When Email was first invented in 1971, one could have imagined little about the endless possibilities it would bring by connecting this world with a free-to-use service.
Today, Emails have evolved so much that they are now an integral part of everyone’s life.
Email as a free medium to communicate thus provides an excellent opportunity for marketers to tap into its potential and market on this platform – Email Marketing thus assumes importance.
Thus, the best email marketing software you choose in 2024 should have every feature you need to engage with your customers throughout their journey with a touch of personalization thereby building long-lasting relationships.
Let’s now look at some of the industry-leading email marketing tools that marketers need today!
What should Best Email Marketing Software Provide?
Right from creating emails to tracking customer behavior, email campaign software needs to be multidimensional.
A good mass email marketing service should enable you to
1. Create highly engaging email newsletters, Landing pages, and Sign up forms with an easy user interface.
2. A drag & drop editor can be a preferred choice to design an email broadcast.
3. Sending a personalized and targeted bulk email with easy Customizable Workflow. This is also known as marketing automation.
4. Simple email list management options with easy tags and segment features along with robust mail list software
5. Tracking and analyzing the performance of the email marketing campaigns you have created should be easy to perform and simple to understand
Also, In today’s time, people get so many emails. Many emails end up in Spam folders and people never check those emails.
A good email marketing software thus confirms that your emails do not land in the spam folder
Henceforth, email personalization assumes importance as it creates genuine interactions.
Most of the email marketing platforms listed below offer email marketing features like autoresponders, email list management, and segmentation features along with drag and drop editor.
However, what stacks them up against each other is Ease of usage, Advanced Marketing Automation features, Pricing, CRM Email Marketing Offerings, and Customer Support
Let’s look at the 11 Best Email Marketing Software and Email Marketing Automation tools you can use to grow your online business with these parameters.
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Table of Contents
Constant Contact – Best Email Service
Highlights – Offers Free Email Service Trial for a Month | Paid Plan starts at $20 for 500 contacts | No Money Back Guarantee | 24*5 Chat Support
Constant Contact, since its inception in 1995 has emerged as one of the best email marketing platforms for small business email marketing
With an experience of over 20 years, Constant Contact has evolved over time and now offers a robust platform for email marketing and automation.
Benefits of Constant Contact Email Marketing Software
With modern drag and drop email builder and mobile-optimized constant contact templates, the Email Marketing features like designing email marketing campaigns, email list management, sending professional emails get comfortable with the Constant Contact email marketing platform.
List Building gets easier with stunning and mobile-friendly Constant Contact newsletter templates, Dynamic sign-up Forms, and Landing Page templates.
Email Plus Constant Contact plan offers intelligent Marketing automation features like drip campaigns, email list management with advanced tags, and segment options.
It helps to target customers to build long-lasting relationships with personalized, scheduled, and targeted emails.
Actionable feedback that comes from emails, social media, or surveys can be integrated with Constant Contact and insights can be used to re-design your email campaigns
- Constant Contact email marketing services for an eCommerce store are a certain power booster to help your online store grow by converting leads to customers.
Constant Contact email marketing analytics captures real-time data like no. of email forwards, Bounces, Open rate, CTR, Subject Line A/B testing amongst others.
Using this data one can efficient email campaigns to target and retarget customers
Constant Contact Pricing
There is a Constant Contact free trial available for the first month. Then the pricing depends on the number of subscribers.
There is a 10% discount on the below prices if you pay in advance for 6 months and a 15% Discount if you pay in advance for 12 months along with the First month free.
This is a huge saving!
Constant Contact offers three plans with the following price tags
- Lite– Starts at $5 per month with 500 Subscribers 10k email sends, this plan offers customizable email templates, live support, email scheduling, and List building tools.
- Email – Starts with $20 per month with 500 Subscribers and First month Free. Along with basic eCommerce ( Shopify + WooCommerce), there are list building tools and welcome email options to use
- Email Plus – Starts with $45 per month with 500 email list Subscribers and First month Free. This plan contains the Advanced eCommerce Integrations, Marketing Automation features, Subject Line A/B testing
| Plan and Subscribers | Email Lite | Email Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upto 500 Subscribers | $5 | $20 | $45 |
| Upto 1000 Subscriber | $10 | $30 | $55 |
| Upto 2500 Subscriber | $20 | $45 | $70 |
| Upto 5000 Subscriber | $40 | $65 | $95 |
| Upto 10k Subscriber | $95 | $95 | $125 |
| Above 10k Contacts | $195 | $195 | $195 |
Click here to look at the details of Constant Contact Pricing Calculator and Features
Even for a low budget, you can afford the Constant Contact Lite plan of this email tool at a cheap price of $60 per year!
SendinBlue – Best Free Email Service
Highlights – Forever Free Email Service Plan | 300 free emails per day | A Free Email Providers with an option to have a list of Unlimited Contacts | No Credit card required for Sign Up | No Money Back
SendinBlue is a cheap email marketing service available for FREE with a $0 payment for 300 emails per day and unlimited contacts.
Signing up at Sendinblue login is free with no credit card required and it allows adding unlimited Contacts that can easily integrate with Sendinblue CRM marketing
Sendinblue offers one of the best free email service with Email Marketing features like Drag and Drop builder, email list management, Tag, and Segmentation features.
However, what sets them apart is Sendinblue offers the ability to personalize your emails and send emails with a single click using Machine learning-powered send time optimization logic. This logic for bulk email service determines the perfect send times for maximum engagement and open rates
Along with the email marketing solutions, Sendingblue offers SMS marketing and Chat services bundled with their plans.
For experts and pros, Sendinblue Premium Plan allows you to launch Facebook ads and retarget Ads from Sendinblue account to target and retarget your website visitors and bring them back to conversion.
Sendinblue offers to create 5 Landing pages only from the ‘Premium Plan’. This is something they can certainly look to improve.
SendinBlue Pricing
- The Free Email Plan starts at $0. Sign up with No credit card and send 300 emails per day with an option to maintain a free email list of unlimited contacts
- Lite Plan – starts with $25 per month with 40k emails per month and no daily sending limit. Unlimited Contacts
- Essential Plan – Starts with $39 per month with 60k bulk email sends per month along with additional features like A/B testing and analytics
- Premium Email Marketing Plan for Sendinblue starts with $66 per month along with additional features like Facebook Ads, Landing Pages, Chat and SMS services
Enterprise Plans with dedicated and priority support, dedicated infrastructure and Priority bulk email sending can be discussed here
Why Should you buy Sendinblue Email Marketing Software?
Instead of ‘Contacts based Pricing’, Sendinblue pricing plan is based on the number of email sends. For most businesses, this can be a cheaper alternative as you pay for what you use. Right from free plan, Sendingblue has an ‘unlimited contacts’ feature.
Sendinblue email management software provides transactional email functionality. Usually, this functionality is charged extra by Mailchimp but Sendinblue gives it at no extra price
With more than 70+ email templates, SendinBlue Free Email Service Plan gives you a FREE CRM for 2000 contacts, very few email marketing platforms provide this much in a free plan.
In case you opt for a paid plan, all these features along with many others get activated for unlimited email sends!
Indeed, Sendinblue is a very flexible, futuristic, and one of the best email marketing software to grow your business.
Check out the Pricing Calculator for SendinBlue or compare SendinBlue vs Mailchimp.
MailerLite – Free Email Marketing Software
Highlights – Forever Free Email service Plan for 1000 Subscribers and 12k email sends per month | One Month Free while you sign up for Paid Plan | 24*7 Customer support
MailerLite is another powerful email marketing platform with one of the best free email plans and cheap email marketing services
With Drag and Drop builder, HTML editor, and ability to create ECommerce campaigns, we would give 5/5 for ease of use and design.
MailerLite, along with other email marketing services offers landing page builders, newsletters, and pop-ups. It offers personalization Options using custom fields and Subscriber management via segmentation features.
However, what sets them apart is the clean design with intuitive functionality that makes it very user friendly and easy to use thus rightly placing it in the category of Best Email Marketing Software in 2020
MailerLite also provides an HTML editor allowing you to add HTML code by copy and paste with options to import along with a real-time preview.
MailerLite Pricing
MailerLite offers a cheap email automation platform to send email blasts with a forever free email marketing plan for 1000 users with 12K emails per month.
Paid plans are very cheap with unlimited emails as below
- For 1-1000 Subscribers with Unlimited emails: $10 per month
- For 1001-2500 Subscribers with Unlimited emails: $15 per month
- For 2501-5000 Subscribers with Unlimited emails: $30 per month
- For 5001-10,000 Subscribers with Unlimited emails: $50 per month
Why Should you buy MailerLite Free Email Marketing Software?
We are impressed with the features that they offer at such a low price. Even their free email plan is perfect for many individual freelancers or bloggers to start with.
Mailerlite free email plan has almost all the features that they offer with the paid plan – thus making it one of the cheap and best email marketing software available in 2020
It allows you to have Unlimited websites & landing pages from $10 a month. All paid plans can have unlimited Domains.
Along with MailetrLite software, they offer a Mailerlite Pro service that allows you to have a priority support by email or live chat.
This is good for those who need a dedicated manager to help you perform your email marketing tasks like importing subscribers, creating email templates, analyzing the metrics, etc.
Explore MailerLite Pricing Calculator and Features
ConvertKit – Best Free Email for Bloggers
ConvertKit is simple to use, clean with a user-friendly interface, and an extremely functional Email Marketing Software that enables its customers in running a successful business, and provides an effective way of running email marketing campaigns.
It is super easy to use with a very reasonable monthly fee. Though a newcomer in Email Marketing, this software is gaining popularity.
Along with Email Marketing Campaigns, Convertkit helps you to create Stunning Landing Pages and Forms that converts.
You have full flexibility to position and time those landing pages and forms for maximum exposure and growth. All this comes with a beautiful platform that is easy to navigate and an amazing Support Team.
Why buy Convertkit Email Marketing Software?
Convertkit Pricing
Convertkit offers one of the best free email services to start with. Convertkit pricing depends on the number of subscribers and the features you would like to avail of.
Pricing is as Follows –
- Up to 1000 – $29/m ( Free if you are able to signup 10 Friends with your referral code)
- 1000 -3000 – $49/m
- 3000-5000 – $79/m
- 5000-8000 – $99/Month
- Over 8000 Subscribers – Check here!
In case you opt for Annual Billing, you can avail Free subscription for 2 months i.e 12 months in the price of 10 Months!
Aweber – Best for Marketers and Bloggers
Aweber had been the go-to email marketing software since 1998. It is definitely an exceptional tool for email newsletters and Email Drip Campaigns
An established industry leader starting with a 30-day free trial, Aweber is one great email automation software with attractive features and a perfect partner to expand your business. Pricing of Aweber depends on the number of subscribers you have.
Aweber is one exclusive email service provider that has Image Carousel — powered by AMP for Email.
This powerfully-simple new feature lets you send your audience emails that contain dynamic and interactive content that can be seen directly inside the inbox.
Why buy Aweber Email Marketing and Automation Platform?
Check our Aweber Detailed Review
Aweber Pricing
Aweber Offers a Free Plan for 30 DAYS. Aweber Pricing is as Follows –
- Up to 500 Contacts – $19m
- 501-2500 Contacts – $29/m
- 2501 – 5000 Contacts – $49/m
- 5001 -10,000 Contacts – $69/m
- 10,001 – 25,000 Contacts – $149
- 50,00 – 100,000 Contacts – Request a quote here
GetResponse – Free One Month Plan
Highlights – Offers one Month Free Plan with No Credit Card | Paid Plan Starts at $15 per month | No Money-back Guarantee | Extra Savings of 30% on Buying two Year Plan
GetResponse assumes an important spot in this list of best email marketing software as it is a mass email service provider with excellent features and benefits to scale business via email marketing automation
As Regular email management software, GetResponse offers email design features like Responsive drag and drop editor to create Newsletters and email broadcasts, Autoresponders, Segmentation with Personalization options, Time based email delivery, etc
Split Testing features offered by GetResponse is very broad. While other email marketing tools allow split test on subject line sonly, GetResponse allows performing split tests on email content, sending times, from field email address and subject lines
Why GetResponse is one of the best email providers?
Along with offering Stunning Landing Pages templates, email newsletter, and Exit Intent pop-ups that help capture leads, what sets them apart is the Conversion Funnel and Marketing Automation features that they offer.
GetResponse Conversion funnels feature – to generate a Sales Funnel, Lead Funnel, and Webinar Funnel is strong and powerful. We are in awe of this feature of Getresponse as it allows creating various funnels to achieve your business goals.
GetResponse Plus plans come with Marketing Automation and Autoresponders that allows to set up 5 Complex Autoresponders with which one can target customers at the desired customer journey
Using GetResponse as an Email marketing tool for your company, it gets easy to turn website traffic into sales by understanding customers’ buying habits and creating targeted email marketing automation campaigns.
GetResponse is the best email marketing software for e-commerce store owners – as it offers a suite of eCommerce tools along with integrations with more than 100 Tools
Getresponse Pricing
GetResponse Pricing starts at $15 with the Basic Plan for up to 1000 list Subscribers. It offers a one-month free plan with access to all GetResponse features.
Basic plan includes email marketing, Autoresponders, and 1 sale funnel for $15
Plus plan, best for Lead Generation and selling products starts with $49 per month for a list size of 1000 and contains all Basic plan features + Automation Builder, Webinar Funnels, Sales funnels
Professional Plan is the unlimited version of Plus plan with price depending on list size.
Checkout GetResponse Pricing Calculator and detailed features.
Digital Marketers,Small and Medium Business Owners or E-Commerce Store owners who need Automated abandoned cart reminders with advanced eCommerce segmentation data should definitely go for GetResponse as their Email service provider
Active Campaign – Good for Advanced Automations
Highlights: Offers 14 Day Free trial | No Credit card Required | 30 days Money back for paid Plan
Active Campaign is full house powerful Email marketing and Automation platform that offers
- Email Marketing Features – Active Campaign supports features like broadcast emailing, Personalization with Tags and Segments, Split Testing, Autoresponders, and Email Funnels
- Marketing Automation Features – Active Campaign enables you to set up Advanced automation with Goal Tracking, Site Tracking, and Marketing Automation that eventually drives better customer experiences
- Sales and CRM – Has features with Advanced Contact and Leads management (Supports Salesforce Integration)
- Messaging – includes SMS, Site Messages, Facebook Custom Audiences, and Real-Time Conversations
Along with the above features, what sets them apart is their offering of Machine Learning based solutions that analyze and filter your data to come up with actionable insights. For example,
- It helps you target those leads that have a better win probability
- Predictive email sending sends your automation emails at the best time so that max people open the email
Why should you Buy Active Campaign Email Marketing Software?
If you are looking for an Advanced Email marketing software that not only allows you to send email broadcast but also allows you to capture leads, track visitors, Set up Advanced Automation to grow your business, then Go for Active campaign – it is the best email marketing and automation platform
Active Campaign offers complete Marketing Suite that spans across Email marketing to Marketing Automation to SMS marketing, Chat Bots and Facebook Audiences for Site tracking
Active Campaign is best suited for Digital Marketers, Online Store owners, and Businesses that require advanced workflows for CRM marketing services and tapping on the Customer Journeys
This is indeed a powerful email marketing tool with flowy workflows and gives powerful actionable insights We highly recommend this tool for your business.
Active Campaign Pricing
You can try Active Campaign free for 14 days and then move to a paid plan if you see benefits. If paid yearly –
- Lite plan starts with $69/mo for 5k Subscribers with only Email Marketing features
- Plus plan starts with $135/mo with Lite Features plus Messaging Features
- Machine learning-based Predictive sending comes with a Professional plan that costs $199 /mo for 5k Subscribers.
Check out the Active Campaign Pricing Calculator and compare the detailed offerings
ActiveCampaign can be a bit pricey, however, the features and marketing tools that Active campaign provides are certainly worth this price as the data insights of this email tool can help you grow your business.
Active Campaign is best suited for Small and Medium business, who need CRM and marketing pro features integrated with email marketing platform
MailChimp – Good for large Sites
Highlights – Forever Free Plan | No Money Back Guarantee | Costly than other mass email service providers
MailChimp is one of the most popular Email Marketing software and top-rated mass email service providers that render services like HTML Editor or Templates, Creating Tags and Segmentation, setting up automated emails, and adding Personalisation features to email.
It also allows creating shoppable webpages, landing pages, postcards, and Transactional emails.
Along with Email Marketing features it offers a Marketing Platform and CRM email marketing services like:
- Marketing CRM to get a holistic view of audience engagement data patterns and gather meaningful insights
- Understand audience actions and create personalized campaigns
- Create FB and Insta Ads for the lookalike audience and find new customers and get them to stay with your brand – All using Mailchimp Platform
- Real-time reports and analytics tools to observe the behavior of your customers and target them
Mailchimp Pricing
Mailchimp offers four pricing plans: Free, Essentials, Standard, and Free. It also offers ‘Pay as You Go’ plan where you can have add on features
- Forever Free Plan – Up to 2000 Contacts and 10,000 email sends with CRM marketing services Features
- Essentials Plan – For 2.5k Contacts, it costs $30 per month with all Features of Free plan plus A/B testing, Custom Branding Options
- Standard Plan – For 2.5k Contacts, it costs $50 per month with All Essential Features plus Retargets Ads, Advanced Audience insights and Behavioural targeting Automation Series
- Premium Plan – Starts at 300USD per month with 10k Contacts with all Advanced features.
Compare the features offered by Mailchimp using this Price Calculator
Benchmark – Best for Mass Emails
Highlights – Offers Forever Free Plan with No Credit Card Required | Free Plan allows storing unlimited contacts with 250 Email Sends per month.
Benchmark email marketing platform is really easy to use with superior email design templates, clean UI, and drag and drop Builder. Overall, it has got a fresh look and design for the email campaigns.
You will love email marketing services of Benchmark for the Clean designs, five Star Customer Support, and ease to design newsletters and email them directly to your subscribers
Benchmark allows you to edit the Photos within the editor making it handy to edit the images. With some awesome email templates, an Inbox checker, and reports to improve your email marketing campaigns and 1500+ Integrations, Benchmark is certainly an email marketing tool to go for.
What sets them apart is the Automation Pro Module that allows Behavioural analytics, Ecommerce Integrations, Creating email sequences for Webinars, Cart Abandonment, and Many more.
Check out the Detailed Features Here
Benchmark Pricing
Benchmark offers a forever free Email Marketing plan with No Credit Card Requirements and the ability to store unlimited contacts with 250 Email Sends per month.
Free Plan comes with all features like creating email broadcast, Drag and Drop Editor, Simple Automations, Responsive Templates, Basic Drip Campaigns like welcome series, Surveys and Polls and Basic Email Analytics
Benchmark offers a cheap subscriber-based email pricing plan for your email marketing needs.
Paid Plan of Benchmark extends the free plan with Automation Pro for Advanced Automation workflows, A/B testing, Google Analytics Tracking, Landing Pages
Explore benchmark Pricing Calculator with all the Features here
| Subscribers | Emails Per Month | Monthly Cost (Paid Annually) |
|---|---|---|
| 0 - 600 Subscribers | Unlimited | $11.89 |
| 601 - 1,000 Subscribers | Unlimited | $18.69 |
| 1,001 - 1,500 Subscribers | Unlimited | $23.79 |
| 1,501 - 2,500 Subscribers | Unlimited | $27.19 |
| 2,501 - 3500 Subscribers | Unlimited | $37.39 |
| 3,501 - 5,000 Subscribers | unlimited | $44.19 |
| 5,000 - 7,500 Subscribers | unlimited | $56.09 |
| 7,501 - 10,000 Subscribers | unlimited | $69.69 |
| 10,001 - 15,000 Subscribers | unlimited | $90.94 |
Why buy Benchmark email marketing Service?
- One of the best cheap and free email marketing platforms, it offers really easy to use email solution to design emails and create Email Automations
- Best for Freelancers, Bloggers, and Entrepreneurs who want to invest less time and make more return to grow their online business.
Explore BenchMark Features and Pricing
Hubspot – Free Email Marketing Software for Enterprises
HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing software and offers a diverse and smart software offering that comprises Email Marketing Software, CRM and landing page capabilities. To help all marketers leverage the full power of their CRM in their marketing campaigns, HubSpot has added email marketing into their free CRM
It’s designed to meet the requirements of customers running small to mid-size businesses to large businesses, as it also helps them with SEO, attracting, nurturing and converting leads.
Hubspot’s smart Lead management, Sales Enablement tools make it easy for any smart marketer or an organization to automate business. It is best for entrepreneurs, marketers, and organizations who are in sales driven business and need various tools to serve their clients and increase the product reach.
A significant benefit is that everything comes as a bundle present in one suite and thus it eliminates the need to have multiple software and hire multiple people to manage the same business. This brings all your data and data usage in one single place saving time and effort.
Following the freemium model, the core services of the Hubspot CRM are free
Why buy HubSpot Free Email Marketing Service?
With HubSpot’s free email marketing software, you can – Send up to 2000 emails a month and Segment your contact database into lists.
You can personalize your emails using any CRM property and Report on your email’s overall success and see how each contact interacted with your email campaigns.
HubSpot Free Email marketing Service is part of HubSpot Marketing Hub. It is the all-in-one free email service tool that generates and track leads, build an email list, and track user behavior on your website
When a lead shares their email, you’ll have real-time data on who they are, their company, and what pages they visited.
With HubSpot Marketing Platform being Free, you’ll have insight into what’s working and what’s not such as what content or traffic sources are driving the most conversions.
There are various Hubspot Free templates that one can use like Sales Prospecting Email Templates, Cold Email Templates, Sales Subject Lines email templates
All this comes for Free – True, it is free.
HubSpot Free CRM
A good email marketing tool is a must-have for marketers today. But along with a great Email Marketing tool, while creating automated and personalized email campaigns, all marketers should be leveraging a CRM too.
A CRM gives the marketer a centralized view of the customer experience they’re working to create and lets them ensure that their emails are personalized for each recipient, at whatever stage of the buyer’s journey, they are in.
Conclusion – Which is the Best Email Marketing Software in 2020?
Email marketing is one of the most wanted promotional trends in 2020. If you plan to flourish through this approach, it is imperative to follow some of the best practices for the Email marketing strategy.
As listed above there are several Email marketing tools that can make your job easier. Choose the ones that suit your brand and let your potential clients know that you care for them.
For Individuals or Bloggers who want to Start a Successful Blog or Make money Online, then Free Email Marketing Software like SendinBlue, MailerLite, Benchmark, or ConvertKit is a good option with their free email plans
For Small Business with no CRM requirement, go for Constant Contact or Aweber as they have 20+ years of Industry presence and they will never let you fail in implementing a successful Email marketing strategy
eCommerce store owners should go for Getresponse given the Marketing Funnel and Conversion funnel it provides along with cheap email marketing plans
For Small and Medium Business or Startups with CRM requirements, ActiveCampaign and HubSpot are the Industry leaders who have all the potential to give multifold returns on your investment.
Do let us know what you think of this comparison of the 11 Best email marketing software and how is your experience with these email marketing platforms in terms of usage, Customer Support, or ROI