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Email marketing consistently delivers a better ROI than any other marketing channel. Plus, it's brilliant for community building and engaging with your customers on what feels like a one-on-one level. But if you don't have the right infrastructure in place to handle your email marketing, you're not going to be able to reach your subscribers and customers in the way you need to encourage engagement, build those important relationships, generate more leads, and increase sales. That's why we've put together this list of the top email marketing platforms on the market right now. Each of the email marketing platforms on this list offers a unique set of features to explore so you can find the perfect email marketing platform to get the results you need.
Before we dive into our list, we're going to take a little time to answer some questions you may have about email marketing, why it matters, what an email marketing platform actually is, and the features you should look for.
Email Marketing Software Overview:
Top Email Marketing Software & Platforms
To create and execute your email marketing strategy successfully, you'll need to find the best email marketing software platform for your business. Here’s a look at the best 31 email marketing software platforms and what makes each a good pick.
1. Campaigner
If you’re searching for a tool to help you with marketing across multiple channels, be sure to check out Campaigner. Included in its powerful list of features is advanced email marketing automation. You can use it to create email workflows, track conversions, nurture prospects, and personalize every aspect of your emails.
If you simply need help with designing your email, it offers hundreds of ready-made, responsive templates. Most email marketing platforms offer a decent selection of templates so this isn’t really a unique selling proposition, but where Campaigner offers extra value is it includes a sophisticated template management system with restricted access and tagging features to organize your templates, especially useful if you’re working as part of a bigger team. Another area where it takes it one step further is by including a built-in image editing tool. This way, you can customize your visual assets without having to switch to another editing tool.
Its reporting features also deserve special mention. Included in its comprehensive reports are the standard things like open and click rates, but it also includes geolocation reporting that lets you zoom in on how your email marketing campaigns are performing per location.
Key Features:
- Email templates.
- Triggered campaigns.
- A/B testing.
- Sign-up forms.
Pricing:
Pricing starts up $59 per month for up to 5,000 contacts.
2. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)
Brevo is an all-in-one platform covering many business communications types, including Email, SMS, Facebook, Chat, CRM, and more. The company’s mission is to help businesses meet their customers. They help you to focus on the important tasks and put the rest on autopilot with automation. You can create professional-looking emails in no time, using its email builder, but the magic is in the platform’s combination of features. With chat, SMS marketing, Inbox, CRM and automations, you’ll find it easy to piece together smarter and more compelling email campaigns. Facebook Ads functionality is built-in, making it possible to retarget contacts and attract new leads.
Key Features:
- A shared inbox so you never lose track of your customer email history.
- 60+ responsive email templates.
- Built-in CRM.
- Built-in SMS and Chat.
- Contact Segmentation – make your emails more relevant by targeting smaller groups of contacts with a tailored message.
- Facebook Ads for lead generation.
Pricing:
Brevo is free for up to 300 emails per day to unlimited contacts. Pricing starts at $25/month for up to 20,000 emails.
3. Omnisend
Omnisend is an all-in-one email marketing automation platform that also caters to eCommerce brands. It enables you to expand on your newsletters and boost sales with automated emails, segmentation, and the added potential of SMS. It includes pre-built automations for cart abandonment, welcome series, transactional emails to help deliver streamlined buyer engagements.
Key Features:
- A library of templates makes it easy to create professional, stunning emails without coding that you can easily customize to fit your brand, add products, include dynamic discount codes, and save for your next campaign.
- An Automations Library with pre-built workflows for every step of your customer journey.
- Segmented targeting that can be used both for campaigns and automations across all the channels Omnisend caters for.
- Pop-ups and forms aid lead generations.
- Reports and analytics track sales and identify winning campaigns.
Pricing:
Omnisend is free for up to 500 emails per month. Pricing starts at $16 per month. There are additional costs for SMS, although higher plans offer SMS credits.
4. SMTP
SMTP’s solutions are more focused than many of the other email tools on our list. Instead of offering you several features that will help with the visual aspects of creating marketing emails, it’s all about delivery. In short, SMTP offers reasonably priced SMTP relay (short for simple mail transfer protocol – the standard communication protocol for sending emails) and email delivery services that you can count on to send and track high-volume emails. Each month it sends out billions of emails using their secure and reliable email delivery platform, helping to ensure that the emails actually get delivered. After all, that should be any email marketing campaign’s main goal, right? It’s also a great tool for transactional emails. It will trigger transactional and automated emails super fast.
Key Features:
- Superior delivery rates
- An optional Reputation Defender that will keep tabs on the health of your email list proactively by suppressing invalid email addresses
- Various transactional emails like password resets, privacy policy updates, receipts, and account updates
- Plug-and-play integration with marketing tools
- Detailed reporting
Pricing:
Pricing starts at $25 per month for up to 50,000 monthly emails.
5. EmailOctopus
EmailOctopus is a popular email marketing software platform that has a mission to provide email marketing that’s simpler, more intuitive, and better value than the competition. It offers templates you can customize in a drag and drop editor, or you can begin your emails from scratch. The app also includes a landing page builder with everything you need to generate leads and grow your email list. Integrations are a drawcard for agile brands. Many of your existing tools, including Shopify, Gravity Forms, and WordPress easily pair with EmailOctopus and make it an attractive tool, especially for brands with ambitious goals.
Key Features:
- Import existing subscribers and keep growing with customizable forms for your website, or create stunning landing pages to capture more subscribers.
- Start with a pre-designed template and customize it or build your own designs from scratch.
- Leverage email automation to deliver campaigns.
- Use insights and data to segment your subscribers into target audiences.
Pricing:
EmailOctopus offers a free plan for up to 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails per month. Paid plans start at $8 per month.
6. Convertkit
ConverKit is a great fit for both eCommerce businesses and creators. Its clean interface makes for an enjoyable experience, and it’s feature rich. It includes features like opt-in forms, landing pages, email workflows, tagging systems, data management and list segmentation, personalization, automation, and a lot more. ConvertKit also comes with helpful integrations with other platforms creators and creators are accustomed to like Woocommerce, PayPal, Stripe, and WordPress.
Key Features:
- Automate your sales funnel to send content to subscribers automatically, getting them prepped to make a purchase.
- Sell digital products with a tool built for creators.
- Change a URL after the email is already sent with Creator Pro.
- Create personalized email marketing campaigns.
- Building professional landing pages and sign-up forms.
Pricing:
ConvertKit offers a free plan for up to 300 subscribers. Paid plans start at $9/month.
7. GetResponse
GetResponse is one of our favorite email marketing platforms and it’s widely used by marketers across industries. It includes email automation, email templates, segmentation, and personalization. There’s also a neat Auto Funnel feature that provides a ready-made marketing funnel for email marketing campaigns. Altogether, GetResponse packs a set of powerful features geared toward brand growth. From A/B testing to a comprehensive analytics tool that tracks email campaign performance.
Key Features:
- Autoresponders to send welcome emails, followups, educational series, and nurture leads automatically.
- One-click integration to run powerful retargeting campaigns using Facebook Pixel.
- Website visitor tracking lets you send relevant communication based on page visits.
- Build landing pages for lead and sales generation.
- Create paid ads for Facebook, Instagram, and Google.
Pricing:
GetResponse offers a 30-day free trial. Pricing starts at $13.12/month.
8. EngageBay
Apart from a standalone Service Bay product (covering activities such as live chat, helpdesk reports, tickets, and more), EngageBay offers three products:
- Marketing Bay
- CRM & Sales Bay
- All-in-One Suite
Email marketing is included in both the Marketing Bay and the All-in-One Suite, although CRM email integration is part of the CRM & Sales Bay. Their email marketing system includes rich text formatting, a landing page builder, email marketing templates, free email automation, and more.
Key Features of the Marketing Bay (most also Included in the All-in-One Suite):
- Marketing automation
- Email marketing
- Email sequences
- Landing pages
- Web forms
- SMS marketing
- Inbound marketing
- Site messaging
- Push notifications
- Contact segmentation
- Email templates
- Bulk SMS marketing
Pricing:
EngageBay is free for up to 250 contacts. Pricing for their All-in-One Suite (including both Marketing and CRM & Sales Bay options) starts at $12.74 per month when paid biennially.
9. AWeber
AWeber is a great email marketing platform for teams, small businesses, and entrepreneurs. It includes a drag-and-drop email editor, templates, automation and workflows, A/B testing, segmentation, autoresponders, and tons of integrations. Like others on our list, AWeber offers a landing page builder. It’s clean and drag-and-drop-based, making it easy to use for anyone who needs to quickly build and deploy a landing page along with an email campaign.
Key Features:
- AI-powered email template designer so you can create stunning branded emails quickly.
- Automate email content creation by broadcasting the latest posts from your blogs.
- Direct campaigns to the right people using tagging and dynamic content.
- Drag and drop landing page builder.
Pricing:
AWeber is free for up to 500 subscribers. Pricing starts at $16.15/month.
10. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is an affordable email marketing platform, making it great for small marketing teams and creators. It includes all the features you’d expect like automation, segmentation, triggered emails, email funnels, autoresponders, A/B testing, and scheduling. It also includes more advanced features like conditional content, geotracking, managed deliverability, and multi-user editing. Geotracking shows you where your subscribers are from, and you also get managed deliverability, and multi-user editing (update multiple fields in an email with subscriber information).
Key Features:
- Segmentation and dynamic content make it easy to customize your message and send targeted emails to the right contact.
- Personalize your emails based on any contact information you have.
- A/B testing to find the best-converting emails.
- Use simple split testing to make your emails get more opens, clicks, and buys.
- Built-in landing page builder.
Pricing:
Pricing starts at $29/month.
11. Drip
Drip is one of the more advanced email marketing platforms on our list and is the perfect option for eCommerce businesses because of its seamless integration with eCommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. You can use eCommerce CRM data to create personalized marketing, segmenting your email list based on any number of criteria like clicks, purchase history, email opens, and more.
Drip also integrates SMS marketing, elevating it into a sphere few email marketing platforms play. SMSs can be sent for a range of engagements, from abandoned cart reminders to promotional deals.
Key Features:
- Ecommerce CRM lets you learn more about your customers so you can create targeted and personalized email marketing campaigns.
- Communicate with your customers no matter where they are, from email to SMS to social and beyond.
- Connect your eCommerce store to Drip to collect revenue-attribution data so you can make better marketing decisions.
- SMS automation to drive engagement with buyers.
- Segmentation and reporting on email campaigns.
Pricing:
Drip offers a free trial. Pricing starts at $39/month.
12. MailerLite
MailerLite is a strong competitor in the creators and small-medium business bracket. It includes the basics you need for successful email marketing like surveys, automation, popups, and landing pages. MailerLite also integrates with dozens of eCommerce platforms and marketing tools you’re probably already using.
At a glance, it appears to be one of the more understated platforms, and this is largely due to it’s clean design. But that’s also what makes it powerful. Everything about the platform is geared towards growth, from eCommerce campaign functionality to automation, segmentation, promotional pop-ups, and the ability to create landing pages.
Key Features:
- A website builder and landing page builder for quick web asset builds.
- Pop-ups and embedded forms help you bring in more leads.
- Personalize your campaigns using advanced targeting features.
- Test, experiment, and streamline your emails to improve your email marketing benchmarks.
Pricing:
MailerLite is free for up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month. Pricing starts at $9/month.
13. Keap
Keap is technically a customer relationship management service, but it has robust email marketing, automation, and sales tools, earning it a spot on our list of the best email marketing platforms. Keap includes automation and workflows, templates for emails, quotes, invoices, and proposals, and it integrates with your other favorite business tools and apps. The true power of this platform is it’s automation and CRM. These help you turn current customers into repeat customers, and they are easy to navigate. Keap also integrates with your other favorite business tools and apps, making it a smart move for small eCommerce brands with a growing MarTech stack.
Key Features:
- Advanced marketing and sales automation, customizable campaigns, and app integration to power growth.
- Automatically capture new leads, assign tasks, and trigger personalized messages.
- Manage your contacts and leads in Keap and sync your Outlook and Gmail.
- Revenue reports and analytics help drive smarter brand decisions.
Pricing:
Keap offers a free trial. Pricing starts at 129$/month.
14. Constant Contact
Constant Contact helps you create email marketing campaigns like a pro. It includes a smart email editor that makes it easy to customize and design great-looking emails that stand out on every device. IOther features that make it a catch for smaller brands and non-profits include automation, social marketing for lead generation, and the ability to build websites and landing pages. Constant Contact also has specialized email marketing for eCommerce tools to help your online store grow. You can upload contact lists from Excel, Outlook, Salesforce—or wherever you store your contacts.
Key Features:
- A smart email editor to design professional and aesthetically pleasing emails.
- Email marketing automation, including a welcome email for new subscribers, triggered email series, contact segmentation, resend emails to non-openers, and powerful list-building tools.
- Smart eCommerce tools-and results, including segmented and automated emails.
- Website and landing page builder.
- Social marketing for posting ads, scheduling content and tracking performance.
Pricing:
Constant Contact offers a one-month free trial. Pricing starts at $9.99/month.
15. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most established email marketing platforms out there. It’s particularly well-suited for beginners and startups and offers tools like email automation, data segmentation, templates, personalization, A/B testing, lead capture forms, and integration with CRMs.
While it started as a purely email-focused solution, the platform offers much more today. You can build a free website, buy a domain, create paid ads and landing pages, publish social media posts, and send printed postcards to any destination in the world.
Key Features:
- Get predictive insights about your contacts so you can personalize your marketing.
- Personalize individual content blocks within your emails with dynamic content.
- Design personalized customer journeys using conditional logic and branching points.
- A/B testing to identify high-converting messages.
- Website and landing page builder.
Pricing:
Mailchimp offers a free plan for up to 500 contacts and one audience. Paid plans start at $11/month.
16. SendX
SendX is affordable, intuitive email marketing software that you can use to design, schedule, and track email campaigns, driving sales from your emails. You can upload an opted-in email list, send broadcast email campaigns, and create reports to measure clicks, opens, measure conversions, and more. You can automate your email marketing with a powerful rules-based interface based on user activity, audience segmentation, and more.
Key Features:
- Design, schedule, and track email campaigns, automating with a powerful rules-based interface when relevant.
- Build your email list using high converting email pop-ups forms, inline forms, and landing pages to own your audience.
- Create landing pages for lead generation.
- Design emails without HTML. SendX drag and drop editor is meant for marketers to design professional-looking emails with ease.
- Click heatmap for email campaigns shows where subscribers are based.
Pricing:
SendX offers a 14-day free trial. Pricing starts at $7.49 per month when paid annually.
17. SendPulse
SendPulse is a multi-channel email and messenger marketing platform built for sending emails, SMS, and creating chatbots for Facebook and Telegram. It may seem like a mouthful, but together, these features can help brands drive strong and more engaging brand experiences for buyers.
SendPulse lets send different types of messages separately or combine them with Automation 360. It includes a suite of email marketing tools, helping you to collect users’ contact information, create responsive templates, and set up automated flows.
Key Features:
- A drag and drop editor to create responsive emails without any HTML knowledge, including 130+ templates.
- Trigger emails to nurture leads in every stage of your sales funnel, and convert them into paying customers.
- A form builder to create a pop-up, embedded, or floating subscription form on your website to collect email addresses and other information from your visitors.
- SMS and web push notifications for lead generation.
- Built-in landing page creator.
- Built-in CRM.
Pricing:
SendPulse is free for up to 15,000 emails to 500 subscribers. Pricing starts at $5.20 per month. There are additional costs for extra marketing channels.
18. Freshmarketer
Freshmarketer is a full-featured marketing automation solution for your business that includes email marketing. It has tools for you to engage and convert your audience from subscribers into paying customers with email campaigns, so you can provide relevant information at the right time and deliver integrated campaigns that improve conversions.
Admitingly, this is a CRM first, but that’s what makes it a powerful platform. Its CRM functionality helps brands gather in-depth customer insights, making marketing campaigns all the more stronger. Automation also powers lead generation and nurturing, and can send invoices or help generate recurring revenue via email reminders to subscribers.
Key Email Features:
- Build emails from scratch effortlessly with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, or choose from a vast collection of templates to create design-rich emails that complement your messaging.
- Send emails that speak to your audience with personalization and can bring in more conversions.
- Gain detailed campaign performance with analytics.
- Automate welcome emails, invoices, reminders, and more.
- Segment customers.
- Build journeys to automate emoail communication and leverage personalization throughout a customer’s lifecycle.
Pricing:
Freshmarketer offers a 21-day free trial. Pricing starts at $19/month for the Marketing Cloud when paid annually.
19. Bitrix24
Bitrix24 aims to replace many services and apps with a single ecosystem for your business to work in. Its tools cover communications, tasks & projects, CRM, contact center, and website. Bitrix24’s email platform comes with webforms, SMS and instant messaging marketing, and Facebook, Instagram and Google paid advertising functionality.
Yes, this makes Bitrix24 sound like a large and clunky tool, but it’s far from it. Brix24 has a relatively easy-to-navigate interface, and with features like a built-in CRM, creating powerful email marketing campaigns is a goal well within reach.
Key Email Features:
- Many channels, one contact center: social networks, mobile messengers, email, telephony, website live chat, website forms.
- Contact center reports (activity by channel, activity by day/time, average response time, client satisfaction, supervisor ratings, custom reports).
- Marketing and sales, including email marketing.
- Google Ads remarketing capabilities.
Pricing:
Bitrix24 offers a free starter business tool set that includes a basic set of Contact Center tools. Plans start at $49/mo.
20. User.com
User.com is a single workspace providing you with easy-to-use yet very robust tools for marketing, sales, management, and support teams. Marketing can use it to upgrade your brand’s communication across channels, planning various paths for multiple customer segments and let automation take over the job. User.com offers personalized and tailored emails, sending the right email to the right receiver at the right moment.
Key Email Features:
- Utilize defined snippet tags to make your message more specific to the person.
- Plan your agenda and set up future promos.
- Personalize email art.
- Track open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribes; see all your campaigns’ analytical results instantly.
- Use unified subsciber data for smarter campaigns.
Pricing:
Price on request.
21. Direct Mail for Mac
Direct Mail for Mac enables you to create and send great-looking email newsletters. You can use it to compose, grow, track, send, collaborate, and automate your emails. Whether your emails are newsletters, announcements, or promotions, Direct Mail is confident you will find the perfect template, and you can customize up to 18 fields. It includes a built-in image editor, a Design Test feature to see pixel-perfect screenshots of your message rendered in over 50+ email clients and live previews that update as you type
Key Features:
- Grow your mailing list by adding a subscribe form to your website that automatically syncs with Direct Mail and integrates with your company’s Facebook Page. Alternatively, swiftly import all of your contacts from other apps.
- Send emails to large lists in a matter of seconds without having to worry about bounces and deliverability issues.
- Autoresponders that are highly customizable and easy to use. Let your subscribers know they’re important to you by sending them a celebratory wish, or a special promotion, every year on their birthday.
- See reports on campaign performance.
- Collaborate with colleagues to build email campaigns.
Pricing:
Direct Mail for Mac is free for up to 150 emails/mo. Plans start at $15/mo.
22. Emercury
Emercury is is a strong contender in the small-to-medium bracket. It’s packed with a host of features that push it north of the spectrum. It offers an easy-to-use HTML editor and a drag and drop template editor to personalized messages, forms and an autoresponder. Automation is available in the form of Emercury’s Journey Builder, a tool that helps you nurture leads using triggers. Emercury enables you to sync your data with over 2,000 sales and marketing tools, teamwork apps, forms, customer support platforms, social media, and more.
Key Features:
- Create responsive emails with a real-time drag-&-drop template editor. Start from scratch or use one of their templates.
- An easy-to-use form-builder for your website that gives you what you need to design a form with customizable fields and then show the form at the right time.
- Managing contacts with ease: segmented lists, bulk unsubscribe capabilities, suppression lists, tagging subscribers, a robust search function, and a never-email list.
- Create automated lead nurture campaigns.
- A/B testing to find the best email messaging.
Pricing:
Choose between subscriber-based pricing and CPM pricing. Prices start at $57/mo.
23. HubSpot
With HubSpot, you don’t need any design skills to create personalized, professional-looking emails. One of its most attractive features is that as it’s also powered by HubSpot’s CRM, you have access to accurate customer data that you can use to customize your emails. To customize your emails further, you can also turn to its marketplace where you’ll find templates that are proven to convert. You can then use its drag-and drop editor to change the layout and elements like calls to action.
Key Features:
- A/B testing to create the best email messaging.
- Built on the HubSpot CRM platform.
- A drag-and-drop template editor.
Pricing:
Pricing starts at $45 per month (when billed monthly) and includes 1,000 marketing contacts. If you need extra marketing contacts, it’s sold in increments of 1,000 from $45 per month.
24. Moosend
Moosend is a great solution for smaller businesses as it has a generous Free plan. Even if you don’t want to sign up for its Free plan, you’ll find that it’s one of the most affordable options.
It’s also one of the better choices if you want to implement personalization. With it, you can segment your email lists based on different customer behaviours. This way, your emails will be very relevant to your subscribers which will help you to stand out.
It can also be useful if you want to grow your email list as it offers custom sign-up forms. Once you have a substantial list, you can take advantage of its email marketing automation features and create workflows so that your emails are sent at the optimal time.
Key Email Features:
- A/B testing to measure engagement.
- Data analytics to track unsubscribes, opens, clicks, social shares, etc.
- More than 40 free responsive templates.
- Straightforward to customize templates.
Pricing:
Moosend offers 30 days free trial. For more features like transactional emails, you need to sign up for its Pro plan that starts at $9 per month when billed monthly.
25. Campaign Monitor
Two things that stand out about Campaign Monitor are its beautiful email templates and customer service. With its email builder, you can customize elements like color schemes and fonts to ensure brand consistency. You can also get access to millions of free photos via Unsplash to let your emails stand out even further.
It’s also a great choice if segmentation is key to your email marketing strategy. You use the customer data that you’ve already collected to create hyper-targeted segments and personalized emails.
Key Features:
- Link Review tool that will automatically search your email for hyperlinks that might be broken or outdated.
- A visual journey designer to create more timely emails.
- A full analytics suite and actionable insights.
- Seamless integration with hundreds of third-party apps.
- Sign-up forms.
Pricing:
Pricing starts at $9 per month. If you need more than its core features and the ability to send unlimited emails, you need to sign up for its Unlimited plan that starts at $29 per month.
26. SendGrid
SendGrid offers unique solutions for every stage of your brand’s growth, making it a great platform for businesses of all sizes. Trusted by more than 80,000 brands, including names like Airbnb, Uber, and Spotify, they offer a wide range of email marketing features that include design, automation, testing, and statistics.
To help you get started, you can browse their library with responsive templates (or import existing ones). Once you’ve found a template that you like, you can refine the design to align with your branding with drag-and-drop tools (but you’re also free to start completely from scratch).
In addition to simplifying the email design process, it also makes engaging with your contacts much easier. You can use automated, recurring emails and segment your subscriber list to send more personal messages.
And, to make sure that all your emails are flawless, it also includes integrated email testing and inbox render tests. So, you can rest assured knowing that spammy content was eliminated and any broken links or buttons were fixed before sending your emails, while the inbox render tests will show you how your message will display in various inboxes.
Key Features:
- Pre-built email templates.
- Built-in calls to action.
- Automation triggers.
- Sign-up forms.
- Email testing and statistics.
Pricing:
SendGrid is free for up to 100 emails per day. Pricing starts at $19.95 per month.
27. Salesforce
Included in Salesforce’s list of products is an email marketing platform named Email Studio. It can help you with different phases of the email marketing process like targeting your audience, creating the actual message, and automating your messages.
Before you build your email, you can use its drag-and-drop segmentation tools to refine your list of subscribers and intelligence to identify content that will resonate to boost conversions. Once your list has been optimized, you can turn your attention to building high-converting emails. You can use customizable templates that were created by professionals to create emails that will engage subscribers along every stage of their journey.
The last piece of the puzzle is to send the emails at the right time. To help you with this, it lets you create a delivery schedule which also helps to reduce the workload of your marketing team. All in all, it might not be as feature-rich as some of the other tools, but if you’re already a Salesforce user it might make more sense to use their email marketing solutions instead of adding another third-party tool to your arsenal.
Key Features:
- Drag-and-drop segmentation tools.
- Templates.
- A/B testing.
- Sophisticated performance reports.
Pricing:
Pricing starts at about €400 per month.
28. Benchmark
If you’re searching for a simple tool that can help you to send personalized messages at scale, you can check out Benchmark. Whether you want to create an automated welcome series or follow up with potential customers who’ve abandoned their shopping carts, it can help you to reduce manual work while at the same time helping you to drive more revenue.
Included in its list of features are 50 free responsive HTML email templates for every occasion, landing pages and forms to grow your subscriber list, and various tools to test the performance of your campaigns.
One feature that deserves special mention is its Inbox Checker. This feature is powered by Litmus and lets you preview your email in various environments before you send it to rule out and fix any possible issues with rendering.
Key Features:
- Drag-and-drop builder and HTML editor.
- 50+ pre-built email templates.
- A/B testing.
Pricing:
Benchmark is free for up to 3500 emails per month. Pricing starts at $9.99 per month.
29. Zoho Campaigns
Zoho Campaigns offers a suite of cloud-based solutions at competitive prices. Marketers can easily create emails in minutes using pre-designed templates, embed sign-up forms on a landing page, and automate information tracking.
Zoho Campaigns uses dynamic and customizable templates, email polls, automated org-level segmentation—all of which can help send personalized messages. A/B testing keeps you informed on which design, subject line and style works best for your specific audience. You won’t waste time preparing effective emails because the software has all the features to make email marketing as efficient as possible.
Another key advantage of Zoho Campaigns is its interoperability; you can create workflows using a third-party CRM such as Zoho CRM to monitor the campaigns closely. While the user interface isn’t as clean or seamless as other software tools like MailChimp, Zoho Campaigns is a viable and affordable option with all the crucial email marketing features you need.
Key Features
- Drag and drop segmentation tools
- A/B Testing
- Analytics reports
- Customizable email templates
- Seamless integration with third-party apps
Pricing:
Pricing starts at $3 per month, but pricing will jump based on increased contacts.
30. Litmus
Litmus is another solid option as it delivers an all-in-one solution in a single platform. Litmus provides email personalization and collaboration so marketers can get the highest ROI for their campaigns. This software program includes strong capabilities, such as pre-send campaign development, A/B testing, and AI-content recommendations via the proprietary Litmus Personalize.
Regardless of your team members’ existing email knowledge, Litmus is a low-code software that even non-technical members can use effectively. Each email is on-brand, guaranteed error-free, and aligns with optimizing goals for opens and conversions.
The software solves content challenges for weekly campaigns—they work with Kickdynamic to provide content recommendations that can be optimized to keep customer engagement. Marketers can conduct testing, collaborate on large volumes of emails, segment according to campaigns, and scale these personalized messages according to a brand’s contact size. Litmus has worked with different industries, from U.S. banks to advertising agencies and eCommerce.
Key Features
- Pre-designed templates
- Email building collaboration
- A/B Testing
- ROI Analytics
- Integration with Google Drive and Slack
Pricing
Pricing starts at $63 per month with unlimited read-only users and up to 1,000 contacts.
31. Robly
Robly is an email service provider that leverages proprietary technologies to boost email marketing engagement and conversion. The software has been a staple across industries, including non-profits, education institutions, charities, and others.
What makes Robly a great choice is the AI-technology. It is the only email marketing software that offers RoblyID, a unique way to grow your email leads ten times over the usual. RoblyID analyzes website traffic and then adds contact records automatically to your email list. It is CAN-SPAM compliant, which means it aligns with information protection policies.
Aside from RoblyID, the software has more open-generating features, namely OpenGen, RoblyAI, and RoblyENGAGE. These technologies help time your emails when subscribers are most likely to open them, automatically conduct retargeting, and protect sender status by segmenting and suppressing unengaged contacts. Your emails will not bombard contacts unnecessarily.
It is a comprehensive platform, but the software is harder to master compared to others. While the learning curve is a little higher, once your marketing team surpasses that stage, it will be a valuable tool to keep the campaigns automated and more likely to boost ROI.
Key Features:
- Proprietary AI open-generating features
- Pre-designed templates
- Real-time traffic monitoring
- A/B Testing
- Analytics
Pricing:
Pricing starts at $15 per month as a flat rate.
Why Does Email Marketing Matter?
As we've already mentioned, email marketing has one of the best ROI of any marketing channel. Despite the fact that email marketing has been around for decades, it still earns an ROI of 4200%—for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you have the potential to earn back $42 in return. Some reports even put email marketing ROI closer to 54%! When you consider that about 4 billion people around the world use email (Statista), this isn't a surprise. With such a large audience spread across different demographics, it would be shocking if email marketing didn't have a great ROI. ROI aside, email marketing helps you reach more customers and subscribers, increase your sales, and improve brand recognition.
No matter your industry, email marketing will help you get your marketing message out to the right people and gives you a way to stay connected with your target audience after they've left your website. Here are a few more reasons why your brand should be using email marketing:
- Loyalty. Email gives you the chance to get website visitors back to your site again and again. And people who come back to your website are more likely to become customers than those visiting your site for the first time.
- Returning visitors. About 97% of the people who visit and leave your website will never come back. That's a sobering statistic for most online businesses. However, by building an email list, you can encourage repeat visitors (and increase our first bullet point, loyalty).
- Increased revenue. Email marketing gets excellent conversion rates. Barilliance reports that the average conversion rates for email marketing in 2020 were 15.11%. Plus, purchases resulting from email marketing campaigns tend to be larger.
What's an Email Marketing Platform?
Now that you're convinced email marketing is worth it, you're probably wondering what an email marketing platform actually is and why using one matters. An email marketing platform is a software that lets you create and manage your email marketing campaigns. Simple enough, right?
Email marketing platforms are typically SaaS (Software as a Service) tools that are cloud-based. A high-quality email marketing platform makes it easy for you to send out any email communication, from email newsletters to promotional emails to abandoned cart recovery emails.
What Should Email Marketing Platforms Do?
Your email marketing platform should ultimately make your life easier, helping you automate your emails and marketing campaigns and making it easy to create beautiful and engaging emails to send to your customers and subscribers. We recommend looking for these six features when choosing the best email marketing platform for your brand:
User Interface
Email marketing platforms are supposed to make the life of an email marketer easier. Look for an email marketing platform that has an easy-to-use interface with a low learning curve to ensure that you're able to utilize all the features you need quickly and easily. A drag-and-drop email editor is a wonderful feature to have. And, if you have email designers, you'll want to choose a platform that allows for HTML email templates. If you don't have people to design your emails, make sure that the email marketing platform you choose has a collection of templates you can customize to create emails that showcase your brand.
Segmentation
Email segmentation dramatically increases the ROI of your email campaigns. You can create targeted marketing campaigns and promotional emails for the specific audiences that will be most interested in them based on demographics, location, behavior, and more. Some email marketing platforms even operate on AI and machine learning so the software can evaluate user behavior in real-time and fine-tune your email campaigns on the fly.
Personalization
Segmentation is important if you want to personalize your email marketing campaigns. And you definitely want to personalize your email marketing campaigns. Find an email marketing platform that includes merge tags to make it easy to personalize your email subject lines as well as the email copy. There are even some email marketing platforms that use dynamic content so you can create and send a single email that automatically includes certain content depending on the segment the email is being sent to.
Automation
Email marketing has a lot of moving parts, many of which are manual, repetitive tasks. Fortunately, many of the best email marketing platforms include automation features that can help you save tons of time. Email automation includes things like email scheduling, delivery receipts, engagement tracking, text analytics, role-based account access for your marketing team, and even intelligent segmentation/re-segmentation based on response to your email marketing campaigns.
Testing
One of the most important steps to take to ensure that your email marketing campaigns are getting the best ROI is testing. Many of the top email marketing platforms include A/B and split testing functionality that lets you test different elements of your marketing emails against one another to ensure that you have the best possible combination of subject lines, copy, calls to action, email design, and format.
Reports and Analytics
There are several email marketing benchmarks you'll want to track to ensure that your email marketing is meeting your goals. However, tracking this information manually can be a full-time job. Choose an email marketing platform that includes reporting and analytics so you can track open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and more.
Extras Features Available Today
Basic functionality aside, there’s a new wave of features that are becoming increasingly available. When added to email marketing software, these features transform platforms from email marketing platforms and into enhanced marketing communications solutions. There’s also a good chance that you’ve seen them promoted before. These features are:
SMS Marketing
SMS services woven into email marketing allow brands to engage buyers at different points in the buyer’s journey. As a permission-based promotional tool, SMS marketing is also highly effective. SMS open rates can be as high as 98%, are shorter and easier to reply to, and 75% of consumers are comfortable with the idea of receiving SMSs.
When SMS paired with a strong email marketing campaign, brands can create a well-orchestrated and layered communications strategy.
Website and Landing Page Builders
Website and landing pages are a quintessential component of online marketing. They’re necessary for promoting products, services, and building email lists. And while there are third-party tools that can integrate with email marketing platforms via plugins and scripts, using one tool that does email and can build and host landing pages is better. Today, most email marketing platforms offer landing page builders that are easy to use and altogether cheaper than spending money on a third-party tool.
Built-in CRM
CRMs have always been more of a sales tool but that’s changing. As the lines between sales and marketing blur, brands have started paying attention to all the data CRMs can collect. Using enriched profiles, marketers can deliver personalized emails and content, something consumers want more of.
Website Personalization
Website personalization allows marketers to deliver unique buyer experiences. And this is critical today. As much as 88% of marketers have seen improvements in customer experience from personalization, while 72% of consumers will only engage with personalized messaging.
Website personalization allows brands to deliver buyer-specific content in the moment. From the right blog post to help buyers along their journey, to a discount coupon for those ready to make a purchase, you can present buyers with targeted marketing engagements that increase conversions.
Digital Advertising
Paid ad creation tools streamline marketing tasks. Like built-in CRM landing page and website builders, paid ad creation tools make it easier to track and measure conversions in one platform. Today, email marketing platforms allow you to create ads for social media and search engine platforms.
Chat and ChatBot Functionality
Chat isn’t a new technology but it’s transforming the way brands engage buyers. As the idea of conversational marketing grows, integrating chat into an email marketing platform doesn’t seem farfetched. With chat, brands open a door to interested buyers, and with smart email automation, those buyers can be guided along a path to a sale much quicker.
Which Platform Should You Choose?
There’s much to consider when picking a platform. To help, we’ve identified a list of 14 categories. They cover small, medium and enterprise recommendations. We also dive into which platforms are best suited for eCommerce brands, which are easiest to use, deliverability numbers, and more.
1. Recommended Email Marketing Platforms for Creators and Small Business
Small businesses often have to balance affordability and functionality more than most. But that doesn’t mean you have to lose out on functionality. To strike a balance between both, here are three platforms we’ve found to be the best for small businesses and soloprenuers.
Each platform allows you to send personalized emails, build landing pages, is easy to use, comes at a great price, and allows you to scale as your brand grows:
ConvertKit - Perfect for driving engagement and sales
Mailchimp - Ideal for small businesses, creators and rolling out paid ads
Aweber - A smart choice for small businesses that want reliability and a clean platform to work in and automation
Here’s a snapshot of key features platforms in this segment offer:
| Feature | ConvertKit | MailChimp | Aweber |
| Email Builder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Landing Page Builder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Campaign Builder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Autoresponder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Price* | $29/mo | $9.99/mo | $16.15/mo |
2. Medium Business Email Marketing Platforms to Use
Our research points to medium-sized businesses wanting greater reliability, functionality, and that pricing isn’t a major drawback if these requirements are met.
These platforms make out list of the best for medium businesses along with features that make them good choices:
- Drip - A powerful solution for small-medium eCommerce businesses, offering SMS, segementation functionality, and revenue attribution
- Keap - Smart automations and CRM functionality allows email personalization based on CRM fields
- SendX - Advanced email sequences and a click heatmap
In addition to all features offers by platforms in the small business segment, here’s a snapshot of key features platforms in the medium business segment offer:
| Feature | Drip | Keap | SendX |
| Built-in CRM or integration) | Integration | Built-in | Built-in |
| Click Heat Map | No | No | Yes |
| CRM Profile-Based Personalization | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Revenue Attribution | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Price* | $19/mo | $79/mo | $7.49/mo |
3. Enterprise Email Marketing Platforms Worth Testing
Larger brands require reliability, especially as they run multiple campaigns. While most platforms offer similar features, those targeted at large businesses are more robust and offer advanced features.
Here are three platforms best suited for large businesses:
- SendPulse - Includes multi-channel integrations and automation that allows for better buyer engagement
- User.com - Built with user engagement as a core function and enables personalization based in unified CRM data
- ActiveCampaign - Powerful for segmenting lists and using dynamic content to customize emails
4. Recommended for eCommerce
eCommerce email marketing is still email marketing, but brands rely on a collection of connected features. Here’s our list of essential features and the platforms that we recommend for eCommerce brands.
| Feature | Drip | Omnisend | MailerLite |
| Landing Page Builder | No | Yes | Yes |
| Campaign Builder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Autoresponder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Segmentation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| A/B Split Testing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Revenue Attribution | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Price* | $19/mo | $16/mo | $10/mo |
5. Best Overall Integrations
We live in a world where apps have to talk to each other. These email platforms offer the best overall integration and platform experience:
| Email Marketing Platform | No. of Native Integrations | Type | App Integerations |
| ActiveCampaign | 384 | Free | View |
| Drip | 108 | Free | View |
| ConvertKit | 107 | Free | View |
6. Top Retargeting Platforms
Retargeting isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when considering which platforms to choose, but it’s a powerful feature. Email marketing platforms have begun to offer pixels for major platforms to help brands remarket to subscribers. Here are platforms with the best retargeting options:
- GetResponce offers a social media platform ad creation tool. It’s an extension of Facebook and Google’s platforms, allowing you to create ads for both platforms (including Instagram), and provides retargetting options.
- Bitrix allows Google, Facebook and Instagram ad creation. These options are integrations using GA Connector. You can leverage Facebook and Instagram Lead Ads, and create Google Search Ads. Remarketing capabilities are available for each ad platform.
- Mailchimp provides a tool that mirrors Facebook and Google’s ad creation platform. With it, you can develop ads and pixels for remarketing opportunities.
7. Best Survey Tools
Surveys are a quintessential tool for businesses. Put them together with email and you’ve got an almost perfect combo for finding out what your buyers think and want. While few platforms offer built-in survey tools, we’ve found that integrations are your best bet right now. Integrations with more advanced survey apps allow for a wider, bug-free feature set.
Here’s our list of the best email platforms with survey tools:
| Survey Functionality | Mailchimp | MailerLite | Brevo* |
| Built-in or Integration | Built-in &Integration | Built-in | SurveySparrow |
| Polls | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Conversational Forms | Yes w/Integration | Yes | Yes |
| Embedded Surveys | Yes | Yes | Yes |
8. Best Templates and Builder Functionality
Great UI and UX are critical today. Our top three make the list for overall experience when building emails and working with templates. They each offer a clean and intuitive feel, and you’ll never wonder off or get frustrated trying to get stuff done. Here’s a look at what the best email marketing platforms offer in the line of templates and builder functionality:
| Builder Features | ConvertKit | MailerLite | ActiveCampaign |
| Type of builder | Drag-and-Drop | Drag-and-Drop | Drag-and-Drop |
| Number of Templates | 9 | 47 | 125+ |
| Customizable | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HTML& CSS Access | Yes | Yes | Yes |
9. Best List Management
List management best practices often provide a great deal of value. But when in your platform, you need features to help identify who you’re emailing to generate positive results. While not all platforms listed include features like predictive commerce insights and predicted demographics, they make the list for their ease of use and functionality.
It’s also worth noting that while segmentation includes segmentation by demography, features like predicted demographics and predictive commerce insights differ. The former relates to pooled data via a large audience across an email platform’s base. The latter offers predictive insights on future purchase behavior.
| List Management Features | Mailchimp | Omnisend | MailerLite |
| Tags | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Segmentation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Behavioral Targeting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Predictive Commerce Insights | Yes | No | No |
| Predicted Demographics | Yes | No | No |
10. Easiest to Use
UI and UX make or break products. Email marketing platforms balance a collection of features, and often, the more they offer, the more complex it is to make a platform easy to use. We’ve found the following three platforms to be the easiest to use with a feature that stands out for us. They aren’t just intuitive, they’re also easy to use if you get stuck and need help from an online knowledge base.
- Mailchimp: Easy to navigate through all features and gives you access to specific tools on your account home page.
- Omnisend: Offers a clean email and campaign builder.
- SendPulse: Provides an easy-to-use drag and drop campaign builder.
11. Value for Money
Affordability is subjective. Sure, you could opt for the cheapest solution with the most features, but your choice may not do everything you need it to do well. We’ve stacked all platforms and here are three we think offer the best value for money in each segment:
- Creators: ConvertKit - Flexible and built with all you need to grow your business
- Small business: MailerLite - Feature rich and intuitive. From $10/mo.
- Medium Business: Mailchimp - Easy to use and scale with your brand. From $9.99/mo
- Large businesses: SendPulse - Powerful feature set and robust platform. From $5.28/mo
eCommerce (small, medium and large businesses): Drip - Best revenue attribution and offers SMS marketing to drive campaign engagement. From $19/mo
Email Marketing Software Cost Estimator
How frequent do you send newsletters
Key Metrics
New Subscribers
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in 12 Months
Total Subscribers
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in 12 Months
Emails Sent
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in 12 Months
12. Best Analytics and Reporting
The best email marketing campaigns are derived from actionalble data. Today, that data changes fast. Email marketing platforms need to be able to not only gather data but also present it all in a way that’s easy to understand and use. Platforms we’ve found to offer the best analytics and reporting are:
- ActiveCampaign: Provides clean and clear results, giving you fast insights on campaign performance
- Mailchimp: Offers predictive analytics on commerce customers
- MailerLite: Provides all you need to track performance down to email clients your subscribers use
13. Best Onboarding and Support
While most platforms are not complex, some require hand-holding to get started. Good onboarding makes you want to learn more and succeed with your choice. These platforms offer the best combination of support we’ve found.
| Service | ActiveCampaign | ConvertKit | Keap |
| Onboarding | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Dedicated Account Manager | Yes | No | Yes |
| On-Demand Training | ActiveCampaign University & Study Hall | Free Course Library | Customer & Resource Webinars, Events |
| Telephonic Support | Yes | Yes | No |
| Email Support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Chat Support | Yes | No | Yes |
| Online Knowledge Base | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| User Community | Yes | Yes | Yes |
14. Top Picks for CRM and Email Automation
Email automation is a given today and offered by almost every platform. What makes these stand out is how other key features compliment automation. CRM integration helps with personalization, and segmentation makes for smarter, more targeted marketing, powered by drip email marketing. Add tagging and revenue attribution, and you can pinpoint how much customers spend.
Here are our top picks for automation along with why:
- ConvertKit is the perfect tool for creators who need to quickly create campaigns and let automation do the rest
- Drip’s revenue attribution and eCommerce-first platform design and integrations with eComm platforms makes it a powerful tool for eCommerce brands.
Keap is powered by Infusionsoft, making it a strong automation platform. You can handle everything from payments to tracking sales via a pipeline.
| Feature | ConvertKit | Drip | Keap |
| CRM Integration | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Segmentation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Tagging | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Revenue Attribution | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Drip Campaigns | Yes | Yes | Yes |
How to Choose the Best Email Marketing Software Platform
Picking the right tool can be a little daunting. As you can tell, there’s a lot to consider when shopping for your email platform. A smarter way to pick your next platform is to create a list of what your brand needs and wants to accomplish with email marketing.
To help, we’ve created this easy-to-follow 3-step framework you can use:
Establish Your Goals
Email marketing is part of a larger goal: marketing success. Finding a tool that will help get you there is better done by identifying your goals. Here are the most common goals marketers aim for.
- Increase open rates
- Improve click rates
- Leverage automation
- Drive site traffic
- Create more personalized customer journeys
- Integrate email with CRM for enriched profiles
- Nurture leads
- Increase leads and sales conversions
- In-depth analytics with revenue attribution
While these are influenced by other factors, like creative content and positioning, email marketing software can also influence how well you can deliver creative content. For example, if you need more than just segments of customers, CRM integration is a must-have. If you need to know how much a customer spends with your brand, revenue attribution by customer isa feature you’ll need.
Match Features to Goals
With an idea of what you want to achieve, it’s time to find platforms that offer what you’re looking for. There are hundreds of platforms out there and the only way to develop actionable intelligence is by gathering data. Create a spreadsheet with what you want and add platforms you find to it.
Pick The Right Plan
Email marketing plans include a few common elements. Here’s a look at what to expect when aligning your budget to your tool of choice:
Pricing Options
Typically email platform pricing comes in two options; monthly and annual. Monthly pricing is also typically based on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning no fixed contracts, and you can cancel at any time.
Annual plans require a little more attention. These come with discounted monthly pricing and are paid for upfront. A word of advice: where possible, test your new platform before committing to an annual plan. Demos are great, but we recommend trials that offer all functionality you need. This way, limitations are identified before you’re locked into a year-long commitment.
Subscriber Counts
Plans are also often based on how many subscribers you have. As a transactional business, email marketing platforms use the number of subscribers and emails you’ll send as a measure of how much to bill you for access to features and functionality.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a list of email marketing software?
Yes. This blog post includes a list of 31 platforms with a collection of key features for each.
What is email marketing software?
Email marketing software is software used by marketers for a variety of purposes. These include designing and producing custom email messages, growing subscriber lists, generating revenue, tracking email campaign performance, and more.
Should I use on-premise email marketing software?
On-premise email marketing software can be more expensive than cloud-based email marketing software. On-premise solutions come with hardware and software costs, and the overhead of technical staff to maintain both. Cloud solutions are priced for a set fee that’s more affordable and does not come with the added overhead.
Which email software is the best?
Email software platforms are designed to provide a range of features. From eCommerce promotions to list building, some platforms are also better suited according to business size. To find the best solution for your business, see our section titled “How to Choose an Email Marketing Platform”.
How does email marketing software work?
Email marketing software allows brands to create and send emails in bulk to many subscribers. Without email marketing software, brands would not be able to perform key tasks required to deliver emails, maintain email lists with ease, track the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns, and more.
Why use email marketing software?
Email marketing software includes a collection of features that help businesses create targeted email messaging that can be delivered to subscribers. As part of a larger marketing strategy, email marketing requires a set of email marketing software features like automation, list segmentation, personalization, reporting and analytics, and more to be successful.
