Email marketing remains one of the most cost effective and trusted methods of marketing and it’s surprising how many businesses still don’t use it. It’s surprising because it’s free and relatively easy to get set up and maintain.
In this review, we look at the different email service providers and what they offer. So, take your time to go through each one to select the best option for you.
| PROVIDER | WHAT’S INCLUDED FOR FREE? | COMMENTS |
|---|---|---|
MailerLite | 1,000 subscribers12,000 emails p/mAutomations, landing pages and reports | MailerLite offer a decent amount of features on its free plan. This includes autoresponders, sophisticated webforms, (limited) reporting and email support. There are only basic structural templates included, however. (Read our full review) |
MailChimp | 2,000 subscribers10,000 emails p/mReportingList managementMobile features | Similar to MailerLite, you have restricted features available on the free account (e.g. no advanced segmentation and delivery by time-zone). But you still have a more generous subscriber amount, and it’s just as user-friendly. And most importantly, you can’t use their email or chat support. There’s also a small ad banner in each email you send. (Review) |
| Sender | 2,500 subscribers15,000 emails p/mAutoresponders + transactional emailsPush notificationsForms | This simple and easy-to-use email marketing tool includes a sizeable sending allowance and some handy extras like automations and push notifications. |
| Zoho | 12,000 emails p/m2,000 contactsA/B testingWeb store tracking & reports | With decent email and subscriber allowances, Zoho’s Forever Free plan is worth checking out. Though automation is reserved for its paying customers, it does allow you to A/B test your emails, use its CRM features and offers a wide range of modern email templates. |
| Moosend | 1,000 subscribersUnlimited emailsAll features includedNo Moosend branding in emails | In terms of extras, this is probably one of the more generous free plans we’ve seen, with access to nearly all areas of the tool (landing pages and team accounts not included). It’s also the only tool we’ve tested that doesn’t include its own branding in your emails. |
Sendinblue | Unlimited subscribers9,000 emails p/mMarketing automationCRMBasic reporting | Sendinblue’s free plan is a little more restricted in terms of emails. You can have up to 9,000 p/m, but there is also a daily limit of 300. You also have their branding present in all emails. (Review) |
| Omnisend | 500 emails p/m to 250 contactsUnlimited subscribersLanding pages60 international SMSSegmentation & automationWebsite tracking | Though the sending allowance is small, Omnisend’s free plan comes with all advanced features, including landing pages, website tracking and marketing automation. (Read our full review) |
| GetResponse | 500 subscribersUnlimited emailsWebsite/landing page builder, plenty of email templates | GetResponse slightly lets itself down by only allowing for 500 subscribers, however, their offering of unlimited emails is pretty appealing. Additional features include a well-designed website builder, but no marketing automation. (Read our full review) |
| SendPulse | 500 subscribers15,000 emails p/mWeb push notificationsTransactional emailsBasic autoresponders | A large sending allowance and some unique messaging features make SendPulse’s free plan a top option for multichannel marketers. |
EmailOctopus | 2,500 subscribers10,000 emailsStats for 30 days only | A refreshingly simple newsletter software with very low prices. Doesn’t have a whole load of features but what it does, it does well. You can integrate it with numerous other tools through Zapier. |
| HubSpot | 1million subscribers2,000 emails p/mCRMWebforms | HubSpot’s free plan is slightly limited in terms of emails, as you have a monthly sending limit of just 2,000. They are, however, pretty generous with subscribers and CRM features. Their branding is present in all emails. |
| Mailjet | Unlimited subscribers6,000 emails p/mReporting | Similar to Sendinblue, Mailjet have a sending limit on their free plan, and a daily limit of only 200 emails. (Review) |
Benchmark | Unlimited subscribers250 emails p/mWebformsList managementBasic A/B testing | Thought the free plan includes unlimited subscribers, with an allowance of 250 emails/month, you won’t be able to do much. (Review) |
| MoonMail | 2,000 subscribers300 emails p/mBasic supportList segmentation | This Amazon-powered email service is disappointingly stingy in their free plan, with a limit of just 300 emails per month and 1 campaign per day. |
| CleverReach | 250 subscribers1,000 emails p/mReportingWebforms | CleverReach’s free allowance is pretty limited when you compare it to other newsletter services. There is also a small ad in your outgoing emails that can’t be removed. (Review) |
YMLP | Unlimited subscribers1,000 email p/m | YMLP (Your Mailinglist Provider) is threadbare in both form and function. The design looks as if it’s a relic from the 90s, and you’ll need to be versed in HTML, or have a designer handy, to get something useful from the editor. |
MailerLite (www.mailerlite.com)
MailerLite is one of the best free email marketing services that gained popularity in the last two years. This tool makes it easier for users to improve interaction using pop-ups and surveys.
How many emails/subscribers do you get for free?
The free plan will let you send up to 1,000 emails without having to spend a dime. And while the free version will give you access to nearly all of the essential email marketing features, you might have to miss out on some advanced features.
By that, I mean you won’t be able to create templates, get live chat support or check CTR using a heatmap, or perform A/B testing. You can unlock all this for $10 per month. If you want to increase the subscribers limit to 2,500 then you need to spend $15 per month instead.
What makes this one of the best free email marketing software?
- You can create beautiful email newsletters, pop-ups, and surveys.
- Easily design a mobile-optimized email template for free.
- Send a newsletter to your global subscribers at optimum time using delivery-by-time-zone.
- You’d be able to control your backend using the custom HTML editor.
- Find the most converting landing page using A/B split testing and heatmap analysis.
- The dedicated support team for providing high-class live chat experience (premium plan)
- Get access to 49+ newsletter templates for blog, eCommerce, business, and more.
- Has an API for developers built on HTTP and REST.
Who should use it?
MailerLite can be used for creating landing pages (for webinars, for example), pop-ups, and surveys from a single dashboard. All this plus the heatmap testing makes it ideal for startups, small to mid-sized businesses and eCommerce stores who need good deliverability.
MailChimp
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Free Plan: Up to 2,000 subscribers and 10,000 emails per month
Paid plans: Start at $9.99 per month
MailChimp is probably the best-known emailing mailing tool covered here. They regularly update their product and add new features. They have recently expanded to become an all-in-one marketing platform.
MailChimp has always been known for the quality of its free offering. It includes all the basics for businesses that are just getting started. It now offers fewer email marketing features in the free plan than previously but has instead added a basic service for a wider range of marketing channels: email, landing pages, Facebook and Instagram ads, social posting, postcards, and pop-up forms. The higher paid levels add in an additional channel – retargeting ads on Google, Facebook, and Instagram. The free version also includes a basic CRM with a single audience and related dashboard, tags and segments, and contact profiles.
You gain access to Mailchimp’s Content Studio in the free version, allowing you to sync and store all your photos, graphics, and other files, so your campaigns are always consistent. It also includes a range of basic templates, with additional ones available in the paid plans.
You can access some single-step automation on the free plan, such as welcome emails, order notifications, abandoned cart, and more.
Sender (www.sender.net)
Sender is yet another email service with a wonderful free plan. It also offers push notifications to go along with its segmentation, integrations, and stunning designs that you can customize.
How many emails/subscribers do you get for free?
The free plan lets you have up to 2,500 subscribers and send 15,000 emails per month.
The next upgrade is $10 per month for 5,000 subscribers and 60,000 emails per month.
What makes this one of the best free email marketing services?
- It has plugins for most popular content management systems.
- Video gets converted into animated GIFs inside emails.
- The analysis tools include click maps and Google Analytics – so you can track all your metrics effectively.
- Adding eCommerce products is done by quickly copying and pasting links.
- It can help you automate your social media marketing efforts.
- It will also give you pointers on how to optimize your subject lines.
Who should use it?
Sender has some wonderful tools, but I like it best because the pricing remains fairly low as you upgrade.
Benchmark (www.benchmarkemail.com)
Benchmark boasts a speedy email designer made just for busy marketers. You can edit photos right in the editor and the templates are great for a wide variety of businesses. At the same time, their free email marketing tool is easy enough to use that your people will be able to subscribe/unsubscribe without added hurdles.
How many emails/subscribers do you get for free?
The free plan lets you have unlimited subscribers and send up to 250 emails per month, which is almost exactly what you get with Mailchimp.
If you’d like to upgrade, you can start with 600 subscribers and unlimited sends per month for $13.99.
What makes this one of the best free email marketing services?
- It doesn’t take much time to craft email marketing campaigns using their drag-and-drop email builder.
- You can easily custom code your emails.
- The email automation options include welcome emails, abandoned carts, and follow-ups.
- Polls and surveys are included.
- You receive tools for A/B testing and integrating with hundreds of apps.
Who should use it?
Since the free plan is one of the best on the market, I would recommend this platform to those who can’t afford to pay anything for an email marketing tool. Otherwise, it works well for bloggers and eCommerce stores (running on WooCommerce and other tools).
Omnisend (www.omnisend.com)
Omnisend is a must among these email service providers for users who are running online stores only. It quickly pulls products from your store and generates beautiful and fun emails and opt-in forms to grow your email list.
How many emails/subscribers do you get for free?
The free email marketing plan offers you 15,000 emails per month and 2,000 emails per day. It doesn’t matter how many subscribers you have.
Upgrading depends on whether you need more emails per month or more advanced features. The first option is $16 per month for 500 subscribers and 15,000 emails. The email count and pricing goes up with more subscribers.
If you’re interested in any of those paid plans, you can get a limited time discount of 20% – for Themeisle readers only. The discount is valid for six months on the Standard plan. Click here and redeem the coupon code INFLUENCES206 during checkout.
What makes this one of the best free email marketing software?
- The free plan is a steal and the upgrades are rather flexible.
- The eCommerce integrations instantly pull products you want to sell into the email.
- It has creative signup forms like popups, landing pages, and a wheel-of-fortune game.
- Send out discount codes or scratch cards.
- Create automation reports and A/B test campaigns.
- Retain mobile audience using mobile-friendly email templates.
- Send out automated emails for abandoned carts and order confirmations.
- Also offers enterprise solutions for bigger companies.
Who should use it?
Omnisend is a great free option for eCommerce stores. You can still use this free email marketing software if you’re not running a store, but you’ll miss out on a lot of the unique functionality.
MoonMail
Free Plan: Up to 2,000 subscribers and 300 emails per month
Paid plans: Start at $23.99 per month
MoonMail describes itself as the next generation omnichannel communication platform. This means that it includes email, SMS, Voice, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Bots.
The Free Forever plan allows you to send up to 300 emails/month for free – one campaign per day to a maximum of 10 recipients per campaign. This is quite a limitation, so most people will quickly move onto the Starter pack.
Free plan users still have access to a powerful drag and drop editor, although MoonMail’s branding appears in the footer if you are on the Free plan.
It is ok for beginning firms, however, as you can build a list of up to 2,000 recipients and begin segmenting them. Once you have segments of greater than 10 people, however, you will have to move into the Starter Plan, though.
Zoho Campaigns
Free Plan: Up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month
Paid plans: Start at $4 per month
Zoho is a collection of multichannel CRM software that allows you to engage prospects, automate your sales process, and close more deals. It offers a vast range of integrated apps – more than 40 – covering a whole range of business functions. They integrate into Zoho One.
Zoho Campaigns is the part of the suite relate to running email campaigns (it is also part of the larger tool, Zoho CRM). You can obtain the Zoho Campaigns app separately, as part of the Zoho CRM package, or in the full Zoho One suite.
You can access some of the features on the Forever Free Plan, sending up to 12,000 emails per month to 2,000 subscribers. The free plan gives you access to a drag and drop editor and pre-designed newsletter templates. You can also import templates and use the template library.
Even free plan users can manage and segment their mailing lists. You can schedule email campaigns, including adjusting for recipient time zone delivery. You can carry out A/B testing on your emails, determining the better performer.
The main feature set removed from the Forever Free plan is marketing automation. If that is an area that interests you, you will need to set up a subscriber-based plan.
Moosend
Free Plan: Unlimited emails/month for 1,000 subscribers (Sign up here)
Best for: eCommerce, SaaS, SMEs, Publishers, Bloggers, Agencies
Unique feature: No branding elements on your campaigns
Moosend is among the top free email marketing and marketing automation services that let you create elegant email marketing campaigns, automate your marketing efforts and boost your lead generation with online forms. With a variety of responsive email newsletter templates, the drag-n-drop email builder will allow you to become a creation pro without any technical expertise.
Apart from its free email marketing features, Moosend will also hook you up with marketing automation workflows and powerful segmentation features for free to increase your open rates and conversions. Through segmentation, you also boost your email list management and deliver more personalized content to your email subscribers.
Your free Moosend account also comes equipped with robust reporting and analytics to track your campaign performance and optimize your marketing efforts. Lastly, the free email marketing service offers integrations with popular apps to streamline your marketing efforts.
Overall, Moosend’s platform is an excellent option for new businesses and marketers that want to send unlimited email campaigns for up to 1,000 subscribers. You can use the tool yourself by signing up for a free account and check out its features.
Moosend Features
- Email newsletter templates you can fully customize
- Drag-n-drop builder to easily create your campaigns
- Marketing automation to simplify tedious tasks
- Email list segmentation to maintain list hygiene
- Online forms to increase your lead generation
- Real-time reporting and analytics to monitor performance
- Integrations to streamline your marketing efforts
Moosend Pricing
You can sign up for a free Moosend account and get unlimited emails for up to 1,000 contacts. For more subscribers, Moosend has paid plans starting at $8/month and will give you access to more unique features, including the landing page builder, the SMTP server, and phone support.
YMLP
Free Plans: YMLP is free for up to 1,000 contacts.
Paid Plans: Paid plans start at $3.75 per month for unlimited contacts and additional features.
YMLP (Your Mailinglist Provider) is a bare-bones free email marketing tool. You’ll need to have an understanding of HTML (or have someone around who does) to get the most from this tool. You can also use MS Publisher to create your emails and YMLP does have some email templates available in its builder.
This tool is surprisingly full of features, from scheduling emails to social media integrations; it just takes some work to get it to, well, work. It’s not a straightforward software and feels a bit clunky and outdated. However, if you can get past the late-90s feels of the software, this could be an excellent email marketing tool for you.
YMLP
Free Plans: YMLP is free for up to 1,000 contacts.
Paid Plans: Paid plans start at $3.75 per month for unlimited contacts and additional features.
YMLP (Your Mailinglist Provider) is a bare-bones free email marketing tool. You’ll need to have an understanding of HTML (or have someone around who does) to get the most from this tool. You can also use MS Publisher to create your emails and YMLP does have some email templates available in its builder.
This tool is surprisingly full of features, from scheduling emails to social media integrations; it just takes some work to get it to, well, work. It’s not a straightforward software and feels a bit clunky and outdated. However, if you can get past the late-90s feels of the software, this could be an excellent email marketing tool for you.
HubSpot
Free Plan: Free email tools are limited to 2,000 sends per month, with HubSpot branding.
Paid plans: HubSpot’s paid marketing plans start at $480 per year.
HubSpot is best known as a CRM, but they also have a free email marketing tool to support small business transactional email needs. This easy-to-use drag-and-drop tool features a visual editor with pre-built templates to get you ready to go fast. HubSpot’s email marketing service offers native integration with its other marketing tools and provides a centralized database of contacts where you can organize lists, as well as manage and track the performance of your emails.
Mailjet
Free Plan: Up to 6,000 emails per month / 200 emails per day
Paid plans: Start at $8.69 per month
Mailjet describes itself as the email solution for fast-moving teams. You have one platform to create, edit, and send emails as a team.
Its free plan is designed for those wanting to send fewer than 6,000 emails per month. You can then choose either the Basic or Premium plans, both of which come in five pricing levels depending on the number of emails you intend to send. Finally, there is a customized Enterprise pricing plan with dedicated account management services for those sending more than 900,000 emails per month.
Unlike many of these tools, the free plan doesn’t have any limit on the number of people you send your emails to – just a limit of 6,000 emails per month in total. You have access to an advanced email editor and receive advance statistics on your campaigns.
CleverReach
Free Plans: Includes up to 250 subscribers and 1,000 emails per month.
Paid Plans: Paid plans start at $30 per month.
CleverReach is an enterprise-level email marketing service that includes features like automation, forms, a campaign calendar, and reports. If your email list is small and you want to make sure you’re GDPR compliant, CleverReach is a great option.
SendinBlue
Free Plan: Up to unlimited subscribers and 300 emails per day
Paid plans: Start at $25 per month
SendinBlue offers a range of plans aimed at firms at different stages of their growth:
- Free – for those getting started with SendinBlue
- Lite – for new marketers
- Essential – for growing businesses
- Premium – for marketing pros
- Enterprise – for marketers who need more
The Free plan limits users to sending 300 emails per day to unlimited contacts. Higher plans remove the daily sending limit (replacing it with a monthly figure), remove the SendinBlue logo from emails, and expand channels to include Facebook ads, landing pages, and marketing automation.
Users of all plans gain access to a mobile-friendly email designer, an email template library, email and SMS personalization, SMS marketing, and A/B testing.
Conclusion
Email marketing can bring a lot of value to your business by driving relevant traffic and increasing sales. But if not done right, it can be costly and even damage your reputation with potential customers.