Welcome to our blog! We’ll be posting updates on the development of our software and the business in general, as well as more casual posts about things we’re interested in.
Our software is designed to make email marketing more cost-effective and efficient. We believe that even small businesses should have access to the tools they need to compete with larger companies.
Table of Contents
Cheap Email Marketing Software
Today we are going to find the best cheap email marketing software for you.
So if are wondering:
What is the best email marketing software?
What is the cheapest email marketing software? And…
Can I have BOTH?
You have come to the right place. 🙂
But which is the best email marketing tool for you specifically? Let’s walk through that.
In this article:
Real email software selection advice
Reviews of 8 cheap Email marketing software tools
An up to date price comparison table
Additional discounts and extra’s (!!)
Realize, you don’t need a big budget to begin with email marketing:
- A lot of email marketing tools offer a free trial. So you can take simply them for a test-drive.
- Tools are so good, you don’t need any real custom work done to get started.
- Some systems are very cheap or even have a free email marketing software tier.
We personally tested and reviewed the 8 well-known systems below.
Let’s dive right in – meet our brave contestants:
- SendinBlue
SendinBlue is an email blast platform, founded in 2010, now has over 50.000 companies using the system.
Included for free
Unlimited subscribers, 99% off your first month
⍟ Extra’s? Yes! 99% off the first month & 20% discount yearly
Short Review | Visit Website
Sendinblue email blast software- Moosend
Moosend is an Email Marketing platform for newsletters and simple automation, with a very nice email builder.
Included with free trial
forms, emails, and landing pages
⍟ Extra’s? Yes! 20% discount on yearly+ swag
Short Review | Visit Website
moosend free email marketing
- MailerLite
MailerLite is a very simple and user-friendly email tool. A clean interface, simple personalization, especially attractive for small businesses.
Included for free
1.000 subscribers with 12000 emails per month
Access to all features + 24/7 support
⍟ Extra’s? Yes! A month free premium features!
Short Review | Visit Website
mailerlite free email marketing
- Benchmark Email
Benchmark Email is a simple email tool, with some advanced features, free small businesses CRM and great support.
Included for free
250 emails per month
24/7 support on chat, email, and phone.
⍟ Extra’s? Yes! 10% extra discount on a yearly plan
Short Review | Visit Website
benchmark email cheapest email autoresponder with CRM
- Getresponse
GetResponse is a popular all-in-one email marketing platform with list management, marketing automation, and full newsletter functions.
Included for free
unlimited newsletters, 1 landing page, website builder, sign up forms
⍟ Extra’s? Yes! 10% extra discount
Short Review | Visit Website
Getresponse free email marketing
- AWeber
AWeber is a user-friendly email marketing platform with a great email editor and an automated template designer, plus hundreds of premade templates.
Included for free
500 subscribers and 3,000 emails a month
600+ email templates + 24/7 live chat support
Short Review | Visit Website
AWeber free email autoresponder software- ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is advanced email automation software that will handle your email marketing and build marketing funnels. Includes Sales CRM.
14-day free trial
Free onboarding and migration service
Short Review | Visit Website
activecampaign email marketing automation software
- ConvertKit
ConvertKit is especially for bloggers and content creators. It is a lead generation, email marketing, and email autoresponders platform. Includes opt-in forms, drip email marketing, landing pages. They are the most expensive on the list, consider if you want the included training and community.
Free up to first 300 contacts
Short Review | Visit Website
Convertkit email marketing software bloggers
Email software Price comparison
I know this article is about affordable email marketing software, so you are probably looking to compare prices. To make it a bit easier, here is an Email software Comparison Chart/table. Just click on the number of contacts and the price and Extra will show you what the different solutions cost. All of the ESPs have a free trial, which is linked on the right.
How many contacts are on your email list?
0 – 1000 up to 2.5K contacts up to 5K contactsup to 10K contactsup to 50K contacts up to 100K contacts
Provider
Pricing
Exclusive Extra’s
Free trial
Sendinblue email blast software
$25 up to 10K mails$25 up to 10K mails$25 up to 10K mails$39 up to 20K mails$54 up to 40K mails$99 up to 100K mails$99 up to 100K mails
First month 99% discount
20% discount on the yearly plan
Free trial
Visit Website
moosend free email marketing
$16 $32
$48
$88
$315custom plan
Access to all features
Exclusive 10% extra discount
Extra swag; a mug or t-shirt
Free trial
Visit Website
Getresponse free email marketing
$15$25$45$65$250$250$450
Extra 10% discount
Free email marketing certification
Free trial
Visit Website
Benchmark Email affordable email marketing
$23$45$58$89$89$279$499
10% discount on yearly plan
Free trial
Visit Website
mailerlite free email marketing
$10$15$30$50$120$210$360
Free trial
Visit Website
AWeber free email autoresponder platform
$19.99$29.99$49.99$69.99$149.99Custom PlanCustom Plan
Free trial
Visit Website
activecampaign email marketing automation software
$29$49$79$139$339$339$549
Free trial
Visit Website
Convertkit email marketing software bloggers
$29$49$79$119$199$379$679
Free trial
Visit Website
- The above numbers are based on the normal edition, with a monthly plan. Some ESPs have additional or extra functions in a higher plan. Our exclusive discounts are already in the shown pricing. Mail-based prices are calculated to let you send at least 4 email campaigns per month. We do our best to update and check the pricing each month, but no guarantees.
Reviews of Free & Cheap Email Marketing Software
To give you a better overview of the Email Marketing Software listed. I am going to give a mini-review of each one. All reviews highlight my findings and considerations.
SendinBlue Review
Sendinblue cheap email blast software
Started out as a transactional email provider, Sendinblue now is a full email marketing solution with a drag-and-drop email designer, statistics, simple automation, and free templates.
What does SendinBlue cost?
SendinBlue pricing is based on the number of emails you send. The free email plan from SendInBlue is good for having a look inside the software and has a daily limit of 300 emails. If you want to send out mass email blasts, SendinBlue is still very cheap. Starting at $25 for 10,000 emails per month.
Creating emails in SendinBlue
The email editor is pretty fast and it auto-saves your progress. The text and font editing are in the middle section and options to the right. More on the editing experience in our full SendinBlue review.
The necessary content block types and options are there. With SendinBlue it is best to prepare your images outside of the platform, as you can resize images in their original ratio, but there is no image editor to crop your email’s images.
Sendinblue cheap email marketing platform editor
If you want to integrate the email newsletter tool, there are direct plugins available for popular platforms like WordPress, Prestashop, WooCommerce Drupal and Shopify. There is also an API and Zapier integration available.
The free email software plan
The free plan has some functions disabled. Most important seeing where people have clicked in the email (with a heatmap). Probably you want to shift to a paid version quickly if you choose to go with SendinBlue. It is an affordable email marketing tool at a low cost, starting at $25 for 10,000 emails per month.
SendinBlue has automation and email autoresponders included, so you can send for instance welcome emails and anniversary campaigns. You can also trigger automated campaigns based on web pages visited and actions on your site. Product purchase and abandoned cart emails are also there. And recently they have added a very well rounded landing page builder.
Pros:
Price: Very cheap email blasting software.
Simple: You need very little technical know-how to launch a campaign.
The system offers text messages (SMS) as well, so you have two channels to reach your customers.
Site triggered automation, and email autoresponder available
Cons:
The editor works fast, but highlighting can take some getting used to.
Not for you if you want to do very complex automation campaigns.
Try SendinBlue free email marketing > (Extra’s included)
⍟ SendinBlue discount and Extra’s
If you try out SendinBlue email marketing software here, there is an extra discount in it for you.
Because when I spoke to the SendinBlue team, they wanted you to get started on your favorite plan – basically totally free.
If you register for a new account, start your free trial via this secret page you get…
99% discount off of your first month of the paid plan
Another 20% discount if you pay per year
Try SendinBlue for free > (Extra’s included)
Moosend Review
free email marketing software moosend
Moosend is a European hosted email marketing system, founded in 2011. You could say they are a real MailChimp alternative, only much cheaper. There is even a MailChimp synchronization to let you automatically import all the contacts.
Email newsletter creation
The drag and drop editor is updated last year and is very easy to use. You can simply change text inline and adjust the design of the newsletter blocks on the left. All of the free email templates are responsive. But you can also add or code your own.
Nice about the editor is a “helper grid”, you can turn it on and off and it will show exactly the structure of your email. With columns and rows, and you see buttons to add more blocks.
For the bit more tech-savvies, there is an HTML email editor with a split-screen view, you can change the code AND use the WYSIWYG editor at the same time. It updates in real-time, which is often lacking in other systems. The email tool has direct live chat support.
Moosend cheap email marketing platform editor
With Moosend you can easily manage multiple email campaigns and mailing lists, while most of the integrations should go through Zapier or direct API.
Email automation and autoresponders work in a linear fashion. You can start your own, or use template automation flows called “Marketing Automation Recipes”. The automated email streams include website based automation like follow up from a site visit, abandoned cart, fields changed, but also welcome campaigns, up and cross-selling campaigns, etc. More about email automation in our full Moosend review.
Moosend pricing plans
Moosend’s pro plan starts from $9 a month for 500 subscribers. With this plan, you get unlimited emails & landing pages, and access to email designer. If you want to take the software for a test run, sign up for a free trial.
What is great about Moosend?
- Modern responsive email editor with free templates
- Support and help directly via Chat
- Sexy smart subject line recommendations and countdown timers included.
- Simple automation and free email autoresponder are all there
- Free landing page builder
What to know before starting with Moosend
- They have the most generous free email marketing plan, 5.000 subscribers, all functions.
- Support is available through multiple channels on European business hours.
- To make it easy, register with your business email address (not Gmail, Hotmail), as it is a requirement before you can start sending.
Try Moosend free email marketing > (Extra’s included)
⍟ Moosend discount and Extra’s
Oh yeah, this is the juicy part. Because you’ve taken the time to review the software here, there is an extra discount on the email software.
When I contacted the Moosend team to get some facts checked on the review and asked them. “Can you do a discount and some extra’s?” They were like: let’s do it!
So… this makes it one of the cheapest email marketing software. If you register for a new account, start your free trial via this secret page you get…
Moosend discount of extra 10% once you hit a paid plan (on top of any other discounts for the yearly plan if you choose that).
Extra Moosend T-shirt or Mug if you have > 50K subscribers
Exclusive email List growth Guide + Excel email growth template
Try Moosend for free > (Extra’s included)
Getresponse review
email marketing automation cheap getresponse
GetResponse has been around since 1997. It is a mature email marketing software, serving over 350,000 email marketing customers. They have been added some cool features over the last couple of years.
Marketing Automation and email autoresponders
Getresponse always had an email autoresponder function. Autoresponders allow you to do timed follow-up mail. It is still in there (I guess for nostalgic reasons). But realistically, you can now use the new email automation functions for that.
GetResponse has an advanced visual marketing automation workflow builder. You can use tagging so you can create profiles with the preferences of your subscribers and there is support for website event tracking. Learning the marketing automation is easy to set up the first one with a sort of email automation guided tour – it is really a snap.
Editor and free email templates
There is a big selection of pre-designed email templates, the top 32 templates are fresh and look 2022 – the rest don’t really. You can also start directly from the drag and drop editor.
There is a handy testing wizard that will let you do A/B testing for up to five variants at a time. The editor has just been redesigned and is drag and drop now. Create a newsletter or two and it works fast. Editing text is mostly inline. As a bonus, there is an image gallery with 5.000+ free stock images. The included image editor for email lets you crop, add filters, stickers, text in the images, etc.
Getresponse all in one email marketing software email editor
Unique Webinar feature
Getresponse is the first email marketing service to have a webinar marketing solution included.
You can control the scheduling and number of webinar invitations, reminders and follow-ups your contacts get. Pre-designed invitations and reminder templates get pre-filled with webinar details. That is pretty cool. And there is an auto-login hash so contacts can enter the webinar without logging in. (also pretty cool)
What to love about Getresponse:
- Chat support available 24/7
- Webinar Feature
- Visual automation and tags
- Free image gallery with 1000+ stock photos
GetResponse free plan
GetResponse recently added a forever-free plan. With this plan, send unlimited newsletters, create 1 landing page, host a website on a custom domain and even create signup forms. It’s a sweet deal for a free plan.
⍟ GetResponse Discounts and extra’s
When I emailed Taylor Barr from the Getresponse team, and asked if we give a discount for Getresponse for the registrants here? Guess what he said? Yes. 🙂
Normally you already get a Getresponse discount if you pay yearly or for 24 months. But… if you register for a new account via this secret link you get…
Additional -10% discount
Depending on the plan, you get an email marketing training and certification for free (worth $199)
Try GetResponse > (Extra’s included)
Benchmark Email review (2022)
benchmark Email Marketing Review
Benchmark Email started out as a family business in 2004. Today, 65.000 brands are actively using it. Benchmark is an email marketing platform with some advanced features thrown into the mix. But how are they compared to other email software? Let’s find out…
Getting started with Benchmark Email
We tested and signed up for a free account. The minute you try an account, they guide you every step of the way. You get welcomed by a friendly face in a “getting started” video. You also get an email and stimulate you to ask any questions you might have.
get started free email marketing
Even for a free account, they offered to do a demo and give personal help with onboarding + set-up. That is so different compared to other Do-It-Yourself email service providers. Maybe the family business spirit is still in the company culture.
Each page in the email tool has a short video that explains exactly what you can do, and you can always chat for help. Phone, chat and email support. We found that chat is tech-savvy, knows the tool and is very responsive (like within the minute).
Forever Free email marketing software
The email marketing software from Benchmark offers a free plan for up to 250 emails/month and there is no limit on time to try it out, it is free forever.
With the free email marketing plan, you get:
Free templates, send 250 emails campaigns
Customizable signup forms to capture more leads
The free plan includes autoresponders and list-based autoresponders
Full customer support 24/7
Once you pass 250 emails, you’d want to do some serious email blasting.
(Pardon my French Andy, I didn’t mean to say email blast.)
The paid version is called Benchmark PRO and starts at $15 ($12.59 with our discount). It has additional functions like:
- A/B testing wizard
- More elaborate email automation based on website behavior
- Subscriber engagement reporting and engagement emails
- Huge image storage (9GB) for your email images
You also have to option to remove the benchmark branding in the footer. Most people don’t mind – or even like branding, provided they get the tools for free. But I think is more professional to mail without email tool branding in the footer.
Let’s craft some emails with the Benchmark Email editor
They just recently updated their interface and it looks spanky fresh. Benchmark has a modern drag and drop email builder. It lets you edit in place, so you can see what your newsletter will broadly look like while typing directly in it. The email design editor is easy to use. Different content blocks you can drag into the editor on the right side and you can arrange them as you like.
It will be more than enough for most brands and small businesses that send newsletters and promotions. You can send a test email directly from the editor screen which is handy. There is a quick preview that shows a simulation of the email on desktop and mobile.
There are 100+ pre-made responsive email templates to get you started/inspired. And most of them (not all) look pretty fresh like they were made in 2022.
Benchmark Email cheap email software editor screenshot
You can always start with the sample email and do it yourself. Here is what I made in a few minutes:
Something to note is the image editor. You can have a lot of fun with it (see above) with filters, cropping, color adjustment all types of text styles, stickers, paintbrushes, and emojis to edit your images. It takes just a little bit of playing with, and you are doing your own email Mona Lisa-image masterpieces.
The drag and drop editor is made to be easy for normal users.
It is not for advanced email designers/coders. For example in the drag and drop editor, you can’t split screen edit the HTML code. And there are no custom HTML blocks in the drag and drop editor. Luckily most small business users wouldn’t even want to see HTML code, ever – if they can avoid it.
Advanced email designers/coders that desire all the cow-bells and cow-whistles, can still use their own HTML. But Benchmark is probably not the best choice for them.
More advanced email features
Email marketing Automation in Benchmark starts with automated autoresponders (called lite) in their free package. They let you do list based and time-based automated email campaigns. You can send a welcome series, birthday emails, etc. So that is a very affordable autoresponder!
In the paid plans engagement-based automation feature is added. This means you can trigger emails based on email clicks, behavior on your website and engagement level (like a reactivation campaign).
benchmark email autoresponder test
Survey publishing: Benchmark comes with free email surveys. You set up a few questions and answer types. And you get the survey URL to use. There aren’t many options to tweak the survey design though. So might as well use a free survey tool like Typeform or SurveyMonkey together with Benchmark.
Small business CRM as a free extra
Any plan above 2500 users comes with free small business CRM built-in. This can be helpful if you don’t have any CRM yet.
Create tasks and follow-ups, log calls
Track sales and a sales pipeline
A support ticket system
A Gmail plugin to add contacts and conversations from Gmail to your CRM.
Recap Benchmark email review; what we like:
- 24/7 real user support. Live chat, phone, and email, even for free users.
- The image editor is amazing fun
- One of the cheapest email autoresponders
- Free small business CRM functions
⍟ Benchmark Email Discount and Extra’s
Oh yeah, one more thing. Because you read our benchmark email review here, there is an extra discount on it.
When I contacted the Benchmark team to get the facts checked on the review and asked them. “Can you give a discount?” They said, “No, we never do that.” But after about 3 months of driving them crazy on the – I want something extra for the people here– we did get something.
If you register for a new account and start via here. (We will make the secret page, will be live in a few days) you get…
• 10% extra discount on the yearly plan. (on top of what you already get)
I’ll add in an awesome surprise (from my own pocket) if you get a > 20.000 subscribers plan.
Try Benchmark Email for free > (Extra’s included)
Mailerlite Review
free email marketing software mailerlite
MailerLite is a popular and simple email marketing tool. More than 450.000 businesses, startups and freelancers around the world use MailerLite. Together sending more than 1 billion emails every month.
MailerLite is really easy to use, and it has enough features for small business email marketing needs. Planning to send some mass newsletters or simple promotional email blasts? It can be all you need if you are not looking for anything too advanced.
Creating emails in MailerLite
When creating newsletters, you can start with a drag and drop editor or use one of their free email newsletter templates as a start. There is help text with every step and everything is explained in videos if you need it.
Screenshot of Mailerlite email editor
During editing, you see your email on the left and you can change text and design on the right. While it updates instantly so you can see how it looks.
More features
They are keeping it basic, as you would expect: Reporting is exactly what you need. Inside templates, there is no conditional content.
MailerLite offers Zapier and API integrations, so that covers a lot of different software. There are direct integrations for the most popular platforms like WordPress, WooCommerce and Shopify and a lot of opt-in subscriber growth plugins.
MailerLite has autoresponders for simple email automation campaigns, don’t expect the world of it. But you can send a welcome email autoresponder flow or automated birthday emails, with follow up emails, etc. These are also included on the forever free email plan, so that is great.
True free email marketing software
MailerLite has a Forever Free plan that gives you all the features that they offer. It includes for 1.000 subscribers and unlimited emails. The only thing they ask is to display a small Mailerlite logo in the footer of your email newsletter. It is one of the cheapest email marketing tools you can find.
There is no spam testing or design testing functionality, but you can preview the designs in the browser and send yourself a test. If you can live with that, it is hard to beat free. (price-wise)
MailerLite has a form builder and a landing page builder. That includes pop-up subscription forms, embedded signup forms and unsubscribe forms. You can put them inside your site pages, as well as let them be hosted by MailerLite.
Some old MailerLite reviews online, report on email list imports to be slowish, in our own MailerLite review we didn’t find that to be true.
What is cool about MailerLite?
- Automated Resend option, to send another mail if the first one wasn’t opened.
- See your email being sent internationally timezone by timezone (if you like). It is in 7 languages.
- The price: Free and if you have more than 1.000 subscribers the price is still very low.
- A/B testing – although you can only test 2 versions (A and B) at a time.
- Track changes while editing your email template, you can undo if you make a mistake.
- Create landing pages and pop-ups, they also integrate with a LOT of opt-in plugins as well.
Try Mailerlite for free >
⍟ Mailerlite Discount and Extra’s
Because you just read this intense Mailerlite review. There is a discount. Yes there is.
Register for a new account via here and get
• Full month of free premium features!
• 30% discount if you take the yearly plan.
• I’ll add in an awesome surprise (from my own pocket) if you get a > 20.000 subscribers plan.
AWeber Review
AWeber free cheap email autoresponder review
AWeber was founded in Pennsylvania way back in 1998 when email marketing was in its infancy. It started out as an autoresponder service but has come a long way since then. These days AWeber is a solid all-around email marketing tool. Over the years, it claims to have served an impressive one million customers. So it must be doing something right!
Creating Emails and Newsletters
AWeber has a huge library of more than 600 email templates to choose from. Most of them are the sort of thing you would use for a newsletter. But there are options for email courses, events, product promotions, surveys and much more.
Every template can be fully customized. AWeber’s drag and drop email editor is easy to use and gives you lots of flexibility. One thing I love is that the editor connects to free graphic design software Canva. Again, it’s really easy to use. But the designs you can create take your emails to the next level.
AWeber Email Editor Free Email Autoresponser Review
Another super cool tool AWeber offers is its Smart Designer. This is really unique. Paste in the URL of your website and it automatically creates email templates. You get a selection to pick from all with your own branding. And if you don’t have your own website, you can use your Facebook page. More on the editing experience in our full AWeber review.
If you want to make life even easier for yourself, AWeber also lets you turn your blog into a newsletter. Simply set how often you want to send and pick your template. Then AWeber will automatically send your latest posts straight to your subscribers.
AWeber’s forever Free plan gives you:
Up to 500 subscribers
3,000 emails a month
All 600+ templates to pick from
Email editor with the Canva integration and Smart Designer
Unlimited landing pages and signup forms
Autoresponders
If 3,000 emails a month isn’t enough for you, the Pro plan starts at $19.99 a month for 500 subscribers and unlimited emails. But you can reduce this to $16.15 a month if you pay yearly. Prices then go up as you increase your number of subscribers.
What’s great about AWeber
Tons of email templates and unlimited landing pages, even on the Free plan.
Smart Designer and Canva are great for creating impressive designs the easy way.
All the tools are easy to use, even for beginners.
24/7 live chat support and an international telephone help desk
You can link your account to more than 750 third party services.
What to know before testing MailJet?
Not for you if you are looking for advanced email automation features.
Try AWeber for free >
ActiveCampaign Review
cheap marketing automation software activecampaign
Instead of email newsletters and mass mailings, the focus of ActiveCampaign is on Marketing automation and marketing funnels. That is where they are really strong. There is even built-in CRM, on-site messaging and SMS.
Automation systems like Pardot or Marketo can get very, very expensive. ActiveCampaigns pricing makes it a great solution for small businesses, or senders that like to put more smarts into their email marketing automation and funnels.
Segmentation, tagging, and conditional content make that email targeting can be everything you want.
The email editor is drag and drop, yet a bit less great in comparison – there are some pre-made templates available. Read our full ActiveCampaign review for more on the content editors.
What is especially nice is the option to import email marketing campaigns that others have built. It makes it very easy to get a running start on automating your emails. For instance, if you want to use and promote your online course on your site, there are ActiveCampaign automation templates for that. If you have never seen an automation system, every system is going to take some time to know. That is because of the many options. ActiveCampaign gives weekly “getting started webinars”, one-on-one design help, and concierge onboarding (if you choose).
What is great about ActiveCampaign
- Pricing is great for such advanced automation and email targeting
- A/B testing works well even on automated and drip campaigns (which isn’t as common as you’d expect)
- Helpful community of funnel building and automation enthusiasts
- The platform is quite actively developed with frequent updates and new features.
What you should know before using ActiveCampaign
- 14-day free trial
- If you are planning to send bulk emails only, no automation, try one of the other systems.
Try ActiveCampaign for free >
⍟ ActiveCampaign discounts and extra’s
I will be working on launching a secret page for ActiveCampaign and will annoy the AC team until they start giving more extra’s or discounts (alternatively, I’ll create / arrange them for you myself 😀 ).
You already get an ActiveCampaign discount of ~ 25% if you sign up for a year vs monthly. You can sign up starting with a free trial here, and if you Let me know once you’ve signed up for a paid account, and I’ll make sure you get the extra’s once available.
Convertkit Review
Convertkit emailmarketing bloggers
ConvertKit was founded in 2013. They offer software for what they call Creators: bloggers, authors, YouTubers, podcasters and online course creators. I have been looking at why people like ConvertKit – and I think it is because they focus on the creators and bloggers audience.
Email software for the Bloggers community
Monthly new “tradecraft” guides are published to improve your professional blogging. For instance on running a successful webinar, influencer marketing, etc.
They run a Product Creation Masterclass several times per year – teaching bloggers to actually make money. I think making money is pretty darn important.
Next to Zapier and CMS integrations, there are a lot of direct integrations with membership and software for online courses like Thinkific, Teachable, Wishlist member (WordPress), Memberpress, etc, etc.
Sequences (Formerly Courses)
Nathan Barry built the software as an outgrowth for his teaching courses. The main structure in ConvertKit is “sequences” (formerly courses) – email drips sent over time, for instance for your course, of course!
The email app has a 14-day free trial, then the cheapest package starts at $29 for 1.000 subscribers which are not cheap in comparison. The email editor is very basic, with no drag-and-drop blocks. While part of the blogging community seems to like the simpleness and “rawness/realness” of not being able to add CTA buttons or columns. Well… everybody can have their opinion.
Stats are there, but nothing advanced. There is no heatmap or e-commerce conversion tracking.
What I like is the tagging system. Tag subscribers for their preferences, the downloads they made – etc. Tags make it easy for people to come in and do multiple downloads without any problems. There is a visual automation editor in there, to set up welcome and product/course campaigns.
Pros:
- For bloggers: Comprehensive training, the whole community is about professional bloggers and creators.
- Segmentation: Use tags to store preferences and segment your groups.
- Visual automation and email autoresponders.
- Free plan for 300 subscribers, to check out the tool. Includes unlimited landing pages and forms.
Cons:
- Price – This overview is about free and cheap email systems. In comparison ConvertKit asks more of the green;
- The email editor is limited;
- No heatmap in your reporting, so no visual way to see where people clicked in your emails.
Try ConvertKit for free >
Email Software selection tips for marketers on a budget
Here are 4 tips for those who are especially looking for low-cost email marketing software.
Selection tip 1: Have a look at more than one system
It is a good idea to look at more than one email marketing system. This makes sense – and you were probably thinking about doing so already. Check for 2 or 3 options that seem to be a good fit and create an account to have a look inside. All of the email software on this page has a free trial and some even a free sending plan, so they are the best MailChimp alternatives you could find. There is no risk to give them a try to see if you like what you see.
Selection tip 2: Don’t be afraid to spend a bit if you like the tool
Don’t be afraid to spend a bit if you tried and like the email platform. Squeezing pennies is the worst mindset for growth. As long as the ESP fits in your budget range, don’t mind a few dollars. Go with the best option for you. You are worth it. 😉 Email marketing can be such a great channel, the investment will seem small in comparison to your results.
Selection tip 3: Think maximum of 1 year ahead
Of course, you want an email marketing solution that will do what you want in the near future. Don’t look too far ahead though, especially when shopping for an ESP for the first time.
Think of what you will be needing this year, it will be more realistic. You save time, evaluate only things you need and prevent over-buying. At least you are not paying for features you won’t be using!
Selection tip 4: Today is better than tomorrow
Get started. Just take the first step by trying out some of the software. Add a list, build it out and send those first emails. If your needs are simple enough, you don’t need to take a lot of time comparing each and every solution. There is nothing more expensive than waiting to start with email marketing.
Selection tip 5: Get the discount and Extra’s
Many email providers give discounts (10 – 20%) for taking a yearly subscription. If you like the system, don’t forget to grab that discount. Non-profits might even get an extra discount. From the vendors we talk about here, 2 already give an extra discount if you sign up via this page. (No need to thank me, I do it with pleasure.)
What to look for in selecting cheap email marketing software
Now you have seen the tools available one-by-one, and an overview of what they have to offer. I’d say you probably have one or two favorites already. But let’s talk about comparison and what you should actually be looking for when comparing cheap or free email marketing services.
As with all newsletter software, there are a lot of shiny gimmicks and hyped features that will easily distract you from the real things you need.
When it comes to email marketing systems, there are only a few key factors that’ll move the needle for you.
Marketing automation and autoresponders
Segmentation and email lists
Responsive Email templates
Reporting
Support
Price (Ok, I put this here – because that was sort of the point of this post)
Let’s see what is important on each of these, I am sure it will make it much easier to pick the best tool for your business.
Finding the right marketing automation tool / best email autoresponder software
The first advice is to consider if you want to just send email newsletters and sales promotion emails or are looking for something more like free email autoresponder software.
Think about what type of campaigns you want to do this year.
Because if you won’t be using more advanced automation, no real need to look into it.
Almost all ESPs will allow you to do a simple drip campaign (like a welcome email autoresponder).
Examples of simple email marketing automation workflows (that most software has):
A contact signs up for your newsletter. A welcome email autoresponder is sent, followed with two or three timed messages.
A subscriber has been on your “list” for three months, and you have an automation set up to thank them and send a special offer.
A message goes out to subscribers on a date, for instance, their birthday. Wishing them a great day (possibly with a gift or discount).
If you really want to get into advanced automation triggers, that will take more than simple email blast software.
Examples of more advanced automation workflows
A subscriber looks at several blog posts about Widgets on your site. The automation software tags him as “interested in Widgets”. An automated email drip campaign follows to foster that interest and promote the Widget category.
A subscriber adds a product to their shopping cart or starts filling in a form, but doesn’t finish. The abandoned cart email sequences bring them back to finish the job.
There is much more possible with advanced email automation. But at least marketing automation software should be able to build flows, tag subscribers and set business rules (to determine who to send your emails to or not).
- Responsive Email Templates
Templates are very valuable to get started quickly and save time with each newsletter sent. If you go for custom templates or use your own HTML, you don’t have to look at email templates.
The best email marketing software has a good starting selection of well-designed and modern looking email templates. The email editor allows you to customize templates and they should be completely responsive.
Modern drag and drop email designers don’t require that many templates though, as the building blocks are almost templates by themselves.
Check we’ve compared and reviewed the 11 best free email template builders.
- Email segmentation and list management
See if you can easily manage your lists and selections in the tool. For list management, think about the ways imports work. Or even better automated importing / integration with your other systems.
You’ll have to see how granular you want to go with your email list segmentation. If the plan is to send an email campaign to just a few segments, most free email service providers have email marketing features like that.
Want to go very detailed into the selections and use several fields at the same time for segmentation to make your selections, test them out.
- Reporting and statistics
All email marketing tools have built-in statistics and reporting of the most important email metrics.
Email deliverability rates, open rate, and click rates are standard. You can find them in any email marketing software.
A tad more advanced reporting lets you see:
- New subscriber list growth (per source)
- Email client reports (desktop versus mobile)
- A click overlay to quickly see where people have clicked in the email
- Automation and drip campaign reporting
- Stats integrated with the site and google analytics
- Support
Here you want to see what type of support you can expect. In the free tier, support can be less than in paid tiers. (you can imagine)
Support and customer service is always important in choosing the right email software. But on a budget think channels, response time and namely DIY (Do it yourself). Look for great documentation, chat (or phone) support, a ticketing system. An added plus would be videos.
Finally
Good hunting, I hope this review of free and cheap email marketing service providers helps you find the right solution for you. So take your pick and try out the tools! Have any questions? Do feel free to get in touch.
easiest email marketing software
You want to grow your business – and need email marketing software that’s easy to use, affordable, and will nurture and convert potential customers.
It should be simple, but with an overwhelming 450+ email marketing tools to choose from – and with every email marketing company’s website saying the same thing, it’s anything but simple.
To identify the best email marketing software for different businesses we surveyed 1,782 marketers ranging from small business owners to Fortune 500 CMOs, who were in the process of changing email marketing software to understand which tool they’re moving from and to – and why.
Here’s our verdict of the 10 Best Email Marketing Tools for 2022:
ActiveCampaign – best overall email marketing software
HubSpot – a good option for B2B service companies
Sendinblue – a good option for transactional email
Drip – a good option for e-commerce businesses
Omnisend – another good option for e-commerce businesses
Autopilot – a good option for advanced marketing automation
Benchmark – a good option for agencies
MailerLite – a good option for personal projects
ConvertKit – a good option for bloggers
EmailOctopus – a good option for developers
Read on to find out what our survey and testing revealed about each tool’s strengths and weaknesses across nine areas; cost, deliverability, integrations, ease-of-use, reporting, security, features, CRM, and support.
1 ActiveCampaign
Best overall email marketing software
With over 130,000 customers, ActiveCampaign was the most commonly mentioned tool that survey respondents were planning to choose for email marketing software in 2022.
ActiveCampaign have earned their reputation as a leading email marketing automation tool by focusing on building a world-class product.
ActiveCampaign’s automation builder makes building automations easy, similar to using a flowchart
It’s by far the most advanced email marketing platform in our list, with machine learning and predictive tools enabling marketers to work smarter and deliver higher ROI.
Often credited for pioneering visual marketing automation, ActiveCampaign is impressively intuitive and easy-to-use compared to some of the tools on our list.
ActiveCampaign’s intuitive drag-and-drop email marketing designer
And while the tip of the iceberg that you see with ActiveCampaign is category-leading, so is what’s below the surface. Their deliverability rates are exceptional (>99%), they integrate with 870+ third-party tools, and go far above and beyond with their security and compliance measures.
ActiveCampaign offers 870+ integrations including native integrations with Salesforce, Shopify, Google Sheets, Slack & more.
As an all-in-one sales and marketing tool, ActiveCampaign comes with an in-built CRM system to manage yours sales, live chat, and of course email marketing automation in one place.
A built-in sales CRM makes it easier to manage deals, but also connects to ActiveCampaign’s powerful automation engine
You’d be forgiven for thinking all of this might come at a hefty cost. Yet, starting at $9/mo, ActiveCampaign is reasonably priced and more affordable than many of the tools in this list.
ActiveCampaign recently published their Customer Success Commitment, which outlines 22 guarantees from their support team including free implementation and migration.
ActiveCampaign’s notable features:
125+ Email templates
500+ Automation recipes
870+ Integrations
Send SMS, site messages & email
Landing pages
CRM
Split actions and A/B Testing
Goal tracking, attribution & sales analytics
Predictive content, sending & deal win probability
ActiveCampaign offers a free 14-day trial with no credit card required.
Try ActiveCampaign today.
2 HubSpot
A good option for B2B service businesses
HubSpot is world-class in offering businesses an all-in-one sales and marketing platform that includes a CRM, landing pages, email marketing, marketing automation, chat, forms, and everything in between.
While some argue that trying to do everything is HubSpot’s downfall, it does enable them to do one thing exceptionally well; Reporting.
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
– John Wanamaker
By using HubSpot as the backbone of your marketing and sales, you can more easily attribute revenue back to the marketing campaign, newsletter, or blog post that influenced each sale. In this sense, HubSpot is more of a CRM that offers email marketing and automation, rather than vice versa.
And if your website is built on WordPress, then you get an extra advantage to using HubSpot as your email marketing tool. HubSpot has a WordPress plugin that gives you the ability to send email campaigns directly from WordPress. The plugin also lets you use a HubSpot form or chat widget to automatically capture contacts in your CRM, all without leaving WordPress.
Hubspot can come at a cost
While much-loved, HubSpot is the second most likely response (behind Mailchimp) to “Which email marketing software are you leaving?” in our survey of 1,700+ email marketers. The reason is almost always the same; Price.
HubSpot position themselves as an affordable option for small businesses by offering free versions of their products – but don’t be fooled by the HubSpot gateway-drug. Their platform becomes exponentially expensive as your list or feature requirements grow.
One business owner I spoke with started on a $50/month plan, and within a year needed a $2,000/month plan that had to be paid annually. The only difference was an extra 15,000 contacts and adding marketing automation, yet they jumped from seeing $50 leave the bank to $24,000.
This is where I feel conflicted about HubSpot.
On the one hand, you could get the same functionality for one-tenth of the price using ActiveCampaign, Benchmark, or half of the tools in this guide. On the other hand, if the value of knowing what influenced each sale is a problem worth paying a five-figure sum to solve, then HubSpot is a strong contender.
This is why we suggest that HubSpot is an ideal choice for B2B service companies, where the value of winning a handful of extra clients a year would easily cover the cost of HubSpot. This extends to larger, or more sophisticated, agencies that must provide clients with in-depth reports on their marketing funnel.
If you just need email marketing software, HubSpot is possibly overkill. But if your search for email marketing software is part of a wider plan to raise to your marketing game and improve performance across your entire sales and marketing funnel, HubSpot is a strong contender – but don’t expect it to come cheap.
3 Sendinblue
A good option for transactional email
Sendinblue is best-known as one of the leading transactional email services. Building on this reputation they built an email marketing automation product.
We use Sendinblue to send transactional emails for two of our ventures (Leadformly and Serene), as they’re one of the few email marketing providers with servers in the European Union (which helps with our GDPR compliance) and they have good deliverability rates (we’re currently at 98%).
While I can’t comment on their marketing automation features from first-hand experience, it’s evident from our customer surveys that it’s good, but lacks some of the more advanced features (such as goal tracking, native integrations, and annotations).
If you need an email marketing tool with a solid API to get your emails into inboxes with a good deliverability rate, Sendinblue’s pre-built developer recipes make it an excellent choice.
What are Sendinblue’s key features?
Marketing automation
SMS
Live chat
CRM
Transactional email
Landing pages
Sign-up forms
Facebook Ads
4 Drip
A good option for smaller e-commerce stores
I think it’s fair to say that Drip’s focus is on smaller to medium-sized e-commerce businesses, whereas our next email marketing tool (Omnisend) seems better suited to the larger e-commerce stores.
As you’d expect, Drip integrates deeply with all mainstream e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce – as well as the more obscure and custom-made ones.
With built-in revenue analytics and tools to engage customers across multiple channels (from social channels to SMS) Drip is ideally positioned as a powerful tool for growing e-commerce stores.
Their pricing is also palatable, starting at $19/month for small list sizes.
What are Drip’s key features?
Visual automation
Email and SMS marketing
Dynamic e-commerce content blocks
Discount codes
e-commerce Segmentation
Retargeting
e-commerce store integrations
Reporting dashboards
Split testing sequences
5 Omnisend
A good option for medium-large e-commerce brands
Omnisend is quickly becoming one of the leading marketing platforms for e-commerce stores.
Designed to help e-commerce brands control their marketing across multiple channels, Omnisend offers automated email, SMS, push notifications, and most impressively, integrations with Google Ads, Instagram, Facebook Ads, Messenger, and WhatsApp – which they claim have 10X higher click-through rates than email.
Omnisend automation
By focusing purely on e-commerce, Omnisend has built innovative email templates designed to reduce cart abandonment and drive repeat buyers. From ‘wheel of fortune’ offers to virtual scratch cards and birthday discounts, it’s evident that Omnisend’s built by a team intimately aware of what works in e-commerce.
Omnisend campaign templates
As you’d expect of an e-commerce email marketing tool, Omnisend hooks into most e-commerce platforms, including Magento, Shopify, and BigCommerce. Where Omnisend goes one step further is in integrating with review, loyalty and help desk platforms, such as Yotpo, Smile.io, and ReCharge.
This not only enables Omnisend to report on how your campaigns impact sales, but enables you to trigger email, SMS and social campaigns based around your customer behaviour to reduce cart abandonment, increase return buyers, drive more product reviews, and more.
Omnisend reporting
If you want the features that make Omnisend stand out, you’ll need a PRO account which starts at $199/month for up to 10,000 contacts. While not the cheapest, nor the easiest to use, Omnisend is a good option for e-commerce brands that want one multi-channel platform to rule them all.
What are Omnisend’s key features?
Visual email builder
Email, SMS and Push notifications
Transactional and marketing emails
Dynamic discount codes
e-commerce Segmentation
Retargeting
Surveys and Polls
Reporting
Popups and forms – wheel of fortune, scratch cards etc.
A/B Testing
6 Autopilot
A good option for marketing automation
Gone are the days where email marketing is about sending bulk newsletters.
In today’s digital landscape, it’s essential for email marketing to be smart; sending the right messages to the right leads at the right time, automatically.
That’s why all of our top ten email marketing providers provide marketing automation. As the name would suggest, this is Autopilot’s forte. To boot, they have one of the best-designed canvases for building email automation sequences.
Autopilot’s marketing automation annotations
Anyone who has ever built an email automation sequence knows how quickly they can become confusing. Autopilot solves this in a rather quirky way, allowing you to annotate your automation sequences with emojis, stickers and explanations, making it easy for teams to collaborate on building sequences.
Yes, it can get messy – but I’d rather that and be able to understand what’s going on, than having beautiful automation sequences that take half an hour to interpret.
Another feature I love about Autopilot is its ability to trigger actions in your other tools inside Autopilot. This saves having to configure integrations using a tool like Zapier and makes your sequences much easier to understand.
Autopilot third party integrations
Autopilot’s reporting is also excellent, though, I’ll go into this in more detail in our section on reporting and analytics below.
Starting at $49/month for 2,000 contacts, Autopilot is far from the cheapest option, particularly considering that Autopilot does not offer an in-built CRM. However, Autopilot is extremely intuitive and great for teams that need to collaborate on powerful email automation sequences. If we had to move from ActiveCampaign, this is likely where we’d go.
7 Benchmark
A good option for agencies
Benchmark is an interesting option for any business looking for a well-designed and easy-to-use email marketing tool.
While not quite as well known as other tools in the top ten, they’ve become an increasingly popular response to “Which tool are you moving to?” in our survey.
Benchmark do everything pretty well and are reasonably priced, but there’s one thing that really sets them apart from other email marketing tools – and that’s design.
Everything from their templates to the platform itself is beautifully-designed – and not just visually attractive, but great user experience. While that may seem trivial to some, it makes all the difference when it comes to understanding your data and creating the right impression with contacts.
Benchmark is a good choice for any small business that needs simple, easy-to-use email marketing and automation software. It’s likely to be a particularly good choice for small agencies and consultancies where design is important both from a staff training perspective – and also providing a good experience for clients.
What are Benchmark’s key features?
Visual email builder
Marketing automation
1,500+ Integrations
Landing pages
Surveys and Polls
Reporting
Sign-up forms
A/B Testing
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8 ConvertKit
A good option for bloggers
ConvertKit is a relatively simple email marketing tool used almost exclusively by bloggers and online course instructors to develop their personal brands.
Their platform has no bells or whistles. It doesn’t even have email templates, as ConvertKit encourages its users to send plain-text emails to increase engagement. As most of its users are individuals trying to build a personal brand this makes sense, but it does make ConvertKit a poor-fit for other use cases.
If you’re a creator that just needs a simple tool to serve your audience with regular content, there’s no better tool.
ConvertKit’s editor
9 MailerLite
A good option for personal projects
At the opposite end of the price spectrum, we have MailerLite, which is among the best email marketing tools for value for money (it’s free for sending up to 12,000 emails/month to less than 1,000 contacts).
Unlike the other beginner email marketing tools out there, MailerLite is a universally good tool irrespective of industry. Whether you’re growing a small charity, a side-hustle, or are a freelancer starting out, MailerLite offers everything you need to send bulk email marketing campaigns.
Mailerlite newsletter campaign builder
If you’re a small business, I’d suggest that a tool like ActiveCampaign may be a better fit, as they offer an in-built CRM and more advanced marketing features for roughly the same price.
For beginners and personal projects, where you just need to send beautiful email campaigns to engage your audience, MailerLite is ideal.
If you want to give MailerLite a spin, the folks there have kindly offered Venture Harbour readers an extended 30-day trial (instead of 14 days) via this link.
10 EmailOctopus
A good option for developers
There’s long been a notion in email marketing that the most affordable way to send emails is using Amazon’s Simple Email Service (SES). Yet, the UI just isn’t built for marketing teams to create campaigns.
Many email marketing services have tried to bridge this gap – from Sendy to Moonmail, but they’ve often ended up either falling short on features or gravitating towards being more developer-centric.
EmailOctopus have nailed this balance.
The benefits of Amazon SES, without the drawbacks
Amazon’s Simple Email Service (SES) is unbeatable from a cost perspective, and the deliverability is world-class. But it creates a huge bottleneck if used to send your marketing campaigns.
Every campaign, typo fix, and email sequence must be briefed as a development task, diverting scarce design and development resources to something that, frankly, is a flagrant waste of developer time.
EmailOctopus closes this gap. Built on the back of Amazon SES, EmailOctopus gives you the infrastructure benefits of AWS, while enabling you to build your email campaigns in a friendly UI.
The main downside of EmailOctopus is its simplicity. If you’re just sending email campaigns to a list that’s fine, but don’t expect the multi-touch attribution or visual automation builder that you’d find in a tool like ActiveCampaign.
EmailOctopus would be perfect for a small tech startup, where someone on the team is fluent in AWS and needs the flexibility and power of SES without the creation of the emails themselves needing to be coded.
Having covered the pros and cons of our top ten email marketing tools, we’ll now compare them head-to-head in nine areas that define a great email marketing tool.
What should you look for in email marketing software?
Email marketing software needs to grow your business by saving you time and converting your leads into customers, and those customers into repeat customers – on autopilot.
From surveying 1,700+ marketers in the process of changing their email marketing software, we discovered nine factors that separate the good from the great:
💰 Compare Cost
😌 Compare UX
📮 Compare Deliverability
✨ Compare Features
🤝 Compare CRMs
📊 Compare Reporting
🔌 Compare Integrations
🙋 Compare Support & Training
🔒Compare Security
Of course, every email marketing tool will claim to do well in all areas, yet by analysing data and observing why marketers leave different email platforms, we’re able to capture a far more honest picture.
Email marketing survey
You can access the dataset we use to determine the top 10 email marketing software providers at the end of this guide.
- Best for affordability
What differentiates a $100/month tool from a $20/month tool?
Sometimes very little, sometimes a lot. HubSpot, for example, may charge 10X more than most email marketing tools but they offer an all-in-one marketing & sales platform that includes everything from landing pages and live chat, to a social media management tool and CRM. On the other hand, ActiveCampaign offers an enormous amount of value while remaining one of the most affordable email marketing tools on the market.
Comparing email marketing software based on cost alone is a dangerous game. That’s why it’s important to look at all nine factors in this article to ensure that you’re buying the right tool for the job, rather than the cheapest.
“There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey.”
– John Ruskin
Caveats aside, here’s a detailed comparison of the monthly cost of all ten email marketing tools at three account sizes ordered from most affordable to least.
Tool Monthly price for 2,500 contacts Monthly price for 10,000 contacts Monthly price for 100,000 contacts
MailerLite $15 $50 $360
ActiveCampaign $49 $139 $549
Benchmark $35 $76 $424
Omnisend $36 $102 $570
Sendinblue $39 $66 $173
ConvertKit $49 $119 $679
Autopilot $149 $249 Not Public
EmailOctopus $20 $30 $210
Drip $39 $154 $1,199
HubSpot $150 $420 $3,100
It would be remiss not to point out that cost and value are not the same thing. HubSpot, ActiveCampaign and, to some extent, Omnisend all offer all-in-one marketing & sales platforms with many features beyond email marketing, while the rest are primarily just for managing and automating email marketing.
Don’t let the tail wag the dog
Your email marketing tool is something that you ideally don’t want to change often, therefore it pays to choose a tool that offers not only what you need today, but what you’ll need for the next few years.
Above all, choose the tool that gives you the best opportunity to grow your business.
In this next section, we’ll outline the top three email marketing software providers for each of the nine factors, so that you can compare between three solid choices, based on the factors that are most important to you.
- Best for ease of use
With some email marketing tools, it’s taken me three hours to make an email marketing template look acceptable on a mobile device. While all the email marketing tools featured offer visual email builders & easy-to-use interfaces, some are better than others.
While some are easy to use because they offer few bells and whistles, others strike a balance of being powerful while easy to use. The following three tools do the latter:
ActiveCampaign
Benchmark
Mailerlite
Rather than explain how easy to use these three tools are, I’ll let screenshots of their email editors do the talking.
- ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign visual editor
ActiveCampaign lists
ActiveCampaign split automations - Benchmark
- MailerLite
Mailerlite newsletter campaign builder
Mailerlite marketing automation - Best for deliverability
An email marketing tool is worthless if your emails end up in the spam folder. That’s why, as dull as it may be, deliverability is a crucial factor.
In order to get the best deliverability rates, there are a few things email marketing services need to do:
Flag clients for review if they receive too many complaints or bounced emails
Remove problematic clients
Monitor blacklists
Manage the reputation of their IP addresses.
All of the email marketing tools in our top ten do all of these. Regardless of which tool you choose, you can expect deliverability rates in the 98-99.9% range.
But if it’s particularly important to you to have the highest deliverability rates imaginable, there are two tools in particular that go above and beyond; ActiveCampaign and EmailOctopus.
ActiveCampaign’s impressive deliverability is the result of 17 years of optimisation and helping customers write better emails. They offer a very handy ‘spam check’ tool for predicting how likely an email is to land in the inbox, and if a score is too low it suggests what changes you should make.
ActiveCampaign’s spam checker
EmailOctopus’ high deliverability is a result of it being based on Amazon’s SES infrastructure – which has very high deliverability rates.
If you want to take deliverability into your own hands, you may wish to buy a dedicated IP for sending emails. This is a feature offered by both companies.
- Best for email marketing features
If you try any of the email marketing tools in this article, you’ll find that they all offer the standard features that you’d expect from an email marketing tool, such as visual email campaign builders, pre-designed email templates, and autoresponders.
ActiveCampaign’s templates
Only a handful go above and beyond with additional email marketing features designed to save you time and get better results. Here are our top three email marketing tools that go above and beyond with features.
ActiveCampaign
HubSpot
Omnisend
ActiveCampaign
Automation A/B Testing – While most email marketing tools allow you to split-test subject lines, send times, and content, ActiveCampaign is one of the only services that allow you to split-test automation sequences.
ActiveCampaign split automations
This means you can split test radical changes like sending ten emails to new leads versus only four, to see which sequence has the highest conversion rate.
Conditional content – ActiveCampaign is one of the only email marketing services that allow you to include conditional ‘IF X is true, show Y’ content blocks inside email campaigns.
We use this for localising pricing (i.e. show $ in the United States, £ in the UK, and € in Europe), and displaying different recommended articles to different customers based on their plan or engagement level.
ActiveCampaign conditional content
Global variables – We have over 200 automated emails setup in our ActiveCampaign account. What happens if, for example, I want to change something in my email signature? Or update the pricing of one of our plans?
With other email marketing tools, you’d have to go into each email and manually update the changes one-by-one. This is where global variables are a big time saver. Instead of inserting the actual price in an email campaign you can enter %price% and it will replace all variables with the actual price when the email is sent out.
ActiveCampaign automation recipes
Downloadable automation recipes – ActiveCampaign is one of the only email marketing tools to offer a range of automation ‘recipes’. Instead of spending days building an elaborate sequence of upsell emails, you can just use one they’ve already made, and then adjust the content so that fits your brand.
In addition to saving a lot of time, these recipes are a great source of inspiration.
HubSpot
Smart Content – Similar to the conditional content feature offered by ActiveCampaign, Smart Content allows you to hide and display blocks of content in your email campaigns based on where a contact is in your buying cycle, or which lists they are in.
Hubspot smart content
Subject line emojis – Using emojis in subject lines have been found to increase open rates by as much as 45%. While you can technically put emojis in the subject line using almost any email marketing tool, HubSpot makes it a bit easier by having an emoji button next to the subject line box.
Hubspot emojis in subject lines
Progressive Profiling – Let’s say a lead visits your website on day one and exchanges her name and email address to download a whitepaper. The next day, they come back to your website to learn more.
Instead of showing the same form asking for their name and email address, HubSpot allows you to identify this lead and show a different offer, or ask a different set of questions to learn more about them over time. This is called Progressive profiling – and it allows you to send more personalised email campaigns as you gather more information on your leads.
HubSpot progressive profiling
- Omnisend
Omnisend offers an impressive range of e-commerce email marketing features.
Campaign Booster – Omnisend has a ‘campaign booster’ feature that automatically resends campaigns to subscribers who haven’t opened an email campaign (a quick-win that Omnisend state boosts email sales by up to 30%).
Omnisend campaign booster
Product Picker – In addition to being able to drag and drop products from your store directly into email campaigns (a huge time saver), Omnisend also has a handful of CTR boosting email templates, such as scratch cards and gift boxes.
Omnisend product picker
Discount codes – One final feature that’s a nice touch for e-commerce users is Omnisend’s discount code generator, which connects to your e-commerce store and automatically generates unique discount codes to incentivise customers to buy again from you.
Omnisend discount codes
- Best for CRM & marketing automation features
Unless you’re a large enterprise it probably makes sense to use an email marketing tool that also has an in-built CRM (customer relationship management) and marketing automation functionality.
The reason for this is that email marketing works best when emails are triggered to the right people at the right time – and the data required to enable this is often stored in a CRM system. While you can make this work with a separate CRM, integrating the two is an extra step that could be avoided.
This requirement technically rules out all but two of our top ten, with HubSpot and ActiveCampaign remaining. We have also included Autopilot here, which despite not having a CRM has exceptional native integrations with the most popular CRMs and has the best marketing automation features we’ve seen.
1 HubSpot
HubSpot is the undisputed leader in this category. As an all-in-one sales & marketing platform, they offer a full CRM system, as well as in-built tools for blogging, social media management, landing page creation, and… well, you name it they probably offer it.
Their CRM system is extremely powerful, yet straightforward to use. You can view deals in a pipeline format (as shown above) or as one long list in a table.
Because HubSpot contains so much data on each of your leads, you can use their marketing automation platform to build email sequences that use CRM data to trigger emails to contacts based on their behaviour.
Granted, it’s not as flexible or powerful as ActiveCampaign or Autopilot’s automation builder. For one thing, it’s difficult to ‘branch’ off and create different steps for different users without getting in a tangle with lots of individual sequences. With that said, if your automation requirements aren’t too complicated, it’s certainly not bad.
HubSpot marketing automation builder
2 ActiveCampaign
As you can see below, ActiveCampaign’s CRM is very similar to HubSpot’s in design and functionality.
Similarly to HubSpot, ActiveCampaign tracks your lead’s activity on your website (or app) and can automatically move leads into different stages of your pipeline based on which pages they’ve visited, whether they’ve bought a product, clicked on an email etc.
ActiveCampaign CRM
You can also deep-dive into any lead or customer’s profile to see a full history of every interaction that person has had with your company since they first gave you their email address.
ActiveCampaign CRM profile page
Where ActiveCampaign shines is with its marketing automation builder. We’ve already touched on this in previous sections of this article, so I won’t go into much more detail here.
ActiveCampaign’s visual automation editor
- Autopilot
While Autopilot doesn’t have an in-built CRM, its marketing automation platform is second to none, and it integrates natively with a handful of the most popular CRMs (including HubSpot CRM, Pipedrive, and Salesforce).
If you use a CRM that’s not listed above, Autopilot also offers a Zapier integration, as well as a native integration with Segment, allowing you to keep your CRM in sync, and trigger your automation sequences from updates in your CRM.
Autopilot’s CRM integration
- Best for reporting & analytics
Most email marketing tools offer very little when it comes to reporting functionality, to the point that understanding what emails are generating a positive return on investment can be a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
In our review of the top ten email marketing tools, we were most impressed by the email analytics and reporting offered by these three companies.
1 HubSpot
HubSpot has an unfair advantage.
As an all-in-one marketing platform, it should come as no surprise that they offer a huge variety of reports, answering every marketing question imaginable. To give credit where it’s due, these aren’t vanity metrics either; HubSpot does a very good job at answering the difficult questions that actually provide actionable insights.
Reporting dashboards in HubSpot
Of course, this kind of reporting comes at a cost (HubSpot’s not cheap, as we’ve already covered) but you do get a lot more insight compared to just knowing how many people opened or unsubscribed from your email campaigns.
Their campaign reports are easy to digest and surprisingly insightful. HubSpot is also one of the only email marketing tools to report on the time people spend reading an email.
HubSpot email campaign analytics
- Autopilot
What I particularly like about Autopilot is that you can set the goal of each automation journey and view reports around whether that automation journey is hitting its goal.
For example, I can set a goal that my lead nurturing journey should convert 20% of contacts that enter it to buy my product and then produce a report like this.
Autopilot reporting
Beyond this, Autopilot’s reporting is fairly basic, with the usual reporting on campaign performance and contact list insights.
- ActiveCampaign
In some ways, I’m reluctant to feature ActiveCampaign in this section, as their reporting is definitely not their strong point. But, credit where it’s due, it’s come along way in the last year and it’s still much better than many other tools for the same reason as Autopilot above – it focuses on goal tracking.
The big difference is that, while Autopilot has managed to make this look beautiful, ActiveCampaign’s visualisation of these reports is a bit convoluted.
ActiveCampaign goal report
ActiveCampaign’s reporting can answer almost any question you throw at it – but you need to be quite mindful of knowing what that question is.
Where HubSpot and Autopilot serve up high-quality answers on a platter, ActiveCampaign’s approach is more akin to vomiting data across 20 or so pages, making it difficult to decipher value from vanity metrics.
- Best for integrations
These days, most email marketing tools integrate with Zapier (a third-party tool that allows you to then send data to over 1,000+ third-party apps & tools) rather than building their own smorgasbord of integrations. There are some exceptions, such as Autopilot, which has an enormous variety of native integrations.
Autopilot integrations
The best email marketing tools for integrating with third-party tools are:
ActiveCampaign
Autopilot
HubSpot
When it comes to Zapier integrations, not all of them are created equal. Every ‘zap’ (integration) has two parts: A trigger and an action. For example, let’s say you want to build an integration so that every time someone subscribes to your mailing list (the trigger), they’re automatically added to a Google Spreadsheet (the action), this can be built in minutes using Zapier.
Broadly speaking, the more triggers and actions an email marketing tool provides, the easier it is to automate tasks. Below is a list of the top ten email marketing tools, ranked from highest number of triggers, actions and searches to lowest.
Type Zapier Triggers Zapier Actions & SearchesHubSpot Free 13 17
ActiveCampaign Free 13 11
Drip Free 16 6
ConvertKit Free 7 5
Autopilot Free 4 4
MailerLite Free 2 2
Benchmark Free 2 1
Sendinblue Free 2 1
Omnisend Free 0 2
EmailOctopus Free 0 3
- Best for customer support & training
- ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is the only email marketing tool to offer a Customer Success Commitment, which outlines a set of standards around education, support and trust that you can expect from ActiveCampaign.
Needless to say, it’s world-class. From implementation and migration support, to access to ActiveCampaign’s community, in-person events and pre-built automation recipes, you can be confident you’re in safe hands.
ActiveCampaign study halls
It’s also worth pointing out that, while ActiveCampaign offers an extensive range of videos, guides and documentation, we’ve had numerous team members join Venture Harbour and be able to build automation sequences with no training, thanks to how easy the platform is to use.
As a customer, I’ve only had to contact ActiveCampaign’s support a handful of times over the last four years, and each time I’ve had a response within a couple of hours with a solution.
- HubSpot
HubSpot has arguably built its entire business around education.
HubSpot invented the phrase ‘inbound marketing’ and went on to acquire tens of thousands of customers by eating their own dog food, so to speak. By blogging, running events, and becoming a thought leader in inbound marketing, leads came to them – rather than them having to rely on traditional outbound marketing.
As such, you can expect world-class training when you sign up to HubSpot. From courses and certifications to eBooks, and their annual INBOUND conference, HubSpot provides its customers with plenty of opportunities to level-up.
HubSpot courses and certifications
One cautionary note is that HubSpot charges additional fees for onboarding services. While this isn’t too unreasonable (as you’re effectively paying for several hours of a Hubspotter’s time), it does highlight to me just how generous ActiveCampaign is by offering onboarding free of charge.
On the support side, HubSpot is also exceptional. With phone, email and live chat support, you can be confident that if any issues arise, they’ll be resolved quickly.
- Drip
As it stands, Drip offers all customers access to its customer success team, who offer agency-level support around deliverability optimisation, strategy and technical support – free of charge.
In addition to this, Drip offers an abundant range of webinars, guides, and courses aimed at advancing your e-commerce email marketing knowledge.
- Best for security & compliance
If you capture sensitive personal data or, due to your industry or size, require an email marketing provider that has particular security and privacy compliance certifications, we’d suggest either:
ActiveCampaign
HubSpot
MailerLite
As you’d expect, these larger and older email marketing providers tend to be the best option when it comes to security and compliance. All three of the services above provide extensive documentation on their websites about their security and compliance measures.
For a more detailed comparison of which security/compliance certifications and features these three email marketing tools offer, we’ve created the table below.
ActiveCampaign HubSpot MailerLiteISO 27018 (cloud privacy) Yes No No
ISO 27001 (information security) Yes Yes Yes
ISO 27017 (cloud security) Yes No No
EU-US Privacy Shield Yes Yes Yes
GDPR Compliant Yes Yes Yes
CAN-SPAM Compliant Yes Yes Yes
HIPAA Compliant Yes (enterprise account only) No No
TLS encryption Yes Yes Yes
Segmented accounts Yes Yes No
Here are some useful links to learn more:
ActiveCampaign’s security
HubSpot’s security
Get the complete dataset
In addition to collecting 1,782 reviews of email marketing tools over the last 12 months, our team has gathered 5,000 data points across 100 email marketing companies, which you can access for free.
If you would like a copy of our raw dataset to make your own comparisons you can get it by completing this survey (no email address required).
I hope this guide has been useful in helping you choose an email marketing tool. If you have any feedback or unanswered questions, feel free to reach out to me or tag me in a share on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Conclusion
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