Is email marketing a priority for your business in 2020? 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 and compare 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 strategy 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 marketing 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-and-drop editor).
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 contact list, segment users into groups, and track the performance of your email marketing campaigns.
Most importantly, a good email service provider ensures that your email campaigns 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, drip campaigns, 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 customer 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 allow small business owners 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. 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 email editor is perfect for beginners with no experience in email marketing.
SendinBlue includes beginner-friendly marketing automation tools that allow you to send transactional emails, create workflows for automatic follow-up emails, and segment users. It can also select the best time to send bulk emails using their AI algorithms to ensure the best 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 real-time content based emails.
3. Drip
Drip is a powerful enterprise email marketing platform for eCommerce, bloggers, and digital marketers. They offer a wide range of tools to make marketing automation, sales funnels, and personalization easy.
Their email software offer seamless integration for all popular website builders including WordPress and WooCommerce. This allows you to easily add pop-ups / 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, split testing features, 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 to maximize their marketing efforts.
Drip offers a free trial, and their plans starts from $49 / month which includes all their features.
4. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a robust email marketing platform for professional bloggers, authors, and marketers. It is extremely easy to use and incredibly powerful.
ConvertKit’s unique feature is that 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 from their emailing service.
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.
5. 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 html 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 limited free plan for up to 500 subscribers. After that, their pricing starts from $19/month. You can also signup for quarterly or annual plans to save even more.
6. 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 any number of emails designed for specific groups. These tools help you create effective email campaigns to boost your profits.
GetResponse comes with beautiful responsive forms, landing pages, A/B testing, unsubscribe 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.
7. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world primarily because they offer a forever free email marketing service plan.
Mailchimp comes with an easy drag-and-drop email builder, autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, and simple tracking for analytics. It also allows you to setup delivery times based on user’s timezones, and you can setup segmenting based on geolocation.
You can easily integrate MailChimp with WordPress, Magento, Shopify, and many other platforms. If you are using WordPress, then see our ultimate guide to using Mailchimp and WordPress for detailed instructions.
When it comes to marketing automation features, Mailchimp platform is quite limited when compared to other providers in our list such as Drip or ConvertKit.
In the recent years, Mailchimp has attempted to add many of the “advanced” features, but having tested many of these, they’re not truly advanced.
Mailchimp support is offered by email, live chat, and a large tutorials knowledge-base. However their support is often slow and no match to the quality of service that you get from Constant Contact.
Mailchimp offers a forever free plan which allows you to send 12,000 emails for up to 2,000 subscribers. This plan is fairly limited because you don’t get features like send-time optimization, advanced segmentation, multi-variate testing, etc. You are also required to display their branding in your email. Last but not least, support is restricted to email only which is fine if you’re a hobbyist but as a serious business, you need reliable support that you can count on.
Their paid plans start from $10/month for up to 500 subscribers, and the pricing increases in the increment of 500 subscribers.
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 business websites use Drip.
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. They also offer a fairly generous forever free plan which 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.
Email Marketing Software FAQs
Having helped thousands of users pick the best email marketing software, we have answered quite a lot of questions. Below are some of the answers to the most frequently asked questions about email marketing platforms.
Can I do bulk email marketing from my Gmail or Outlook?
In theory, yes. But this will quickly get your email accounts suspended. G Suite and Outlook are not made for bulk email sending. They are great solution professional business emails.
Which is the best free email marketing service?
A lot of email marketing services will offer free tiers for limited use. The best free email marketing service is SendinBlue because their free plan doesn’t have a limit on the number of subscribers. MailerLite and MailChimp also offer free email marketing service plans.
How much does email marketing cost?
Your email marketing cost will entirely depend on the number of subscribers you have, the number of total emails you send per month, and the email platform you use. On average, a small business email marketing costs is around $20 – $300 per month on email marketing given that they manage their own campaign. If you use an email marketing agency, then your cost might be closer to $500 per month or higher.
Are there other email marketing platforms that are not listed here?
Yes, there are literally hundreds of email marketing services out there, but we have not listed them all here. We believe that creating a full email platforms list would create more confusion and cause choice paralysis for non-techy readers.
We have tried all the top major email marketing service including many that are not in our email platform lists above such as: MailerLite, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Ontraport, Mailjet, Campaign Monitor, InfusionSoft (now Keap), Klaviyo, Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot by Salesforce, Sendloop, iContact, Moosend, Emma, TotalSend, SharpSpring, MailPoet, and more.
The top email marketing services that we have chose to include in our list provide the best features for the best price.
Which are the best email marketing services in your opinion?
Our top 3 choices for the best email marketing services are:
- Constant Contact – Best email marketing services for small business.
- SendinBlue – Best Email and SMS marketing platform.
- Drip – Best email marketing platform for eCommerce.
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, and our comparison of the best business phone services for small businesses.
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.
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.
Awesome summary of the tools. GetResponse has an interesting marketing automation solution. Is it easy to use?
Email marketing is the best option for targeting your readers. I am using Aweber and MailChimp, and I am satisfied with these.
Hi Jigar, why did you decide to use both AWeber and MailChip?
I also would like to know why you use both.
What about integration to generate leads from a website? That is what I need most out of a mail service. Which are best (and cheap)?
Nice Article, Nowadays, Email Marketing is considered an extremely powerful marketing tool. However, users need to know key factors before they start designing and launching their email marketing campaigns.
Happy to see GetResponse on the list! I like their marketing automation.
Great list but I am surprised you didn’t mention MadMimi.
MadMimi is cheaper than MailChimp and it gives users lots of addons that make alot of sense. Imagine, you can’t automate with MailChimp free 2000 option while MadMimi allows you to set up drips even when you are on the free plan. You can plug in rss feed, the interface is so simple to use (drag n drop) etc.
Good. Hw good is Madmimi
Hi,
Thanks for this list, to which you could add SendInBlue. Very intuitive, with responsive template, worpdpress plugin, analytics board. I use it for two years now for my little business in France.
Stephan
Looking good – Wish we had this article a few days ago! (After wasting many hours searching and comparing them all) We tried most of the above (Except ConvertKit, will check them out) but we found this little gem, SmartMailer.com worth considering for the next article as they offer more free subscribers and better priced than most.
Don’t be fooled, looks like a dodgy website. Browser prompted that the website is unsafe and do not proceed. it is not even secured (HTTPS:// )
How about MailerLite ?
It gives autoresponder for free account(1000 subscription)
Hi,
Is there a free service that lets you start a campaign from your phone?
Thanks,
Ted
Hands down MailChimp rules for small business and starter nonprofits. I will use nothing else.
Thank you for your research and the post. Very useful
After helping Small Biz’s and Non-Profits with Contact Contact, and then migrating them to MailChimp. Gonna have to disagree with #1. CC is only good if you have lots of resources (money) to gain. Way too complicated and unreliable for SMBs.
Thanks for the post, I see some new( to me) services. Eager to check them out.
MailChimp is indeed the best for non-profits due to their free pricing plan and non-profit discounts.
I think that all are amazing email marketing services but what is your opinion about mailrelay?
We have not tried MailRelay. Sorry Ramon.
Ok. Don’t worry.
I’m from Spain and recently the European Union have changed laws about email marketing and some services from non european companys wasn’t adapted to the new laws. I’ve read that mailrelay (european company) was adapted to this news laws.
Thanks.