Best Email Marketing Software

Best Email Marketing Software for 2021

Our email marketing experts tested and assessed over 50 email marketing software services. They reviewed and analyzed them by pricing plans, features and user experience. On this page you'll find our verdict for the best tools we've tested.

Written by Ria du Plessis - Digital Marketing Expert

Updated 9/1/2021

Short on Time? Our Top 5 Picks:

  • Mobile responsive email
  • Feedback with surveys and polls
  • Tracking donations by a custom landing page
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  • Sms marketing tools
  • Facebook ads for finding new clients
  • No limit for sending daily emails
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  • Marketing Automation
  • Personalized Email Marketing
  • Dynamic Content
  • Contact & lead scoring
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  • Email marketing tool for a great strategy
  • Easy set up of customized emails
  • Live editing option
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  • Complete webinar marketing solution
  • Flexible terms for clients
  • Different tools for driving traffic
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Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for any business and could have a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign.

Email marketing software is easy to manage, gives you full control, and allows you to establish a direct contact with your customers. It’s the best tool to drive engagement, build relationships and deliver a higher ROI than any other type of marketing platform.

In this review we audited most of popular email marketing software providers. Whether you’re starting a new email list from scratch or looking to switch to a new provider we are here to help you base your decision based on expert verdicts and verified facts. 

Best Email Marketing Services For 2021:

1. Constant Contact  - Versatility and Uncluttered Design 

constant contact

You will find advanced statistical reporting and high deliverability rates on Constant Contact. The best bit that attracts beginners and small businesses is its versatility and uncluttered design.

If you’re looking for automating emails and A/B Testing, Constant Contact is missing this feature. The absence of ROI tracking might be a drawback for performance-oriented users. Moreover, customization and pricing of premium services could use a bit of improvement.

Plans & Pricing

There are two standard pricing plans on Constant contact. The prices of both the plans increase based on the total number of subscribers. You can opt up to 50,000 contacts on Constant Contact.

  •   Email: Includes basic features at $20 per month for 500 contacts with unlimited emails
  •   Email Plus: Includes basic and advanced features at $45 per month for 500 contacts with unlimited emails

Who is the software for?

If you have limited technology experience, Constant Contact will help you get acquainted with email advertising swiftly. For a small business owner, Constant Contact can be used for integrating Ecommerce tools. Event organizers can integrate Constant Contact for managing event marketing tools effortlessly.

Read Constant Contact Full Review

2. SendInBlue - Great Automation Features 

SendInBlue

Notable advantages of SendInBlue are instinctual A/B testing, flawless automation, graphical campaign comparison and plugins for tracking social media ads. The software stops emailing subscribers with high bounce rates leading to better deliverability rates.

Shortcomings of SendInBlue includes a limited landing page with basic functionalities and high costs for dedicated IP. Additionally, none of the pricing plans on SendInBlue offer unlimited emails.

Plans & Pricing

  •   Free: $0 with 300 emails per day and unlimited contacts
  •   Lite: $25 with 40,000 emails per month and unlimited contacts
  •   Essential: $39 with 60,000 emails per month and unlimited contacts
  •   Premium: At $66 with 120,000 emails per month and unlimited contacts
  •   Enterprise: Get a quote for Dedicated Support, Account Manager, Infrastructure and SSO

Who is the software for?

Primarily aimed at startups, SendInBlue is tailored for small and medium-sized businesses. This tool offers a complete set of tools you need for launching successful email marketing campaigns. It works best for agencies, enterprises, NGOs, marketing companies and Ecommerce.

Read SendInBlue Full Review

3. ActiveCampaign - Hundreds of Integrations

ActiveCampaign

The upside of investing in ActiveCampaign is its logically triggered automation. With a deliverability rate of 96% and advanced split testing and A/B testing, ActiveCampaign can help you set triggers based on customer behavior. It is excellent for creating automated workflows with flowchart automation. Another pro for ActiveCampaign is the hundreds of integrations and apps you get to use without a hitch.

For those who prefer heat maps, ActiveCampaign might not be the solution due to the absence of this feature. However, you can use the alternative link maps available. In addition, the product is priced a little higher than peers and doesn’t include any free trials if you prefer to try before you buy.

Plans & Pricing

  •   Lite: At $15 per month with unlimited emails and up to 500 contacts
  •   Plus: At $17 per month with unlimited emails and up to 500 contacts
  •   Professional: At $159 per month with unlimited emails and up to 500 contacts
  •   Enterprise: At $279 per month with unlimited emails and up to 500 contacts

Who is the software for?

Ideal for beginners in advertising, media or Ecommerce, ActiveCampaign provides a setup wizard that assists you every step of the way. It is designed for small businesses and Ecommerce websites.

Read ActiveCampaign Full Review

4. Benchmark - Best For Ease-Of-Use and Small Businesses

Since 2004, California-based Benchmark has been providing innovative and easy-to-understand email marketing services. With its drag-and-drop email creation and availability in 9 different languages, there’s no surprise it’s the software of choice for many.

Plans & Pricing

The three plans on offer at Benchmark are designed to suit the needs of businesses of varying sizes. They include:

Free Plan

  • Basic Marketing & Lead Generation
  • Basic Reporting
  • Lite Automation
  • Basic Support
  • 250 Emails

Pro Plan - $13 Per Month

  • Advanced Marketing & Lead Generation
  • Pro Automation
  • Advanced Reporting
  • Premium Support
  • Unlimited Emails

Enterprise Plan - Price is Customized

  • Advanced Marketing & Lead Generation
  • Pro Automation
  • Advanced Reporting
  • Whitelabeling 
  • Dedicated IP
  • Priority Support
  • Unlimited Emails

Who is the software for? 

Benchmark is ideal for all small businesses, especially those that are just starting out, given that it’s so simple to use. It offers a flexible range of plans meaning that anyone can get started and scale up to meet the changing needs of their business when they need it most. 

Benchmark is equipped to cater to businesses of all sizes, and what makes it stand out is its stylish UI and flexibility on plans. The only part we’d like to see an improvement is on analytics. Tracking the data of your email marketing is essential to curating the perfect strategy, and since it’s competing against the likes of Google Analytics, a few adjustments could go a long way.

Read Benchmark Full Review

5. GetResponse - Highest Deliverability Rates 

GetResponse

Perks of signing up with GetResponse is the 99% high-deliverability-rate and advanced campaign customization. Time Travel is the best highlight of GetResponse where you can schedule emails to send in the local time of the customer. You can also use scoring models on GetResponse to assess your best leads from past campaigns.

You lose a bit of the email edge with GetResponse due to the lack of functions for landing pages. Moreover, optimization functions for the landing page are a bit messy.   

Plans & Pricing

The prices of all the plans increase based on the total number of subscribers. You can opt for up to 100,000 contacts on GetResponse.

  •   Basic: At $15 per month for 1000 contacts
  •   Plus: At $49 per month for 1000 contacts
  •   Professional: At $99 per month for 1000 contacts
  •   Enterprise per: At $1,999 month for 1000 contacts

Who is the software for?

Made for large companies and brands, GetResponse also offers 500 templates for email and sign-up forms so that you can work on a large-scale while saving time. It is recommended for growing small and medium-sized businesses.

If you work in the automotive, Ecommerce, IT or Finance industry, GetResponse will serve you well.

Read GetResponse Full Review

6. Hubspot - Thousands of Templates

Hubspot

If you’re considering Hubspot, it is best to know its advantages in advance. Best suited for clients eager to access its high deliverability rate of 98%, Hubspot features a unique WYSIWYG editor with thousands of templates to reference. Combined with multi-faceted ROI analysis, it’s a hit. Top features also include frequency caps, and intuitive heat maps called Clickmap Visualization.

The lack of workflow customization is the biggest disadvantage of Hubspot for email marketing tool. The other item to consider when evaluating Hubspot service is its high price to use the top-quality features.

Plans & Pricing

  •   Free: At $0 up to 2,000 emails
  •   Starter: $50 per month with 1,000 contacts and up to 10,000 emails per day
  •   Professional: $800 per month with 1,000 contacts and up to 20,000 emails per day
  •   Enterprise: $3,200 per month with 10,000 contacts and 20,000 emails per day

Who is the software for?

Hubspot is customized for small to medium-sized businesses. If you manage Ecommerce sites, Hubspot can help you streamline broader campaigns for advertising and media.

Read Hubspot Full Review

7. AWeber - Easy Navigation

AWeber

The best features of AWeber are the 99% deliverability rate and the advanced email automation feature. You can also create scheduled email blasts and custom drip campaigns using 700+ email templates. Easy navigation and intuitive design add to its merits.

One area to be conscientious of is that AWeber is a tad on the pricier side of the industry. There are several competitors which offer more for less. Moreover, some of the templates are outdated and they could also improve the customization for including/excluding segments in newsletter campaigns.

Plans & Pricing

  •   Up to 500 Contacts: $19 per month with unlimited emails
  •   500 to 2,500 Contacts: $29 per month with unlimited emails
  •   2,501 to 5,000 Contacts: $49 per month with unlimited emails
  •   5,001 to 10,000 Contacts: $69 per month with unlimited emails
  •   10,001 to 25,000 Contacts: $149 per month with unlimited emails
  •   More than 25,000 Contacts: Get a Quote

Who is the software for?

A perfect choice for Amazon sellers who want to build their subscribers from the ground up, Aweber is good for small and medium-sized businesses owing it its powerful automation techniques. Entrepreneurs and Ecommerce websites will find the software fun to experiment with when it comes to advertising.

Read Aweber Full Review

8. SendX - Best Tool for Beginners

sendx 

The strongest reason to use SendX is it’s personalized design for growing businesses. With 1,500 email templates and integrations, SendX is ideally suited for beginners too. The WYSIWYG editor on this software works well for email marketing automation via rules.

Some limitations of SendX include the absence of email tracking and social media tracking which might be a significant drawback for certain businesses. Moreover, while it’s aimed at small businesses, SendX does not translate to affordable pricing for upcoming Ecommerce sites. 

Plans & Pricing

  •   Business: $9.99 per month (or $7.49 annually) with 1000 contacts and unlimited emails
  •   Enterprise: Get a Quote

Who is the software for?

Ideal for SaaS companies, SendX works well for rising Ecommerce websites and small businesses too. It is best used in niches of marketing and real estate. Blockchain businesses also pair up well with SendX.

Read SendX Full Review

9. Omnisend – Fruitful Audience Engagement

Omnisend

By using Omnisend, you will be able to enjoy seamless integration with the most popular e-commerce platforms, among other things.
As for cons, there is no RSS available. Also, client support could use some speed improvement.

Plans & Pricing

There are three pricing plans that you can pick from on Omnisend. It’s worth noting that the Free Plan offers a decent amount of features too.

  • Standard: all Free Plan features at $16.99/month for up to 15,000 e-mail/month plus segmentation and 24/7 support.
  • Pro: all Standard Plan features at $99/month plus things like priority support and push notifications.
  • Custom: you can customize everything from price to features and you have unlimited e-mails/month too.

Who is the software for?

Omnisend is best suited for e-commerce websites and customers searching for good funnel reporting and easy-to-use automation tools. Better engagement with the audience is this tool’s main focus.

Read Omnisend Full Review

10. Mailchimp - Best Software for Beginners

Mailchimp

Among the most well-known email service providers, Mailchimp is best for beginners. Merits include multi-step custom workflows, deep segmentation, pre-made automation workflows, paid split testing and A/B testing.

The biggest drawback for Mailchimp is the lack of advanced automation tools. Additionally, it offers no email support for free members. The low deliverability rate of 84% is also lower relative to competing service providers. Moreover, you need to buy the Premium plan to access call support.

Plans & Pricing

  •   Free: $0 with 1 user and up to 2000 contacts
  •   Essentials: $9.99 per month with up to 3 users and 50,000 contacts
  •   Standard: $14.99 per month with up to 5 users and 100,000 contacts
  •   Premium: $299 per month with unlimited audiences and up to 200,000+ contacts

Who is the software for?

Perfectly suited for small businesses and individual websites or Ecommerce stores, Mailchimp is the right software for beginners. If you are a large business, the major advantage of using Mailchimp is the high number of contacts in the plan.

Read Full Review

Go To Mailchimp

11. Drip - Comprehensive ROI Analysis

drip

Easy navigation is not the best attraction of Drip, but the in-depth guide you get before signing up is assuredly a great feature. Drip has an upper hand on comprehensive ROI analysis that assesses multiple revenue streams at once. More importantly, Drip advanced automation works in two ways- via rule and workflow.

The main drawbacks of selecting Drip for marketing are the limited integration options and lower deliverability rate of 89.8%. Moreover, the lack of heat maps work detrimentally to assess subscriber behavior well.

Plans & Pricing

  •   Free Trial: Experiment with Drip free for 14 days
  •   Paid Subscription: Starting from $49 per month with 2,000 contacts up to 140,000 contacts for $1740 per month

Who is the software for?

Recommended email marketing software for nurturing leads, Drip is tailor-made for beginners. If you’re a growing small business or Ecommerce site, Drip will help you increase the checkouts and engagement of your subscribers.

Read Full Review

Go To Drip

How to Choose the Best Email Marketing Software?

Before spending big money on email marketing software, it’s important to choose one that works for you and meets your organizational needs. Here are some factors to consider:

Email Marketing Platform - Ease of Use  

More than anything else, your email marketing software needs to be accessible and useful for every member of your team. This goes beyond being able to open it, and includes the following:

  • Automation: Your email marketing software should remove the need to handle menial tasks that are necessary but tedious, such as sending, auto-responses, and more. 
  • Campaign Management: The best email marketing software lets you keep track of every single campaign you have active, including scheduling, monitoring, and adapting to changing metrics. You should have full access to every aspect of your campaign in one easy to use dashboard.
  • Device Adaptability: One underrated aspect of email marketing software is the ability to design a single email that can be formatted appropriately for viewing across multiple devices. Cutting down on unique designs with smart management can improve your campaigns. 

Pricing For Email Marketing Service 

Your budget is also an important consideration. Sometimes having more features isn’t necessarily the biggest benefit, if you’re not using them. Accordingly, you should always consider an email marketing tool’s potential ROI.

You should be able to justify it in both cost-benefit and ROI terms. Moreover, you may even be better off with a free email marketing suite at first if you’re still in the early phases of your email marketing strategy.

Email marketing tool - Design 

It’s vital to choose software that meets both your email needs and your team’s skill level. Design is crucial because it defines usability and ensures smooth operations. Find the email marketing software that matches the tools you have, or that lets you tailor a design that suits you. 

Third-Party Integration

Your marketing campaigns don’t happen in a vacuum—they take data and share resources with your other business tools. Your email marketing software should have the ability to connect with a variety of third-party tools such as analytics, CRM, social media, and more to have the most impact on your overall campaigns.

Reporting

Campaigns have little value if you can’t measure and adapt them. Sometimes an initial approach needs tweaking, but it’s hard to know without proper analytics and monitoring tools. Having robust reporting can help you get the most out of every dollar you invest in email marketing.

Industry

Not every email marketing tool is built for every industry. Find the ones that are industry-specific for you, or email marketing software that is customizable enough to match your unique needs.

Customer Service

Accidents, errors, and unexpected surprises happen all the time, even with the most reliable software. You should have access to resources, experts, and support whenever you need it. Look for companies that supply multiple support channels, extensive knowledge bases, and educational tools.

Security

The software you use should meet the highest industry standards for security and privacy, all while granting you full control over your settings and data.

What features should I look for in an email marketing tool?

Each email marketing platform offers its own benefits and drawbacks. Before settling on your preferred email marketing software, you should compare the features it offers to the factors you need to check off on your list of requirements.

  • Newsletter templates: It’s time-saving and efficient to have access to a wide library of attractive and ready-to-publish templates for your mass emails.
  • Email sending limits: It’s important to find a service that lets you send as many emails as you need and gives some room to grow,  and preferably scales with you instead of forcing you to pay for the bandwidth you don’t require.
  • Personalized messages: The best email marketing tools let you personalize each message or bundle of messages for optimal impact.
  • Preview Emails: Quality assurance is a must for emails, which must seem professional and accessible. The ability to preview emails before they’re sent is a must-have for any organization.
  • Deliverability: Customizable delivery and automated sending are key aspects of good email marketing software. 

Why Is Choosing the Best Email Marketing Software Important? 

Email marketing is still the backbone of a solid marketing strategy. According to statistics, 80% of business professionals say that email marketing manages to help them gain and retain customers.  For this reason, choosing one of the best email marketing software for your business is essential for your success. 

An email marketing platform can help you constantly nurture your relationship with customers through automated email campaigns. It can allow you to facilitate online purchases through transactional emails or gain valuable customer insights through its sign-up forms or landing pages.  

What Makes an Email Marketing Software Solution a Great One?

Here are a few key features that a great email marketing platform should have: 

    • An intuitive interface that takes little time to get to know.  
    • Great deliverability rates: a great platform manages to deliver most of your emails to your contact inboxes and prevents them from getting to the spam folder. 
    • Plenty of integrations to help you connect your account to other services and apps to facilitate multi-channel marketing.  
    • Beautiful templates that enable you to create your campaigns using ready-made, responsive emails. 
    • Various reports help you track your campaigns’ progress. 

What is The Benefits of Email Marketing Software? 

Though it may seem that email is the purview of old-school businesses out of touch with modern trends, the reality is that nearly every company, in every industry, uses email marketing software in one way or another. There isn’t really a single profile of the email user, but it will instead vary widely based on your organization’s needs.

Social media apps may use email to inform users about activity by their friends, while B2B companies may use it to reach out to old leads, keep up with new ones, or simply inform existing customers about major events or updates that may impact them. 

There are several important advantages to using tools from some of the top email marketing companies.

Here are a few key benefits of using email marketing tools in your campaigns: 

  • Target users more specifically with segmentation and more accurate data on user profiles
  • Track engagement metrics instantly and understand how your campaigns are working on a granular level
  • It offers you instant impact as emails can be scheduled and are delivered nearly instantaneously
  • You can cut down on prep time and planning by automating a large part of the email writing and design process
  • Email marketing software helps plan campaigns that result in sales. Some reports place sales resulting from email campaigns at over $35 billion

How Does Email Marketing Software Work?

Email Marketing Software
Email marketing software centralizes all of the tasks related to planning, preparing, deploying, and monitoring an email campaign for your organization. This includes organizing and maintaining a dynamic mailing list, offering email marketing automation tools to cut down on tasks such as layouts, scheduled sending, new email creation, and in some cases even responses.

Overall, bulk email marketing software optimizes your email campaigns without affecting your costs.

There are several types of email marketing, including: 

Promotions:

This is great for spurring engagement and rekindling old leads with value-added deals and new hooks for consumers. Promotional emails include offers, information about new incentives, and can go out to both new leads and existing or lapsed customers. 

Loyalty:

Loyalty email marketing lets you create programs that reward those customers that keep coming back by incentivizing engagement. 

Welcome:

When a customer first interacts with you (via purchases, registration, etc.) it’s always vital to let them know there’s a human on the other side. Welcome emails are excellent for building a stronger foundation for return customers. 

Invitation:

Invitation email marketing focuses on letting existing customers know about new services and drawing in new users to try products that may interest them more. 

Engagement:

Engagement emails are included even in free email marketing software, and they let you keep customers abreast of new developments, products, and even new blog posts that can help you re-engage with them organically. 

What are the Biggest Email Marketing Software Trends? 

AI

Artificial intelligence delivers significant improvements to email marketing, including the ability to better understand campaigns through analytics, more adaptability, and faster responses to customers with automation. 

Advanced Personalized Emails

The ability to target emails is being improved thanks to better analytics. Software today can create highly specific and multi-faceted conditions to send the right email at the right time with surprising accuracy. 

Cloud-based email marketing software

On-premise tools are expensive and hard to scale. Cloud-based software based on a subscription model offers bandwidth on demand all while reducing overheads significantly. 

Packed Software

Having the ability to fully customize software is still a valuable feature. Many companies are choosing packed software as well for its security and privacy. 

Mobile Optimization

Most people access the web from their phones. Email is also migrating to mobile, so tools that can optimize existing campaigns and web designs for mobile formats automatically are highly prized across industries. 

How to Start an Email Marketing Campaign? 

Even with the right email marketing tools, it can be daunting to build a new strategy.

A bulk email marketing campaign requires some thought, but you can easily get started with a few simple steps: 

  • Determine your campaign’s goals, whether they’re engagement, sales, attention, or others. 
  • Choose the right email marketing software. Even the best email marketing campaigns require the right infrastructure to take off. No matter if it’s a paid or free software, find a solution that matches your goals.
  • Create a detailed and segmented list of your contacts. Try to focus on different groups to tailor messages that deliver the best results. 
  • Build your emails and determine how many there are and how frequently they will be sent. 
  • Send your emails and start monitoring your campaign’s progress.

What is Email Marketing Automation? 

Most modern email marketing services help you by removing the need to perform tedious and repetitive tasks that are still necessary. Things like laying out individual newsletters and collating the content, sending out emails, tracking results, and more can be automated by today’s best platforms.

Email marketing automation is no longer a luxury, but a necessity that can save you time, money, and effort. 

What are the Potential Issues With Email Marketing? 

  • Compliance – There are strict rules regarding email marketing, and companies must always be aware of the regulations in any jurisdiction they operate in to avoid liability or other issues. 
  • Spam Filters – Spam has become a major complaint for consumers, and most email clients have powerful spam filters. Finding the right blend of marketing and transparency to avoid spam is crucial. 

How do We See Online (Digital) Marketing In General?

Before diving into email strategies, it’s worth understanding the broader ecosystem.

Today, most companies invest in a strategy that covers multiple channels, including: 

  • Social Media: Social media marketing looks to create a more personalized and individualized connection to users by targeting and tailoring the message to the right audience. 
  • Content:  Content seeks to draw visitors to the website by providing valuable long-form information. 
  • SEO: Short for “search engine optimization”, SEO is focused on optimizing websites to appear higher on searches by modifying meta tags and creating content that matches popular search terms. 
  • PPC: PPC, or “pay-per-click” is closer to the standard ad model where ads are displayed on a page, and you pay a fee whenever your ad is clicked. 
  • Affiliate Marketing: This involves generating buzz via word of mouth and gently orienting people to your website by using third-party affiliates that receive a commission for each visitor they send to your site. 
  • Email: Email today is used for a variety of purposes, including maintaining a constant line of communication with key stakeholders or prospective clients, providing new information, reconnecting with lapsed leads, and more.

When it comes to email marketing, you’re getting a lot more than simply letting your clients know what’s going on at your company today. It helps you accomplish that, but it also empowers you to generate new leads by contacting them once you have their information, and it helps you reactivate old leads by building fresh awareness.

Final Thoughts on Email Marketing

Regardless of your industry or business, email marketing can help you expand your brand’s reach and engage with your customers. Find the right tool for you with our expert reviews, and see what others are saying about the top brands.