Best Email Marketing Services Compared 2023
In 2023, email is still alive and thriving. Email marketing is still one of the most successful ways for businesses to reach engaged customers – if it’s done right. As a result, there is no shortage of email marketing services to choose from. Our staff has reviewed some of the most popular sites to help you cut through the clutter. Here are some of the biggest email marketing software on the market today.
Email Marketing Feature Comparison (Marketing and Sales)
We’ve compiled some of the most important marketing and sales features of any email marketing automation software in this review in the table below. This is especially handy if you are a B2B organization or one with a sales team, as you may need features like those included in a customer relationship management (CRM) system in your platform.
| Marketing Features | Active Campaign | AWeber | Constant Contact | ConvertKit | Drip | GetResponse | Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native Conversion tracking |  | |  | | | | |
| Web activity tracking | | | | | | | |
| Split testing Campaigns | | | | | | | |
| Splittesting Automations | | | | | | | |
| Dynamic Personalized Content | | | | | | | |
| Multichannel Attribution | | | | | | | |
| Site Messaging | | | | | | | |
| Facebook Integrations | | | | | | | |
| SMS Integrations | | | | | | | |
| Webinar integrations | | | | | | | |
| Native Landing page builder | | | | | | | |
| Native Shopping Cart | | | | | | | |
| Sales & CRM Features | Active Campaign | AWeber | Constant Contact | ConvertKit | Drip | GetResponse | Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leadscoring | | | | | | | |
| Native CRM System | | | | | | | |
| Task Management | | | | | | | |
| Realtime Sales alerts | | | | | | | |
| Gmail integration | | | | | | | |
| Mobile App CRM | | | | | | | |
| Create quotes & invoices | | | | | | | |
ActiveCampaign – Best for advanced automation marketing
ActiveCampaign is a complete email marketing tool with advanced automation features
ActiveCampaign has one of the most advanced automation systems we’ve ever tried, and it doesn’t compare to Constant Contact’s simplistic approach (it only has autoresponder capabilities). They also offer powerful reporting and analytics tools. On top of that, they’re even cheaper than Constant Contact.
Mailchimp – Best all-in-one email marketing
Excellent email marketing tools for managing your audience
Summary
MailChimp has one of the best free subscription plans of any email marketing service provider. Along with a long list of features including unlimited image hosting, Google Analytics, and integration with hundreds of apps, MailChimp is a great choice for beginners or those with limited funds. However, his automation features are not as advanced as those of his competitors and are more restrictive to affiliates.
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world, mainly because they offer a permanently free email marketing service plan.
While we no longer recommend it because there are better solutions on the market, the sad reality is that due to their popularity, we couldn’t create a list of the best email marketing software without including Mailchimp.
Mailchimp has a simple drag-and-drop email generator, autoresponders, grouping of contacts into groups, and simple tracking analytics. It also allows you to set send times based on the user’s time zone, and you can set segmentation based on geographic location.
You can easily integrate MailChimp with WordPress, Magento, Shopify and many other platforms.
When it comes to marketing automation features, the Mailchimp platform is quite limited compared to other providers on our list such as HubSpot, Drip or ConvertKit.
In recent years, Mailchimp has tried to add many “advanced” features, but after testing many of these features, they are not really advanced.
Mailchimp support is provided via email, live chat, and a large tutorial knowledge base. However, their support is often slow and does not compare to the quality of service you get from Constant Contact.
Mailchimp offers a perpetual free plan that allows you to send 12,000 emails to 2,000 users. This plan is quite limited as you don’t get features like send time optimization, advanced segmentation, multivariate testing, etc. You also need to display their brand image in your emails. Last but not least, the support is limited to emails only, which is fine if you are a hobbyist, but as a serious business you need reliable support that you can count on.
HubSpot – All in one email marketing and CRM for growing businesses.
HubSpot excels at automation
Summary
A powerful all-in-one inbound marketing platform that gives businesses the tools to build a customer base and increase sales. A full-fledged end-to-end marketing technology solution, HubSpot Marketing Hub’s impressive feature set spans sales, email marketing, and marketing automation, with enough flexibility to serve large or small businesses.A full-fledged end-to-end marketing technology solution, HubSpot Marketing Hub’s impressive feature set spans sales, email marketing, and marketing automation, with enough flexibility to serve large or small businesses.
Overall – 89%
HubSpot is one of the most well-known software in the CRM and email marketing space.
Their email marketing service is free to start, and it comes with a lot of powerful automation features designed to grow your business.
You can use their simple drag-and-drop email builder and a selection of templates to create a fully customized newsletter that matches your brand’s personality and color.
Thanks to the native integration with HubSpot CRM, you can personalize your emails for each subscriber based on device type, country, list membership, or any other custom information you may have for individual subscribers.
HubSpot has all the powerful features you expect from an enterprise-grade email marketing software, such as send-time optimization, high email delivery rates, A/B testing, detailed performance analysis, marketing automation, drip campaigns, and more.
One of the main reasons small, midsize and enterprise customers choose HubSpot is that they offer an all-in-one marketing platform that includes email marketing, CRM, automated workflows, sales tools, website builder, operations center and more.
Hubspot Email Marketing has a free plan that includes a CRM and all of HubSpot’s free marketing, sales, service and operations tools.
The free version allows you to send 2,000 emails and store an unlimited number of subscribers. You can create custom sign-up and pop-up forms, build landing pages, manage and track your online advertising, and much more. It has all the tools you need to get started.
If you need more advanced features, then their paid plans start at $50/month.
Constant Contact – Best easy-to-use email marketing tool.
Easy to use and serves the basic marketing automation needs.
Summary
Constant Contact is a pretty decent tool. It’s easy to use and can meet basic marketing automation needs. You can set up nice emails, it’s great for setting up campaigns, and it includes some cool other features. When it comes to automation, form building and A/B testing, Constant Contact lags behind other tools.
Constant Contact is an email marketing platform used by more than 600,000 businesses worldwide and served over 15 years. Its target audience is small businesses with basic email marketing needs. Pricing starts at $10 per month, and subscription costs increase depending on your number of contacts. Constant Contact offers a large library of integrations and email templates, but its segmentation, automation, and A/B testing capabilities are not as robust as top competitors.
Constant Contact vs Mail Chimp
| Features/Pricing | CTCT Core * | CTCT Plus * | MailChimp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plans? | No | No | Yes |
| 0 – 500 subscribers | $9.99/mo | $45/mo | Free |
| For 2,000 subscribers | $35/mo | $70/mo | $34/mo |
| For 10,000 subscribers | $80/mo | $125/mo | $87/mo |
| For 25,000 subscribers | $155/mo | $270/mo | $225/mo |
| eCommerce Segmentation | No | Yes | Yes |
| Customizable Pop-up Forms | No | Yes | Yes |
| Polls | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| RSVP | No | Yes | Yes |
| Monthly Email Sends | Unlimited | Unlimited | Based on Contact Limit |
| Facebook / Instragram Marketing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| List Building Tools | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nonprofits Discount | 20 – 30% Off | 20 – 30% Off | No |
| Free Trial | 30 days | 30 days | No |
GetResponse – Best for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
Reliable email marketing tool that works well for many SMBs
Summary
GetResponse is a reliable email marketing tool that works well for many SMBs, and it competes most directly with solutions like ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp.
GetResponse’s automated features are easy to use and competitive with similarly priced solutions. In addition, GetResponse offers several marketing tools beyond email, such as webinars and sales funnel software. However, GetResponse’s A/B testing tools are limited and only allow you to test different subject lines. In addition, GetResponse only allows you to add 8 conditions to each segment.
GetResponse is a popular marketing automation platform with over 350,000 customers in 183 countries. getResponse’s core product is email marketing, but it also offers a variety of marketing tools such as webinars and sales funnel software. The majority of GetResponse’s customers are small and medium-sized businesses with fewer than 30 employees.
GetResponse represents a more cost effective way to host and communicate with email databases. It is competitively priced in the marketplace and one of the more interesting email marketing products we have tested because it goes beyond e-newsletters; it facilitates e-commerce, sales funnels, live chat, push notifications and webinars.
It’s hard to think of a competitor email marketing solution that offers so many “comprehensive” recommendations; this makes it especially suitable for new business owners who don’t have the budget to invest in multiple tools. Its “free forever” plan is also very generous.
Overall, GetResponse is a solid email marketing tool that works well for many SMBs, and it competes most directly with solutions like Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign.
I was particularly impressed with GetResponse’s webinar feature – it’s very feature-rich and very valuable for what it is.
If you want a solid email marketing solution packaged with webinar and sales funnel features, you should consider testing GetResponse.
If you want to optimize email content, header text and messaging with robust A/B testing, we recommend other solutions such as ActiveCampaign.
Drip – One of Best for e-Commerce
Email Marketing for E-Commerce
Summary
Drip offers email marketing software that is aimed at eCommerce marketers. You can use it to generate new leads through engaging forms that appear at the right place and time. It also allows you to automatically send emails and SMS with enticing promotional content, support emails, or follow-up messages to users who have abandoned their shopping carts.
Drip is a powerful enterprise email marketing platform for eCommerce, bloggers and digital marketers. They offer a wide range of tools that make marketing automation, sales funnels and personalization easy.
Their email software offers seamless integration with all popular website builders, including WordPress and WooCommerce. this allows you to easily add pop-ups/opt-in forms to your website and capture more leads.
What sets Drip apart from competitors like Campaign Monitor are their smart marketing automation tools, smarter email segmentation, split testing capabilities, list groups, and a visual drag-and-drop builder to automate workflows. These features allow you to reach the targeted customers on your email list to get more sales.
Drip allows users to send mass emails while connecting and engaging with each customer on a personal level with their intelligent eCommerce marketing automation.
Their eCommerce revenue attribution feature shows us exactly how much revenue we generate from each email campaign.
Although it’s a bit pricey, we believe Drip is the best ecommerce email marketing software for ecommerce websites and business owners who want more advanced features to maximize their marketing efforts.
Drip offers a free trial and their plans start at $49/month and include all features.
Recently, they have added SMS notifications to all plans, allowing you to connect with your subscribers on both email and SMS marketing channels. This makes them a true all-in-one email marketing platform for store owners.
ConvertKit – Best for Creators, Professional bloggers, Authors, and Marketers
An email marketing tool built for content creators
Summary
ConvertKit is an email marketing tool made specifically for “creators” with the goal of making it as streamlined as possible to grow your list to tens of thousands of subscribers.
You’ve got everything you need to turn casual readers into subscribers, loyal followers, and repeat customers. And it’s all done through a simple, straightforward visual automation builder that anyone can use.
Including embedded forms, landing pages, autoresponders, a relatively straightforward tagging system, and a lot of other nifty features.If you’re a digital content creator – professional bloggers, writers, course creators, YouTuber – this tool is made specifically for you!
It also helps users build landing pages to sell products and services via email. Think of it as a cross between Infusionsoft and MailChimp, but cheaper and easier to use.
ConvertKit is a powerful email marketing platform for professional bloggers, authors and marketers. It is very easy to use and very powerful.
What makes ConvertKit unique is that it allows you to easily provide content upgrades and rewards through your email signup form. It also comes with an easy-to-manage autoresponder that allows you to send drip emails from their email service.
With ConvertKit, you can easily divide your subscribers into those who are interested and those who have already purchased. This helps you increase conversion rates by feeling more personalized with automated emails. In marketing terms, this is known as targeted email marketing.
They have all the great features you would expect from a top email marketing service, such as A/B testing, beautiful email templates, landing page builders, smart workflows, and more.
ConvertKit offers email-based support and has an extensive knowledge base and excellent learning materials.
Many of ConvertKit’s features, such as paid newsletters, are designed specifically for creators and professional bloggers, which is why we rated them as the best email marketing service for professional bloggers.
They even add the ability for you to sell digital products and subscriptions from the same platform.
ConvertKit offers a 14-day free trial and their pricing starts at $9/month. They also offer a 30-day refund policy.
Their Creator Pro program also includes premium features such as a newsletter referral system, subscriber ratings, advanced reporting, and Facebook custom audiences.
SendinBlue – Best SMS and email marketing software
Powerful marketing automation tool that combines email marketing, SMTP bulk emails, and SMS messages
Summary
SendinBlue is an effective and great email software for small and medium sized businesses. (So not for businesses.) They have a great free plan, and even with the paid plan, it’s one of the cheapest email software you can find. It’s easy to get started.
Sendinblue is an excellent digital marketing automation provider with the tools most businesses need to oversee email, text, landing pages, Facebook ads and more. Keep in mind that it lacks some noteworthy tools, especially content types such as two-factor authentication, surveys and polls, and mobile apps that users who want to manage campaigns on their smartphones or tablets are sure to miss.
The email editor lives up to its name and the click-through newsletter is fun. Automation isn’t as complicated as ActiveCampaign, but it’s very effective.
With all the features you expect, SendinBlue is worth using for your newsletters.
SendinBlue is a complete SMS and email marketing software for businesses. They are one of the fastest growing email marketing platforms in Europe.
It is a very easy to use platform with great tools to create beautiful and highly engaging emails. Their simple drag-and-drop email editor is perfect for beginners with no experience in email marketing.
SendinBlue includes user-friendly marketing automation tools that allow you to send transactional emails, create workflows for automated follow-up emails, and segment your subscribers. It can also use its artificial intelligence algorithms to select the best time to send bulk emails to ensure optimal email deliverability.
SendinBlue offers a completely free email marketing plan with unlimited contacts. Their free plan lets you send up to 300 emails per day, but all your emails will be branded with their branding.
Their paid plans start at $25 per month for Starter. You can also add text messages to your account, but the price will vary depending on your sending requirements.
They have recently improved their premium plan to include more advanced features such as a landing page builder, live chat, sales CRM and Facebook ad integration. This means users now get more value for the same price.
SendinBlue also offers a separate SMTP bulk email marketing service that you can use to power automated or transactional emails for your WordPress site. You don’t need this for email marketing campaigns, but if you have a large website and you want automated real-time content-based emails, this is a great feature.
AWeber – One of Best for Ecommerce
One of oldest and most popular email marketing service providers
Summary
AWeber is a powerful, business-focused marketing software that specializes in email marketing. Its web-based tools help businesses grow their businesses by engaging their audience with emails, landing pages, automation and more – all from a single platform.
Aweber used to be considered the best marketing automation solution on the market, especially because they were the first email service provider to focus on autoresponders. As time went on, new features were developed and new competitors entered the market. While we feel it hasn’t kept up with the competition, we still think it’s a good tool if you’re a beginner or don’t have advanced needs. It contains most of the basic features you would want to use in a marketing automation tool.
AWeber is one of the oldest and most popular email marketing service providers in the world. They offer a wide range of tools for small and medium sized businesses to manage their email marketing.
Getting started with AWeber is easy. It works seamlessly with most platforms, including WordPress.
You can use ready-made HTML email templates, list management, autoresponders, A/B testing, and email tracking with detailed insights.
AWeber also has other powerful email marketing features such as AMP email, automatic RSS-to-email for blogs, and tag-based user segmentation. However, marketing automation in GetResponse is considerably more advanced than what you’ll find in AWeber.
Support options include live chat, phone support, email support, live webinars, and an extensive library of how-to’s and tutorials.
AWeber offers a limited free plan for up to 500 users. After that, their pricing starts at $25/month. You can also sign up for a quarterly or annual plan to save even more.
Omnisend – Best for boosting ecommerce with shoppable emails
Powerful SMS and email marketing services for eCommerce businesses looking for omnichannel marketing automation solutions.
Summary
Omnisend’s biggest strength is how it’s tailored to promoting online stores. It pulls sales and customer data straight from your e-commerce platform, you can sell directly from your emails with a couple of clicks, and there are plenty of advanced, sales-focused analytics and marketing strategies like customer lifecycle mapping.
Best of all, Omnisend makes most of this simple and accessible, so even novice users can get to grips with its powerful tools.
It’s worth noting, however, that Omnisend’s strength is also its weakness. For example, while the sales-oriented analytics are great, the purely campaign-oriented stuff is pretty basic. It’s the same story with the product-focused templates, and with the limited use of landing pages.
All in all, Omnisend is by no means perfect, but it is pretty good, from quality, user-friendly campaign building, personalization, and automation, to excellent support and attractive pricing for the Standard plan.
Omnisend is an all-in-one email marketing automation platform. It is especially targeted at high-growth e-commerce businesses. You can integrate channels into your automation workflow, send personalized messages, and create your brand the way you want it.
However, Omnisend is more than just email. You can drive more sales from one platform by combining email with SMS and more channels.Omnisend’s template library makes it easy to create professional, stunning emails. You can easily customize their templates to fit your brand. Campaign Booster lets you resend emails with different subject lines to everyone who didn’t open them the first time.
Omnisend is a powerful SMS and email marketing service for eCommerce businesses that are looking for an omnichannel marketing automation solution.
They offer one of the most generous free email marketing plans because it includes all the powerful features such as pre-built automated workflows, user segmentation, A/B testing, performance reporting, and even SMS + web push notifications.
Most other free email marketing plans have limitations, but Omnisend is so confident in their value proposition that they offer most of the features in the free plan. As your contact list grows, you’ll need to upgrade to their paid plan.
Omnisend integrates seamlessly with all popular website builders and e-commerce platforms such as WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, and more. They also integrate with hundreds of other business tools such as live chat software, help desk services, and more.
One of the best things we like about Omnisend is their pre-built eCommerce marketing automation workflow designed to help you drive more revenue. This includes emails like welcome email series, shopping cart abandonment emails, cross-selling emails, and more.
Their email builder is very easy to use and has a large selection of email templates so you can create beautiful, on-brand campaigns. Once set up, you can personalize your emails using their powerful targeting and segmentation features.
What many users like about Omnisend is that they offer built-in SMS, so you don’t have to pay for a separate software, and their SMS feature allows you to send messages in 209 regions around the world.
Omnisend’s free email marketing plan allows you to reach up to 250 subscribers, while their paid plans start at $16 per month.
If you’re a small online business looking for more of an all-round service with decent e-commerce features and affordable prices, ActiveCampaign is worth checking out as an alternative.
Final Thoughts – The Best Email Marketing Services
There are dozens of email marketing services out there, and we want to make sure you choose the right one for your business needs. Here are our expert picks.
If you’re a small business, nonprofit, or new blogger, then we recommend Constant Contact. their pricing is great and their support team is absolutely top notch. Their onboarding team will help you find immediate success with email marketing.
If you run an online store/e-commerce website, then we recommend Omnisend or Drip as they offer the best e-commerce email marketing software. Their personalization and automation features are very powerful. We use Drip for many of our own business websites.
If you are a professional blogger or content creator, then we recommend ConvertKit. they offer an easy to use platform with advanced segmentation and funneling features that will help take your blogging business to the next level.
If you are a business owner and want a powerful marketing automation tool that combines email marketing, SMTP mass mailing and SMS, then we recommend SendinBlue. their platform is easy to use and they allow you to manage email and SMS from a single interface. They also offer a fairly generous perpetual free plan, which makes them the best free email marketing software out there.
If you are looking for an all-in-one email marketing solution, then we recommend HubSpot. they offer a powerful suite of marketing tools including email marketing, CRM, sales tools, live chat, website builder, and more. There free plan is great for lead generation as it allows you to store unlimited subscribers.
Email Marketing Software FAQs
Which is the best free email marketing service?
Many email marketing services will offer a free tier with limited usage. The best free email marketing service is SendinBlue because their free plan has no limit on the number of subscribers. HubSpot, Omnisend, MailerLite and MailChimp also offer free email marketing service plans.
Can I do bulk email marketing from my Gmail or Outlook?
In theory, yes. But this will quickly get your email account suspended. g Suite and Outlook are not made for mass emailing. They are the best solutions for professional business email.
How much does email marketing cost?
Your email marketing costs will depend entirely on the number of subscribers you have, the total number of emails you send per month, and the email platform you use. On average, the cost of email marketing for a small business is about $20-$300 per month because they manage their own campaigns. If you use an email marketing agency, then your costs could be closer to $500 per month or more.
Which is the best email marketing app for Shopify?
Many of the email marketing services mentioned above offer an intuitive Shopify application that is easy to use. We recommend using Omnisend or Drip as they offer powerful ecommerce marketing automation tools that integrate seamlessly with Shopify and WooCommerce.
Some big e-commerce players prefer Klaviyo’s Shopify email marketing, but their platform is quite expensive for small businesses.
Which is the best email marketing platform for WordPress?
Most email marketing platforms are deeply integrated with WordPress, as it is the most popular website builder on the planet, powering over 43% of all websites. With that being said, the best WordPress email marketing platforms are Constant Contact, Sendinblue and HubSpot.
Over the past few years, many business owners are also turning to native WordPress email marketing solutions like FunnelKit Automations because it can help you save a lot of money while offering all the powerful features like broadcast emails, automated drip emails, CRM and more, right inside WordPress.
Website owners use FunnelKit to create emails and then use the WP Mail SMTP plugin and SendLayer, Amazon SES, SendGrid or other SMTP services to ensure that all emails reach customers’ inboxes reliably.
What Is a Drip Marketing Campaign?
A drip marketing campaign is a series of emails that are sent to your subscribers at certain days and times. These emails aren’t sent to all of your subscribers at once. They’re only sent to those who have recently subscribed to your list or to whom you’re presenting a specific offer.
For example, some marketers have created drip plans that follow a typical cadence.
Someone learns about a business/brand, is intrigued, and sees that the company is offering an incentive for subscribing to their email list.
The person signs up and receives a series of emails, similar to what follows:
- A welcome email right after they sign up
- They’ll also receive access to the incentive, such as a free eBook or a “How To” toolkit
- They’ll continue to receive regular emails at various intervals upselling the product or service that they were introduced to via the free incentive
Instead of an eBook or toolkit, some brands offer a week-long challenge with daily emails. These typically begin a few days or weeks after the potential customer signs up. Days before the challenge begins, emails are sent to their inbox that build excitement for the event.
The subscriber will then receive a daily email for the duration of the challenge. These emails not only engage the customer because of the challenge, but they give them an idea of what it would be like to invest in you/your product or service.
Finally, after the challenge, one or more emails will be sent at designated times encouraging the customer to learn more about what you have to offer or to make a purchase right then.
What is considered a good open rate?
Open rates can vary from sender to sender. However, here are some general thresholds you can use to measure your open rate performance:
| Open Rate | Likely Sender Reputation |
| 0% – 15% | Low |
| 16% – 25% | Medium |
| 26% – 35% | High |
| 36+% | Very High |
If your open rates are continuously below 10%, we strongly recommend that you clean your list.
Are open rates always 100% accurate?
Unfortunately, open rates are not always accurate. Here are a few things that can impact the accuracy of your open rates.
- If your subscriber has images blocked in their email system, the tracking images mentioned at the beginning won’t be loaded. This might happen due to firewall settings as well.
- Spam filters can also automatically open emails before your subscriber has any chance of opening them. In this case this can elevate your open rates even if some subscribers might not open your email.
- If your email is too large (over 100 KB) your message might be clipped, and this will also block the tracking image from being loaded. When an email is clipped, the bottom part of the email won’t load automatically.
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