Is email marketing a priority for your business in 2019? Are you looking for the best email marketing software?
Choosing the right email marketing service can have a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign. In this article, we will review the 7 best email marketing services for small businesses.
Why Choosing The Best Email Marketing Service is Important?
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing tools for small businesses. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing on average sees a 4300 percent return on investment (ROI) for businesses in the United States.
This is because email marketing is easy to manage, gives you full control, and allows you to establish a direct contact with your customers.
Not convinced on email marketing? See these 6 reasons why building an email list is so important today.
It’s important to understand that a lot of your success with email marketing depends entirely on the email marketing software you choose because they are responsible for making sure that your emails actually get delivered.
If you aren’t careful, then you will end up paying a lot more money for fewer features and terrible email deliverability rates (which causes you to lose even more money).
What to Look for in a Good Email Marketing Tool?
A good email marketing service should enable you to create highly engaging email newsletters with an easy user interface (ideally drag & drop).
You should be able to easily send bulk emails that are actually personalized and targeted without a lot of work. This is also known as marketing automation.
Aside from that, your email marketing service must make it easy to manage your contacts, segment users into groups, and track the performance of your email marketing campaigns.
Most importantly, a good email marketing service ensures that your emails do not end up in the spam folder.
Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the most popular email marketing service providers and how they stack up against each other.
1. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is one of the largest and fastest growing email marketing service in the world. It is also the most easy to use and beginner friendly email marketing service.
You can easily manage your email lists, contacts, email templates, marketing calendar, and more.
Each account gives you access to easy tracking and reporting, built-in social media sharing tools, free image library, list segmentation, Facebook ads integration, and a powerful eCommerce integration for Shopify stores.
Their Email Plus accounts also come with powerful features like email automation, surveys & polls, coupons, online donations, and subject line A/B testing which helps you send targeted emails to maximize your open rate.
Constant Contact offers unmatched support with live chat, phone calls, email, community support, and a vast library of helpful resources.
Aside from online training, they also offer in-person live seminars across the United States. This allows small businesses to quickly learn the basics of email marketing and start using it to grow their business like a pro.
For all the reasons above, we rate Constant Contact the best email marketing service for small businesses.
Constant Contact has a 60-day free trial (no credit-card required). After that their pricing starts as low as $20/month.
WPBeginner users can use our Constant Contact coupon code to get an additional 20% off.
2. Drip
Drip is a powerful email marketing platform for eCommerce, bloggers, and digital marketers. They offer a wide range of tools to make marketing automation and personalization easy.
They offer seamless integration for all popular website builders including WordPress and WooCommerce. This allows you to easily add sign up forms to your website and capture more leads.
What sets Drip apart from the competition like Campaign Monitor is their intelligent marketing automation tools, smarter email segmenting, list groups, and a visual workflow builder. These features allow you to reach targeted customers in your email list to get more sales.
Support options at Drip include live chat support, webinars, automation training, detailed courses, free guides and excellent documentation.
We use Drip for several of our businesses because it allows us to send bulk emails while connecting and engaging with every customer on a personal level using their smart eCommerce marketing automation.
Even though it’s a bit pricey, we believe Drip is the best email marketing software for eCommerce websites and business owners who want more advanced features.
Drip offers a free account for up to 100 subscribers. After that their plans starts from $49 / month which includes all their features.
3. SendinBlue
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 an extremely easy to use platform with excellent tools to create beautiful and highly engaging emails. Their simple drag and drop tools are perfect for beginners with no experience in email marketing.
SendinBlue includes beginner-friendly automation tools that allow you to send transactional emails, create workflows, and segment users. It can also select the best time to send bulk emails using their AI algorithms to ensure maximum email deliverability.
SendinBlue offer a completely free email marketing plan that lets you send up to 300 emails per day, but all your emails will have their branding. Paid plans start from $25 per month. You can also include SMS to your account, but the pricing will vary based on your sending requirements.
They have improved their premium plan to recently include more advanced features like landing page builder, live chat, CRM, and Facebook ads integration. This means users now get more value for the same price.
SendinBlue also offers a separate SMTP bulk email marketing service which you can use to power automated or transactional emails from your WordPress site. You do not need this for email marketing campaigns, but it’s a nice to have feature if you have a large website, and you want automatic content based emails.
4. Mailjet
Mailjet is a popular email marketing service that’s known for having the best price and email deliverability. Their all-in-one email marketing platform comes with everything you need from email newsletters, email automation, transactional SMTP emails, and SMS.
Their drag and drop email marketing builder is one of the best in the industry because it puts marketers first. You can start with one of their many newsletter templates and create a beautiful newsletter in minutes. The best part is that it comes with a real-time collaboration feature which is great for teams.
Mailjet team has made high email deliverability a priority which is evident by their real time email performance dashboard. Their team of email deliverability experts will work with you to make sure your emails always end up in your user’s inbox.
Mailjet offers the most generous free email marketing plan in the industry because they allow you to send 6000 emails per month to unlimited contacts. You also get access to their SMTP transactional bulk email marketing service as part of the free plan.
Their basic paid plans start at $9.65 per month which allows you to send 30,000 emails per month to unlimited contacts. To unlock advanced features like marketing automation, segmentation, and a/b testing, then you will have to upgrade to the premium plan that costs $20.95 per month.
They also have a transactional SMS marketing platform that lets you send SMS messages in more than 55 countries. It is available as an addon that you can purchase with any of their existing plans.
5. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a robust email marketing platform for professional bloggers, authors, and marketers. It is extremely easy to use and incredibly powerful.
ConvertKit allows you to easily offer content upgrades and incentives with email signup forms. It also comes with easy to manage auto-responders allowing you to send drip emails.
With ConvertKit, you can easily segment subscribers into those who are interested and those who have already purchased. This helps you increase conversions with automated emails that feel more personal. In marketing terms, this is called targeted email marketing.
ConvertKit offers email based support and have extensive knowledge base with great learning material.
A lot of ConvertKit features are specifically designed for creators and professional bloggers that’s why we rate them the best email marketing service for professional bloggers.
ConvertKit offers a 14-day free trial, and their pricing starts from $29/month. They also offer a 30-day refund policy.
6. AWeber
AWeber is one of 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 connects seamlessly to most platforms including WordPress. For detailed instructions, see our ultimate guide on how to connect AWeber to WordPress.
You get access to ready to use email templates, list management, autoresponders, and email tracking with detailed insights.
Support options include live chat, phone support, email support, live webinars, and a vast library of how-tos and tutorials.
AWeber offers a 30-day free trial. After that, their pricing starts from $19/month. You can also signup for quarterly or annual plans to save even more.
7. GetResponse
GetResponse is another very popular email marketing solution. It is extremely easy to use and simplifies email marketing for small businesses.
It comes with some amazing marketing automation tools which allow you to create smart automated campaigns.
With their drag and drop builder, you can create campaigns, segment contacts, and send content designed for specific groups. These tools help you create effective campaigns to boost your profits.
GetResponse comes with beautiful responsive forms, landing pages, A/B testing, tracking, and autoresponders. It also integrates with third party lead generation software like OptinMonster, SalesForce, Google Docs, ZenDesk, etc.
Support is provided by phone, live chat, and email. Their help section is full of free learning material including videos, webinars, how-tos, guides, etc.
GetResponse offers a 30-day free trial. Their pricing starts at $15/month.
Popular Email Marketing Service that You Should Avoid
Mailchimp is one of the oldest and well-known email marketing service providers in the world. MailChimp became famous because they offer a forever free email marketing service plan.
It used to be one of our favorites, but in the recent months we have started switching all of our companies and clients to better email marketing platforms listed above.
That’s because MailChimp leadership have decided to evolve their product from email marketing to what they’re calling an all-in-one marketing platform. In this process, they have made several decisions that doesn’t put users best interest first.
For example unlike other email marketing services, they’re now charging businesses for unsubscribed users in their account which is unfair. You should NOT have to pay for subscribers who are no longer receiving messages from you.
Their support has become increasingly unhelpful and almost every request gets a standard message like: we’re forwarding this to our engineering or leadership team.
While they’re using fancy marketing lingo such as “all in one marketing platform”, you don’t have the availability to do basic things like bulk delete more than 100 contacts at a time.
Their automation features are extremely basic when compared to other providers in our list such as Drip or ConvertKit.
Their free plan that used to lead the industry is no longer the best. Mailjet for example offers a forever free plan that allows you to have unlimited contacts and send up to 6000 emails per month.
SendinBlue’s forever free plan also allows you to have unlimited contacts, and it includes advanced features like marketing automation which you don’t get on MailChimp until you’re on their third most expensive plan.
Last but not least, we believe helpful support is extremely important specially when it comes to email marketing software. As we mentioned earlier, MailChimp support is not very helpful. You don’t even get phone support unless you’re paying them minimum of $299 per month whereas our #1 pick, Constant Contact offers helpful live chat, email, and phone support to all customers.
Final Thoughts: The Best Email Marketing Service
There are dozens of email marketing services out there, and we want to make sure you choose the right one for your business needs. Below is our expert pick:
If you’re a small business, non-profit, or a new blogger, then we recommend using Constant Contact. Their pricing is great, and the support team is absolutely top-notch. Their onboarding team will help you find success with email marketing right away.
If you run an online store / ecommerce website, then we recommend using Drip because its the best eCommerce email marketing software. Their personalization and automation features are extremely powerful. A lot of our own businesses use Drip, and we will be switching the WPBeginner website to use Drip as well in 2019.
If you’re a professional blogger or content creator, then we recommend using ConvertKit. They offer an easy to use platform with advanced segmentation and funnels that will help you take your blogging business to the next level.
If you’re a business owner who wants a powerful marketing automation tool that combines email marketing, SMTP bulk emails, and SMS messages, then we recommend using SendinBlue. Their platform is easy to use, and they allow you to manage both email and SMS from a single interface.
If you’re a business owner who wants an email marketing service that has excellent team collaboration features, a smart email builder, and extremely high deliverability, then we recommend using Mailjet. Their email builder is one of the best in the industry, and their generous pricing along with the forever free plan makes them the best free email marketing software.
Pro Tip: Get More Email Subscribers, Faster!
Once you have picked an email marketing service for your business, you’ll likely want to start getting more email subscribers.
We use and recommend OptinMonster. It is a powerful conversion optimization toolkit that helps you turn abandoning website visitors into email subscribers and customers.
OptinMonster seamlessly integrates with all the best email marketing service that we mentioned above and dozens more.
WPBeginner founder, Syed Balkhi, is also the co-founder of OptinMonster. He initially built OptinMonster to help grow our own email list. After the launch in 2013, it has tremendously grown in popularity.
Today OptinMonster is being used by some of the largest brands in the world including McAfee, Experian, TripAdvisor, Pinterest, Harvard University, Pateron, and more.
Bonus Tip: Improve Your Email Deliverability
All the email newsletter tools that we have shared in this article have great email deliverability rates.
However there are few things you can do to make sure that your marketing emails always get delivered.
1. Use a Professional Email Address
Email platforms like Gmail, Outlook, and others have algorithms that look for spammy behavior. One of them is the sender email address.
As a business, it’s important that you use a professional business email address (like yourname@yourcompany.com) and not a generic hotmail or gmail address.
This will help make sure that your email deliverability rate is higher than industry average.
2. Send Targeted Emails based on Interests
It’s very important that you personalize your emails based on user segments. Email marketing software like Constant Contact allows you to easily group your subscribers into segments such as most active, not-active, interested in specific topics, custom segments, etc.
This will help your email marketing campaigns have the highest open rate and click through rate which is a big factor in future email deliverability.
For more tips, see this ultimate step-by-step email marketing guide with examples to help you create a successful email marketing campaign.
We hope this article gave you a good overview of the best email marketing services for your business. You may also want to see our list of 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Please I need a email provider that could drop Gmail spamming to inbox……
If you mean you don’t want your messages being sent to the spam in Gmail’s inbox then any of these services can help with that and if you reach out, also have recommendations to help prevent your message from being sent to spam.
Very informative list. I am planning to buy any of Convert kit, Aweber, or Constant Contact. But I need to know Whether these Email services provide Landing pages and A/B testing tools? Since I am completely new in Email marketing, I have no idea. Kindly reply on this.
There are different implementations for each email marketing provider. If you reach out to their support with what you would like to set up, they should be able to let you know if that is available with their platform.
I used mailchimp for some time and then switched to Tabellarius. Both give you very powerful tools under your belt if you know how to use them correctly.
Thank you for sharing the service you’re currently using
I send bulk emails to existing customers about three times per year. Usually 250-1500 at a time.
What service would you recommend? I currently use myemma and am charged monthly whether I use the service or not.
Thanks.
You may want to start by looking at MailChimp and Drip depending on your specific needs.
I switched from Emma too, and am stuck paying their monthly bill regardless of giving 30 days notice. I missed cancelling by the auto renewal, for which no notice was given.
Besides MailChimp does any of these amazing platforms have a BA agreement or will be able to sign one? This is for a Foot and Ankle clinic.
Thanks for any feedback
Yes, however, you would want to reach out to them for specifics on if it is still available.
Great work Syed Balkhi.
Thank you for giving those great ideas. Keep up going
Glad you like our articles, we’ll continue to make them
The biggest issue I have yet to resolve is the majority of clients I work with have customer lists in the the THOUSANDS, but have never embraced email marketing. Through personal experience with several of the platforms listed here they will not let you load your current customer list and start emailing. Even if the lists are validated and cleaned through a source like NeverBounce. With the new GDPR rules, they only want emails that have current, ongoing engagement. So in other words, even though you have been in business for years and have a list of current emails from current and past customers, you cannot load them in to these platforms with any success. This makes it very difficult for legacy businesses that now want to start communicating with all their prospects and customers.
Hi Scott, yes that is correct. Most platforms will not let you upload large customer lists if you do not have specific opt-in dates. However if you can provide the data when the user opted in to receive email notifications from you, then you would be able to import the list. These rules may vary based on different providers, but this is exactly the process for switching email service providers (you have to import customer list in the new provider).
Great your post on Successful Email Marketing Campaign. It helps me a lot to understand successful email marketing. Keep up the Good Work. Excited to see your upcoming posts. Thanks.
Thank you, glad our post could help
Great list of providers for permission based email marketing. If you are a small business who incorporates purchased email lists into your strategy?
We don’t recommend purchasing email list as that would be spamming the users who did not consent to be added to your email list and many other negatives against it.
This is a great list
currently, i am deciding which one i should go
considering covertkit, mailchimp and mailerlite
Thanks, hope our article can help you choose the best one for you
Interested to know why you haven’t reviewed Active Campaign which I use for one of my businesses and find to be very good.
We had to restrict the list to 7 providers, so it’s easy for people to choose. ActiveCampaign is a powerful solution and so is Pardot or HubSpot. But those are bit more advanced solutions than what a small business would need in our opinion.
Hi,
When I go to the Drip website, I don’t see an option for Drip offers a free account for up to 100 subscribers?
Hey David, if you go on their website and type in the quote calculator that you have 100 subscribers, it’ll show you the option for free signup.
I am surprised that you didn’t include ActiveCampaign in the list.
Hi Wouter,
Yes, we had to restrict the list to 7 providers, so it’s easy for people to choose. ActiveCampaign is a powerful solution and so is Pardot or HubSpot. But those are bit more advanced solutions than what a small business would need in our opinion.
I recently switched from MailChimp to Mailerlite and have been pleased with the results. I ran into a small problem and the customer service was excellent and responded very quickly (I’m using the free plan).
Thanks for sharing your experience David
Basically, all the email marketing service which improves our business so thanks for your of your post
Glad our article was helpful
very useful information, tx a lot
but the main question is kinda not answered :
I know that depending these companies have their servers, i.e. States or Asia , the emails tend to end faster in the spam folder . Well at least it was the case a couple of years back. Can someone confirm/help ?
Thanks a mil!
Hi,
Location of the mail server has no effect on whether your email ends up in spam or not.
Great blog about email marketing. Worth reading this. Really useful
This article is help me to decide what will I used for long term. As a marketer building a list is very important. Thank you.
Really good information. Thanks for sharing this information. These days peoples are using an email marketing service for business purpose.
Great article here. Pls. I’m a little bit confused. All I just need is a vendor that has a Landing page feature, allows for autoresponder, allows for promotion of genuine mlm and affiliate business, and cost effective for beginner. I tried Mailchimp but got suspended just within two weeks with them, and the customer care pretty bad and arrogant. Please advice
Thank you for giving good infromation
Really good information, thanks for the comparison
These days we are using AWeber and MailChimp for our campaign process but your list make us thought again.
I’m not happy at all with MailChimp. Has anyone found the same problems with MailChimp as I have? I find that many of my list members unsubscribe from my list daily. I know these people ands contact them and they say they have not unsubscribed. twice I even found my own email taken off the list. When I look into the MailChimp list Spam is the reason for the person’s unsubscription. Over the years I’ve been on MailChimp I’ve contacted support and I’ve done everything I can but nothing has changed. I’m now looking to move to another company.
Hi. thank you for the great information. I currently have Mail Chimp and it is set up to sync between my WordPress site and Mail Chimp. the problem is it isn’t and new subscribers to my blog are not being updated onto the list on the Mail chimp end. I have tried several fixes and nothing is working. I am unsure what to do now after endless googling it may be time to quit Mail Chimp. Seems others are having this problem also.
Hi,
Thanks for sharing the best email marketing services available in the market right now. I will love to begin with Mail Chimp.
I also had a similar experience with Get Response when sending out my 1st email using a direct sales list i had from my past job… banned me on the spot and poor customer service. They made me feel like a spammer when my email I crafted in no way was!!!!
Thank you for listing us! We hope you’re satisfied with our platform.
Which one of these lets you filter EU and non EU subscribers in order to segment the list? The GDPR goes into effect in a few days and Aweber has no means of segmenting the list that way.
I’v used MailChimp but my emails go in Promotion box of users whereas when I use GetResponse the same email lands in Primary. What could be the solution?
We’ve used MailChimp for years and are very satisfied. They continue to enhance the product beyond our needs. Glad they’re always ahead of the curve.
We’re pretty satisfied with how MailChimp gets the job done minus without their prices being so steep. Do you know how MailChimp can be integrated with Autotask? Your input would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Edith,
We are not sure, you can try connecting it through Zapier which has support for both platforms.
I’ve been very satisfied so far with GetResponse. It’s super user-friendly, which is great if you’re just starting out.
Thank you for the list. I’ve used three of those on the list (Constant Contact, Mailchimp, and Campaign Monitor) over the years. They’re all good. My current email list marketing host, Madmimi.com, is better than any of the other three for a combination of low rates and great customer service. Its user interface is good.
Thanks for this. I’ll go investigate madmimi. I was suckered into G SUite and it was a disaster. Can’t believe a company like Google would offer such crap.
Editorial Staff, you are a genius! I didn’t even think to use that feature. I am going to look into it and add it as a reader tip into the post. So smart! I bet all the soccer parents love the cute emails
I have a photography site with and I would like to start an email marketing campaign to promote it. Any suggestions on the best email marketing company for this kind of online business? Thanks.
Mailchimp really lost it and being caught up by many other providers. Their support is really bad and in some ways even arrogant. Really disappointing after working with them for several years.
I recently had my MailChimp account suspended. One of my sites is in the ‘make money online’ space. It’s a completely legitimate website, but apparently if your emails contain keywords they don’t like, they will suspend you. I would not recommend using them. Contacting support I just get form responses that are completely unhelpful. There’s no phone support- just account termination. Really bad experience. Luckily, this is a very new site- but imagine if you have thousands of emails and they just shut you down without ANY recourse.
So, do you have any idea what you wrote that triggered your account suspension? I’d be interested in knowing.
so totally true this just happened to me as well. im looking for a new AR, any suggestions?
Yes I experienced the same thing, i tried creating other accounts too. When I was creating my landing pages, all of a sudden my mailchimp account has been suspended. That was really annoying. Three times I have done that and same thing happened. I don’t know what triggered them,
I am not happy with their system.
The post is very informative and the list you have shared with is great, but the Constant Contact is good I think to start the company as the live chat features are powerful in it can solve the one query on time. But it’s chargeable that to $20 at least it should be $10, I don’t know much about its but I’ll try for that free package and check it. Thank You.
I find Sendinblue very good, not so expensive as Mailchimp. and according the new laws in the EU
So, we have been using mail chimp, and they just booted us from using it because of new regulations. Does anyone know of a service that will allow us to send mass e-mails without issue?
Rob, you don’t say who ‘booted’ you from using it. A significant GDPR factor is non-profits having to consent/re-consent those on established email lists and experiencing significant proportions of lists being lost because people miss the notifications or are too busy to fill in yet more forms. However, I have found a few using a ‘one-touch’ re-subscription button that takes immediate effect, without the recipient having to do anything else. It would appear that the re-subscription rate is higher, the easier it is to activate. On enquiry, I was told that they were using mail chimp for this.
If anyone could give any GDPR basis for not using mail chimp – it would be interesting – but there is a mass of confusion out there at the moment. I would challenge the ‘booter’ to substantiate their opinion/action.
Thanks for posting! GetResponse is my all time favorite. Has anyone tried their marketing automation?
Dear,
I have lots of email data with me. I want to send email newsletter to them daily.
What you will suggest for me to go with?
Please help me. I checked most of the email sending services, they are charging more for less emails.
Hi Yakoob Can u please suggest me how to get email data….Just guide me, it will be help full for me to start good carrier.
Hey, great article!
Just wanted to notify you on a spelling error
“It integrates beautifully with WordPress, Magneto, Shopify, and many other platforms. If you are using WordPress, then see our ultimate guide to using MailChimp and WordPress for detailed instructions.”
It’s Magento instead of Magneto.
Cheers!
Hey Dylan,
Thanks for notifying us, we have fixed it
I have a small coaching business, any professional suggestions would be appreciated on what is the most productive above product to use.
Thank you
Good overview of platforms but I’m sick of these reviews that simply praise each platform, don’t rate them, don’t say what they are lacking or how they compare. Obviously it’s not to critique the platforms as they provide you with affiliate income, but sometimes I think you would do better with a more critical approach. Anyhow, my thoughts.
From where can I get a targeted email list for my products that I want to sell on line as I do not have a list?
This article is informative, but it does not offer distinguishing features between the services covered (other than mailchimp is free). You seemed to go to great lengths to say good things about each – although I’m sure each services has positive aspects. I would have benefited much more from a rating of some sort of the various features of each service, or at least the pros & cons of each.
Loved reading this! Which of these would you recommend so that I could set myself reminders on certain clients so that I can follow up with them in the future? I feel like I am doing a lot of extra steps that I might not have to do if I was using an actual marketing software. I am in the very beginning stages of getting my business out there and I would like to follow up with potential clients down the road with an email… is this a possibility or should I just keep using my excel spreadsheet!?
Hi Annie,
Did you find a solution to your situation? I’m in exactly the same place and about to start looking for something that can get my customers to tell me dates of things that I can then send emails to them around those dates,
Thanks
Noel
We just started using MailChimp because it seems to be the only one that offers a free account for small or new users. The problem is that there are so many steps for a potential subscriber to go through with both double opt-in and recaptcha, that we are getting at best complaints to worst, plain nasty comments posted on our Facebook page. We don’t know how many would be subscribers we lost because of this.
I have a scuba operation and have thousands of e-mail addresses from people that have used my service before. Is it alright to add them all to my new e-mail marketing newsletter? do they just unsubscribe if they don’t want it? What’s the right thing to do here?
Hi Adam,
Most email marketing services allow you to send an email to all users you are importing. This email asks their permission to be added into your email list. If they give consent, then they will be subscribed to your email list.
Hi Adam, Yes most of the time all email service providers (ESPs) will include an unsubscribe line in every email you send so you can stay Can Spam Complaint. It is also a great idea to add your unsubscribe link to the top of your emails as this give more options to your customers to be removed from your mailing lists with ease.
Best,
Mike
I agree with marketing automation. Most of the B2B companies are utilizing marketing automation because it can help in marketing processes. Also, when leads freeze over and unable to move toward sales, marketing automation enters, helping managers fish out qualified sales prospects.