands to create and send emails in bulk to many subscribers. Without email marketing software, brands would not be able to perform key tasks required to deliver emails, maintain email lists with ease, track the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns, and more.
Why use email marketing software?
Email marketing software includes a collection of features that help businesses create targeted email messaging that can be delivered to subscribers. As part of a larger marketing strategy, email marketing requires a set of email marketing software features like automation, list segmentation, personalization, reporting and analytics, and more to be successful.
