Want to jump straight to the answer? The best email marketing service for most people is definitely Constant Contact.
Email is one of the most powerful tools at your business’s disposal.
It can drive engagement and build relationships. Email campaigns also deliver a higher ROI than every other type of marketing category. Set up your emails properly, and it can be extremely lucrative.
But to have a successful email marketing strategy, you need to find the best email marketing service. That helps you manage your subscribers, content, and campaigns.
Most email marketing services will have similar features. That’s why finding the best email marketing software for your business or website can be difficult.
What makes one email platform better than others?
Throughout my career, I’ve managed multiple email lists with more than 100,000 subscribers and used about every email marketing tool in existence. I know what it takes to run successful email marketing campaigns, and I know which software will get the job done.
Whether you’re starting a new email list from scratch or looking to switch to a new provider, this guide will help you find the best email marketing service for your situation.
Top 10 Best Email Marketing Services
- Constant Contact — Most beginner-friendly email builder
- Sendinblue — Best for growing your list
- MailerLite — Simplest email marketing service
- HubSpot — Best for automated email marketing
- Moosend — Best for AI-powered ecommerce sales
- GetResponse — Best all-in-one automated lead generation tool
- AWeber — Most value for smaller lists
- Omnisend — Best for ecommerce businesses
- ConvertKit — Best for influencers, bloggers, and creators
- Drip — Best for new ecommerce businesses
Hundreds of providers offer email marketing services. But you should really only be considering these top 12 for your business.
Below, I’ll highlight the top features, price, benefits, and any potential drawbacks or downsides for you to consider. Let’s begin.
Email Marketing Service Reviews
#1. Constant Contact – Most Beginner-Friendly Email Builder
- Price starts at $20/mo
- Drag-and-drop email builder
- 100+ mobile-friendly templates
- Simple automation tools
Constant Contact is a great platform we recommend to those of you who are newer to the email marketing world.
That’s because of their intuitive drag-and-drop email builder. It allows you to easily create new emails that look good and on-brand—no coding knowledge needed. Adding text, image, video, coupons, polls, and events to any message is simple and straightforward.
It couples excellently with their more than 100 pre-built, mobile-optimized templates.
With Constant Contact, you can track the results of your campaigns in real-time. You’ll see everything from open rates to click-through rates, as well as data for each individual subscriber.
Automation is a key benefit of Constant Contact. You can trigger welcome messages for new subscribers and set up drip campaigns based on their actions.
Constant Contact offers a 60-day free trial, which is one of the best offers you’ll find in the industry.
Pricing for Constant Contact’s email software is straightforward. There are two plans for you to choose from—Email and Email Plus.
Like most email marketing platforms, your rate will be based on the number of subscribers on your list.
Here’s what some of the prices look like for each plan:
- 0 – 500 Subscribers — Starting at $20 per month
- 501 – 2,500 Subscribers — Starting at $45 per month
- 2,501 – 5,000 Subscribers — Starting at $65 per month
- 5,001 – 10,000 Subscribers — Starting at $95 per month
Email Plus
- 0 – 500 Subscribers — Starting at $45 per month
- 501 – 2,500 Subscribers — Starting at $70 per month
- 2,501 – 5,000 Subscribers — Starting at $95 per month
- 5,001 – 10,000 Subscribers — Starting at $125 per month
These tiers continue all the way up 50,000. Once you eclipse 10,000 subscribers, you’ll automatically be upgraded to the Email Plus plan.
For basic and professional emails, the cheaper plan will be fine. But for those of you who want to get the most out of your email campaigns, I highly recommend Email Plus.
This plan comes with more advanced features like subject line A/B testing, dynamic content, and automated behavioral campaigns. You’ll also get access to personalized demographic data, coupons, polls, and surveys. Learn more and sign up for free at Constant Contact.
#2. Sendinblue – Best for Growing Your List
- Price starts at FREE
- Unlimited contacts
- Drag & drop editor
- Highly customizable
Sendinblue offers a fully-automated email marketing solution for growing businesses.
That means if you’re just beginning your business and looking to grow your list (and your sales), Sendinblue is a top contender.
They offer a combination of drag-and-drop editors along with automation to optimize your email marketing campaigns.
They also offer a host of lead nurturing tools to help you grow even more including:
- Landing pages. Create actionable and engaging web pages to collect leads for you.
- Sign up forms. Place forms anywhere on your website to get user information.
- Facebook ads. Leverage the power of Facebook marketing to nurture more leads.
- Retargeted ads. Powerful ads based on a user’s previous online interactions.
With all this, Sendinblue helps cultivate audience, lead, and customer growth.
The platform is available via a fantastic free plan that gives you unlimited contacts and up to 300 emails per day. That’s a pretty great deal—especially if you’re running a bootstrap startup or solo operation.
Their email builder is incredibly intuitive with a drag-and-drop editor allowing you to easily create the look and feel of your email.
They currently offer four different pricing tiers:
Free — 0$ per month
- Up to 300 emails per day
- Unlimited contacts
- Chat
- SMS marketing
- Email template library
Lite — $25 per month
- Up to 100k emails
- No daily sending limit
- A/B testing
- Remove the Sendinblue logo
Premium (Most popular) — $65 per month
- Up to 1MM emails
- Marketing automation
- Facebook ads
- Retargeted ads
- Landing pages
- Telephone support
Enterprise — Customized pricing
- Customized email volume
- 20+ landing pages
- Customer success manager
- Access for 10+ users
- Dedicated IP
The Lite plans should be more than enough for most small businesses and startups.
However, as your business scales, the Premium option is always a great option. That comes with even more marketing features such as Facebook and retargeted ads, along with telephone support.
#3. MailerLite – Simplest Email Marketing Service
- Price starts at $0
- Premium plans start at $10/mo
- All basic email features
- A/B testing tools
MailerLite offers all of the essentials with none of the fat.
It’s a great option for anyone who wants a straightforward email marketing service. You’re a creator who doesn’t need a ton of bells and whistles. You just need the tools to start your newsletter or send emails—and do so well.
The platform still offers tools for automation, landing pages, pop-ups, and surveys, so it’s not like you’re extremely limited. But even the UI for each one is fairly spartan and straightforward.
MailerLite has a drag-and-drop editor, which makes it easy for anyone to design a high-quality message. Segment your subscribers to enhance personalization and optimize your campaigns with features like A/B testing.
I’d recommend MailerLite for those of you who want simple email software at an affordable rate.
Here’s a look at the price points for MailerLite:
- Up to 1,000 subscribers — $10 per month
- 1,001 – 2,500 subscribers — $15 per month
- 2,501 – 5,000 subscribers — $30 per month
- 5,001 – 10,000 subscribers — $50 per month
- 10,001 – 15,000 subscribers — $75 per month
- 15,001 – 20,000 subscribers — $100 per month
- 20,001 – 25,000 subscribers — $120 per month
- 25,001 – 30,000 subscribers — $140 per month
The pricing tiers continue to rise at about $20-$40 per 10,000 subscribers. MailerLite offers a 30% discount if you sign up for annual billing, making it one of the most affordable options on our list.
There is a free plan for up to 1,000 subscribers, but you’re limited to just 12,000 emails per month. You can use this option as an extended free trial when you’re just starting out. Learn more and try Mailerlite for free.
#4. HubSpot – Best for Automated Email Marketing
- Price starts at $0
- Powerful email automation
- Stunning email templates
- Traffic and conversion analytics
HubSpot is the king of marketing automation–so it’s no surprise they offer a fantastic email marketing solution.
They allow you to quickly and easily create, personalize, and optimize your emails without the need for designers or IT.
Where their software really shines is in the automated workflows. This allows you to easily set triggers for your email subscribers and nurture the leads into customers (or whatever else you want them to do).
The software’s handy mapping tool allows you to visualize this as well for greater clarity and easy optimization.
Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure journey that you set for your subscribers. Depending on the specific actions they take, you can have them branch off to experience different, targeted things via email.
The email marketing service is just one tool in the Swiss Army Knife that is Hubspot. It can stand alone or be used in tandem with their other offerings such as Marketing Hub and their CRM. Your email marketing only becomes stronger when coupled with those products too.
They also have plenty of premade email templates to help you out. With their drag-and-drop builder, you’ll be able to create great emails with no coding or development knowledge needed.
HubSpot is simple to use and allows you to customize your layout, add calls-to-action and images, and modify your content and colors to match your brand.
Use their advanced personalization tools to personalize your emails in order to boost your open and clickthrough rates with ease. You can use any information in an email subscriber’s contact records to automatically serve up the most relevant subject lines, content, links, attachments, and calls-to-action.
Their A/B testing tool is top notch. Use it and dive into the in-depth analytics after you send your emails to see which performed better—and why.
Use this data to determine which subject lines get the most opens and the content and calls-to-action that will earn you more sales. You can also leverage this with landing pages and signup forms to accurately get a sense of ROI of email campaigns.
The HubSpot email tool is free for up to 2,000 email sends per month, with upgrade solutions starting at $50/month.
Join HubSpot for free to create and send email campaigns that look professionally designed and display perfectly across any device—all by yourself.
#5. Moosend – Best for AI-Powered Ecommerce Sales
- Starts at $0
- AI-powered ecommerce
- Unlimited emails
- Reporting & analytics
Moosend offers an email marketing solution no matter if you’re a complete beginner or if you’re a seasoned pro.
From their easy drag-and-drop email builder, to their easy segmentation tool, to their accurate real-time analytics, they have all the features you need to nail your email marketing campaigns.
Our favorite thing about Moosend is their ecommerce AI. It leverages machine learning and collaborative filtering to target customers with products they might like based on the shopping habits of similar customers.
You’ll also be able to easily cross sell based on customer shopping habits, and keep track of how often they buy certain products (e.g. perishables) so you can regularly promote the products they need to them when they need it.
I haven’t seen any other email marketing service do this. But it has the potential to really help out the newer ecommerce business looking to level up their targeting and segmentation game.
Moosend also does the basics of email marketing very well. Their advanced personalization features allows you to create emails unique for your target customer. Their segmentation tool allows you to spit your audience by purchasing behavior, cart abandoned products, and more.
They don’t offer that many themes with just 40 responsive themes to choose from. However, they’re all highly customizable and eye-catching.
Pricing starts free with their premium plans starting at $8 per month. More detailed information is below:
Free — $0/month
- Unlimited emails
- Signup and subscription forms
- Reporting and analytics
- No credit card required
Pro — $8/month
- Landing pages
- Transactional emails
- Phone support
- SMTP server
- 5 team members
Enterprise — Custom pricing
- Custom reporting
- Dedicated account manager
- SSO & SAML
- On-boarding and migration
- 10 team members
- Service-level agreement
#6. GetResponse – Best All-in-One Automated Lead Generation Tool
- Price starts at $15/mo
- Automated sales funnels
- 200+ email templates
- 24/7 live chat support
GetResponse is a bit more than a basic email marketing service. It’s more of an all-in-one solution that specializes in automation.
And when we say all-in-one, we mean it.
With tools and features such as audience segmentation, autoresponders, landing page builders, automated emails, advanced analytics, and even a webinar software, you’ll be able to collect beaucoup leads, put them in the right workflows, and turn them into returning customers.
One standout tool that GetResponse offers is called Autofunnel. It can be used to create funnels for sales, leads, webinars, and more. It’s fully automated and very easy to use.
Funnels include things like emails, landing pages, exit popups, marketing automation, Facebook ads, and ecommerce integration. It all depends on your goals and how you want to set it up. But GetResponse provides all the tools you need to grow your subscriber list and monetize those contacts.
Once a user enters your funnel, everything is fully automated by GetResponse. It’s the perfect way to guide customers through the conversion process with multiple digital touchpoints.
Let’s take a closer look at GetResponse’s plans and pricing.
Basic — Starting at $15 per month
- Autoresponders
- Unlimited landing pages
- 1 sales funnel
- Unlimited lead funnels
- Sell e-products
Plus — Starting at $49 per month
- Automation builder with 5 workflows
- 5 sales funnels
- Contact scoring capability
- Webinars with up to 100 attendees
- CRM software
Professional — Starting at $99 per month
- Automation builder with unlimited workflows
- Paid webinars with up to 300 attendees
- Unlimited sales funnels
- Unlimited webinar funnels
Max (enterprise tier) — Custom pricing
- Transactional emails
- Dedicated IP
- Webinars with up to 500 attendees
- Consulting services for email campaigns
- Dedicated account manager
These prices are all based on 1,000 subscribers. The rate will increase as your list grows. As you can see, even the entry-level plan offered by GetRetresponse comes with advanced features like autoresponders, lead funnels, and sales funnels.
All plans come with 220 email templates, 180 landing page templates, 700 form templates, 40 autofunnel templates, 150 integrations, and 24/7 live chat support.
But to really get the most out of this software, I’d recommend the Plus plan, especially if you don’t already have CRM software. The base rate is definitely higher compared to the other services we’ve seen. However, the plan just comes with so much more.
Instead of just getting email software, you’re benefiting from building automated lead funnels, landing pages, webinars, and lots of other extras that just aren’t included from other providers.
GetResponse offers discounts for annual and 24-month contracts if you pay in advance. At the very least, you can try GetResponse free for 30 days.
#7. AWeber – Most Value for Smaller Lists
- Price starts at $19/mo
- Great for <500 subscribers
- A/B testing and automation tools
- 700+ pre-built templates
AWeber is a traditional email marketing service that’s reliable and very affordable.
Where AWeber really shines, though, is its simple pricing structure. In fact, it’s very lucrative to those with small lists (500 subscribers or less).
Unlike other platforms that add features and capabilities for plans at different price points, AWeber offers all of its features with every plan.
Pricing is based strictly on the number of subscribers on your list. So you’ll get the same features whether you have 20 contacts or 20,000 contacts.
Here’s an overview of the pricing tiers.
- 0 – 500 Subscribers — $19 per month
- 501 – 2,500 Subscribers — $29 per month
- 2,501 – 5,000 Subscribers — $49 per month
- 5,001 – 10,000 Subscribers — $69 per month
- 10,001 – 25,000 Subscribers — $149 per month
With AWeber, you’ll get all of the basic features that you expect with an email marketing service:
- 700+ pre-built templates
- Drag-and-drop email builder
- Email analytics
- A/B testing
- Sign up forms
- Automation
- Third-party integrations
- Subscriber segmentation
AWeber is an industry leader in email deliverability rates. They make sure that your content is optimized to reach your subscribers’ inboxes.
You can try AWeber for free.
#8. Omnisend – Best for Ecommerce Businesses
- Price starts at $0
- Tailor-made for ecommerce businesses
- Pre-built automations
- Cross-channel sales tracking
Omnisend is an easy-to-use email marketing solution that’s tailor-made for ecommerce sites. They offer multiple features such as automated email and SMS messaging in order to convert leads into customers.
They do this by going a step further than most, combining text messages, web browser push notifications, email marketing, Google Customer Match, and Facebook ad retargeting to ensure your connect with the most customers as possible.
All of their channels allow for segmented campaigns. That means you’ll be able to target exactly the customer you need to for your product or services.
They also have pre-built automations for actions your customer might take such as cart abandonment emails/messages, along with welcome emails/messages.
Their library of themed drag-and-drop templates makes creating gorgeous, on-brand emails simple.
Their annual plans and prices are based on how many contacts you have. Below are what it’ll look like based on 500 contacts:
Free — $0
- Up to 15,000 emails / month
- Omnisend-branded email campaigns
- Signup forms, boxes, and pop ups
- Reports
Standard — $16 per month
- Up to 15,000 emails / month
- Email campaigns
- Signup forms, boxes, and pop ups
- Reports
- SMS campaigns and automation
- Audience segmentation
- 24/7 email and chat support
Pro — $99 per month
- Up to 15,000 emails / month
- $80 in free SMS credits / month
- Email campaigns
- Signup forms, boxes, and pop ups
- Reports
- SMS campaigns and automation
- Audience segmentation
- 24/7 email and chat support
- Web push notifications
- Facebook custom audiences
- Google Customer Match
- Priority support
- Advanced reporting
Enterprise — Custom pricing
- Unlimited emails
- Free SMS credits
- Email campaigns
- Signup forms, boxes, and pop ups
- Reports
- SMS campaigns and automation
- Audience segmentation
- 24/7 email and chat support
- Web push notifications
- Facebook custom audiences
- Google Customer Match
- Priority support
- Advanced reporting
- Email migration
- Dedicated account manager
- Deliverability support
- Custom IP address
Remember: This is based on a contact list of 500. If you have more, the prices will go up.
I highly recommend at least the Standard plan. Having unbranded emails alone is worth the cost and you’ll also get access to their email and SMS automation tools. The 24/7 email and chat support is a must-have too.
Learn more and signup now at Omnisend.
#9. Drip – Best for New Ecommerce Businesses
- Price starts at $49/mo
- 24/7 live chat and email support
- CRM for ecommerce stores
- Automatic revenue attribution
Drip is a relatively new platform. It’s a CRM that offers email marketing for ecommerce businesses.
I like Drip because they’re great for new ecommerce merchants since they focus on offering smaller, independent shops the same powerful automation and segmentation tools for email marketing as larger ecommerce stores.
As such, they’re great for newer brands looking to get a leg up.
With Drip, you can track valuable commerce metrics related to customer intent and purchase behavior.
You’ll be able to segment new website visitors from returning customers. Drip also lets you target users who abandoned their carts.
Their CRM helps you reach customers through multiple touchpoints online, including email. Drip also has a revenue attribution feature, giving you a clearer view of which campaigns are actually making you money.
Again, this is ideal for ecommerce shops.
With personalization capabilities, powerful segmentation options, and detailed analytics, Drip has everything you need to succeed with email marketing.
Pricing is based on the number of customers in your account. All plans come with the same features and benefits.
- 1-500 subscribers — $19 per month
- 501-2,000 subscribers — $29 per month
- 2,001-2,500 subscribers — $39 per month
- 2,501-3,000 subscribers — $49 per month
- 3,001-3,500 subscribers — $59 per month
- 3,501-4,000 subscribers — $69 per month
- 4,501-5,000 subscribers — $79 per month
- 5,001-6,000 subscribers — $99 per month
- 6,001-7,000 subscribers — $109 per month
This stretches all the way up to plans that allow for up to 140,000 subscribers before pricing becomes custom.
All Drip plans come with 24/7 live chat and email support. You can try it out free for 14 days and have access to all of the features.
#10. ConvertKit – Best for Influencers, Bloggers, and Creators
- Price starts at $29/mo
- Excellent for independent creators
- Custom forms & reporting
- Easy tagging and segmenting
ConvertKit is one of my favorite email marketing services.
It’s a perfect choice for creators of all stripes. That includes influencers, bloggers, video producers, musicians, artists, and more. That’s because their platform focuses more on engaging your audience and nurturing them with landing pages, ecommerce platforms, and membership sites.
You’ll be able to create leads out of casual visitors to your social media accounts, blogs, YouTube videos, Facebook pages, and more.
For those of you who want to build automated email funnels at an affordable price, ConvertKit will be a top option for you to consider.
To set up automated emails, you’ll be guided through a simple visual flow chart.
Instead of having multiple lists of contacts, ConvertKit groups all of your subscribers into one list. But you’ll still be able to tag them manually for segmentation purposes or with auto tags based on their behavior to improve the personalization of your campaigns. That’s great for creators with big audiences.
ConvertKit is best for sending quick emails with clean formatting. There are no complex designs or distracting elements here.
Like most email marketing software, ConvertKit pricing is based on the number of subscribers you have.
- 0 – 1,000 Subscribers — $29 per month
- 1,000 – 3,000 Subscribers — $49 per month
- 3,000 – 5,000 Subscribers — $79 per month
If you switch to ConvertKit with more than 5,000 subscribers, you’ll benefit from their free concierge migration service. You can save some money and get two months for free if you sign up for an annual plan.
ConvertKit has more than 70 third-party direct integrations, customizable forms, and custom reporting. Email and live chat are available for 12 hours per day, Monday through Friday, with limited support on nights and weekends.
Still not sold? Take advantage of ConvertKit’s free 14-day trial to test it out on your own.
How to Find the Best Email Marketing Service for You
The best available email marketing service is going to be unique to you. After all, the multi-million dollar info product business is going to have very different needs than the humble blogger.
But there are specific factors that we took into consideration, because we believe that they tend to be the most important ones for most businesses.
I’ll break down the details of our process for making this list and explain what matters, what doesn’t, and what you need to know to find the best option for you.
Use our methodology to help guide your ultimate decision.
Plenty of Email Templates
There are a lot of reasons to want an email marketing service. You might want to create your first sales funnel and incorporate email into your marketing strategy. Or maybe you just want to send the occasional newsletter out to subscribers.
Whatever your reason, you want your emails to look good while you do it.
That’s why you should find an email marketing service that takes the stress out of things like formatting and typesetting by giving you a list of great email templates for any of your needs.
Many of the offerings above offer drag-and-drop email templates to help take the headache out of designing a great-looking email.
They’ll also offer a variety of different email template types to fit specific purposes.
For example, Hubspot comes with a library of pre-built sales email templates ready for you and your business to use. If you want, they’ll even allow you to create your own templates unique to your business. You can customize them to your exact needs and save them for use whenever you need them.
MailChimp is another great service with tons of different email templates for different needs such as selling a product or promoting a blog post. It’s also highly customizable, allowing you to create specific ones for your brand’s goals.
Simple Segmentation
As your business grows, you’re going to want to target different parts of your audience for different products. After all, if you offer a variety of different services and products, not everyone on your list will want the same thing.
A good email marketing service gives you easy but powerful ways to segment your audience.
For example, a service like MailChimp allows you to tag segments of your audience depending on how they subscribed to your email list. That way, you can put those segments into specific targeted funnels easily and automatically (more on that later).
A service like Omnisend allows you to send segmented campaigns based on things like your subscriber’s interests, demographics, email open rates, and the products they’ve purchased.
It’s important to note: If you want segmentation features (and if you’re serious about email marketing, you should), you’re going to have to pay for it. This often doesn’t come with a service’s free plan. However, it’s well worth it, especially if you’re focused on growth and conversions.
In-Depth Analytics
As the old business adage goes: “If you can measure it, you can improve it.”
To that end, a good email marketing service will give you all the reporting tools you need to provide you with in-depth metrics and KPIs.
Knowing this information will give you vital data about where your subscribers live, who they are, and what they want from your business.
It’ll also help you create better services and marketing strategies in the future. For example, you’ll be able to better segment your audiences with the right analytics.
HubSpot has some of the best traffic and conversion analytic tools available. Along with their A/B testing feature, their analytics tools will let you know exactly how each of your emails perform and why.
Easy Automation
There’s nothing quite like the “set it and forget it” approach to business.
When an email marketing service is automated, you don’t have to worry about making sure that each and every one of your new subscribers is in the right sales funnel. Once you’ve set it up, they’ll receive the emails they should receive automatically.
That’s why you want to find an email marketing service that will let you easily set up automated emails without a lot of fuss and complex tagging schemes.
Constant Contact is a standout when it comes to automating emails. It lets you trigger welcome messages for any new subscribers and put them into specific drip campaigns depending on their actions. The simple design allows you to do this easily, too, with no headaches involved.
GetResponse is another option to definitely consider if automation is your game. Its Autofunnel platform allows you to easily create fully automated sales, leads, and webinar funnels in just a few clicks.
Best Email Marketing Services for 2021
What’s the best email marketing service? It depends on what you’re looking for.
Here’s a quick recap of the top options on my list.
- Constant Contact — Best drag-and-drop builder
- Sendinblue — Best for growth and engagement
- MailerLite — Best for the essentials at an affordable price
- HubSpot — Best one-stop-shop for inbound marketing management
- Moosend — Best for AI-powered ecommerce sales
- GetResponse — Best all-in-one solution for automated lead generation
- AWeber — Best value for low subscriber count
- Omnisend — Best omnichannel email marketing platform great for ecommerce sites
- Drip — Best all-in-one email marketing and CRM platform
- ConvertKit — Best for ecommerce
I made sure to include something for everyone here. Whether you’re starting a new list from scratch, switching providers, need team collaboration tools or looking for a full-service CRM, there’s an option for you above. From ecommerce specific CRMs to basic and budget-friendly emails, you can find what you need using this guide.
No comments:
Post a Comment