Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools in your business arsenal. With just a few clicks, you can reach millions of potential customers and convert them into loyal customers who will pay for your products and services. But doing it right takes more than just a few clicks. It takes planning, strategy, and a lot of time spent on crafting compelling copy that will bring in new customers and keep them coming back.
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Online Email Marketing Software Free
Looking for a way to run your email marketing efforts without breaking the bank? The free email marketing services on this list all let you send thousands of emails per month without spending a single penny.
For beginners; you can check our article what is email marketing? to find out how to get started.
Keep reading for a detailed look at each free email marketing service’s sending limits and pros and cons. Then, we’ll share our recommendations at the end. These are much better than Gmail for professional users!
Best free email marketing services in a nutshell
Here are the top solutions that we’re going to cover:
- Sendinblue (www.sendinblue.com)
- Mailchimp (mailchimp.com)
- MailerLite (www.mailerlite.com)
- Benchmark (www.benchmarkemail.com)
- Omnisend (www.omnisend.com)
- Sender (www.sender.net)
Before we dig in, here’s a quick summary of the free email marketing tools that we’ll cover, along with the various limits on each service’s free plan:
| SERVICE | SUBSCRIBER LIMIT | MONTHLY EMAIL SENDS | DAILY EMAIL SENDS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sendinblue | Unlimited | 9,000 | 300 |
| Mailchimp | 2,000 | 10,000 | 2,000 |
| MailerLite | 1,000 | 12,000 | – |
| Benchmark | Unlimited | 250 | – |
| Omnisend | Unlimited | 500 | – |
| Sender | 2,500 | 15,000 | – |
Note; while there are other popular email marketing solutions on the market as well, like ConvertKit, GetResponse, Mailjet, AWeber, Constant Contact, Moosend, HubSpot, SendPulse, ActiveCampaign, and more, we felt that their free offerings were either not up to par with the lineup that we settled on in the end (or nonexistent at all). Keep reading for a deeper look at each service that has made the final list.Email marketing on a budget? Here are the 6 best #free #email #marketing servicesCLICK TO TWEET
1. Sendinblue (www.sendinblue.com)
Sendinblue has a great free plan (unlimited contacts) along with support for SMS text message sending, SMTP, in-depth analytics, powerful marketing automation features all in the same dashboard. Sendinblue is also headquartered in France, so you’re guaranteed to comply with GDPR.
How many emails/subscribers do you get for free?
The free plan lets you have an unlimited number of contacts, but you’re limited to 300 emails per day. For that reason, this platform might not be a great option if you want to send out email blasts to all your subscribers at the same time. However, if you have lots of drip campaigns, it’s quite flexible because there’s no subscriber cap.
The first upgrade is called the Lite plan, which offers 20,000 emails per month at $25.00 per month. The daily sending limit is removed.
What makes this one of the best free email marketing services?
- A strong drag-and-drop email editor.
- Impressive email marketing automation with things like autoresponders, coupons in emails and abandoned cart messages.
- Integrations with platforms like Shopify, Salesforce, and Intercom.
- Heat mapping and A/B testing to see how your emails are doing.
- SMS marketing that can be linked to your email campaigns.
- A feature-rich WordPress plugin that lets you manage everything from your WordPress dashboard. Plus, you can handle your transactional emails through Sendinblue as well.
- Chat feature to reach out to visitors in real time. One of the unique features with an email marketing service.
- A unique CRM solution that’s integrated into the main Sendinblue package.
Who should use it?
Because of the way the free account works, Sendinblue is a great email marketing solution if you have lots of subscribers but you don’t need to message them all at the same time. If you’re only going to be sending a reasonable number of emails each day, you won’t have to pay for Sendinblue at all. It’s also a good option for WordPress users because of its official plugin and it has better analytics than many of the other free email marketing services.
We are using Sendinblue at Themeisle. Because of this relationship that we have with them, they’ve offered an exclusive 30% discount for the first month on all paid plans. If you end up buying any of them, communicate with this email to redeem the discount: axel+codeinwp [at] sendinblue.com. 
2. Mailchimp (mailchimp.com)
Mailchimp is a favourite of many bloggers and small businesses because it was one of the first big email services to offer a completely free plan. Not only that, but Mailchimp has some excellent eCommerce and email marketing tools.
How many emails/subscribers do you get for free?
The free plan includes 10,000 emails per month for up to 2,000 subscribers.
If you would like to upgrade to unlimited emails it costs $11.00 per month – the catch is that you can only have up to 500 subscribers – which isn’t the case for some alternatives.
What makes this one of the best free email marketing services?
- The drag-and-drop editor, along with the beautiful templates that you can personalize, are some of the best in the business.
- You get a landing page builder – use them to promote special offers.
- Mailchimp has tools for Instagram and Facebook ads and posts.
- Connect with tools like Shopify, Eventbrite, and Salesforce.
- The automation tools include options for abandoned carts, welcome campaigns, and product recommendations.
- A/B testing and segmentation make your emails more effective.
- Great award-winning customer support available 24/7.
- Options for list segmentation.
Who should use it?
We like Mailchimp for any small business owners and bloggers who appreciate great designs and stellar deliverability (it will also help you optimize your open rates). It’s also nice if you have an eCommerce store or plan on automating emails and you’d like to make your automation workflows more efficient.
3. MailerLite (www.mailerlite.com)
MailerLite is one of the best free email marketing services that gained popularity in the last two years. This tool makes it easier for users to improve interaction using pop-ups and surveys.
How many emails/subscribers do you get for free?
The free plan will let you send up to 1,000 emails without having to spend a dime. And while the free version will give you access to nearly all of the essential email marketing features, you might have to miss out on some advanced features.
By that, I mean you won’t get access to customizable templates, get live chat support or check CTR using a heatmap, or perform A/B testing. You can unlock all this for $10.00 per month. If you want to increase the subscribers limit to 2,500 then you need to spend $15 per month instead.
What makes this one of the best free email marketing software?
- You can create beautiful email newsletters, pop-ups, and surveys.
- Easily design a mobile-optimized email template for free.
- Send a newsletter to your global subscribers at optimum time using delivery-by-time-zone.
- You’d be able to control your backend using the custom HTML editor.
- Find the most converting landing page using A/B split testing and heatmap analysis.
- The dedicated support team for providing high-class live chat experience (premium plan)
- Get access to 49+ newsletter templates for blog, eCommerce, business, and more.
- Has an API for developers built on HTTP and REST.
Who should use it?
MailerLite can be used for creating landing pages (for webinars, for example), pop-ups, and surveys from a single dashboard. All this plus the heatmap testing makes it ideal for startups, small to mid-sized businesses and eCommerce stores who need good deliverability.
4. Benchmark (www.benchmarkemail.com)
Benchmark boasts a speedy email designer made just for busy marketers. You can edit photos right in the editor and the templates are great for a wide variety of businesses. At the same time, their free email marketing tool is easy enough to use that your people will be able to subscribe/unsubscribe without added hurdles.
How many emails/subscribers do you get for free?
The free plan lets you have unlimited subscribers and send up to 250 emails per month, which is almost exactly what you get with Mailchimp.
If you’d like to upgrade, you can start with 600 subscribers and unlimited email sends per month for $13.99.
What makes this one of the best free email marketing services?
- It doesn’t take much time to craft email marketing campaigns using their drag-and-drop email builder.
- You can easily custom code your emails.
- The email automation options include welcome emails, abandoned carts, and follow-ups.
- Polls and surveys are included.
- You receive tools for A/B testing and integrating with hundreds of apps.
Who should use it?
Since the free plan is one of the best on the market, I would recommend this platform to those who can’t afford to pay anything for an email marketing tool. Otherwise, it works well for bloggers and eCommerce stores (running on WooCommerce and other tools).
5. Omnisend (www.omnisend.com)
Omnisend is a must among these email service providers for users who are running online stores only. It quickly pulls products from your store and generates beautiful and fun emails and opt-in forms to grow your email list.
How many emails/subscribers do you get for free?
The free email marketing plan offers you 500 emails per month, and you can reach 250 of your subscribers. It is possible to have a larger contact list but you will only be able to send to 250 of your contacts.
Upgrading depends on whether you need more emails per month or more advanced features. The pricing plans start at $16 per month for 500 subscribers and 6,000 emails. The email count and pricing goes up with more subscribers.
If you’re interested in any of those paid plans, you can get a limited time discount of 20% – for Themeisle readers only. The discount is valid for six months on the Standard plan. Click here and redeem the coupon code INFLUENCES206 during checkout.
What makes this one of the best free email marketing software?
- The free plan is a steal and the upgrades are rather flexible.
- The eCommerce integrations instantly pull products you want to sell into the email.
- It has creative signup forms like popups, landing pages, and a wheel-of-fortune game.
- Send out discount codes or scratch cards.
- Create automation reports and A/B test campaigns.
- Retain mobile audience using mobile-friendly email templates.
- Send out automated emails for abandoned carts and order confirmations.
- Also offers enterprise solutions for bigger companies.
Who should use it?
Omnisend is a great free option for eCommerce stores. You can still use this free email marketing software if you’re not running a store, but you’ll miss out on a lot of the unique functionality.
6. Sender (www.sender.net)
Sender is yet another email service with a wonderful free plan. It also offers push notifications to go along with its segmentation, integrations, and stunning designs that you can customize.
How many emails/subscribers do you get for free?
The free plan lets you have up to 2,500 subscribers and send 15,000 emails per month.
The next upgrade is $10 per month for 5,000 subscribers and 60,000 emails per month.
What makes this one of the best free email marketing services?
- It has plugins for most popular content management systems.
- Video gets converted into animated GIFs inside emails.
- The analysis tools include click maps and Google Analytics – so you can track all your metrics effectively and in an user-friendly way.
- Adding eCommerce products is done by quickly copying and pasting links.
- It can help you automate your social media marketing efforts.
- It will also give you pointers on optimization of your subject lines.
Who should use it?
Sender has some wonderful tools, but I like it best because the pricing remains fairly low as you upgrade.
free bulk email marketing
As we mentioned, bulk email marketing services are used to send a large volume of emails via SMTP, API, or a web interface. These tools are generally less expensive than marketing email services, but that’s because they tend to have fewer bells and whistles. Here are the 10 free bulk email marketing services we’re loving right now.
1. Elastic Email
Elastic Email is a free bulk email marketing service that’s easy to use. You can manage your recipient list for each marketing campaign and the platform includes autoresponders. The platform also includes web forms that you can add to your emails as well as a WordPress plugin for the WordPress users out there. Since Elastic Email offers API access, you can integrate the platform with the apps you already use. In addition, Elastic Email allows for sub-accounts and includes A/X testing features.
💡 Features
- Email designer or upload your own HTML email template
- List management
- Sending and scheduling options
- Autoresponders
- Unlimited web forms
- Subscriber form WordPress plugin
- Landing pages
- Tags and custom fields
- Segmentation functionality
- Unlimited sub-accounts
- Email automations and workflows
- A/X testing
- Detailed reporting
- Email verification
- 24/7 support
✔️ Pros and Cons
- 😊 Web forms and landing pages for lead generation
- 😊 Less expensive than other options
- 😊 Tracking and dashboards have lots of info
- 😊 Great support
- 😩 Emails might end up in spam
- 😩 Reputation can drop quickly if you’re not using the platform correctly
- 😩 Some users reported that their accounts were closed for sending phishing emails
💰 Pricing
- Free plan allows you to send up to 100 emails per day
- Unlimited: $15/month for up to 5,000 contacts
- Unlimited Pro: $30/month for up to 5,000 contacts
- Email API: $0.10/1000 emails + $0.40/day
- Email API Pro: $0.12/1000/emails + $1/day
2. Mailgun
Mailgun is another bulk email marketing service that has a robust API for sending, receiving, and tracking emails. It also offers SMTP integration for easy sending of bulk transactional emails, email validation in real-time, advanced email analytics, tracking engagement metrics, and more.
💡 Features
Base features:
- Email APIs, SMTP relay, and webhooks
- Suppression management
- Email tracking and analytics
- 99.99% guaranteed uptime SLA
- 5 days of log retention (15 days with Growth, 30 days with Scale)
- Detailed documentation
- Limited 24/7 ticket support
Higher-level plan features:
- Inbound email routing
- 1 dedicated IP (foundation 100k and up)
- Email address validations
- Inbox placement tests
- 1-day message retention (3-day with Growth, up to 7 days with Scale)
✔️ Pros and Cons
- 😊 Can set up alias emails without needing to set up new email accounts
- 😊 Easy to set up and use in WHM
- 😊 Clean and useful dashboard
- 😩 Not the easiest interface to customize messages
- 😩 More expensive compared to other bulk email marketing services
- 😩 Some users experienced downtime of system servers
💰 Pricing
- Pay As You Grow: 5,000 free emails/month for three months, then pay only for what you send
- Foundation: $35/month up to 50,000 emails (additional emails charged at $0.80/1000 emails)
- Growth: $80/month up to 100,000 emails (additional emails charged at $0.80/1000 emails)
- Scale: $90/month up to 100,000 emails (additional emails charged at $0.80/1000 emails)
3. Amazon SES
Amazon SES is a bit complicated to get set up, but once that’s done, it’s an easy-to-use bulk email marketing service. It includes tons of features like tracking and mass mail. Amazon SES offers detailed reports so you can monitor the performance of your account, get anti-spam feedback, and track tons of email marketing metrics.
💡 Features
- Multiple ways to send emails — the Amazon SES console, SMTP interface, and the Amazon SES API
- Shared IP addresses are monitored to ensure high deliverability
- Users can lease dedicated IP addresses or set up dedicated IP pools
- Users can bring their own IP addresses to use with the service
- Supports all industry-standard authentication mechanisms — DKIM, SPF, and DMARC
- Access SMTP endpoint without requiring an internet gateway in a VPC
- Captures information about the entire email response funnel — numbers of sends, deliveries, opens, clicks, bounces, complaints, and rejections
- Use the Global suppression list to remove bounced emails from your sending list
- Reputation dashboard to track issues that could impact the delivery of your emails
- Use CloudWatch to create alarms that notify you when your bounce or complaint rates reach certain thresholds
- Deliverability Dashboard helps you understand and remediate issues that could impact the delivery of your emails (like suboptimal email content or attempting to email users who have unsubscribed or bounced in the past)
- Accept or reject email based on the email address, IP address, or domain of the sender
- Mailbox simulator to test how your application handles certain scenarios (like bounces or complaints) without impacting your sender reputation
✔️ Pros and Cons
- 😊 First 62,000 emails are free to send
- 😊 Has great deliverability
- 😊 Easy to use after initial setup
- 😩 Support is slow
- 😩 Configuration settings are complicated
💰 Pricing
- First 62,000 emails are free to send from applications hosted in EC2
- Sending email from an email client or other software package: $0.10/1,000 emails + $0.12/GB of attachments
- Receiving email: $0 for the first 1,000 emails you receive, $0.10 for every 1,000 emails you receive after that + $0.09 for every 1,000 incoming email chunk
4. SendPulse
SendPulse is less a bulk email marketing service and more of an all-in-one communication platform. It lands on our list because it also includes a bulk email sender tool. SendPulse’s free bulk email sender includes automated chatbot campaigns and push notifications. The platform has free email templates, event-triggered emails, and more.
💡 Features
- Resend to unopened with a new subject line
- Segment recipients based on interests and demographics
- A/B testing
- Set user access levels
- Integrate with your CRM or CMS
- Mobile app
✔️ Pros and Cons
- 😊 Analytics are good
- 😊 Easy to use
- 😊 Nice backend site
- 😩 Filters are quite finicky
- 😩 Support isn’t great
💰 Pricing
- Free plan up to 500 subscribers and 15,000 emails
- Standard: $8/month up to 500 subscribers or $76.80/year
- Pro: $9.60/month up to 500 subscribers or $92.16/year
- Enterprise: $13.44/month up to 500 subscribers or $129.02/year
5. Sendinblue
Sendinblue is a bulk email marketing service that includes automation, email templates, and more with a drag-and-drop interface. You can use it to segment your email marketing list based on demographics and interests and use that information, along with contact information, to personalize your email marketing. We especially like the send time optimization feature (available on higher-level paid plans) that lets you send your emails at just the right time for each contact.
💡 Features
Base features:
- Email campaign designer (mobile-friendly designer)
- Email template library
- SMS marketing
- Email and SMS personalization
- Chat
Higher-level plan features:
- A/B testing
- Remove Sendinblue logo
- Send time optimization
- Landing page builder
- Facebook Ads
✔️ Pros and Cons
- 😊 Great contact management, filtering, and segmentation
- 😊 Modern web-tracking and lead-scoring functionality
- 😊 Templates are nice looking and easy to use
- 😩 Transition between drag-and-drop and HTML isn’t great
- 😩 Might be hard to configure with dedicated IP
- 😩 CRM functions might be a bit limited
💰 Pricing
- Free plan for unlimited contacts and up to 300 email sends per day
- Lite: $25/month for up to 10,000
- Premium: $65/month
- Enterprise: By quote
6. Sender
Sender is another of our favorite free bulk email marketing services that also has great paid plans, too. With Sender, you can send emails using customizable templates or use the drag-and-drop building to create your own newsletters and emails. There’s also a custom HTML editor for coding your own email templates.
💡 Features
- High email deliverability
- Smart automations
- Library of templates to choose from (or build your own)
- Personalize your messages
- Advanced analytics tools
- Advanced email delivery infrastructure
- Plugins for popular content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, and more
- Landing pages
- SMS marketing
- Push notifications
✔️ Pros and Cons
- 😊 Support is great
- 😊 Strong deliverability
- 😩 No image library to store used images
- 😩 Can be difficult to navigate
💰 Pricing
- Free plan for up to 2500 subscribers and 15,000 emails/month
- Monthly Subscription: starts at $11/month for up to 5,000 subscribers and 60,000 emails/month
- Prepaid Credits: $35 for 10,000 credits; cost per credit goes down as you buy more
7. MailerLite
MailerLite is one of the free bulk email marketing services on our list that is great for beginners. It has drag-and-drop functionality that makes it really easy to create awesome newsletters as well as an easy way for eCommerce businesses to add product listings. With the bulk email sender, you can send automated emails and even make certain sections of your newsletters visible only to certain subscribers. This is called dynamic content and is absolutely great for providing relevant information to your segments without having to create an entirely separate email for each of those segments.
💡 Features
- Create your emails from templates, a custom HTML editor, rich text editor, or the drag-and-drop tool
- Built-in photo editor
- Includes a website builder, landing pages, popups, and embedded forms
- Subscriber management
- Advanced targeting features
- Email automation
- Personalization and segmentation
- A/B split testing
- Deliver by time zone
- Auto resend
- RSS campaigns
- Tracking and analytics including campaign reports, surveys, click maps, and opens by location
✔️ Pros and Cons
- 😊 Free plan includes automation features
- 😊 Easy to use
- 😊 Landing page editor
- 😩 No CRM features
- 😩 Limited reporting
- 😩 No advanced automations
💰 Pricing
- Free up to 1,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails per month
- Paid plans start at $10/month for unlimited emails per month
- Pricing is based on the number of subscribers
- Sites Pro Add-on: $10/month to create as many web pages and landing pages as you want
- MailerPro Add-on: $100/month for priority support
- Dedicated IP Add-on: $50/month and recommended if you’re sending more than 50,000 emails/week
8. Omnisend
Omnisend’s bulk email marketing services are perfect for eCommerce business owners and others. It includes preset automations, integrates with your shop to give you better customer targeting and key insights into shopping behavior, and offers multiple marketing channels (email, SSM, and MMS) so you can reach your customers wherever they are. Omnisend offers up a template library, automations, product analytics, and funnels with easy-to-use drag-and-drop control.
💡 Features
- Library of templates
- Customize emails to fit your brand — add products, dynamic discount codes, and save them as presets
- Drag-and-drop editor
- Dynamic discount codes
- Automations Library has pre-built workflows
- Drag-and-drop workflow editing
- AI-driven customer analytics, segmentation, and insights
- Customizable, TCPA, and GDPR compliant forms and automated messages
- Aggregate sales and performance metrics as well as detailed campaign and automation reports
- Omnichannel customer experience with email, SMS, and more channels in one platform
- Migration tools
- Multi-store accounts
- Tons of integrations
✔️ Pros and Cons
- 😊 Product picker lets you add products to your emails easily
- 😊 Templates look great
- 😊 Great customer service
- 😊 Easy to track performance of newsletters and automations
- 😩 Can’t integrate multiple shops
- 😩 Monthly fees vary
- 😩 Email designers might find the templated system frustrating
💰 Pricing
- Free plan for up to 15,000 emails/month
- Standard: $16/month or $156/year
- Pro: $99/month or $960/year
- Enterprise: By quote
- SMS: $0.015 each
- MMS: $0.045 each
9. Mailjet
Mailjet is a bulk email marketing service that supports real-time collaboration between team members. You can use the drag-and-drop editor to create great mail layouts, add image and text blocks, and even buttons for social media sharing. Mailjet also has subscription forms to help you grow your email list as well as an SMTP server and quite extensive documentation.
💡 Features
- Intuitive drag-and-drop editor
- Responsive email newsletter templates
- Real-time team collaboration
- Inbox Preview tool, so you can see exactly how your email will display
- Native WordPress plugin
- A/B testing tool
- Marketing automation tools
- Advanced statistics
- Integrate Mailgun to schedule, send, and track emails using SMTP server or RESTful API
- Subscription forms
- Contact management to organize and segment subscribers
✔️ Pros and Cons
- 😊 Great deliverability reputation
- 😊 Easy to configure website to send emails from there
- 😊 Useful dashboard and reporting
- 😩 Customer service doesn’t exactly “wow” users
- 😩 System sometimes lags
- 😩 Lack of re-engagement campaign functionality
💰 Pricing
- Free plan for 200 emails/day (6,000/month)
- Essential: $15/month or $162/year
- Premium: $25/month or $270/year
- Custom: By quote
10. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the more popular bulk email marketing services on our list. It offers inbuilt marketing tools, a bulk email verifier, and custom domains for increasing sales. You’ll also be able to use Mailchimp to create and share social ads, emails, landing pages, and even postcards (yep, actual postcards). Mailchimp has behavioral targeting and predicted demographics features to help you reach the right people at the right time as well as a subject line helper, real-time marketing automation, and A/B testing.
💡 Features
- Build a website with a custom domain
- Signup forms, landing pages, social posts and ads, and a lookalike audience finder
- Customer dashboards
- Segmentation tools
- Integrates with the tools you probably already use
- Pre-built segments, tags, behavioral targeting, and predicted demographics
- Award-winning support
✔️ Pros and Cons
- 😊 Thorough reporting tools
- 😊 Simple and easy-to-use email editor
- 😊 Includes an online store builder (US and UK users)
- 😩 Plans can get expensive, fast
💰 Pricing
- Free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers
- Essentials: $9.99/month
- Standard: $14.99/month
- Premium: $299/month
- Plans vary depending on the number of subscribers
Conclusion
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