Email marketing is by far the most reliable way to reach your customers because it’s a marketing channel that you own. No algorithm can throttle your reach.
At WPBeginner, we’ve tried several different email marketing services over the last 16 years for our various business. This includes Constant Contact, MailChimp, AWeber, Kit (formerly ConvertKit), HubSpot, Brevo, and more.
Based on our experience, we believe Constant Contact is the best choice for small businesses if you’re just starting out. However, based on the type of your business and needs, you might find a different service more appropriate.
To help you make the right choice, we will compare the best email marketing services for small businesses and share our experiences.
If you’re in a hurry, here’s a quick look into all our recommended email marketing services.
| # | Email Marketing Service | Best For | Price |
| 🥇 | Constant Contact | The #1 email marketing service for small businesses | $12/mo |
| 🥈 | Brevo | SMS and email marketing software | Free and $9/mo |
| 🥉 | HubSpot | CRM and email service for small businesses | Free and $15/mo |
| 4. | Omnisend | SMS and email marketing platform for eCommerce sites | Free and $16/mo |
| 5. | Campaigner | Advanced SMS and email automation suite | $53/mo |
| 6. | Drip | Enterprise email marketing for eCommerce businesses | $39/mo |
| 7. | Moosend | Affordable email solution for small businesses | $9/mo |
How We Tested and Reviewed Email Marketing Tools
We have used several email marketing services listed in this article for a long time on our various online businesses (publishing and eCommerce). This includes MailChimp, Drip, Kit, Constant Contact, and HubSpot.
We have first-hand experience with these email marketing platforms, and know the pros, cons, and features that suit different types of businesses.
For other email services, we signed up for accounts, so that we could test the features for creating emails, segmenting contacts, setting up automation, and actually sending emails.
Along the way, we looked for services that are easy to use for beginners, offer automation options for eCommerce, and have fair pricing for small businesses.
Why Trust WPBeginner?
WPBeginner is a team of experts with 16+ years of experience in WordPress, SEO, email marketing, web hosting, and more. We thoroughly test and extensively review each email service to give you the best recommendations. For details, see our editorial process.
Without further delay, let’s get into the details of each of the recommended email marketing services.
1. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is our #1 choice for an email marketing service. We used it on our test site and recommend it to anyone especially those who are starting out with an email list.
From our test, we found that it offers great beginner-friendly features so you can send error-free and stunning emails with confidence.
For example, it offers 300+ email templates to choose from, which makes building a stunning email easy. Unlike other platforms, it checks for common beginner errors in the email, like template placeholder text and missing links, and even offers subject line recommendations.
Each account gives you unlimited emails, easy tracking and reporting, built-in social media sharing tools, a free image library, list segmentation, Facebook ads integration, and a powerful eCommerce integration for Shopify stores.
Their Email Plus accounts also have 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.
We particularly like that Constant Contact has 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 allows small business owners to quickly learn the basics of email marketing and start using it to grow their business like a pro.
For more details, see our Constant Contact review.
Pros of Constant Contact Email Marketing Service
- Constant Contact has a simple user interface for creating and managing your email marketing campaigns.
- It offers features like email automation, surveys and polls, A/B testing, and more, making it suitable for your marketing strategies.
- It comes with easy-to-use social media tools and list segmentation capabilities to support targeted and multi-channel marketing efforts.
- Each account includes unlimited emails, which is valuable for your small business to grow at any scale.
- Constant Contact has excellent customer support.
Cons of Constant Contact Email Marketing Service
- We believe that the email template designs are less modern compared to other email services.
- It can become more expensive with a large contact list, making it difficult for you to grow your business.
- It provides basic tracking and analytics, which can be improved with advanced reporting options.
Why do we recommend the Constant Contact email marketing service?
We recommend Constant Contact as the #1 email marketing service because of its user-friendly interface and features tailored to small businesses. Some of the top features include easy reporting and tracking, social media tools, A/B testing for subject lines and content, and more. The customer support is also top-notch, including live chat, phone, email, and seminars.
Pricing: Constant Contact has a 60-day free trial (no credit card required). After that, their pricing starts as low as $12/mo.
For WPBeginner users: Use our Constant Contact coupon code to get an additional 20% off for 3 months. Starting at $10.20/mo.
2. Brevo (Formerly Sendinblue)
Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue, is a complete SMS, CRM, automation, and email marketing software for businesses like yours.
What we really like about Brevo is that they offer a free plan for up to 100,000 contacts.
Although they offer an easy-to-use platform, compared to Constant Contact, they offer a limited number of email templates to choose from (Just around 40+, while Constant Contact offers 300+ templates). Plus, Brevo doesn’t offer live chat support and phone support is not free.
However, if you’re looking for a platform that offers free plan, Brevo could be the best bet.
They also offer advanced features including a landing page builder, live chat, sales CRM, and Facebook ads integration. This means users now get more value for the same price.
Brevo 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 functionality to have if you have a large website and want automatic real-time content-based emails.
Pros of Brevo Email Marketing Service
- Brevo comes with a drag-and-drop email editor and a simple user interface.
- It offers advanced automation tools to create user workflows and segmentation.
- It uses AI to send bulk emails, ensuring enhanced email deliverability and open rates.
- Brevo has additional features like live chat, sales CRM, and Facebook ads integration, making it a powerful solution.
- With its SMTP service, it lets you send automated and transactional emails easily.
Cons of Brevo Email Marketing Service
- It comes with a free plan, but it only allows 300 emails per day, making it too limited for businesses looking into this option.
- It can become expensive for high-volume emails, multi-user access, and advanced features.
- Limited live chat and phone support, depending on your plan.
Why do we recommend the Brevo email marketing service?
We recommend Brevo for its user-friendly design combined with powerful tools, making it suitable for beginners and professionals. It comes with AI-driven bulk email timing for optimized deliverability and advanced features like a landing page builder and CRM. Additionally, we like its separate SMTP service for real-time transactional emails, making email delivery reliable.
Pricing: Brevo offers a completely free email marketing plan with unlimited contacts. Their free plan lets you send up to 300 emails per day, but all your emails will have their branding.
The paid plans start from $9 per month for Starter. You can also include SMS on your account, but the pricing will vary based on your sending requirements.
For more information, see our Brevo review.
3. HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the most well-known software in the customer relationship management (CRM) and email marketing space.
Their email marketing service is free to start and comes with many advanced automation features designed to grow your business. You can use the easy drag-and-drop email builder and a selection of templates to create a completely custom newsletter that matches your brand’s personality and colors.
Because of the native integration with the HubSpot CRM, you can personalize your emails for each subscriber based on things like device type, country, list membership, or any other custom information you might have on the individual subscriber.
HubSpot comes with all the powerful features you’d expect from enterprise-level email marketing software, such as send time optimization, high email deliverability, A/B testing, detailed performance analytics, marketing automation, drip campaigns, and more.
We would recommend HubSpot for small, medium, and enterprise customers because it offers an all-in-one marketing platform with email marketing, CRM, automation workflows, sales tools, a website builder, an operation hub, and more.
Pros of HubSpot Email Marketing Service
- It’s an all-in-one solution that includes email marketing service, CRM, automation workflows, sales tools, and more.
- HubSpot CRM allows you to create highly personalized email campaigns based on detailed subscriber data.
- It has a drag and drop email builder and several email templates to design custom newsletters without advanced technical skills.
- It provides detailed analytics and insights, including A/B testing results, to help you optimize your email marketing campaigns.
- The free plan includes HubSpot CRM and email marketing tools, which are a great combination for small businesses trying to build their presence.
Cons of HubSpot Email Marketing Service
- HubSpot is a good service for small businesses, but it becomes expensive when you try to scale up.
- It has several tools integrated within each other, making it a bit confusing for beginners.
- It can be challenging to integrate HubSpot with third-party tools.
Why do we recommend HubSpot email marketing service?
We recommend HubSpot email marketing service for its seamless integration with the HubSpot CRM and other tools. Plus, it offers advanced automation features, A/B testing, and high deliverability. The best part is that their free plan comes with CRM and other marketing tools, making it exceptional value for small businesses to connect with their customers.
Pricing: The free version allows you to send 2,000 emails and store an unlimited number of subscribers. You can create custom signup and popup forms, build landing pages, manage and track your online ads, and more. It has all the tools you need to get started.
If you need more advanced capabilities, then HubSpot email marketing plans start at $15 per month (paid annually).
For more details, see our HubSpot review.
4. Omnisend
Omnisend is a powerful SMS and email marketing service for eCommerce businesses looking for an omnichannel marketing automation solution.
It offers one of the most generous free email marketing plans around because it includes all the powerful features like pre-built automation workflows, subscriber segmentation, A/B testing, performance reports, and even SMS + web push notifications.
Most other free email marketing plans are restricted, but Omnisend is confident in its value proposition, so it offers almost everything in its free plan. As your contact list grows, you will need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Omnisend seamlessly integrates with all the popular website builders and eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, and more. It also has integrations with hundreds of other business tools like live chat software, help desk services, and more.
The thing we liked most about Omnisend is its pre-built eCommerce marketing automation workflows, which are designed to help you drive more revenue through customer journey optimization. This includes emails like welcome email series, cart abandonment emails, cross-sell emails, and more.
Its email builder is very easy to use and comes with a large selection of customizable email templates, so you can create beautiful, on-brand campaigns. Once it’s set up, you can personalize the email using its powerful targeting and segmentation features.
Many users also love Omnisend because it offers SMS built-in, so you don’t have to pay for separate software. The SMS feature allows you to send messages in 209 regions worldwide.
Pros of Omnisend Email Marketing Service
- Omnisend has a generous free plan with powerful email marketing, SMS, and web push notification features.
- It’s built specifically for eCommerce marketing campaigns and automation workflows to boost your sales.
- It seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, and other eCommerce platforms.
- Omnisend has a variety of email templates for beginners to quickly design email campaigns.
- It has advanced targeting and segmentation features, allowing you to connect with users in a more personalized way.
Cons of Omnisend Email Marketing Service
- The features of Omnisend are designed mainly for eCommerce businesses, making it limited to other types of sites.
- SMS marketing can be costly, especially for international reach.
- The unlimited email option is only available in the enterprise plan, which is expensive for small businesses and startups.
Why do we recommend Omnisend’s email marketing service?
We recommend Omnisend for eCommerce businesses looking for an effective omnichannel marketing solution. One feature we liked at Omnisend is its pre-built automation workflows, which can significantly boost revenue generation. Also, their free plan is quite generous and comes with A/B testing, subscriber segmentation, SMS, and web push notifications.
Pricing: Omnisend free email marketing plan allows you to contact up to 250 subscribers, and their paid plans start at $16 per month.
See our Omnisend review for more information.
5. Campaigner
Campaigner is an advanced email marketing suite that comes with powerful automation features to increase conversions and sales.
With its easy visual builder, you can quickly build simple or complex automation workflows to nurture subscribers and customers through your conversion funnel. You can even build combined email and SMS automations to connect with customers on their preferred channels.
You can choose from many different events, triggers, and actions to create workflows for welcome series, abandoned cart series, re-engagement campaigns, milestone campaigns, customer service series, and much more.
Plus, you can add personalization options like advanced segmentation, custom fields, geolocation, purchase behavior, past engagement, and dynamic content. This helps you create highly relevant messages based on the unique traits on your subscribers.
While testing Campaigner, we liked how easy it was to create beautiful email campaigns. It includes a drag-and-drop editor and over 900+ responsive email templates that you can use to get started.
Other smart features include conversion tracking, autoresponders, A/B testing, signup forms, landing pages, and more. You can also get the Reputation Defender addon to protect your list from invalid or risky emails that can harm your deliverability.
Pros of Campaigner Email Marketing Service
- Campaigner has advanced automation features, allowing users to create complex email and SMS workflows quickly.
- It comes with a user-friendly workflow builder to create email marketing campaigns.
- With hundreds of responsive email templates, you can design interactive and engaging email campaigns in just a few minutes.
- Campaigner offers advanced personalization options, such as geolocation, purchase behavior, and past engagement, enabling highly targeted marketing campaigns.
- It filters out spam email accounts to make sure you send emails to real people.
Cons of Campaigner Email Marketing Service
- The powerful automation and workflow builder can be overwhelming for beginners or small businesses with simpler needs.
- Full options for SMS marketing and automation are only unlocked when you buy a higher-tier plan.
- Their customer support takes time to respond, making it difficult for users requiring immediate assistance.
Why do we recommend Campaigner?
We recommend Campaigner for its automation features, which enable small businesses to grow subscribers through various stages of the conversion funnel using email and SMS channels. It also has over 900 email templates for welcome emails, targeted campaigns, abandoned carts, and more. We also really like some of its premium features, including conversion tracking and A/B testing.
Pricing: Campaigner offers a free 30-day trial that gives you access to all of their features. Pricing starts at $53 per month for up to 5,000 subscribers.
If you have a large email list, Campaigner’s pricing is more affordable than other email marketing solutions. For example, Omnisend costs $81+ per month for 5,000 subscribers.
6. Drip
Drip is a powerful enterprise email marketing platform for eCommerce, bloggers, and digital marketers. It offers a wide range of tools to simplify marketing automation, sales funnels, and personalization.
We use Drip for several of our businesses, including WPBeginner, because it meets our growing email marketing demands, like improved segmentation and personalization features.
Its eCommerce revenue attribution feature shows us exactly how much revenue we generate from each email marketing campaign.
For more details, you can see why WPBeginner switched from Mailchimp to Drip.
Although Drip is a great email platform WPBeginner, it may not be the right solution for everyone. For example, their plan starts at $39 per month so if you’re on a limited budget, you could choose a tool like Constant Contact instead.
What sets Drip apart from the competition, like Campaign Monitor, is its intelligent marketing automation tools. These include smarter email segmenting, split testing features, list groups, and a visual drag-and-drop builder for automation workflows. These features allow you to reach targeted customers in your email list and increase sales.
Drip’s support options include live chat support, webinars, automation training, detailed courses, free guides, and excellent documentation.
We believe Drip is the best email marketing software for eCommerce websites and business owners who need more advanced features to maximize their marketing efforts.
Pros of Drip Email Marketing Service
- Drip fully integrates with eCommerce platforms to offer features like revenue attribution to boost sales.
- It offers powerful automation features, making it possible to create complex customer journeys with ease.
- You can segment your audience and personalize emails to increase engagement and click rate.
- Drip captures user behavior and interactions across platforms and enables highly targeted and effective marketing tactics.
- It has support via live chat, webinars, training, guides, and documentation to troubleshoot issues quickly.
Cons of Drip Email Marketing Service
- The pricing is on the higher side compared to some of their alternatives, especially for smaller businesses.
- Unlike some other email marketing tools, Drip does not offer a permanent free plan.
- Drip has simple email templates and requires work to create engaging emails.
Why do we recommend Drip email marketing service?
We recommend Drip for its powerful and intelligent marketing automation tools, email segmenting, and seamless integration with WordPress and WooCommerce. Some of our favorite features from Drip include a user-friendly drag-and-drop automation builder, split testing, list groups, and eCommerce revenue attribution. Furthermore, it also offers live chat, webinars, and detailed training materials to help design your email campaigns.
Pricing: Drip offers a free trial, and plans start from $39 / month, which includes all the features.
Recently, they’ve also added SMS notification as a feature to all plans, which allows you to connect with your users on both email and SMS marketing channels. This makes Drip a true all-in-one email marketing platform for store owners.
7. Moosend
Moosend is an affordable email marketing service for small businesses. It comes with a suite of powerful marketing automation features, email list-building tools, landing pages, and more.
You can quickly create an email newsletter and customize the email design to match your brand within minutes by either choosing from their dozens of pre-made email templates or by creating a completely custom template.
The thing we liked most about Moosend is that it offers marketing automation features in all plans. You can use their automation workflow designer to offer a personalized subscriber journey for your newsletter subscribers.
Moosend offers detailed email analytics that shows important metrics such as email opens, clicks, bounces, product views, purchases, custom event tracking, and even predicted demographics data.
All plans come with powerful conversion optimization features such as A/B testing, email heatmap analytics, countdown timers, conditional content, an AI engine for product recommendations, popup forms, floating bars, newsletter signup subscription forms, and more.
Pros of Moosend Email Marketing Service
- Moosend is the most affordable email marketing service for small businesses, offering cheaper plans and a 30-day free trial.
- It has a simple and easy-to-use interface to design your email campaigns, from creation to execution.
- Even at its basic plan level, Moosend includes marketing automation features to send personalized emails based on subscriber behavior.
- Moosend provides detailed analytics on email performance, including opens, clicks, and conversions.
- It has a powerful AI engine to optimize your email marketing efforts with ease.
Cons of Moosend Email Marketing Service
- The customer support experience is not as good as that of other email services on the basic plans.
- Moosend faces challenges with email deliverability, which can impact the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
Why do we recommend the Moosend email marketing service?
We recommend Moosend to small businesses due to its affordability and marketing automation features. We like its personalized automation workflows, detailed analytics, and conversion optimization tools. The best part is that Moosend ensures all users, regardless of their plan, can access advanced features like A/B testing, email heatmap analytics, and AI-driven product recommendations.
Pricing: Moosend offers a 30-day free trial with an unlimited number of emails (no credit card required). After that, their pricing starts at $9 per month for their Pro plan, which includes a landing page builder, transactional emails for eCommerce websites, team management, and more.
Bonus: More Email Marketing Platforms
Let’s look into some more email marketing platforms that are out there for small businesses like yours.
These email services come with a free plan or a free trial, so you can get started with email marketing.
Bonus #1. AWeber
AWeber is one of the oldest and most popular email marketing service providers in the world. It offers 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, a/b testing, and email tracking with detailed insights.
AWeber also offers powerful email marketing features, such as AMP emails, automatic RSS-to-email for bloggers, and tag-based subscriber segmentation.
It also provides many integrations with popular CRM software, email verification tools, membership plugins like MemberPress, lead generation tools, and more.
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, pricing starts from $12.50/month. You can also sign up for quarterly or annual plans to save even more.
See our complete AWeber review for more details.
Bonus #2. Kit (Formerly ConvertKit)
Kit is a powerful email marketing platform for professional bloggers, authors, and marketers. It is extremely easy to use and incredibly powerful.
Kit’s most unique feature is that it 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 Kit, 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.
It has all the powerful features you’d expect from a top-notch email marketing service, such as A/B testing, beautiful email templates, a landing page builder, smart workflows, and more.
Kit offers email-based support and has an extensive knowledge base with great learning material.
A lot of Kit features, such as paid newsletters, are specifically designed for creators and professional bloggers, which is why we rate them the best email marketing service for professional bloggers.
You even have the ability to sell digital products & subscriptions from the same platform.
Kit offers a free plan with limited features for up to 10,000 subscribers. Pricing starts from $9/month (paid annually), depending on the number of subscribers you have. There is also a 30-day refund policy.
The Creator Pro plan also includes advanced functionality, such as a newsletter referral system, subscriber engagement scoring, advanced reporting, and Facebook custom audiences.
Bonus #3. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world primarily because it offers a forever-free email marketing service plan.
Although we no longer recommend it since there are better solutions available on the market, the sad reality is that we cannot create the best email marketing software list without including Mailchimp due to its sheer popularity.
Mailchimp comes with an easy drag-and-drop email builder, autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, and simple email tracking for analytics. It also allows you to set up delivery times based on the user’s time zone, and you can set up 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, or check out our picks of the best Mailchimp plugins.
When it comes to marketing automation features, the Mailchimp platform is quite limited when compared to other providers in our list such as HubSpot, Drip, or Kit.
In recent years, Mailchimp has attempted to add many of the “advanced” features found in other platforms, but after testing many of these, we believe that they are not truly advanced.
Mailchimp support is offered via email, live chat, and a large tutorial knowledge base. However, their support is often slow and does not match the quality of service that you get from Constant Contact.
Their paid plans start from $13/month, and the pricing increases based on the number of subscribers in your audience.
However, if you want unlimited audiences, advanced audience segmentation, multivariate testing, and comparative reporting, then you’d have to move to their $350/month plan.
Final Thoughts: The Best Email Marketing Service
There are many other email marketing services available, but we want to make sure that you choose the right one for your business needs.
Below is WPBeginner’s expert pick:
If you’re a small business, a non-profit, or a new blogger, we recommend using Constant Contact.
Its pricing is great, and the support team is absolutely top-notch. Also, Constant Contact has an onboarding team that will help you find success with your email marketing campaigns right away.
We recommend Brevo for small business owners who want a powerful marketing automation tool that combines email marketing, SMTP bulk emails, and SMS messages.
Brevo has an easy-to-use platform that allows you to manage email and SMS from a single interface. It also offers a fairly generous forever free plan, which makes it the best free email marketing software.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one email marketing solution, we recommend HubSpot.
HubSpot offers a powerful suite of marketing tools, including email marketing, CRM, sales tools, live chat, a website builder, and more. Its free plan is great for lead generation because it lets you store unlimited subscribers.
If you run an online store or eCommerce website, we recommend using Omnisend or Drip, which offer the best eCommerce email marketing software.
Many of our eCommerce business websites use Drip for email marketing. The personalization and automation features of Drip are extremely powerful.
If you’re a professional blogger or content creator, we recommend using Kit. It offers an easy-to-use platform with advanced segmentation and funnels that will help you take your blogging business to the next level.
Pro Tip: Get More Email Subscribers, Fast!
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 services that we mentioned above and dozens more.
WPBeginner’s founder, Syed Balkhi, is also the co-founder of OptinMonster. He initially built OptinMonster to help grow our own email list. After its launch in 2013, it has grown tremendously, with over 1.5 million active installs of the WordPress plugin.
Today, OptinMonster is being used by some of the largest brands in the world, including McAfee, Experian, TripAdvisor, Pinterest, Harvard University, Patreon, and more.
You can read our in-depth OptinMonster review for more details.
Aside from OptinMonster, you can also use the following tools to grow your email marketing list:
- WPForms is the #1 WordPress form builder for creating contact forms, surveys, polls, and other types of forms. It comes with built-in integration with all popular email marketing services and is trusted by over 6 million website owners.
- SeedProd—Want to create custom landing pages to boost conversions? SeedProd offers a far superior landing page builder experience. Smart website owners use SeedProd along with their preferred email marketing service because it integrates with all the popular email platforms.
- LiveChat.com – One of the easiest ways to grow your email list is to connect your live chat software with your email marketing service. We use LiveChat on several of our sites.
- ChatBot.com – Another smart way to grow your email list is to use chatbot software and connect it with your email marketing service.
- RafflePress – This is the leading WordPress giveaway and contest platform. It lets you use viral marketing to grow your email list.
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 a 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’s 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 the 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 and HubSpot 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 and click-through rates, which are big factors in future email deliverability.
We always recommend sending a personalized welcome email to all new subscribers and then segmenting users according to their interests.
It’s also important to have a clear unsubscribe link for users so they can unsubscribe rather than marking your emails as spam.
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 solutions for 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 Brevo (formerly known as Sendinblue) because its free plan doesn’t limit the number of subscribers. HubSpot, Omnisend, 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’s email marketing costs around $20 – $300 per month if they manage their own campaigns. If you use an email marketing agency, then your cost might be closer to $500 per month or higher.
Can email marketing help with SEO?
Email marketing has no direct impact on SEO. However, it can help you get more traffic to your website, which can lead to more shares and sometimes backlinks / mentions.
Google and other search engines use shares and mentions as social signals to rank websites. So indirectly, email marketing can help your website’s SEO rankings.
You may also want to use these best WordPress SEO plugins and tools to improve your rankings.
Which is the best email marketing app for Shopify?
Many of the above email marketing services offer an intuitive Shopify app that’s easy to use. We recommend using either Omnisend or Drip since they offer robust eCommerce marketing automation tools that seamlessly integrate with both Shopify and WooCommerce.
Some eCommerce power users prefer Klaviyo for Shopify email marketing, but their platform is quite expensive for small businesses.
Which is the best email marketing platform for WordPress?
Most email marketing platforms have deep integration with WordPress because it’s the most popular website builder on the planet, powering over 43% of all websites. With that said, the best email marketing platforms for WordPress are Constant Contact, Brevo, and HubSpot.
Over the last few years, many business owners have also switched to native WordPress email marketing solutions like FunnelKit Automations. These solutions help you save big on costs while offering powerful features like broadcast emails, automated drip emails, CRM, and more right from inside WordPress.
Website owners use FunnelKit for creating emails and then use the WP Mail SMTP plugin along with an SMTP service like SendLayer, Amazon SES, SendGrid, or others to ensure that all emails reliably reach customers’ inboxes.
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 making a full list of email platforms would create more confusion and cause choice paralysis for non-techy readers.
We have tried all the top major email marketing services, including many that are not in our email platform lists above, such as: MailerLite, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Ontraport, Mailjet, Benchmark, Campaign Monitor, InfusionSoft (now Keap), Klaviyo, Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot by Salesforce, Sendloop, iContact, Emma, TotalSend, SharpSpring, MailPoet, Email Octopus, Sendy, and more.
The top email marketing services that we have chosen to include in our list provide the best features for the best price.
Which are the best email marketing services in your opinion?
In our opinion, the best email marketing services are:
- Constant Contact – Best email marketing services for small businesses.
- Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) – Best email and SMS marketing platform.
- HubSpot – All-in-one email marketing and CRM for growing businesses.
Bonus: Omnisend and Drip are the best email marketing platforms for eCommerce.
Along with an email marketing strategy, we recommend adding web push notifications to your website. This is another powerful way to connect with your visitors after they leave your website.
We use PushEngage on WPBeginner, and it has become a top 5 traffic source on our site.
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 the must have WordPress plugins for business websites or 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.
D.
Can I add to this that I spent hours putting together draft campaigns in Mailchimp only to fall foul at the last hurdle when they decided that the content I was intending to send to my existing customers was “a “prospecting or introductory campaign” and that they couldn’t allow me to do it.
WPBeginner Support
You would want to reach out to MailChimp’s support as depending on how you created the list, you may be getting caught in a safety measure to prevent spam.
Admin
Eldisa Haka
Does free plan of sendinblue create a email list and a newsletter?
WPBeginner Support
You would want to check with them for their current offerings but at the moment, you can do that with their free plan
Admin
Jasmin B
Awesome thank you so much this is great for email marketing
WPBeginner Support
Glad our recommendations were helpful
Admin
Bruce Maples
I have an unusual question — Do any of these services offer a way to have a real-time or query-driven connection to the data? If I could find a provider that supported some sort of SQL connection, that would be much better than what I am doing.
WPBeginner Support
We would recommend reaching out to the support for the different services with the tools you’re using on your site to see what integrations they have available.
Admin
Ankur Sood
Thanks for sharing such a great article and it’s helpful for everyone. Great Post!
WPBeginner Support
Glad you found our content helpful
Admin
Fenicia
Thank you for this information I found it to help me very much.
WPBeginner Support
You’re welcome
Admin
Rahat
I’m going to try it for my next post.
WPBeginner Support
We wish you luck
Admin
Beth Gucio
You are a great writer. I like the way you present it. Surely, it helps a lot. Thanks for this and keep writing.
WPBeginner Support
Glad you found our content helpful
Admin
Chris jones
Such a great article, Thanks for your valuable information.
WPBeginner Support
You’re welcome
Admin
CHUKWU NWANNEKA
That’s a good one. I’m just a biginner, will know better soon
WPBeginner Support
Glad you found our recommendations helpful
Admin
Faisal
Are those Email marketing providers good for transactional emails?
WPBeginner Support
If you wanted to you could certainly use these services for that.
Admin
Ciara
Thanks for all the helpful information–a quick question I didn’t catch above: can you easily switch from one Email Marketing Service to another if you unhappy with the service/your business needs change?
WPBeginner Support
Yes, you can if you wanted
Admin
Omolara
Whao! This article is a great help. I will try the most top rated. It is good guide to help expose my website and products. I really appreciate this.
WPBeginner Support
Glad our article could be helpful
Admin
Zuby Singh
Besides your list, I personally use CaptureCode and they offer so much then just email marketing. They offer an entire platform for campaign management and a host of other marketing tools.
WPBeginner Support
Thanks for sharing your recommendation
Admin
Adriana Jenson
Hi there, I just wanted to offer a tip in case you’d like to update your article. I just went to the ConvertKit website, and they have a free version now! It’s for up to 500 subscribers. I think it may get some new bloggers who would typically go to Mailchimp.
WPBeginner Support
Thank you for sharing this
Admin
Adriana
You’re welcome! Happy to help. Your team helps me so much. Thank you for sharing your article!
Anantha Ram
It seems mail chimp will serve the starter needs without any discouragements! lets have a good time!
WPBeginner Support
Glad our recommendation was helpful
Admin
Stefan Ch
I’d say that regardless of which esp one picks we should always make sure that deliverability is ok. I.e. SPF, DKIM, DMARC records set up correctly, and blacklists are checked upon regularly.
WPBeginner Support
Thanks for sharing your recommendations
Admin
Pschool
thank you for providing email marketing tools and software provider for email marketing.
WPBeginner Support
You’re welcome, glad our recommendations could be helpful
Admin
Ranojit Kumar
I used MailChimp for my tiny startup e-commerce website. I think it’s best. I think it best for those who are looking for a lower price.
WPBeginner Support
Thanks for sharing your recommendation
Admin
Jochen
OptinMonster is a nice tool for collecting leads and mails. I am just playing around with it on a e-commerce page.
The great thing is, that I can use it on every blog or shop system.
WPBeginner Support
Thanks for sharing your recommendation
Admin
Dilraj gurjar
Sir can you please tell me some strategy to grow my email list because it’s no growing fastely. It is running slow like per day 2 or 3 subscriber
WPBeginner Support
For growing your email list, you would want to take a look at our article here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/12-tested-and-easy-ways-to-grow-your-email-list-faster/
Admin
Mark JC
Thanks for the article. There are two departments in my company which uses Constant Contact whole tho other uses Mailchimp. I find Mailchimp better for a bigger campaign. Great article and thanks for the comparisons.
WPBeginner Support
Thanks for sharing your experience with the services
Admin
Vitus
Thanks for the wonderful comparison. Still new in email list building. Would come handy.
WPBeginner Support
You’re welcome, glad our article could be helpful
Admin
Melvin Adame
I ended up going with Drip after being with Mailchimp for 3 years and it has been the best decision I could make. I have to thank the author of this article!! Thank you
WPBeginner Support
You’re welcome, glad we could recommend more options to you
Admin
Karen Tooker
Great comparison article. I’ve heard great things about Aweber and Wordpress sites and auto responders. Nice to be able to compare in one place.
WPBeginner Support
Glad our article could be helpful
Admin
Thomas
While I hear alot of good things about Sendinblue and Convertkit, I heartily recommend Mailchimp to small businesses, email marketing entrepeneurs just starting out or if you just don’t have a clue, are new to email marketing but want to find something affordable where you can start out. Then Mailchimp is for you. They miss some functions that other companies offer but the easiness and the “free up to 2 000 contacts” makes it e great starting point.
WPBeginner Support
Thanks for sharing your recommendation
Admin
Kerry Hunt
Thank you for this excellent article. I’m looking for an ESP that is easy to use and allows affiliate links. I understand some ESPs don’t allow affiliate marketing in your emails. I’d love to hear which do or don’t. Thank you!
WPBeginner Support
Most if not all email service providers should allow for affiliate links. They just do not allow affiliate marketing and by that, it means emails only for recommending products rather than keeping up a relationship with your subscribers for your content
Admin
Shakeel Anjum
Thank you WPB for providing the details of Best Email Marketing Services.
I’m currently using MailChimp and I’m currently happy with it.
WPBeginner Support
You’re welcome, glad you’re happy with MailChimp
Admin
Kevin Norberg
Hey, thanks for supporting us out here! Really appreciate the quality training and content.
WPBeginner Support
You’re welcome, glad out tutorials can be helpful
Admin
Adi Rainbow
Nice Blog For The Email Marketing!
WPBeginner Support
Thank you
Admin
Trent W
Nice page really helpful and I have a question
1st ) if you choose a service and decide to change do you keep your list or have to start over
WPBeginner Support
Most if not all of the email marketing services give you the ability to export your list of users to transfer to the new platform.
Admin
Naum
Can u guys check the maijet link because when i click it doesnt take me to the maijet website, i think the link is at the forth paragraph. but thanks for the article it is very helpuful
WPBeginner Support
From testing the link appears to be working but we will be sure to keep an eye out should the links have any trouble
Admin
Okereke Divine
WPbiginner – this is the first blog that I learnt how to create wordpress back then in 2016. Today, I have also learnt a lot about the email marketing.
I really appreciate you guys existence and YES, HAPPY BIRTHDAY
WPBeginner Support
Thank you, glad we could be helpful over such a long time
Admin
kashyap
Nice Blog For The Email Marketing
WPBeginner Support
Thank you
Admin
Sikha Mishra
Very good list, added to my favorites. I like that you broke down the questions by topics.
WPBeginner Support
Thank you, glad you like how we broke down our article
Admin
David
MailChimp does seem to be peeling back what it offers, and over time is restricting their plans more and more… however I do believe they announced they were adding automation to the free plan a while back. I’m not sure your report on them is accurate in that sense.
WPBeginner Support
We will certainly keep an eye on any product in our articles and update the article should our opinion change
Admin
Donna
Please I need a email provider that could drop Gmail spamming to inbox……
WPBeginner Support
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.
Admin
Sanjay Sajeev
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.
WPBeginner Support
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.
Admin
Alian
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.
WPBeginner Support
Thank you for sharing the service you’re currently using
Admin
Doug Graver
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.
WPBeginner Support
You may want to start by looking at MailChimp and Drip depending on your specific needs.
Admin
Janet
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.
Kesha LAzenby
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
WPBeginner Support
Yes, however, you would want to reach out to them for specifics on if it is still available.
Admin
Mikhil
Great work Syed Balkhi.
Thank you for giving those great ideas. Keep up going
WPBeginner Support
Glad you like our articles, we’ll continue to make them
Admin
Scott Webb
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.
Editorial Staff
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).
Admin
Biplab Mahanta
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.
WPBeginner Support
Thank you, glad our post could help
Admin
A. Harris
Great list of providers for permission based email marketing. If you are a small business who incorporates purchased email lists into your strategy?
WPBeginner Support
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.
Admin
Kwabena Okyire Appianing
This is a great list
currently, i am deciding which one i should go
considering covertkit, mailchimp and mailerlite
WPBeginner Support
Thanks, hope our article can help you choose the best one for you
Admin
Noel Guilford
Interested to know why you haven’t reviewed Active Campaign which I use for one of my businesses and find to be very good.
WPBeginner Support
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.
Admin
David
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?
Editorial Staff
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.
Admin
Wouter
I am surprised that you didn’t include ActiveCampaign in the list.
Editorial Staff
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.
Admin
David
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).
Editorial Staff
Thanks for sharing your experience David
Admin