31 Best Email Marketing Tools, Software, Services & Platforms in 2021 (Updated January)

Email marketing tools are very useful and cost-effective to market your products and services. They are especially great marketing tools for small businesses that don’t have the technical know-how.

There were more than 3.7 billion global email users in 2017 and this number is expected to further grow to 4.3 billion users by 2022.

That is too big an opportunity to miss, for any marketer. And don’t forget, for every dollar invested in email marketing, marketers can get a return of over $38. That’s an ROI of 3800%.

Pro Tip: Identify the KPIs for every email campaign right in the beginning. In this way, you can measure your campaign’s performance more precisely.

But, what is email marketing and why should you use it?

Let’s find out.

What Is Email Marketing and Why Do You Need It?

Email marketing refers to the practice where marketers reach out to their target audiences via emails. It can be used for acquiring new customers as well as engaging current ones.

Email marketing allows you to build trust with customers and foster customer loyalty.  You can keep them informed about promotions, product launches, discounts, and offers.

This is a direct way of reaching your customers and via a channel that they like.

Why is this?

Well, consumers prefer brands to communicate with them via email over other forms of communication.

Image via SmarterHQ

There are some more things you need to know about email marketing.

You send emails to people who have given you permission to send emails by giving you their contact information. This automatically filters out the people who are absolutely not interested and thus makes email marketing more effective.

Additionally, the ROI of email marketing is also easy to measure with the help of email marketing tools. All of these tools provide basic analytics data on metrics like open rates, click rates, etc.

But how do you determine which email marketing tool is the best?

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Disclosure: Please note that a few of the links in this article are actually affiliate links. If you click on them, I will earn a commission, without any extra cost to you. Please know that I have only selected the best email marketing tools for you, which I personally tested and highly recommend. For more information, please read my affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy.

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How Can You Choose the Best Email Marketing Tool?

Email marketing tools can help you manage your email list, connect with your customers, and manage your email campaigns.

So, are all email marketing tools good for you?

Here are some of the factors to consider when choosing the best option for your business:

Integrations

Does the email marketing service integrate seamlessly with your customer relationship management software (CRM)?

It should also integrate easily with other third-party apps and social media platforms. Seamless integration allows you to handle customer data better and easily view key metrics.

You will also have an easy time determining which campaigns perform better and which ones need improvement.

Mobile-Optimization

According to an IBM study, most consumers prefer to read their emails on mobile. 49.1% of all emails in the world are opened on mobile. Compare this to 33.3% read on webmail and 17.6% on desktop.

Image via IBM

Choose an email marketing tool that has mobile-optimized templates. This way, your audience can read your emails clearly both on mobile and desktop.

Features and Functionalities

Before you choose an email marketing tool, consider these:

• Does the service provider allow you to do more than just create drip campaigns?
• Can you use it to run abandoned cart campaigns?
• Can you track orders and tracking info?
• Can you automate newsletters with relevant product promotions?
• Can you customize customer responses based on each request received?
• Can you effectively track, monitor, and analyze campaigns during and after completion?

Choose these options depending on the size of your business, the number of emails you plan to send, and the number of campaigns you need to run.

What Are the Benefits of Using an Email Marketing Tool?

Why should you bother using an email marketing platform?

Well, here are some of the advantages of using email marketing platforms:

Predesigned Templates

You do not have to design a template every time you need to run a campaign. Email marketing platforms provide you with numerous templates that you can customize to suit your brand colors and themes.

These templates work for all email service providers, including Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook, and others.

Manage Your Email Lists

You can use email marketing services that automatically manage your email list. They make it easy for you to segment your contacts and track the performance of your campaigns.

You can also send bulk personalized emails to your target audience without getting flagged as spam.

Analytics

These platforms provide analytics data on who opened your emails and which ones they opened. You can also find out how many links a subscriber clicked on, what subject lines were most effective, and so on.

This information allows you to tweak your strategy for better results.

Follow the Rules and Protect Your Reputation

The providers help you follow set rules and regulations within the email landscape.

For example:

Email marketing tools encourage you to provide an opt-out option to your subscribers. They also ensure that your subscribers can see your contact information when they receive your emails.

If you send bulk emails with a Gmail or Yahoo account, you run the risk of having your account shut down for running spammy practices. Email marketing tools, on the other hand, allow you to send bulk emails and not get flagged as spam.

What Are Some Email Marketing Best Practices?

Are you ready to boost your email marketing ROI?

Here are some best practices to take your marketing to the next level:

Know Your Audience

Your audience is more than their first or last name. You must understand:

• Their demographics
• The kind of communication they prefer
• What sets them apart from the general population?

You can get this information from your analytics data that can help you improve your email marketing strategy. It can also help you personalize your communications with your audience.

Send Your Emails at the Right Times

There are numerous studies on when one should send emails, but therein lies the big problem.

If Wednesday 10:00 am is the best time, according to studies, to send an email, then everyone will be waiting to send their emails at that time.

And the result?

Your target consumers get emails from different subscription services at the same time. Your email could easily disappear in that crowd.

So, when should you send your emails?

Choose the best time for your email list. Conduct tests and use analytics to figure out what time your target audience reads your emails more.

What days do you get the most open rates?

Keep testing until you find the best time for your subscribers, then use that consistently. This way, your audience can expect to receive your email on a particular day at a specific time. Consistency in sending emails can also help you improve open rates.

Choose a Sending Frequency

How many emails should you send to your audience and how often?

You may want more traffic for your website, but sending too many emails may put them off instead of increasing sales.

In this case, less is more. Make sure that every email you send to your contacts adds value to their life.

How frequently you send depends on what you have to offer. If you think you can send relevant and useful emails on a weekly basis, then do that. Otherwise, you can go for bi-weekly or monthly emails or newsletters.

Use Great Subject Lines and Clear Calls-to-Action

The best email subject lines are catchy, personalized, and creative.

Your subject line should encourage the reader to open your email. Therefore, it is important to write subject lines that are eye-catching. You can also personalize them and be creative to get more people to open your emails.

You should also have calls-to-action that direct your readers to your website. Let your email recipients know what to do next.

Make sure the call-to-action is clearly visible and has strong action words. You could also include a timer or an expiry date for an offer to create a sense of urgency.

Accept Feedback

Make it easy for your audience to send feedback after reading your content. It could be an email address, your social media accounts, or any other mode of communication.

Do not use “noreply” email addresses to send emails to your subscribers. Rather, you should open a line of communication between you and your audience.

The many responses you get may overwhelm you. But, it is worth the effort as it shows that you are open for feedback and makes people trust you more.

Test, Track, and Measure

Test your subject lines, calls-to-action, and messages to see which ones drive the best results. Find out if your current tactics are getting the desired results for your campaigns.

Are you achieving your email marketing goals?

Do you need to change some of your tactics?

As you can see, using email marketing opens numerous opportunities for your brand. However, to run effective email campaigns, you need email marketing tools that can help. This week, we bring you 31 of the best email marketing software services, to run successful email campaigns.

Bonus Tool: MailGenius

Before you can choose the right Email Marketing tool for you, we wanted to share a quick free bonus tool.

All of your email marketing efforts will fail if your emails don’t reach the inbox of your subscribers or end up in the spam folder. MailGenius will help you improve your email deliverability.

MailGenius works with ALL email service providers and can be used to optimize your emails BEFORE you hit send.

It’s simple to use, completely free and is a must-have for all email marketers.

Run a Free Test

What Are the Best Email Marketing Tools for Your Business?

Now that you are convinced that you need a robust email marketing tool for your business, we come to the topic of tool selection.

Want to know the best email marketing tools that you can use?

After considering the tool-selection criteria we mentioned before, we have identified 31 great email marketing platforms and tools for you.

We have highlighted each tool’s key features, pros and cons, pricing, usability, and level so that you can compare these tools side-by-side and find your best fit.

Ready to get started?

1. Pinpointe

Pinpointe’s ‘Email Marketing Tool for Teams’ is the best solution for companies who have multiple people collaborating to design and deliver their email campaigns. Enterprises and marketing agencies can define specific user roles like campaign creation, database management and reporting, for each team member. Agencies can set up as many as 500 separate team accounts for each customer and define or restrict what each team member can have access to.

Pinpointe provides one of the best drag and drop editors we’ve seen. With hundreds of templates and pre-made blocks, companies can create beautiful looking, mobile friendly emails very quickly and without having to know html.

The smart-segments feature allows you to target your emails to relevant prospects with precision. Overall, this is the go-to tool if you want to do email marketing at scale.

Starting Price: $49 per month.

Start a free trial now

2. HubSpot Marketing Free Email

HubSpot offers a fully-featured email marketing tool that was built to help businesses grow, no matter where they are on their journey.

The tool has a free-forever plan that allows you to send up to 2,000 emails per calendar month. Once the business grows, you can opt for one of the paid tiers and unlock more features and benefits.

The great thing about HubSpot is that it offers all-in-one solutions to help you do more than just email marketing. They enable you to use your website data to run more personalized email campaigns. You can also benefit from their live chat, form builder, CRM, and other features.

Image via HubSpot Marketing Free Email

Key Features

• Easy-to-use template builder with a drag-and-drop editor
• Ready-made, customizable goal-based templates
• A/B testing and advanced marketing automation features
• Audience segmentation options based on contact list membership and lifecycle stage

Pricing

• Free plan: send up to 2,000 emails per calendar month
• Paid tiers start at $50/month

Pros

• Access to powerful tools such as:
  • CRM to personalize emails
  • Automation features to save time on menial tasks
  • Forms to capture new contacts
  • And more
• A simple user interface
• Supports six languages
• Access to countless resources such as HubSpot Academy for you to learn how to use the tool and become a better marketer

Cons

• Emails include HubSpot’s branding
• Only basic templates available in the free plan
• Limited support with the free plan
• No A/B testing functionality in the free plan
• Third-party integrations required to benefit from features like abandoned cart notifications

Usability

Ideal for marketers who want to manage everything from one place including email marketing.

Pro Tip: Learn from HubSpot’s extensive knowledge base to use this platform in a better way.

3. MailerLite

MailerLite is an all-in-one email marketing tool designed to help you create, automate, personalize, optimize, manage, and conquer your email campaigns.

Features

Its drag-and-drop editor allows you to build professional and impressive newsletters without HTML skills.

With advanced targeting features, it becomes easier to personalize your campaigns and deliver the right emails to each subscriber at the right times.

You can track results, experiment with design elements and copy, and improve your engagement metrics using campaign reports, surveys, and click maps.

And what’s the greatest advantage?

You can also grow your audience using its website builder, landing pages, pop-ups, and embedded forms.

Pricing

MailerLite allows you to choose plans according to the number of subscribers you have. You can send unlimited emails to up to 1000 subscribers for only $10/month.

You can get a 14-day free trial of its premium features.

The platform offers other add-ons too such as MailerPro, Dedicated IP, and SitesPro at different costs. You can check out all of their pricing information here.

4. AWeber

AWeber is a popular email marketing tool that can help you create and send effective emails. It provides hundreds of customizable, mobile-responsive email templates that you can use to create your marketing emails.

Using AWeber, marketers can easily build email lists, send emails, and connect with their audiences quickly.

The tool can help you track and measure the performance of your email marketing campaigns.

Key Features

• Pop-ups and sign-up forms for data collection
• Built-in analytics dashboard
• Free email template library
• Easy contact management and segmentation
• Drag-and-drop email editor

Pros

• Affordable plans
• RSS compatibility
• Follow-up emails

Cons

• Monthly fee applies even if you’re not actively using the tool
• Credit card required to subscribe for the free trial
• No free plan

Starting Price

• $19 per month
• Free one-month trial

Level: Advanced

Usability

Anyone who wants to grow their business can use AWeber.

Case Study

EastVille Comedy Club used the AWeber Smart Designer to create a custom email template that showcased the personality of the visual brand in a great way.

Pro Tip: Take advantage of the tool’s sign-up forms and collect contacts from your social profiles.

5. Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder an email marketing tool which provides website visitor tracking software solution. Once you know who visits your website, you can get more information on them and then send bulk emails to drive conversions.

What else?

This is clearly one of the best email marketing tool for small businesses as it allows you to find leads by seeing who visits your website.

You can find the companies that have visited your website, understand how they found you, and their interests. This way, you can send bulk emails to your leads and get conversions.

Key Features

• Native and two-way integration with CRM and email marketing tools
• Facilitates targeted emails to the right decision-makers
• High-quality leads

Pros

• High degree of flexibility
• Excellent integrations
• Easy setup
• Neat user interface

Cons

• Costly if you have multiple websites
• Basic filters

Starting Price

• $55 per month
• Free LITE plan
• Free trial of the PREMIUM plan

Level: Advanced

Usability

It’s a great tool for lead generation, especially if you don’t have marketing automation software. Businesses on tight budgets can step up their sales and email marketing by using the verified warm leads provided by Leadfeeder.

Pro Tip: If you want to cut through the noise and reach qualified leads, integrate Leadfeeder with your CRM. You will get customer insights as well as data.

6. SendinBlue

Sendinblue is a great email marketing tool that can help you run effective campaigns in an automated, seamless manner.

What’s more?

It allows you to create professional-quality newsletters using their drag-and-drop feature and just a few clicks. Even professionals who don’t have any knowledge of coding can easily use their platform to create attractive newsletters.

Its advanced segmentation lets you target narrow audience segments with the right message.

Key Features

• CRM integration for you to access contact details and insights
• Unlimited contacts
• Support for bulk emails
• Rich email template library
• A/B testing of email subject lines and sending times
• Dynamic content to give your emails a personal touch

Pros

• Comfortable pricing structure for small businesses
• Easy to use

Cons

Less than perfect customer support.

Starting Price

Free (for 300 emails/day)

Level: Intermediate

Usability

Works with Android, iPhone/iPad, and is cloud-enabled.

Case Study

The France-based platform has added a number of SMB-friendly features to help small companies accelerate their growth through email marketing. They partnered with Vonage to integrate their SMS-platform, Nexmo, with email capabilities.

Pro Tip: If you’re using their Enterprise solution, take advantage of the account management service. You’ll get a dedicated expert who works with you closely to optimize your email campaigns.

Sign Up for Free

7. GetResponse

GetResponse is primarily an email marketing tool. It imports, hosts, and captures data of mailing lists. It helps you create newsletters that can be sent to the subscribers on your mailing lists.

You can schedule and send bulk emails with the help of autoresponders. It provides you detailed analytics and other stats like click-through, open rates, and other metrics for your email marketing campaigns.

It’s also the best email marketing service for those who want to create landing pages as well.

Key Features

• Workflow automation
• Autoresponders for automatic follow-up emails
• Advanced segmentation
• Unmatched delivery with the Perfect Timing feature
• Split testing of emails
• Drip campaigns on readymade funnels

Pros

• 24/7 live support
• Scalable pricing
• All-in-one solution
• Free email marketing courses

Cons

• Complex navigation
• Limited customization options

Starting Price

• $12.30 per month
• 30-day free trial
• No credit card needed, cancel anytime

Level: Advanced

Usability

Technologically-challenged users can also use this tool with ease. Marketers can create end-to-end funnels.

Case Study

A case study published on their website states how an ecommerce client, LandCafe.pl, earned 54% sales through an educational email campaign which they made using GetResponse.

Pro Tip: Enroll in one of the free courses on the platform to improve your email marketing skills.

8. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is an easy-to-use email marketing tool that helps you send bulk emails.

This tool allows you to import customer data from email clients and spreadsheets. You can personalize email sign-up forms and embed them on web pages and Facebook. It has real-time reporting features that help you track clicks, email opens, social shares, and more.

Key Features

• Automatic welcome emails
• Subject line testing feature to optimize your subject lines
• Reliable deliverability mechanism
• Smart segmentation of contacts based on actual metrics like past clicks
• Triggered email workflows based on click events
• Automatic resend emails
• Effective list-building tools

Pros

• Affordable plans
• Free trial
• Sign-up forms
• Unlimited emails
• Integration with Google Analytics

Cons

• Testing is not very smooth
• Slow-to-load dashboard
• Less granular control over campaign permissions

Starting Price

• $20 per month
• First month free
• 30-day free trial

Level: Intermediate

Usability

It’s easy to use. You get wide support options, such as FAQs, help articles, and toll-free coaching. You also get phone support in specified durations.

Pro Tip: Its segmentation feature is legendary. You can break down your contact list into numerous micro-categories and target them with relevant messages.

9. Clearbit Connect

This is a useful email marketing tool used for finding email ids. Clearbit Connect helps you connect with anyone with an email ID within a few seconds.

If you have been searching for contacts in a company, this tool will provide it to you.

What’s more, you ask?

You can find people by name, job title, or role. It can provide you with other relevant details of the contact person too.

Key Features

• Widgets for Gmail or Outlook to make things simpler for you
• Additional contact information, such as location, titles, and personal details
• Smart filtering of contacts by parameters like role and location
• Integrates with Salesforce

Pros

• User-friendly interface
• Salesforce integration gives you great contact insights

Cons

• Lack of data for selected sectors like FMCG and CPG
• Sometimes, their data pool contains outdated information

Starting Price

It’s completely free.

Level: Beginner

Usability  

You can add Clearbit Connect to your Gmail or Outlook, and use its email ID finder from there.

Pro Tip: Sign up early to get a forever-free account.

Pricing

Free trial for 14 days – No credit card required.

Clearbit Connect is one of the best marketing tools for small businesses as its absolutely free to use.

10. BombBomb

BombBomb is a video email service. It helps you send personalized video emails to your prospects. This makes it one of the best email marketing tool.

Still not convinced?

Videos in emails boost its engagement rates. BombBomb allows you to send video emails right from your inbox. You can record and send videos easily, or do screen recording for the video. You can also get an animated preview of your video so that customers can see it right away.

Key Features

• Integration with Gmail, Salesforce, and Outlook
• Allows sending video emails and previews right from your email inbox
• Android and iOS app versions let you take videos from your smartphone and embed them in emails with one click
• Efficient email tracker

Pros

• Weekly podcasts for explaining video marketing best practices
• Webinars for troubleshooting the tool
• Live chat support

Cons

• The editor is a bit clunky
• Not very easy to use

Starting Price

• $468 per year per user
• 14-day free trial
• No credit card required

Level: Advanced

Usability

If you use email marketing for nurturing customer relationships, BombBomb is the right tool for you. It can humanize your brand generating delectable video emails that tell your brand’s story effectively.

Pro Tip: BombBomb is not just a video emailing tool that you use once in a while. Use its CRM-like capabilities and tracking to create end-to-end email marketing campaigns.

11. Cakemail

Cakemail is one of the finest email marketing tool for small businesses because it provides a hassle-free email designing experience. It lets you send beautiful emails to multiple contacts at scale.

It has all the basic and fundamental features that you need in an email marketing tool. Easy import of contact list, easy to use email editor, testing, scheduling, personalization, tracking, this tool has you covered in all aspects.

Key Features

• Appealing responsive emails with optimized fonts, colors, and layouts
• Ready-to-use email templates and content blocks
• Dynamic content and personalization
• Efficient contact management and segmentation
• Consent management to secure opt-in and opt-out from contacts
• Analytics and reporting

Pros

• Affordable
• Easy to use
• Efficient list management

Cons

• Sluggish performance when sending bulk emails

Starting Price

• Free trial
• No credit card required
• $8 per month

Level: Intermediate

Usability

Best for freelancers and small businesses

Pro Tip: Use Cakemail to craft beautiful newsletters with personalized content and great layouts.

12. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a powerful email marketing platform that has email automation capabilities. This email marketing tool can help you use your email list to grow your business. Bloggers can use easy-to-embed, customizable opt-in forms for readers.

Key Features

• Customizable opt-in forms to get more subscribers
• Advanced segmentation based on interests and activities
• Automated emails to increase your conversions
• Time-sensitive broadcasts for bulk emailing
• Easy integrations
• Easy-to-use dashboard

Pros

• Easy tagging and segmentation
• Great educational tutorials

Cons

• Users need technical knowledge to use this platform
• Migration from multiple lists to single list can be tricky

Starting Price

• $25 per month on annual basis
• Free plan for up to 500 subscribers
• 14-day free trial

Level: Advanced

Usability

This tool is great for online creators and businesses.

Pro Tip: Users will enjoy the flexibility that this tool offers. You can create a single consolidated list of contacts and then tag and segment them like you want.

13. EmailOctopus

EmailOctopus is an email marketing tool that helps you manage your email marketing campaigns with the help of Amazon SES.

You can also use pre-designed templates, analyze and optimize campaigns, and automate them. Store the details of your contacts and send bulk emails with no effort, within an automated workflow.

Want to know more of its features?

Key Features

• An intuitive editor that lets you put together sleek emails
• Efficient automation to send bulk emails and drive conversions with ease
• Real-time analytics to capture granular metrics like clicks, opens, bounces, and unsubscribes
• 500+ integrations through Zapier
• Code-free collection of subscriber information through the WordPress plugin and embedded forms

Pros

• Pocket-friendly price
• Non-gimmicky features

Cons

• Limited features for collaboration

Starting Price

• Free Starter plan with 10,0000 emails a month
• Pro plan for $20 monthly with a cancel-anytime option.

Level: Intermediate

Usability

It’s good for small and new businesses

Pro Tip: Use the savings calculator to find out exactly how much you will save after subscribing to this tool. In this way, you will be able to plan your marketing budget better.

14. FeedBlitz

FeedBlitz is an all-in-one email marketing tool that helps you manage email marketing, RSS feeds and social media. It helps you convert your feed and blog updates into newsletters which are then delivered to your subscribers via emails.

You can segregate and manage multiple mailing lists, filter by content preferences, schedule and send bulk emails. It also enables social media sharing.

Wondering if this is the right tool for you?

Check out its features and pros.

Key Features

• Fully-customizable email campaigns
• No cap on the volume of delivered messages
• Email subscription SmartForms
• Integrations with third-party apps
• Support for workflows related to ecommerce

Pros

• Real-time reporting
• Compatible with most CMS
• RSS-to-email feature

Cons

Limited number of templates

Starting Price

• $7 monthly or $49 annually
• Discounted plans for RSS-only users
• Branding of RSS feed at concessional rates

Level: Intermediate

Usability

It can be used by bloggers, ecommerce vendors, small and mid-sized businesses, and agencies.

Pro Tip: If you publish posts on your website or blog regularly, use their RSS-to-email feature to  share your posts via email with your contacts. You can also schedule them for later.

15. Infusionsoft

This email marketing tool can double up as a CRM software solution as well. With it, you can automate different sales and marketing processes.

It keeps all of your customer information in one place along with your communication history with them. You can personalize and send bulk emails. You can also A/B test your emails to optimize your email marketing.

Key Features

• Automate your workflows to ensure timely delivery of emails
• Unified dashboard to view all your interactions from a single place
• Personalized emails to both new and old subscribers
• Built-in CRM
• Detailed analytics

Pros

• All-in-one marketing platform

Cons

• No free plans

Starting Price

• Starting from $100 a month
• Free trial
• Free demo

Level: Intermediate

Usability

It’s a good fit for SMBs that want functionality at par with Salesforce and Zoho.

Case Study

Presidential Pools from Arizona, USA generated 4X leads using email campaigns that they made using Infusionsoft.

Pro Tip: You might find the tool’s user interface a bit overwhelming at first. If you feel overwhelmed, take advantage of the live coaching feature to learnhow to use the tool in the best way.

16. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is a powerful email marketing tool for email automation.

Why, you ask?

Their easy to use drag-and-drop email builder and professionally designed templates help you execute email campaigns with ease.

You can schedule your emails and keep your customers engaged. Personalize and segment to send super-relevant emails. You can also use behavioral data to build relationships. And you’ll have a full analytics suite to track your email campaign’s performance.

Key Features

• Visual journey designer to set up personalized customer journeys. This way, you can create more timely emails and drive revenue automatically.
• Segmentation features to create highly-targeted segments that increase email relevancy
• Hundreds of readymade email templates
• Drag-and-drop editor
• Countdown timer to create urgency
• Sign-up forms to build your contact list
• Feature-packed analytics suite
• 250+ seamless integrations with platforms like Shopify, Magento, and Facebook

Pros

• Can be used without coding/designing experience
• Suggestive tips for email formatting
• Affordable pricing

Cons

• Some features can be hard to find in their GUI (graphical user interface)
• Templates have restricted formatting options

Starting Price

• $9 per month
• Pay per campaign option also available
• Free trial but only for less than 5 contacts

Level: Advanced

Usability

It has a responsive interface that looks good on all devices and screen sizes.

Case Study

The Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation in Australia used Campaign Monitor to accelerate their email marketing. They saw an increase of 50% in their subscriber base. They found the tool to be 2X more productive than the other tools they have used for the same purpose.

Pro Tip: The tool’s scenario handling capability helps in smart contact segmentation. Use it to drill down upon narrow audience segments.

Happy with the options provided so far?

Read on to find more amazing tools for your business…

17. Litmus

Litmus is a comprehensive email marketing tool which enables marketers to build, preview, test, and track their email marketing campaigns.

It’s the best email marketing service for those who want to build engaging emails quickly. Marketers can leverage it to catch errors and improve email performance as well.

Want to know the best part?

HTML changes can be applied and viewed at the same time. You can test and track the performance of your email campaigns with ease.

Key Features

• Email creation and testing to ensure maximum deliverability and open rates
• Real-time tracking of sent emails
• Drag-and-drop web-based email editor
• Customizable, ready-to-use email templates
• Guided check of critical elements before you send your emails
• Collaboration feature to shorten your email review cycles and accelerate your campaigns

Pros

• Efficient HTML editor
• Robust spam tests
• Integrated dashboard

Cons

• Limited previews
• Hefty price tag

Starting Price

• $79 a month if paid annually (for 1 user)
• 7-day free trial

Level: Intermediate

Usability

Litmus is meant for multi-user teams where collaboration and teamwork are required. For a single user, the tool doesn’t give value for money.

Pro Tip: Make use of their pre-send testing to see how your emails will render in different inboxes.

18. Mailgun

Mailgun comes with a host of email marketing tools to help you optimize your campaigns. Think of it as a transactional email API integration—a cloud-based service to send, receive, and track emails. It has excellent features for intelligent inbound routing, storage, and email validation.

It simplifies the process of sending transactional or bulk emails. It has searchable logs. You can scale quickly. You can use tracking and analytics to manage emails.

Key Features

• Email ID validation
• Burst sending of up to 250,000 emails every minute
• A/B test of data
• An email API that sets up the platform in minutes
• Inbox placement to predict deliverability issues so that you can remediate on priority

Pros

• Generous threshold of 10K free emails
• 24/7 customer support
• 99.99% uptime SLA for high deliverability

Cons

• Lacks a responsive app
• Complicated navigation if you use multiple domains

Starting Price

• Free for 10K emails per month
• Paid plans start from $79 monthly

Level: Advanced

Usability

It’s best for developers who are looking for a simple email API.

Case Study

Quantum Response Business used Mailgun to uplift their email marketing performance. According to a case study on Mailgun’s website, the mega-brand has recorded a 95% increase in their email sessions, which has boosted their website traffic.

Pro Tip: If you face any issues while using the platform, don’t hesitate to get in touch with their customer care team. They respond really quickly.

19. MotionMail

What’s unique about MotionMail?

MotionMail offers free countdown timers – an impressive email marketing tool for your emails. You can easily integrate the timer with your email marketing software and leverage the fear of missing out (FOMO) in your audience.

Countdown timers help you increase engagement, conversions, and sales from your emails. They help your subscribers take action by a certain date or time by creating a sense of urgency. And they can help marketers foster anticipation for upcoming events.

Key Features

• Code-free application of countdown timers by using code snippets
• Visual and customizable countdown timers
• Timers compatible with different time zones
• Support for multiple languages
• Accurate tracking of timer impressions

Pros

• Free edition with a liberal view limit
• Unlimited timers

Cons

• No immediate testing feature
• Weak customer support

Starting Price

• Free version for 20K views
• 20% off on annual plans
• $10 per month

Level: Beginner

Usability

It’s a good resource for marketers who rely heavily on email marketing to drive sales.

Pro Tip: Use the countdown timer in transactional emails that promote limited-time sales and offers.

20. NewsletterBreeze

This is also a very handy email marketing tool for businesses that want to curate and send newsletters to their contacts, but do not have the time and resources to do it manually.

NewsletterBreeze generates content for newsletters by automatically gathering and curating content. It collects the best industry news from the web.

Want to know the best part?

You can integrate NewsletterBreeze with any email marketing software easily.

Key Features

• Automated gathering and content curation feature
• Option to manually add content to your newsletters and send bulk emails via Mailchimp, Sendinblue, etc.
• Support for ecommerce stores
• News button

Pros

• Crated content
• Affordable price
• Efficient automation

Cons

• Limited features

Starting Price

• $17 a month
• Free for the first 15 days

Level: Beginner

Usability

It can be used by content marketers and small business owners.

Pro Tip: Embed the News Button in your browser to access the latest news at your fingertips and use it in your newsletters.

21. Sendbloom

Primarily a sales automation platform, Sendbloom can be also used as an email marketing tool. It is data-driven and helps create hyper-targeted email campaigns. Its smart crawlers and database help you get valuable contextual information about your prospects.

Sendbloom helps you create consistent sales processes and you can launch email marketing campaigns with ease using it. Marketers can tailor each email to ensure that they are highly relevant for the prospects.

Key Features

• Segment designer helps you build campaigns of any granularity
• Campaign manager to track and analyze your campaign- and segment-level metrics
• Custom templates
• Integration with Gmail and Outlook
• Automated follow-up workflows for every contact

Pros

• Easy to use
• Granular analytics

Cons

• Auto-responses are viewed as replies
• No pricing information on the website

Starting Price

You need to contact them to get customized quotes.

Level: Advanced

Usability

It can be used for companies of all sizes.

Pro Tip: The Segment designer is Sendbloom’s unique feature. Use it to drill down into your contact list at prospect-level.

22. Sendy

Sendy is a self-hosted email marketing tool as well as newsletter marketing software solution. It lets you send trackable emails through Amazon SES. You can send bulk emails at a low price with no compromise on deliverability.

Key Features

• Easy-to-understand, customized reports of your campaigns
• Allows you to retarget segments of subscribers from your report
• Autoresponders
• List and subscriber management
• Bulk emails and newsletter via Amazon SES
• White-labeling of client accounts

Pros

• Cost benefit in bulk emailing
• Third-party integrations

Cons

• No list segmentation
• No support for RSS to email

Starting Price

• One-time free of $59
• $1 per 10,000 emails

Level: Intermediate

Usability

It’s great for small brands that need bulk emailing to grow their business with minimum investment.

Pro Tip: Use Amazon’s reliable deliverability and affordability and do email campaigns at scale using Sendy.

23. Slik

Slik is an email prospecting tool that enables you to gather email addresses of the people through their LinkedIn profiles. No more manual prospecting.

This email marketing tool helps you improve your email marketing campaigns by finding email IDs. You can easily send bulk emails using email marketing services such as Mailchimp and Sendinblue after prospecting through Slik.

Key Features

• Automated prospecting and lead generation
• Provides contextual data about your leads
• Advanced filtering system
• Huge database of verified contacts

Pros

• AI-powered
• Easy to use

Cons

• Limited credits in low-end plans

Starting Price

• $70 per month
• Free trial

Level: Intermediate

Usability

You can use it with most major email marketing tools. 

Pro Tip: Use the prospecting tool to send transactional emails, not marketing emails so that you don’t get spammed for cold emailing.

24. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a cloud-based email marketing tool. You can easily create, execute, analyze, and track email marketing campaigns. Welcome, re-engage, and follow-up with your contacts automatically.

You can easily create integrated campaigns with social media, email, ads, and other modes.

Marketers can also track data and get insights from it to improve the email marketing campaign.

Mailchimp is one of the most widely used email marketing services for small businesses.

Want to know why? Let’s find out.

Key Features

• Spam filter diagnostics
• Autoresponders
• Segmentation of contact lists by time zone
• Tools for social networking integration
• Integrated marketing CRM
• Integration with 300+ apps

Pros

• Exceptional support team that won 4 Gold Stevie Awards in 2020.
• Scalable pricing plans
• GDPR-compliant

Cons

• Support only with paid plans
• Phone support only with the top-tier plan

Starting price

• Free plan with basic templates
• $9.99 per month
• Pay-as-you-go plan for infrequent senders

Level: Advanced

Usability

It can support both small startups as well as large enterprises. If you’re a WordPress user, Mailchimp is the perfect email marketing tool for you.

Pro Tip: Use mailchimp’s reliable analytics to discover insights about your email subscribers. Then, target them with the right message every time.

Pricing

Mailchimp is one of the best marketing tools for small businesses as the basic plan is free to use. Its premium plans start from $10 per month.

25. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one email marketing tool. It helps you with automation marketing and much more.

By using ActiveCampaign, marketers can turn leads into customers and repeat customers.

Key Features

• Drag-and-drop campaign builder
• Advanced segmentation
• Personalization and dynamic content
• Autoresponders
• Drip campaigns
• Automated workflows

Pros

• Intuitive GUI
• Top-notch customer handling
• Affordable rates

Cons

• Restricted reporting options
• Integrating third-party apps can turn out expensive

Starting Price

• $9 per month, payable on a yearly basis
• Free trial

Level: Advanced

Usability

Want to know who should use this tool?

This is one of the best email marketing services for small businesses that features CRM and marketing automation tools. It’s the best email marketing service for those who want to segment their target audience too.

Case Study

One of their clients, Screencastify, sent beautiful bulk emails informing their contacts about how the brand is helping educators teach remotely during COVID-19.

Pro Tip: If you’re a WooCommerce user, ActiveCampaign allows you to send automatic welcome emails and triggered emails.

26. Drip

Drip an email marketing tool which helps with marketing automation for ecommerce businesses. It helps you send personalized emails to first time buyers, return buyers, customers who abandon their carts, and more.

It helps you build relationships with customers and simplifies your sales funnel. This email marketing tool also lets you send out drip emails to your customers so that you can reach them when the time is right.

This makes it one of the best email marketing services for small businesses.

Key Features

• Visual workflow builder to design custom email campaigns
• Impressive customer tracking capabilities
• Ecommerce CRM integration
• Behavior-based workflows
• Personalized emails

Pros

• Powerful automation
• Integration with leading CRMs and ecommerce platforms

Cons

• Not the best templates
• Form builder has limited features

Starting Price

• $49 per month
• Free trial for 14 days

Level: Advanced

Usability

It’s best suited for ecommerce stores.

Case Study

The Spice House vouches for Drip’s exceptional contact segmentation and customer support. They were able to uplift their promotional emails and broadcasts by using Drip’s powerful automation and personalization capabilities.

Pro Tip: Use their ecommerce-specific workflows like win-back emails and cart abandonment emails.

27. Sendloop

Sendloop is a smart, full-featured email marketing tool and marketing automation software solution. It helps you nurture leads, segment them, and then run highly targeted email campaigns. And it provides in-depth analytics.

It’s possible to send bulk emails up to 100k per month and you can easily increase your delivery rates with it too.

Sendloop Classic is the best email marketing service for small businesses and has a user-friendly and simple platform as well.

Key Features

• 80+ free templates
• Managed Delivery Service for bulk emailing
• Drag-and-drop email builder
• Email slicers for segmentation
• Subscriber import
• Social media sharing
• On-premise option to run it on your own servers

Pros

• One-stop email marketing solution
• Responsive customer service

Cons

• No mobile-optimized emails
• Limited variety in plans

Starting Price

• $1750 per month
• Includes SNDS and Google Postmaster monitoring
• Includes 24/7 reputation management

Level: Advanced

Usability

It’s best for customers looking for a start-to-finish marketing automation solution. It is a single tool that will meet all of your marketing needs.

Case Study

Connected Pictures is a film production company in London. They used Sendloop to streamline their email marketing. The tool helped them create always-on email marketing campaigns and get all their subscribers under one roof.

Pro Tip: Use the tool if you have scattered audiences or need targeted messaging for specific audience groups.

28. Zoho Mail

This email marketing tool is an ad-free email hosting platform for businesses. It comes in the Office suite with Zoho Docs.

Zoho is an email marketing tool that lets you retain your emails across the organization. It also lets marketers create a domain for their businesses and set up custom email addresses.

You will be able to manage all incoming/outgoing emails, set individual quotas, and block unwanted emails. It comes with an.

Key Features

• Powerful admin control panel
• Control over functions like domain management, group management, and email restriction policies
• Allows blocking unwanted emails
• Enterprise email
• Easy migration
• Robust eDiscovery portal for compliance with email retention rules

Pros

• 99.99% uptime
• Neat interface
• Easy integration with email clients using SMTP

Cons

• Faulty copy/paste functionality
• Pricing per user is steep

Starting Price

• $59 per month per user
• 5 GB space free
• 15-day free trial for the MAIL PREMIUM plan
• No credit card required

Level: Advanced

Usability

It’s a great tool if you manage your email marketing on the move. The Android app version is very efficient.

Case Study

Rambal Limited is a client of Zoho. While signing up for Zoho, they were worried about migrating their mammoth contact database and securing their inbox. But they were in for a surprise. Zoho not only made their inbox impregnable but also ensured no productivity loss during the transition period.

Pro Tip: Use the powerful admin control panel to manage user access and permissions and simplify your delegation task.

29. Omnisend

Omnisend is an omnichannel email marketing tool that’s a rising star in the automation marketing world.

With email marketing at its core, Omnisend offers powerful automation that not only allows you to automate your emails but improve email marketing results using other channels as well.

With Omnisend, you can add these channels into the same automation workflow: email, SMS, Facebook Messenger, web push notifications, WhatsApp, Viber, and more.

In this way, you can capture insights about subscribers from different touch points and create omnichannel marketing campaigns.

Key Features

• Sign-up forms for collecting email IDs
• Visual email editor
• Advanced segmentation
• Micro-targeting
• A/B testing of critical email elements
• Many click-rate booster tools Product Picker and Gift Box

Pros

• Simple to set up
• Helpful tutorials
• Great customer service

Cons

• No RSS-to-email feature
• The interface is not very intuitive

Starting Price

• Free plan for 15K emails/day
• Paid plans starting from $16 per month
• All paid plans have a 14-day free trial

Level: Intermediate

Usability

B2B, B2C, SaaS, and solo entrepreneurs can use the platform with ease.

Case Study

One of Omnisend’s clients is The Cake Store. They made $37,000 by using the custom workflows in Omnisend. They have reported 32X more sales conversions since they started using Onmisend.

Pro Tip: If you own or promote an ecommerce store, Onmisend can take your store’s conversions to the next level. The tool is compatible with leading ecommerce platforms like Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce.

30. Exponea

Exponea is a powerful platform to understand and communicate with your customers through emails and other customer touchpoints. Their full suite of email marketing tools will help you deliver the right messages to the right customers.

As a Customer Data & Experience Platform (CDXP), Exponea ingests, analyzes, and stitches together customer data to build 360-degree profiles of each of your customers.

Then it activates that data through omnichannel campaigns, helping you increase customer loyalty, increase revenue, and save time.

Want to know more? Read on.

Key Features

• WYSIWYG and HTML editor
• Pre-built templates
• Optimal time prediction
• Built-in frequency policy to improve email open rates and deliverability
• Hyper-granular segmentations and customer filters
• Detailed analytics reports

Pros

• Sleek interface
• All-in-one marketing tool
• Responsive mobile version

Cons

• No free trial

Starting Pricing

Contact their sales representative to get a quote.

Level: Intermediate

Usability

Medium and large companies in the B2C domain will find this tool handy.

Case Study

Missguided, a leading fashion brand from the UK, is a client of Exponea. The tool helped them to segment their contact database and create more targeted campaigns. Their initial test mails received an open rate of 18% in the UK and 20% in the USA. They were also able to reduce their spam scoring and improve their sender reputation.

Pro Tip: Leverage the tool’s top-notch analytics to discover new insights about your contact. Use this business intelligence to create emails with the optimal message.

31. SendX

SendX is an intuitive, feature-packed, and affordable email marketing tool that can help you launch and execute unlimited email marketing campaigns.

This software enables you to design, schedule, and track multiple email campaigns, all in one place. You can easily broadcast email campaigns to your list and measure clicks and open rates. In case you are looking for one, this software also happens to be a great alternative to Mailchimp.

You can also automate your email sequences to ensure that you send the right messages to the right users at the right times.

Key Features

• High-converting pop-ups, forms, and landing pages
• Real-time analytics to measure your campaign’s performance
• Drip sequences
• Contact segmentation
• Ready-to-use email templates
• Countdown timer

Pros

• Reliable customer care
• Continuous updates based on user feedback

Cons

• It doesn’t allow editing of settings once a campaign is rolled out
• No white labeling of sign-up forms and reports

Starting Price

• $7.49 per month
• Free trial
• No credit card required

Level: Advanced

Usability

With a pocket-friendly price point, SendX is a good email marketing tool for small- and mid-sized businesses with tight marketing budgets.

Pro Tip: Integrate SendX with your in-house CRM to fine tune its contact segmentation.

FAQs

Q1. What are email marketing tools?

A. Email marketing tools are those tools that can help marketers plan, set up, and execute email marketing campaigns. Using them, you can build an email list and then draft, schedule, and send emails to your subscribers. These tools also help you automate your email marketing campaigns through drip emails.

Q2. What are the best/top email marketing tools/platforms/software?

A. Some of the best email marketing tools are:

• Pinpointe
• MailerLite
• HubSpot Marketing Free Email
• AWeber
• Leadfeeder
• SendinBlue
• GetResponse
• Constant Contact
• Clearbit Connect

Q3. What is the best mass email software?

A. Some of the best mass email software solutions out there are:

• Pinpointe
• MailerLite
• HubSpot Marketing Free Email
• AWeber
• Leadfeeder
• SendinBlue
• GetResponse
• Constant Contact
• Clearbit Connect

Q4. How can I send bulk emails for free?

A. Sending bulk emails manually can be a challenge. Instead, you can use some of the finest email marketing tools that offer free plans. Some tools like Mailchimp let you send bulk emails to up to 2000 contacts.

Q5. What is better than Mailchimp?

A. If you’re searching for a Mailchimp alternative, a great email marketing tool to use would be Constant Contact. This affordable email marketing tool not only offers features like automation but also lets you build websites and ecommerce stores.

Q6. Is email marketing still effective?

A. Email marketing is still a great marketing strategy and continues to deliver a high return on investment (ROI). One of the major reasons for this being that people tend to use their smartphones to check and keep up with emails. And over 90% of people in the US above the age of 15 use email.

Q7. What are the types of email marketing?

A. The 6 main types of email marketing are:

• Newsletters: Email newsletters are sent out regularly to subscribers to update them about the latest happenings with a brand.
• Transactional Emails: These emails are typically sent out whenever a customer completes any transaction.
• Cart Abandonment: These emails are sent when a prospect doesn’t complete the purchase.
• Triggered Emails: This type of email campaign revolves around sending automated emails based on specific triggers.
• Drip Emails: These emails are sent to subscribers at regular intervals.
• Promotional Emails: Promotional emails are sent to announce promotions and discounts.

Q8. Is email marketing the same as marketing automation?

A. No, they’re not the same. Marketing automation is the automation of repetitive tasks. It can help improve your email marketing campaigns. You can use automation to send out emails to your customers based on various triggers or set time intervals.

Q9. How much does email marketing software cost?

A. The pricing of email marketing software ranges from free to a few hundred dollars per month. Your costs are determined by your requirements. Many email marketing tools offer free subscriptions if your requirements are minimal. As you scale up, the costs will increase too.

Q10. What are the top free email marketing software?

A. While numerous email marketing tools offer free trials, there are a few that also give you free accounts. Here are the best free email marketing software solutions:

• Mailchimp
• Sendinblue
• SendPulse
• HubSpot Email Marketing
• MailerLite
• Mailjet
• Moosend

Q11. What skills do you need for email marketing?

A. The most essential skills that an email marketer should possess are:

• Strategic Thinking
• Copywriting
• Analytics and Testing
• List Building Capability
• Subscriber Engagement Skills
• Email Designing

Have You Decided Which Email Marketing Tool You Want?

Email marketing tools are a must-have for an effective email marketing strategy for your business.

Among other things, these email marketing tools ensure your carefully drafted messages don’t get blocked and reach your recipients at the right times. They can help keep your targeted group of customers engaged and involved.

Have you used any other email marketing tool that you’ve found helpful? We would love to hear about it. Please tell us about it in the comments.

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Disclosure: Please note that a few of the links in this article are actually affiliate links. If you click on them, I will earn a commission, without any extra cost to you. Please know that I have only selected the best email marketing tools for you, which I personally tested and highly recommend. For more information, please read my affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy.

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