You seriously need an email marketing service provider. After all, email marketing has the highest ROI compared to any other marketing channel.
The only problem? Which email marketing platform should you choose?
The best tool for the job depends exactly on your marketing needs.
In this post, I’ll be comparing 9 powerful email marketing services and sharing recommendations for various use cases towards the end.
Let’s jump right into it:
Here is a quick summary of each of platform:
ActiveCampaign is a leading email marketing platform known for having the most effective balance between functionality and affordability.
This tool has a very rich feature-set that goes beyond email marketing. It has an extremely powerful visual automation builder – one of the most effective I’ve tested.
When it involves the core emailing functionality, you’ve got all the features you would like. For example, you’ll be able to choose between a variety of email templates or design your own with a drag & drop editor.
You have several different options for sending your campaign emails, choose from: one-off emails, timed campaigns, automated emails, RSS-based, A/B testing, or auto-responder.
ActiveCampaign features a lot to offer in terms of contact management. You get lots of ways to filter contacts, and full history of how your contacts have interacted with you – this works in sync with their site & event tracking functionality. List cleaning functionality is included, which might even be done via automation sequences.
Segmenting your email list is straightforward, and you will have access to advanced functionality such as A/B testing and dynamic content. These two features alone can assist you get more opens, clicks, and conversions.
Balancing functionality, price, and performance, ActiveCampaign is the greatest all-round email marketing service.
ActiveCampaign’s offering is configured in such a way that it makes industry-leading marketing automations available to individual content creators and small businesses, while also supporting larger businesses with enterprise-specific functionality.
You’ll find user accounts available for your team, live chat, on-site messaging, custom domains, CRM & sales automation, and lots more.
Key Features:
Pricing:
Plans start at just $9/month (paid yearly) for their lite plan which includes all the necessary email & automation features most people need. You can upgrade your plan to unlock additional features such as site messaging, custom domains, CRM, SMS marketing, and more.
ConvertKit is an email marketing service with a strong focus on bloggers & content creators.
Most platforms specialize in trying to please everyone. ConvertKit doesn’t. Instead, they cater to the wants of a specific audience – bloggers & content creators.
The result’s a well-crafted tool that’s incredibly simple to use. You will get the all-important features necessary to start such as visual automation, with the addition of opt-in forms & landing pages. While you’ll get more mileage out of a dedicated landing page builder, it’s a pleasant choice to have for building your email list.
Simple reporting gives you an honest top-level view of how your forms are performing, and the way your email list is growing overall, and tagging/segmentation is extremely easy.
You can add different email sequences, then pull them into the visual automation builder. You’ll do the same with forms too. With most platforms, you’d need to jump between these options, but you’ll be able to open both directly while editing your automations.
Given ConvertKit’s simplicity, there are some limitations. For instance, filtering your subscribers isn’t as easy as other platforms, there’s no spam scoring, and there’s no visual email builder as such.
But, if you’re new email marketing and you’re after simplicity without sacrificing powerful email automation functionality, make certain to give ConvertKit a try.
Key features:
Pricing:
A free plan is available for up to 1,000 subscribers but doesn’t include visual automations or email sequences. Paid plans start from $29/month up to 1,000 subscribers but it allows for unlimited email sends.
Drip position themselves as an ecommerce CRM, and while they do that job incredibly well, they’re one of the most effective all-round email marketing services I’ve tested.
You can create drip email campaigns, individual broadcasts, or use their robust visual automation builder. One particularly great feature is the ability to split test within different automations.
You can send simple emails that do a good job of getting out of the promotions tab or you can choose to use their visual email builder for branded emails.
They have lots of reporting functionality available. And for those of you that are running ecommerce sites, you’ll find ecommerce specific reports that are actually very useful.
Even if you’re not running an ecommerce site, Drip is well worth testing out if you are looking for an email marketing service. Hands down, it’s one of my favorite email marketing platforms to use for my websites.
Key features:
Pricing:
Plans start from $19/month for 500 subscribers with unlimited email sends.
GetResponse is a veteran amongst other email marketing software platforms.
While there was a time when GetResponse was losing ground to other platforms, they have recently stepped up their game by adding a slew of new features and services.
While their core email marketing product has always been strong since the beginning, the addition of visual marketing automations, landing pages, webinars, CRM, and other new features has helped GetResponse become more of an all-in-one platform.
There is an excellent selection of email templates, which are organized by industry. Split testing is also available for your newsletters too. The visual email builder is drag & drop and has built-in preview functionality & spam scoring.
Contact management provides for easy filtering, list hygiene, and reporting. You’ll find a visual automation builder that’s functional, and like ActiveCampaign, as it comes with automation templates to get you up and running.
Out of all the features that GetResponse offers, what impressed me most was their Conversion Funnel feature. In conjunction with their other features, they’ve created a platform that provides you with everything you need to create an entire sales funnel.
This includes ad creations to fill your funnel, the creation of your landing pages, webinar creation, exit-intent popovers, sales page creation, ecommerce integrations & payment processor integrations. You’ll also be able to build your own store within the platform.
And since you can do all this within a single tool, analytics & reporting are exceptionally convenient.
The only issue I have with GetResponse is it’s complex pricing. It seems designed to confuse. For instance, some basic automation functionality such as segmentation, and on-site tracking isn’t available until you get to the higher plans.
Key features:
Pricing:
Plans start at £11/month with access to basic features. Higher plans unlock more features. Unfortunately, not all of the automation features are available until you subscribe to those higher plans.
Sendinblue stands out amongst competitors as an email marketing tool that delivers incredible value without sacrificing functionality.
You’ll find valuable core features like a drag & drop email builder, feature-rich marketing automation, and more specialized features such as spam testing & A/B split testing.
Sendinblue stands out in a couple of ways. Firstly, they provide transactional email.
What is transactional email? Well, there are two types of email. Marketing & transactional. If you send newsletters, then this is often classed as marketing email.
The difference is that transactional emails are related to product purchases and account sign ups – the sort of emails needed by default. So, if you run an ecommerce website or any other site that has to send account related emails – you’ll find this especially useful.
Not only that, but Sendinblue also prices its services based on the number of emails you send, not the number of subscribers you have. So, if you find yourself sending emails on a regular basis, you may save a lot of money with Sendinblue.
It’s also worth noting that automations are capped at 2,000 contacts unless you upgrade to the Premium or Enterprise plans.
Overall, Sendinblue offers a deep feature set which is extremely impressive once you consider their low price point. and that they have a powerful user interface which makes the platform enjoyable to use.
Key features:
Pricing:
You can send up to 300 emails per day for free with limited features. Opt for the Lite plan in order to send 100,000 emails per month and unlock more features. Higher tier plans unlock even more features, and “Pay as you go” style pricing is available.
Mailerlite is an email marketing software that has gained tons of recognition in recent years due to its feature-rich free plan.
You get access to a very simple to use interface, effective subscriber management, drag & drop email builder, and a full-featured visual automation builder.
You can segment your subscribers, remove inactive subscribers with a few clicks, and look at subscriber activity. you can split test your campaign emails or send emails via RSS.
The visual email builder has some great templates included and it can be used to design emails used within your automations (paid plan required).
In recent years I’ve started using Mailerlite for my smaller sites as a replacement for MailChimp. I began to notice open rates dropping with MailChimp, and it makes sense – all the people adding me to newsletters without my permission seem to use MailChimp. Whereas Mailerlite must approve all new customers before they’re allowed to send emails.
Overall, I was very impressed by the simplicity of the platform overall, given the features included. and I love that there’s a simple paid plan that unlocks all features not included in the free version. So, whether you’re paying $10/month or $1,000/month – you’ve got access to all features.
I have had variety of glitches with Mailerlite. Support couldn’t resolve them and every time their team took 3+ weeks to return with an answer of “we don’t know” or “we couldn’t find a problem” – that is why I chose not to feature it highly on this list.
Key features:
Pricing:
A free starter plan is offered with access to most features and limited support. You’ll get a free trial of premium features. Paid plans start at just $10/month which offers access to all features.
AWeber was one of the first email marketing tools I ever used. They’re one of the few platforms to remain true to its core focus – email marketing.
If you would like a robust solution for sending emails that’s simple (but not too simple), AWeber is a good choice.
They offer an excellent drag & drop email builder with a huge selection of over 700+ templates to make your emails look stunning. And since they’re a preferred platform, you’ll find that a lot of tools integrate with them.
Adding tags is straightforward, and split testing allows you to test your subject lines, email content, and more.
You can also filter your email subscribers and have access to robust reporting analytics. AWeber does in fact offer automation but there’s no visual builder which may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your preferences.
One significant downside to AWeber is that unsubscribes count towards your plan and they need to be manually deleted.
Key features:
Pricing:
Plans start from $19/month for 500 subscribers and unlimited email sends.
Sendlane is a relative newcomer to the email marketing space, in comparison to some on this list. That said, they have a rich feature set.
You can do all of the basic campaigns and newsletters that every other platform offers. Select from a variety of email templates or build your own with the drag & drop builder. You can also use tags and custom fields to segment your list and view real-time analytics.
Sendlane features a particularly well-refined visual editor for creating emails. It’s drag & drop with a very slick user interface.
Like some other platforms on this list, you’ll find that some features are locked behind higher tier plans. However, some plans are only available after a certain size email list.
Regardless, Sendlane features a lot to offer and is really sticking it to some of the more established email marketing heavy hitters with its deep feature set. give it a go for yourself!
Key features:
Pricing:
Plans start at from $99/month while additional features are only available on higher tier plans.
SendX is one of the newer email marketing services on the market compared to others on this list.
Despite competing with tons of established brands, they’ve come out of the gates swinging with a feature-rich platform that’s a lot cheaper than a number of their competitors. In fact, in comparison to a per subscriber basis, it beats out most other platforms on this list.
The interface is super simple and easy to find your way around, and it’s easy to manage your contacts. Unsubscribed and bounced contacts are easy to find as well. In your contact history you’ll be able to see a timeline of their activity.
Campaigns can be either be setup as a newsletter or a drip campaign. You can also do split A/B tests for your campaigns or trigger campaigns based on site activity.
They have a drag & drop email builder and an affordable selection of templates you can use.
SendX sadly doesn’t have a visual automation builder yet (it’s on their product roadmap). However, what they do have is a rule-based if X happens then Y happens style system.
If you have any issues integrating SendX with other tools, you’ll be able to use Zapier to open up the ability to connect to 1,500+ other apps.
Key features:
Pricing:
Plans start from $9.99/month up to 1,000 email subscribers and an unlimited amount of email sends.
The best email marketing service will depend exactly on your business’s needs.
Here are a couple of recommendations based on specific needs:
Email marketing has a higher ROI than any other marketing channel. It’s not just important for businesses – it’s critical.
With the email marketing services we’ve discussed throughout this post; you’ll be able to find a tool that aligns perfectly with the needs of your business.
Everything from simple email marketing to all-in-one platforms to help power your entire sales funnel. For instance, some providers offer marketing automation, landing pages, and live chat on top of their core email functionality.
The best part is most of these tools offer free trials, and most of them won’t require a credit card to get started. So, try a few on this list and see what you think – ultimately, it’s your opinion that matters most.
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