If you are running a business online you know you need the right tools for the job. And one of the most important thing is email marketing which you’ll need to capture leads and send them consistent emails regarding your business or what you are selling. From the research I’ve been doing in my experience, I’ve come up with the list containing all the top 15 best email marketing softwares for 2021.
To get the best, I needed to research about the prices, Reliability, Technical Support, Template designs, ease of use, deliverability, automation, integrations, and any additional features you need. My top 4 are all winners in their own right by offering a great portfolio of services at a great value point. And most of all, excellent customer service with happy clients. Choosing the right email marketing service can have a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign.
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategy for small businesses. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing on average sees a 4300 percent return on investment (ROI) for businesses in the United States. This is because email marketing is easy to manage, gives you full control, and allows you to establish a direct contact with your customers.
A good email marketing service should enable you to create highly engaging email newsletters with an easy user interface (ideally drag-and-drop editor).
You should be able to easily send bulk emails that are actually personalized and targeted without a lot of work. This is also known as marketing automation.
Aside from that, your email marketing service must make it easy to manage your contact list, segment users into groups, and track the performance of your email marketing campaigns.
Most importantly, a good email service provider ensures that your email campaigns do not end up in the spam folder.
Moosend
Get Response
Pabbly
Active Campaign
Gist
AWeber
Constant Contact
Sendinblue
ConvertKit
HubSpot
Mailchimp
Omnisend
Mailerlite
Campaign Monitor
Mailigen
Now let’s get into more details
Excellent All-In-One Email Marketing Automation Tool
Moosend is an email automation tool that helps you build your email list, personalize your messages, and automate tasks so you can focus on customer relationships.
They have intuitive drag-and-drop email templates in their campaign builder. This tool lets you add images, text blocks, social icons, and more to your emails. They have a large library of email templates with different layouts that are responsive and look great on desktop or mobile.
Real-time Progression -See what happens, the moment it happens. Track opens, clicks, social shares and unsubscribes and build the right strategies to maximize your ROI and serve your customers better.
Ability to Create Beautiful Landing Pages in a Blink of an Eye- Move, crop, resize, group, add and change anything you want and create beautiful landing pages in just a few minutes and say goodbye to web designer expenses.
Fuel continued list growth with the right template- Grow your mailing list around the clock, collect valuable data effortlessly and share your forms across all your online channels with our packed-with-features online.
Customer Support-Each paid plan provides phone support. Custom enterprise plans all provide an account manager and support via email, phone, and live chat. They also have video tutorials and a huge knowledge base to answer your questions.
Moosend Pricing is dependent on the number of subscribers you have in your email list. They have a free plan for users with subscribers under 1000 and includes sign-up forms, reporting, and the ability to send unlimited emails. Their plans begin at 8$ per month and scale up with the number of subscribers.
All-in-one marketing software perfectly suited for your business marketing needs.
GetResponse is a comprehensive marketing software platform that helps you create content, boost sales, and increase traffic to your website.
Integrated email marketing, autoresponders, and landing pages let you automate essential tasks and launch effective marketing campaigns. Advanced analytics make it easy to track conversions, leads, and ROI, and learn what your customers want. Customizable template scenarios do the work for you — no coding necessary.
Marketing Automation — GetResponse’s marketing automation feature lets users build scalable workflows based on customer journeys. Action-based autoresponders allow for the creation of messages that are triggered by relevant recipient actions — with personalized one-to-one responses. In addition, GetResponse provides users with advanced segmentation tools that enable them to divide their contacts into subgroups and tailor emails accordingly.
Landing Page Builder — GetResponse has an intuitive drag-and-drop landing page builder that allows users to create 100% responsive landing pages and web forms. Business marketers can build web pages for sales, webinars, thank yous, opt-ins, about-me and downloads in just a few minutes. Moreover, GetResponse lets users test, analyze and optimize their pages to increase conversion rates.
Comprehensive Reporting — GetReponse has robust reporting capabilities. A few simple reports appear directly in the dashboard, offering a brief overview of campaign success via raw numbers and pie chart. The Email Analytics section provides further detail, with line and bar graphs for clicks, unsubscribes, opens, complaints and bounces. Additionally, for every report, users can view which subscribers within their email list performed any given action.
Webinar Integration — The GetResponse webinar platform seamlessly integrates with GetResponse email marketing, allowing users to host product announcements, demos and training sessions
You can get started with a 30-day free trial and upgrade to their $15/month Basic Plan. You also save between 18 and 30% with annual plans.
Excellent Inbox Delivery and Independent SMTP Service ($29/month)
Pabbly is an online platform, which offers a full-service suite of marketing tools for online form building, email marketing, subscription billing, and email list cleaning.
Also, it provides a complete business management bundle of all these tools at a low cost named Pabbly Plus.
Pabbly’s email marketing service doesn’t restrict you on features like marketing automation, list management, autoresponder emails, segmentation of subscribers, etc. whether it’s a paid or free plan. You can effortlessly integrate in-built or 50+ external SMTPs and send emails without any additional charges.
Email Marketing. Possibly one of their biggest draws, Pabbly makes email marketing hassle-free and accessible.
Pabbly Form Building. Seamlessly collect precise data based on your specifications. This feature can be used for surveys and audience reviews alike.
Pabbly Subscription Billing. This was actually a surprising addition for me because it really is the complete package! Pabbly’s subscription package comes with inclusions for affiliate marketing additions as well.
Pabbly Connect. As a step further into creating automated workflows, Pabbly’s tool promises to make life easier for digital businesses.
Email Verification. Pabbly gives you the tools to optimally polish your email and subscriber list by authentic verification.
The pricing for Pabbly Email Marketing is based on your number of subscribers. Here’s a comparison of annual savings vs. other popular options on this list:
Pabbly Connect is a solid addition to the roster of Pabbly’s overall services. As far as functionality is concerned, this workflow automation service hits all the right notes. It strikes a balance between being user-friendly while also bringing a lot of value to the table. The pricing is also very affordable, catering to a lot of bases.
Best Email Marketing Automation and Deliverability ($9/month). ActiveCampaign is a hidden gem in the marketing automation world. They’re one of the most affordable providers for small businesses and their software is exceptionally well-designed. Despite this, very few people have even heard of them.
Email workflows are robust and easy to manage. All of this data syncs with their inbuilt CRM to provide sales teams with advanced lead scoring functionality.
Their lead scoring system is flexible and robust. If you’re not familiar with lead scoring, it’s a way to award points to individual email subscribers based on the actions of your choosing. Then once they hit a point threshold, they either enter a new automation funnel or can be contacted by your sales team.
First, you select your engagement metrics. These could be anything from an email open or click, all the way to a content download or consultation request.
Next, you add your lead scoring rules and points based on these conditions. These should be set based on the level of effort and propensity to convert.
Maybe an email open is worth two points, and a link click is worth five points. Or actions like non-opens or unsubscribes are worth negative points. Once a subscriber reaches a pre-determined point threshold, subscriber data flows to the Deals CRM where they enter a new stage of automation.
These features unlock with ActiveCampaign’s Plus Plan at $49/month, which is their most popular option.
Another strong selling point is email deliverability, ranking higher than all other platforms on this list. Their email sends are the least likely to be marked as spam and have the best chance of hitting primary inboxes on Gmail and Outlook.
Their paid plans start at $9/month, and they offer a 14-day free trial. This plan gives you up to 3 users, up to 500 subscribers, and the ability to send unlimited emails. They also have advanced reporting tools, with geo-tracking, click maps, website visitors, sign-up forms, and more valuable data.
Overall, ActiveCampaign is the best tool if you’re looking for an advanced CRM, lead scoring, and high deliverability rates.
I recommend you get started for free to check out their dashboard and features. Then when you’re ready, unlock either their Lite Plan ($9/mo) or Plus Plan ($49/mo) based on the size of your email list. Make sure to save between 30–40% when you pay yearly.
In-One Marketing Software (Free — $33.99/month)
Gist is marketing automation, live chat, and email software that provides a full 360-degree view of your business.
Pros: It offers a complete package of email marketing features. It also gives you complete analytical support about your campaign. Many free customize email templates for every business.
Cons: It worked great for me. Never had any issue. No cons.
Overall: Gist is a handy tool to start an email marketing campaign. It offers an excellent email campaign with customized templates. It’s a very intuitive and overall best email marketing tool.
You can get started for free for up to 500 subscribers and upgrade to their professional plan when you grow.
Best Email Marketing Software for Small Businesses and Helpful Support ($19/month)
AWeber is a market leader of small business email marketing software. Founded in 1998, AWeber has over 20 years of proven success helping more than one million customers around the world reliably connect with their prospects and customers through powerfully-simple email marketing software. Along with its award-winning 24/7 US-based customer support, AWeber delivers the ability to quickly build responsive landing pages, load and manage contacts, send amazing emails, and analyze results without having to be a tech whiz. AWeber works with more than 1,000 partner software solutions, allowing customers to seamlessly integrate with the apps and services they rely on to operate and grow. A privately-held company, AWeber is headquartered in Chalfont, PA.
Like other tools on this list, they offer over drag-and-drop email builders, list management tools, and analytics reports.
With Aweber list management, you can import an email list and create a database from common file types like XLS, XLSX, TXT, CSV, and TSV.
They make it easy to manage your lists with any rules you create automatically. Additionally, with their marketing automation tools, you can create an autoresponder workflow based on actions like email opens, link clicks, site visits, and purchases.
One selling point is their 700 design templates — this compares to 500 with GetResponse and just 80 with MailChimp. Some of their templates look outdated, but some also look great and remind me of high-quality Instagram ads.
They also just released the ability to use web-fonts in addition to standard fonts.
There are 2 versions of Aweber: ‘Pro’ and ‘Free.’
For the Pro plans, the pricing structure is as follows:
Hosting and emailing a list containing up to 500 subscribers: $19 per month
501 to 2,500 subscribers: $29 per month
2,501 to 5,000 subscribers: $49 per month
5,001 to 10,000 subscribers: $69 per month
10,001 to 25,000 subscribers: $149 per month
A 14% discount is available if you pay quarterly; a 14.9% discount is available if you pay annually. There are also some discounts available for students and not-for-profit organisations.
Additionally, an entirely free version of Aweber is available. This allows you to use most of the features of Aweber, so long as your mailing list is smaller than 500 subscribers (after this, you’ll need to subscribe to a paid plan).
Best Email Marketing Service for Small Business. Constant Contact have been in the email marketing game since 1995. During that time they’ve managed to become one of the most used email tools in the world, boasting over 650,000 customers.
One of their most unique features is event management and the ability to manage invitations, registrations, and tickets. What makes them special is that they’ve added several features over the years that none of their competitors sport, such as surveys and social campaigns. These all add to the diverse list of email options available, in addition to automations and recurring newsletters. In the past, they offered users a built-in events management tool. However, this is no longer the case and new users will be prompted to integrate with Eventbrite.
Constant Contact boast a marketplace with over 400 apps and integrations that cater for even the most niche of products. Yet despite these flashy numbers and features, interest in Constant Contact seems to be on the decline, at least according to Google Trends. Enough reason for us to take a closer look at Constant Contact’s ins & outs and check if it’s still relevant in the 21st century.
You run events-Constant Contact is quite unique in this regard, being one of the few email marketing tools that allows you to manage event invitations, registrations, and tickets (if you opt for the Email Plus plan). Bear in mind that new users wanting to manage their events through Constant Contact will be prompted to integrate with Eventbrite, which wasn’t previously the case.
You need advanced automation-Surprisingly, for the premium it charges, Constant Contact doesn’t offer the most advanced automations. While they do offer triggered campaigns, autoresponders and abandoned cart campaigns (for Shopify only), you’ll find that other much cheaper tools offer similar levels of automation — GetResponse and Pabbly, for example.
Email deliverability is above average and one of the highest among email service providers at over 90%.
Constant Contact pricing is tiered based on the number of email contacts in your list. Their paid plans start at $18/month for up to 500 contacts.
Their drip campaigns are easy to use and intuitive. You can create simple sequences, but can’t combine conditions or use advanced filtering.
Ultimately, if you’re looking for niche features like event management and also want top-notch email deliverability, Constant Contact is the choice for you. They are my #2 choice for email service providers this year.
Best Email Marketing Service with Automation on a Budget ($20/month)
Sendinblue is an easy to use email marketing service with a free plan that allows unlimited contacts, and 300 email newsletter sends per day. If you’re serious about growing your list, you can use their Lite plan which starts at $20/month and allows up to 40,000 sends per month and no daily sending limit.
Their free platform is all built on ease of use. Its simplicity allows you to easily create clean-looking templates, automated welcome emails, and website opt-in forms. They also offer live chat and a CRM in their free plan, which includes one automation workflow for up to 2,000 contacts
Now features basic CRM functionality
Impressive range of automation
Wealth of auto-responders and transactional email features.
Initial account setup can be tedious
Basic templates could use improvement
You can also view real-time statistics with necessary reports that provide metrics like open rates, click-through rates, deliverability, and heat maps.
One of their best features is their email automation workflows. These allow you to set triggers and put your subscribers through custom workflows based on actions they take on your website and in the funnel:
These automated triggers create actions like sending emails and SMS messages, segmenting your contacts into separate lists, and updating their information in your database.
If you want advanced email marketing automation software on a budget, you can get started with their Lite Plan for $20/month and save 10% on annual plans.
Best Email Marketing for Bloggers ($29/month). ConvertKit is an email service provider that is specifically marketed towards bloggers, podcasters, and other businesses who are building audiences.
For bloggers looking to send personalized, text-based emails, their designs look like they’re coming right from Gmail.
Additionally, they offer pretty advanced email sequences based on both site actions and actions within emails. Their advanced triggers make for some excellent list segmentation options.
Is ConvertKit the right newsletter service for you?
You want to run ultra-targeted campaigns- With ConvertKit’s flexible tagging and segmentation system, you can run laser-focused automated campaigns to very specific groups of contacts. Its inbuilt landing page editor also allows you to manage end-to-end campaigns within the one tool.
You want to send visual emails — The fact that it only offers 3 email templates (and all text-based) means that you’re very limited. There’s no option to select from or even upload your own email templates, so if this is important to you we’d recommend a more design-flexible option like MailerLite or MailChimp.
You don’t have a big budget- Although ConvertKit is aimed at creatives and bloggers, their pricing seems more apt for big businesses. There are definitely more affordable tools available, with similar (and even better) features.
Although they a free plan, their pricing starts at $29/month and a 14-day free trial, it’s a great choice for bloggers focused on building high converting sales funnels.
Best Email Marketing Software for Marketers. HubSpot is the most integrated marketing package on the market. Using their email marketing software is one of the easiest ways to design, optimize, and send fantastic looking emails.
Marketing Automation: Customers can create visually appealing emails without ever learning a line of code, then select from dozens of actions, conditions and triggers to send the right emails to the right prospects at the right time. HubSpot also includes a visual editor that allows users to envision workflows in real-time — whether they’re creating a simple follow-up sequence or a complex, multi-stage journey with several paths.
Social Media Marketing: HubSpot comes with basic social media tracking and contact capabilities. Therefore, customers are provided with the option to attribute leads to specific sources, which gives them the added advantage of BI (business intelligence). It also allows users to easily manage various social media accounts from a single, easy-to-use interface. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are all supported, and the HubSpot mobile app allows clients to take their HubSpot Social Inbox wherever they go.
Lead Management: Users get to see every detail pertaining to a lead within a single contact profile, and access a chronological overview of each touchpoint between their company and a contact, such as page visits, asset downloads, email opens and website visits. All-in-one contact intelligence provides the full context of leads’ history, making it easy to create targeted lists, automate email campaigns and increase conversions. And because HubSpot’s contact database integrates with several CRM systems, sales can get the inside scoop on a lead and make smart follow-ups.
Landing Pages: HubSpot users can quickly create and launch aesthetically pleasing landing pages without assistance from IT or designers. They get to choose from HubSpot’s built-in library of responsive templates. The on-page editor makes inserting forms and images and adding copy a breeze. Additionally, HubSpot lets customers identify their best converting landing pages through a centralized dashboard. A/B tests can be conducted for every element to discover which version drives the highest conversions.
Marketing Analytics: HubSpot’s built-in analytics allows customers to see detailed reports for each of their marketing assets, from landing pages and website, to social media accounts, blog posts, emails and more. They can also use the competitors report to see how they’re performing compared to other firms in their industry. Moreover, users can break down any report by the company-level or contact properties in their CRM or database to spot key trends in their data over a period of time.
Starter: $50/month (billed annually)
The Starter plan is best for solopreneurs and beginning marketers. It provides access to just the basic features such as lead tracking and form customization 1,000 contacts are included. An additional 1,000 contacts can be added for $20 per month.
Professional: Starts at $800/month (billed annually)
Professional users can have 1,000 contacts in their database and are required to pay $50/month per 1,000 additional contacts. There’s no limit for site visits. Onboarding is needed for a one-time fee of $3,000.
Enterprise: Starts at $3,200/month (billed annually)
The Enterprise plan is for companies that have a very large contact database and numerous leads coming in.
One of the Biggest Names in Email Marketing (Free — $14.99/month)
MailChimp is one of the biggest names in email marketing with over 1 billion emails sent every day on their platform and over 14 million customers as of 2017.
Mailchimp (which starts at $9.99 per month, though there’s also a free plan), is the dominant player in the email marketing segment and a consistent Editor’s Choice selection. Mailchimp empowers businesses through its seamless controls, wide range of templates, and powerful integration and automation features. The company is now branching out its expertise to encompass other aspects of small business marketing, including automation and customer relationship management (CRM) functionality. Mailchimp’s latest releases have extended towards domain name search and hosting, too, as well as website design, and they’ve kept it all inside their familiar product framework.
Has evolved into a full-featured marketing platform
Workable free tier, highly flexible pricing
Powerful slew of automation options
Impressive third-party integration options
Reporting functionality could be better
Move to marketing platform could alienate smaller businesses
They charge based on the size of your email list, so if you go over the threshold of 2,000, you join their 2,000–2,500 plan at $30/month.
Overall, MailChimp may be the most well known free email marketing service on the market, with over 17 million users as of a few years ago.
However, they are down on my list as everyone uses them, but there are plenty of other good options that can create more customized.
Best Omnichannel Email Marketing Service for Ecommerce ($16/month). Omnisend takes email marketing a step further by unifying email marketing across social media platforms, text, push notifications, Whatsapp, and more. Over 40,000 marketers use their email marketing software in 130+ countries.
For e-commerce brands, Omnisend can send isitors more relevant messages across platforms and devices. They do this by understanding website browsing behavior and user device preferences based on any custom events that you create.
For example, you can track user actions on your website and then again within welcome emails, abandoned cart emails, and post-purchase automation series to segment messages more effectively.
And they integrate with all of the top ecommerce platforms.
Whether you’re using BigCommerce, Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, or other e-commerce software, you can hook up Omnisend to drive more sales.
With their $16 per month Standard Plan, you can send 15,000 emails/month and get access to their automation features. These include interactive signup forms and email elements, SMS notifications, and product recommendations.
This feature set is excellent for e-commerce conversion rates as users will receive messages based on the products they’ve interacted with on your site.
Omnisend is an excellent resource for companies that want to opt-in and out of paid subscriptions as there is no limit on contacts with a free subscription. This permits you to have the contacts in the account and then opt into the paid subscription when mass mailings need to go out.
Best Ease of Use and 24/7 Support (Free — $10/month)
MailerLite are relatively new when it comes to the world of email marketing, and that youthfulness permeates throughout its design and features.
Not in a ‘young, crazy, fun!’ kind of way, but more in a ‘modern, clean and simple’ kind of way. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that their average office age is 25? Well, whatever it is, it’s working for them.
Also a reflection of their staff, and values, MailerLite is a more international tool than some of the others we’ve reviewed. The interface is available in 8 languages, and their support in almost as many. They also have an app! Though it’s only currently available on iOS.
You can start with their forever free plan if you have less than 1,000 email subscribers. This free plan has limited features and allows you to send up to 12,000 emails per month.
Upgrading to their $10/month plan gives you access to all features that help your marketing strategy, including a landing page builder, embedded forms, and pop-ups.
Free Plan (1000 subscribers)
Easy To Use
Clean and Sleek Editor
Supports Automations and Workflows
Powerful Segmentation Rules
Missing some pro features
Strict Approval Process
Can’t create emails without leaving the visual workflow editor
Can’t use form building templates in free plan
People-First Company with 99% Customer Satisfaction ($9/month)
Campaign Monitor, which starts at $9 per month, is an innovative email marketing platform solution for small to midsize businesses (SMB). Featuring various tools that can track the customer journey and automate marketing processes, Campaign Monitor also excels at providing insights and analytics that can help inform marketing strategies. It features easy to use online builders that provide an intuitive range of email or newsletter solutions for SMBs. Offering a generous amount of flexibility by way of design options and analytics, this is a solution that could be just right for startups or businesses just getting around to building mailing lists.
With a 99% customer satisfaction rate and a Giving Back program, they are a global company with people-first values.
PROS
Versatile email templates
Easy-to use WYSIWYG interface
Convenient custom auto-responders
Solid insights and analytics
CONS
Contact importing is difficult when matching custom fields
Lacking direct online support
The cheapest plan starts at $9 per month for up to 500 subscribers and 2,500 emails.
There are also packages for 2,500 subscribers and 12,500 emails (starting at $29 per month), 5,000 subscribers
and 25,000 emails (starting at $49 per month), and 50,000 subscribers (starting at $299 per month for 250,000 emails).
Custom high-volume plans are available if you have more than 50,000 subscribers. Unlimited or Premium plans are also an
option for SMBs that require unlimited sends each month.
Essentially, if fast support and well-designed templates are your top priorities, Campaign Monitor is worth a try.
You can get started with a completely free account to test out their features.
Best for Integrations ($10/month)
Mailigen is a web-based marketing tool designed for businesses from all scales and industries. It integrates all of your marketing campaigns such that you can keep track of the progress of each of them with ease. This contributes to the growth in sales revenue, especially for the e-commerce businesses.
Key features include email list segmentation, email automation, campaign analytics, sign-up form builders, pre-made templates, and online surveys.
Real time reporting and tracking
Social sharing tools
Contact segmentation
A/B split testing
Free email templates
API access
Email autoresponders
Online surveys
Behavioral email automation
Email builder
Email inbox preview
SMS marketing
Multi-user accounts
Premium services
Starter at $10/month
Free sign up forms for your database
Free trial
Real time analytics and reporting
Responsive email templates
Email marketing
Professional at $19/month
Email CRM integration
A/B testing
A demo on request
Online surveys
Behavioral email automation
Premium at $299/month
It has all features from the professional plan plus:
Custom design and strategy
A demo on request
Deliverability experts access
Dedicated support and account representative
A free 30-days trial is also available.