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Feb 21, 2023
For the past 14 years, I've been working in the email marketing industry. First for a digital marketing agency and then I set up EmailToolTester. My goal with this website was to make this powerful technology accessible to marketers who don't want to invest hours and hours combing through the forest of emailing services.
Tons of price plans, complex-looking email automation, differences in deliverability rates… It can be hard to select the best newsletter tool. This is why our team has put together a selection of the best solutions currently available, all meticulously tested and organized by ranking.
Hopefully, you’ll come out with a clear idea of which are the best email marketing service providers!
Table of Contents
| Use Case | Emailing Service | Free Option Available? | Paid Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best tool for marketing automation | ActiveCampaign | Not available for free | From $39/mo |
| Most intuitive tool | MailerLite | Available for free | From $17/mo |
| Best range of advanced features | GetResponse | Available for free | From $19/mo |
| Great value for money | Sendinblue | Available for free | From $35/mo |
| Best for ecommerce automation | Omnisend | Available for free | From $16/mo |
| Excellent reporting features | Mailchimp | Available for free | From $13/mo |
| Very affordable tool | Moosend | Not available for free | From $9/mo |
| Good transactional service | Mailjet | Available for free | From $15/mo |
Find out more about the pros and cons of the top 4 in this video review:
ActiveCampaign , MailerLite, Sendinblue, GetResponse
What is an ESP? Well, there are two main parts that belong to an ESP (email service provider): software that helps you set up a newsletter, manage your contacts and forms. The other building block is an email engine that will deliver your newsletters. On top of that, email marketing service providers can cover everything from automation and segmentation to customer relationship management (CRM) and reporting.
These marketing tools exist to make our lives easier and are crucial to a strong email marketing strategy, so it's important to find one that's easy to use and has the functionality you require.
Check out our guide to lead generation through email marketing for tips and best practices on how to make the most of email marketing.
Some may prefer to go for an all-in-one email marketing service with all of the features formerly mentioned, others might prefer to keep it simple with an easy-to-use email newsletter service. We'll introduce you to various options below so you can make an informed decision and make sure your marketing efforts don't go unrewarded.
So what is the best email marketing tool? Take a look at our ranking table below to find out.
| # | Email marketing service | Pricing | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
The Automation Champs
| 1,000: $39/mo 2,500: $61/mo 5,000: $99/mo 10,000: $174/mo 50,000: $424/mo Pricing details | + Extremely powerful automation + Thorough reporting + Good deliverability + Free migrations – Features can be overwhelming Learn more |
| 2 |
Simplicity and Design | 1,000 contacts: $0/mo 2,500: $17/mo 5,000: $32/mo 10,000: $54/mo 15,000: $87/mo Pricing details | + Free + Easy-to-use + Landing page editor + Excellent deliverability – Missing some pro features Learn more |
| 3 |
The Swiss Army Knife | 1,000 cont: $19/mo 2,500: $29/mo 5,000: $54/mo 10,000: $79/mo 50,000: $299/mo Pricing details | + Intelligent list automation + Conversion funnel feature + Design and spam testing – Deliverability Learn more |
| 4 |
Bang For Your Buck | 300 emails/day: $0/mo 40,000 emails: $35/mo 60,000: $49/mo 100,000: $115/mo Pricing details | + Low-cost plans + Solid automation + SMS – Email builder and general usability Learn more |
| 5 |
800 Pound Gorilla | 500 contacts: $13/mo 2,500: $39.50/mo 10,000: $100/mo 30,000: $295/mo 50,000: $350/mo Pricing details | + Thorough reporting + Limited freemium plan + Great drag and drop email builder – Expensive paid plans – Limited allowances on free plan Learn more |
| 6 |
Ecommerce Automations | 500 emails to 250 contacts: $0 2,000 contacts: $30/mo 5,000: $65/mo 10,000: $115/mo 50,000: $330/mo Pricing details | + Niche ecommerce features + Excellent automations + Live website tracking + Landing pages – Limited allowances on free plan Learn more |
| 7 |
Pay-as-you-go plan | 500 contacts: $9/mo 1,000 cont: $16/mo 2,000: $24/mo 3,000: $32/mo 5,000: $48/mo 10,000: $64/mo | + Tons of automation workflow templates + Unlimited emails on all plans – Small UX issues – Custom reporting reserved for Enterprise plan Learn more |
| 8 |
CRM Ecommerce | 2,500 contacts: $39/mo 5,000: $89/mo 10,000: $154/mo 50,000: $699/mo | + Ecommerce CRM features + Excellent automations + Contact tagging – No spam or design testing – On the pricey side Learn more |
| 9 |
Very affordable | 6,000 emails: $0/mo 50,000: $35/mo 100,000: $95/mo 250,000: $225/mo Pricing details | + Transactional emails + Drag and drop editor – Premium features cost extra Learn more |
| 10 | Some Good Pro Features | 250 contacts: $0/mo 5,000: $50/mo 10,000: $89/mo 20,000: $134/mo 50,000: $249/mo | + Use your own domain name for links + Excellent deliverability rates – Signup forms are not responsive – Not the cheapest option Learn more |
| 11 |
The Expensive Choice | 500 contacts: $9.99/mo 2,500: $45/mo 5,000: $65/mo 10,000: $95/mo Pricing details | + Good deliverability rates – Very poor price-to-performance ratio – Limited automation – Interface & templates need a design update Learn more |
| 12 |
Best Self-Marketing | 1,000 cont.: $0/mo 300: $15/mo 1,000: $29/mo 3,000: $49/mo 5,000: $79/mo 10,000: $119/mo 25,000: $199/mo Pricing details | + Flexible subscriber management + Good deliverability – It's pricey – Poor design options – Reports are lacking in depth Learn more |
| 13 |
Email Marketing Old-Timer | 500 contacts: $0/mo 500 contacts: $19.99/mo 2,500: $29.99/mo 5,000: $49.99/mo 10,000: $69.99/mo 25,000: $149.99/mo Pricing details | + List management tools + Sales tracking + Support – High price and unfair subscriber count – Editor bugs – Deliverability issues Learn more |
| 14 |
Solid Average | 500 contacts: $9.99/mo 1,000: $19/mo 2,500: $29/mo 5,000: $49/mo 10,000: $79/mo 25,000: $199/mo Pricing details | + Easy-to-use editor + Flexible templates + Marketing automation – Deliverability issues – File storage charges Learn more |
| 15 |
For Stunning Emails | 5,000 emails: $69/mo 10,000: $99/mo 25,000: $139/mo 50,000: $179/mo | + Unlimited contacts + Templates + Good drag & drop email builder + Keep data in-house – Form/contact fields – Segmentation – Pricing Learn more |
Tip #1: Want to be able to analyze two or more of the best emailing services side-by-side? Compare email marketing platforms with our comparison tool.
Nowadays, most email marketing software is designed to perform a range of functions beyond simply sending email campaigns and newsletters. Which features are an absolute must? Here’s our list of the key things you should be looking for in order to support your marketing strategy:
Tip #2: You can also compare the prices of different email marketing companies using our Newsletter Cost Calculator.
Here’s a more detailed look at the best email marketing software from our ranking table. Each profile also contains a link to the full review, in case you need more information.
We awarded ActiveCampaign our Best Email Marketing Tool badge for 2023!
ActiveCampaign’s main goal is to help you send fewer emails with better results. To that end, the American provider clearly focuses on marketing automation and highly targeted messages in order to make sure your marketing efforts are fruitful. Though other email marketing tools we’ve tested are working to improve their automation features, ActiveCampaign continues to rein in that field. With ActiveCampaign, you can automate everything based on your website visitors’ behavior with complex if/when/then logic. The CRM also makes it easy to manage sales directly from the backend and target ‘at risk' or ‘hot' leads. It's worth mentioning that they recently divided their plans into two different Sales and Marketing plans, which can be bought together as a Bundle.
What we like: Great design with clean, responsive templates. The automated workflows, as mentioned above, are absolutely some of the best around. The support is excellent, you can add live chat to your site, build landing pages with their excellent landing page builder, and manage various marketing channels through their deep integrations. Also, it has good email deliverability rates.
Where they can improve: The amount and complexity of the features can be a bit overwhelming for complete beginners. Some might also find it slightly expensive if they're just starting out.
Who ActiveCampaign is for: ActiveCamapign offers more advanced automation features than other popular email marketing services. I'd recommend it to power users who need complete control over their automated workflows. Small businesses have a lot to gain by turning their email communications into sales channels with ActiveCampaign.
We awarded MailerLite our Best Email Marketing Tool For Ease of Use badge for 2023!
Based in Lithuania, MailerLite has a young and dynamic team (averaging 25 years of age) that has created a modern and simple email marketing platform. Their focus is international: both the support and interface are available in multiple languages. And in spite of its basic appearances, MailerLite offers well-developed features, a robust editor and a “free for life” plan. Too good to be true? Apparently not, as you’ll see in the pros and cons.
What we like: General ease of use. Clean and intuitive interface with a fast editor. The templates are well-designed and flexible, plus you get the most important marketing features, like landing pages, sign-up forms, autoresponders and reports. Excellent deliverability rates, too. In fact, MailerLite has taken the #1 spot in a number of our tests. If you're looking for free email marketing software, MailerLite is a great option!
Where they can improve: We'd like to see more advanced automation options and email analytics features. Email templates are sadly not included in the free version.
Who MailerLite is for: MailerLite is a great email marketing software for small businesses and freelancers who want an affordable solution with an easy learning curve and well-designed features with good functionality.
With 350,000 users in 183 countries and more than a billion messages sent monthly, the numbers look good for GetResponse. We particularly like two unique features of theirs: the ability to create webinars and sales funnels, both of which come under their popular Conversion Funnel feature. Moreover, GetResponse offers excellent automation functions and we like their free access to 1000 iStock photos. They also offer a well-designed landing page builder and website builder with a range of attractive templates – making it quite the marketing hub!
What we like: Ability to easily create landing pages and advanced automation workflows. Their selection of responsive templates is a big advantage, as well as the webinar feature for those who offer online courses. They have also recently added a free plan to their offering, which comes with unlimited emails. Setting up Facebook ads and integrating with your social media accounts is also possible.
Where they can improve: Email deliverability isn’t fantastic. It's also on the pricey side for those who want to benefit from the automations (from $59/month).
See how it compares to our top email marketing service, in this GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign guide.
Who GetResponse is for: Marketers looking for a solid, versatile email marketing platform with the latest features. If you're looking for a sales funnel tool then GetResponse is worth checking out.
We awarded Sendinblue our Best Email Marketing Tool For Value For Money badge for 2023!
Launched in 2012, Sendinblue is a young Parisian platform that used to focus on transactional emails (for invoices, subscriptions, etc…). They have since pivoted and now provide mass email services with their own newsletter platform. The bet seems to have paid off. They now send around 30 million emails and SMS daily in more than 14 countries.
What we like: Very appealing prices. List management, automations and reporting are all good. They also offer advanced features, such as their free CRM software, live chat functionality and SMS marketing.
>See how Sendinblue compares to Mailchimp
Where they can improve: The user experience could be a little smoother, as could the drag and drop builder. We'd also like to see their email templates updated for something more modern.
Who Sendinblue is for: Users who want a good budget solution with decent features and unlimited contacts.
Mailchimp is now one of the world-leading solutions in email marketing Unlike other email marketing platforms, they offer a free plan with a strong selection of basic email marketing features. However since their plans and pricing update, the subscriber and email send allowances are very limited Features on the free plan include a landing page builder, single-step automations, ecommerce builder and a CRM. The premium plans, on the other hand, come with advanced marketing features such as multi-step automations, social post scheduling and time zone delivery.
What we like: They regularly add new features to the platform, for example, you can now sell your products and book meetings through Mailchimp. Social media features are great, and so is the quality of the support (though this is reserved only for paid subscriptions). You can set up Facebook ads, schedule social media posts and organize everything in a marketing calendar, which will really help you define your email marketing strategy.
>> Our ecommerce email marketing statistics study found that 5.4% of big retail brands use Mailchimp as their email marketing service.
Where they can improve: The interface can be confusing as they change the design layout more than you'd expect. The allowances within the free version are so small that you may need to upgrade pretty quickly and the premium plans are pricey compared to the competition. Unfortunately, the support offered within the freemium plan isn't available after the first month, which is incredibly frustrating.
Also, the fact that you get charged per contact, as opposed to just subscribed contacts means you have to really stay on top of list hygiene. The free templates are very limited and not very modern at all. Find out more in our Mailchimp alternatives post, and see why ActiveCampaign beats Mailchimp in our detailed comparison.
Who Mailchimp is for: Users who want a solid free newsletter service.
Omnisend’s mission is to give marketers ‘the power to rise above the promotional noise and get better results than ever.’ Sounds pretty appealing, right?
Due to its many automations, including browse abandonment and cart recovery, Omnisend is a great choice for online store owners.
What we like: As well as its excellent automated workflows, it also has some pretty unique features like ‘wheel of fortune’ incentives for sign-ups, interactive gift boxes, automated product recommendations, and even ‘live view’ website tracking. You’ll also be able to set up unlimited landing pages, set up SMS marketing, add your products directly in the email editor and segment lists based on specific details, for example, customers who purchased a specific product. Find out more about Omnisend's plans here.
Where they can improve: Unfortunately, the free plan now has a lower sending allowance (just 500 emails to 250 contacts), though you can store unlimited subscribers. Creating advanced non-ecommerce automations can get a little fiddly if you don’t have much experience.
Who Omnisend is for: Omnisend includes an impressive amount of features designed to help maximize conversions, so it’s a good email marketing service for those who have an online store on platforms like Shopify.
Moosend isn’t perhaps the most well-known email marketing platform out there, but, in light of its affordable prices and feature-rich service, we feel the tool deserves a place on this list.
What we like: Its Pro plan starts at just $9/mo for 500 subscribers and unlimited ad-free emails – not bad at all! You’ve also got a nice selection of around 70 email templates to choose from, spam testing, A/B testing and marketing automation.
We also like that they offer a pay-as-you-go plan.
If you’re going to be automating emails such as abandoned cart and upselling emails, or perhaps the more basic anniversary emails, this platform is definitely worth checking out – the automated workflow options are endless.
Where they can improve: They recently removed the freemium plan, which was a big part of its appeal.
Who Moosend is for: Those looking for a feature-rich, affordable email marketing solution.
Drip was launched in 2013 and has since become a popular email marketing service for ecommerce. Top features include ecommerce CRM features and intuitive sales and marketing automation. You will have access to all features on all paid plans, though you'll need to spend $99 or more for chat support to be included. Their lowest plan starts at $39/month for 2,500 contacts .
What we like: Their automation workflow editor is easy to use, well-designed and flexible, plus their icons and bright colors make it quite fun to use. There is a range of automation triggers to choose from including links clicked, page views, tags assigned, a purchase in your online shop, etc. Another great feature is that you can automatically tag users if they carry out a certain action, like visit a particular page.
Where they can improve: Surprisingly, Drip doesn’t offer any kind of spam or design testing and the email editor isn’t the most efficient or intuitive. You’ll also only have 6 email templates to choose from, though you can upload your own HTML templates. See why ActiveCampaign beats Drip in our detailed comparison.
Who Drip is for: Drip is a great all-in-one solution for ecommerce businesses. Their sophisticated automations and CRM features will help you save time and better organize your leads. Note that you'll need to connect your ecommerce store in order to be able to use Drip.
Like the aforementioned Sendinblue, Mailjet is based in Paris, France, and also used to focus on transactional emails. Their recent foray into the world of email marketing seems logical enough, and the editor works great for such a relatively new product. SMS, plus features such as autoresponders, A/B testing, sub-accounts (e.g. for agencies) and team collaboration are all included.
What we like: Very affordable plans and the free offer is generous too. Drag and drop editor works well, and the automations are decent. Mailjet also have had good deliverability rates in the past, according to our tests, just not so great more recently.
What they should improve: In order to access features like automations or A/B testing, you'll need to upgrade to one of their higher-level plans (Premium or Custom).
Who is Mailjet for: For beginners looking for something simple and affordable, it’s a great tool. Being able to manage multiple sub-accounts also makes it interesting for agencies too.
CleverReach's free plan has a decent email allowance (10,000), but with an allowance of 250 subscribers, you'll quickly outgrow it. Plus, you can only use it if you are from the US, Canada, India, New Zealand or Australia.
They do offer a lot of different pricing options, which may seem overwhelming at first, but they give you a lot of flexibility. Among them are flat-rate, pay as you go, and high-volume options. Then there are pro features such as their content segmentation that allows you to customize content blocks to your reader's preferences.
What we like: Their excellent deliverability rates – our most recent deliverability test saw a new high for them. They feature a decent automation center and let you set up your own tracking domain for outgoing links.
Where they can improve: It's a pity that signup forms aren't responsive. The editor has its quirks but nothing too bad.
Who CleverReach is for: Senders who require a newsletter tool with a broad range of features.
Maybe because Constant Contact have been doing email marketing since 1995, they managed to find new avenues that no other providers had touched. For instance, they were the only solution to offer event management tools, surveys or social campaigns. Unfortunately, they recently removed the event management tool, instead offering an integration with Eventbrite.
They now have around 650,000 users worldwide, and 270+ apps for integrating extra services to their platform. Is it still enough to make them relevant?
What we like: Consistently good email deliverability results. Niche features such as the ability to manage event invitations, registrations, and tickets.
What they should improve: Expensive and relatively basic automation. In general, Constant Contact lacks basic functions that you find elsewhere (see our Constant Contact alternatives guide). The editor is lacking in design options, and their templates could do with a revamp. See Constant Contact pricing details here.
Who is Constant Contact for: We see Constant Contact as too expensive for what it offers. You’d get more for your buck with ActiveCampaign or MailerLite.
Another young player in the email marketing services space, ConvertKit is taking an interesting approach by focusing on creators. That means Vloggers, YouTubers and bloggers, amongst others.
It’s a strange angle, especially since the features are basically the same as with other providers (for example, MailerLite). On the plus side, you get all the features, even on the cheaper plan.
What we like: Good email subscriber management features. Tags let you create advanced segmentation. Helpful support and good email deliverability rates.
What they should improve: Plans are pricey, especially when compared to more advanced email marketing services like MailerLite. Not many design options (only 3 templates available). Reports could have more options – they do not even show bounce rates. Their free account is very limited, not even including reports. The landing page editor is lacking in options and is not user-friendly at all. The landing page templates are also not the best.
Who ConvertKit is for: Individuals or small teams of digital marketers with a budget who are only looking to send plain text newsletters. Good enough for small companies without complex email marketing workflows.
AWeber claims to have invented the autoresponder. With over 20 years of operations, it’s entirely possible they did. However, we would have hoped these years of experience would deliver a better email marketing platform – more on that below.
On the plus side, all price plans offer the same features. You get things like A/B testing, email analytics and conversion tracking. They also have a mobile app, so you can send email marketing campaigns on the go.
What we like: Good features for list management and decent support.
What they should improve: AWeber is pretty expensive, which would be fine if the editor wasn’t buggy (after 20 years!). The automations are a bit basic and email deliverability is a real issue.
Who is AWeber for: Not sure, to be honest. There are cheaper and better alternatives. ActiveCampaign if you want a really smart solution and MailerLite for a solid email marketing service at a good price.
Present in 15 countries around the world, Benchmark prides itself on its international service. We’ve spoken with numerous members of their support team (in different languages) and the service was friendly, fast and gave good answers.
We’ve also been pleasantly surprised by how easy and intuitive the platform is while offering powerful marketing tools. This is particularly impressive when you can access many of the features without spending a dime.
What we like: Intuitive editor. A great choice of flexible and varied mobile-optimized templates. The support is top-notch.
Where they can improve: The automations are lacking. Storage space is limited, and you have to pay extra if you run out. Also, they have consistently performed very poorly in our deliverability tests.
Who Benchmark is for: Multilingual teams looking for an affordable and intuitive tool.
This French email marketing provider recently revamped its desktop software with a smart new design and a web-based version of their tool. It’s packed with new features, too, including automations, landing pages, and SMS. They offer a great selection of modern-looking email templates, and a drag and drop email editor that’s easy to use.
Bonus feature – if you’d prefer your data to stay offline, Mailify’s desktop version will actually let you keep your data hosted locally.
What we like: Great user interface, and some very fresh email designs. The editor is fast and easy to use, giving you plenty of flexibility to edit email marketing campaigns.
Where they can improve: Contact list management and automations are quite simple – would be great if you could do more with them. As they charge based on email sends, the service can also get a little pricey.
Who is Mailify for: If ease of use and good email designs are important to you, Mailify could be well-suited to your needs. We’d also recommend it for anyone wanting to keep their data offline.
Try Mailify for free for 30 days
At EmailToolTester, we only review cloud-based email marketing software. They have a couple of advantages over packaged software that is installed locally on your computer:
However, there are some disadvantages too:
In general, we’ve noticed that the best email marketing software is cloud-based. Smaller and medium-sized companies, in particular, benefit from having no IT maintenance to worry about. Never underestimate the amount of time and money that this costs. For smaller companies, it’s almost impossible to run an email server for newsletters that isn’t blocked by services such as AOL or Gmail at some point.
And then there’s the security aspect: many companies don’t like hosting their recipient lists off-site. The email marketing companies themselves will obviously be very careful to fix any security issues as quickly as possible – after all, it’s their reputation on the line. However, there will always be some residual risk.
Cloud-based software is usually available for a monthly subscription fee. There’s no upfront cost, and you’ll often get the chance to pay month by month or opt for discounted yearly plans. You can expect the following to be included within your monthly fee:
Tip #3: We often hear from people who are worried about not having many contacts to write to. If that’s the case for you, consider setting up a welcome email series as an autoresponder. This way, everyone who signs up starts receiving emails from you right away without the need for you to publish on a regular schedule (just yet).
A great way to encourage sign-ups is a free checklist, ebook or other exclusive content. Check out our complete guide to how to build an email list for more strategies like these.
Tip #4: Most newsletter services allow you to A/B test your subject lines. If you have a significant number of email subscribers (2000+) you should start doing regular tests to get a feel for your subscribers’ preferences.
Obviously, there is no one-size-fits-all piece of advice, as the best newsletter software for you may be completely different to the one I’d recommend for the next person browsing this page. That’s why I created a few categories to help you navigate.
Our focus is small business email marketing, which means that this review of email apps was created with you in mind. So, basically, if you just want a decent and affordable email solution that won’t cost you an arm and a leg, I’d recommend MailerLite or Sendinblue.
If, on the other hand, you want a CRM for your small business, and are also keen on getting your marketing automation close to perfection, check out ActiveCampaign or Drip. Of course, that means spending a little more, but hey, with all that automation you’ll either increase your sales or save time which you can invest elsewhere.
As an online merchant, you have very specific needs: Sales data should find its way into the newsletter software so you can use it to create segments and launch triggered campaigns (like abandoned cart emails). We’ve compiled a list of the top Shopify newsletter tools here.
Omnisend is fully focused on ecommerce and offers deep integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce. Using their product picker you can drag and drop your items very easily into your email campaigns.
If marketing automation features are important for you, check out ActiveCampaign or Drip. Use their free Deep Data Integrations for Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Square to pull in revenue, order numbers, order status, etc.
There are a number of free email marketing services to choose from. The most infamous is Mailchimp, which immediately grants users free access to a selection of handy email marketing tools. The only issue is that since their update, the subscriber and send limits on the free plan have decreased, therefore you may need to upgrade sooner than expected.
The best free email marketing service is MailerLite. The free plan includes 12,000 emails and up to 1,000 subscribers, automations and an excellent landing page editor. What’s more, you won’t get a shock once you move onto the paid plan, as prices start from just $10/month, and you’ll pay $32/month for up to 5000 subscribers.
Sendinblue also offers a free version, which comes with unlimited subscribers and 9,000 emails a month, just be aware of the daily cap of 300 emails. In terms of paid plans, even if you’ve got a bit of email volume they are very affordable. 40,000 emails per month go for only $35/mo.
Let me start by telling you which email mailing service you should avoid: Mailchimp doesn’t like their tool being used for affiliate marketing. Countless accounts have been closed because of this violation of their terms of service.
Instead, you should probably look at GetResponse. They recently introduced a sales funnel feature, which is particularly useful if you run lead generation campaigns via paid ads or webinars. We also have a much more detailed article on the best sales funnel builders here.
It is indeed old, but it doesn’t mean it’s ineffective. In fact, its maturity can be a strong indication that it’s here to stay, especially when you consider its excellent ROI of 36%. Look at the following pros:
As you can see, email marketing is still a robust and reliable workhorse. And as we mentioned in the last point above, the platforms are increasingly easy to use for complete beginners. Best of all, many of them come with free plans, so you can test the waters before spending money on the solution.
Now one more thing before we finish up – let’s just recap the basic email-marketing lexicon.
Autoresponder: A series of automated emails sent in sequence. Usually start as soon as a user subscribes to one of your forms. They can range from tips and tricks to sales funnels designed to convert clicks into sales. Learn more.
Bounced email: Undelivered email, because the address is invalid or deleted. Email marketing providers usually deactivate these users for you.
Deliverability: Not all emails reach users’ inboxes, for a number of reasons. The success rate is called email deliverability, and it’s worth considering when settling on a provider. We have put together a complete guide on email deliverability best practices, where you can find more detailed information on how to improve your email deliverability.
Email automations: Slightly more complex and flexible than autoresponders, as they don’t need to be on a time schedule. You can tag a user depending on the page they visit on your site and send them customized automated emails. Or you can trigger an email based on behavior (for example when they click a link). Some of these automations can go really far with site-tracking and complex logic trees.
GIF: It's a graphic file that can be animated. Why is this important? It's essentially impossible to embed a video in a newsletter that works across all email clients – most of the time it would be blocked. That's why animated GIFs are a popular way to add moving images. Services like Mailerlite and Mailchimp even automatically create a GIF animation by simply adding a video link (e.g. YouTube) to the template.
Pay-as-you-go and subscription models: Pretty self-explanatory. It’s like a mobile phone plan. You can credit a certain amount of emails to your account. Or you can pay monthly, which seems to be the most popular solution, especially for businesses. This usually means unlimited campaigns, with price variations based on your amount of subscribers. Check out our newsletter cost calculator to see the pricing offered by each provider.
Responsive email: Like with a website, the email adapts to the screen size. It means your newsletter should look good on desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets.
Template: A predefined style for your newsletter. The design styles might be basic or very fancy, with different fonts, colors and buttons. Using the drag-and-drop email builders, you can easily create nice-looking emails that contain images and rich formatting. We have a list of free responsive email templates that you can download, and that will work with any newsletter tool. You might also like to take a look at these newsletter examples for inspiration.
Transactional emails: Some providers also offer the ability to send triggered, business-related emails on mass – e.g. order confirmations, password resets, and renewal reminders.
Tip #5: If you are still new to all of this you should check out our Email Marketing Crash Course. It's a compact (and free!) ebook for beginners that will get you up to speed in very little time: Download it here
Prices vary a lot between different email marketing services. And more expensive doesn’t always mean better. For instance, Sendinblue and MailerLite have very good affordable plans. AWeber is on the pricier end, and you don’t even get better automation than with GetResponse or ActiveCampaign (nobody does better marketing automation than ActiveCampaign).
Choosing a free email marketing service to start with seems relatively risk-free. Do keep in mind that your emails will show a small ad, and you'll only have limited support.
Though ActiveCampaign is our number one email marketing service, some might be put off by the higher price tag. In which case, you should check out these alternatives to ActiveCampaign.
In any case, we hope this guide gives you a good idea of the pros and cons of each tool, so you can find the right email marketing service for you.
Questions? Feedback? We answer all comments below.
