Internet marketers have always known the power of email marketing. Email marketing is the weapon of choiceer for businesses that are looking to grow and stand out in a crowded marketplace. I take a look at the best email marketing platforms for small business and also offer up my own experience with these tools.
Email marketing confuses a lot of small business owners when they are trying to figure out the best platform to use. There’s an overwhelming choice to choose from. And these tools aren’t all free, so you have to decide if it’s worth paying for. So what’s the deal? What’s the best email marketing tool? And how do you know which one is right? It can be tricky. That’s why we are doing a variety of articles on this subject..
So you’re a business owner. You’ve just started your first business and you’re really finding your feet in the world of email marketing and automation. As a result, you’ve been doing a little research on what the best email marketing tool for small businesses is.
Finding the right email marketing tool isn’t easy, especially if your business doesn’t have a big budget to spend. Want to know which mailing services are the cheapest, but still provide the features you need? Read on!
When it Makes Sense to Invest Into Email Marketing
Before we get into the individual advantages of the products we’ve reviewed, let’s talk about why you should care about email marketing services in the first place.
Online businesses are nothing without their subscriber list. The most successful internet entrepreneurs say loudly, without hesitation, that it’s all about the list. And it’s true.
Email marketing is the most lucrative among the marketing efforts, yielding you $42 for every dollar you spend.
Wow, right?
Simply, it makes sense to invest in email marketing services if you do any kind of business online. And you can really deliver for your customers through useful information and offers in the messages you send them.
If you’re a finance professional, you can offer lead magnets that explain ideas about improving credit scores.
If you have an ecommerce store, you need a list of customers to message about coupons, special events, and promotions.
And If you sell online courses, you’re going to want to send marketing appeals that let recipients tell you what they want to see you teach them next.
To send out your emails on a mass scale, you need email marketing software. You should not use something like Gmail to send mass marketing emails, since their terms of service won’t allow it.
If any of your emails were to get marked as spam, your Gmail account would be suspended without warning.
Email service providers provide you with formatting tools, templates, and security features that make emailing in bulk to your subscribers more efficient while maintaining a higher probability of reaching their inboxes.
Often, you will hear about dedicated IP addresses when you read about or discuss email marketing. This just means you don’t share an IP address with other users when sending emails.
Why are we bringing this up? And do you have to care about dedicated IP addresses now?
The major reason we mention this is your email sending reputation. It’s kind of like a credit score online for email.
If you have bad or nonexistent “credit”, that results in poor deliverability and your emails will never be read.
Now you don’t have to worry about dedicated IP addresses in the beginning. Here’s why.
When you’re fresh on the scene of email marketing, you want to use other people’s sending reputation to boost yours. You want the IP address you’re sending emails from to be recognized.
This will instantly establish emails that hold some kind of authority, with a good reputation, improving your chances of landing in the inbox. Which is great.
A dedicated IP address is for businesses with established lists, where the readers are aware of your emails, your brand, and trust you.
If you start with an IP address with zero authority before you’re known, your emails can be viewed as spam from day one. This will immediately start your email campaigns out with a bad reputation.
SendPulse.
Best Omnichannel Email Marketing Software (Free – $6.40/month)
SendPulse is a relatively new free email provider founded in 2015 with some excellent recent reviews both by beginners and more advanced users. Their free mail plan is pretty generous and allows an email list of up to 2,500 subscribers and up to 15,000 emails per month.
Pricing:
If you want to upgrade to a premium plan and remove the limits, plans start at $6.40 (billed annually).
Although the free plan offers high limits on email sends, some users have experienced slower performance and limited template options. However, advanced features like SMS workflows and push notifications to multiple devices make up for any performance issues:
MoonMail.
All-In-One Cloud-Based Email Marketing (Free – $44/month)
MoonMail is a cloud-based email marketing tool that operates with Amazon AWS. They are a great omnichannel option and can send messages via email, Voice, SMS, WhatsApp, plus Facebook Messenger, and chatbots.
This form of event-based communication is excellent for marketers looking to expand their messaging outside of just email.
Like many other tools on this list, they have a drag-and-drop editor and templates. One bonus is their interactive email headers. With HTML and CSS, you can change add features like menus, color changes on hover, fades, opacity changes, and more.
Plus, they provide excellent customer support and a strong knowledge base to help with common questions:
MoonMail’s free plan is pretty limited. It gives you up to 2,000 recipients, and one campaign send per day, but you can only send to 10 recipients per campaign.
However, a big selling point is that they allow users to only pay for emails sent vs. based on the number of subscribers on your list.
Their open API lets you send messages via WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or other chatbots.
They also have a native Shopify app that helps e-commerce merchants send autoresponders and abandoned cart emails to potential customers.
For marketers and small businesses looking to send more dynamic and interactive emails and use APIs to expand their reach, MoonMail is a good choice.
Pricing:
Your best bet is to leverage their $44/month Lite Plan. This plan allows you to store unlimited contacts in your email list, and send up to 50000 emails per month.
It also provides automated email bounce management, spam reports, compliance tracking, automation, and premium support.
Ontraport.
Best Full-Lifecycle CRM for Email ($79/month)
When you think of email marketing, the name Ontraport might not immediately come to mind. However, they have been in business for 13+ years, have over 100 employees, and make over $10MM in revenue per year.
They’re best known as a customer relationship management (CRM) tool first, and email marketing platform second.
Their core feature is their Campaign Builder, which is visual marketing automation and live reporting platform. With this tool, you can create advanced sequences and collaborate with other users in real-time:
Ontraport has a powerful block-based editor with lots of helpful contextual help and hover buttons to help you with any issues you run into while building campaigns.
Pricing:
One downside is that their Basic paid plan starts at $79/month and only allows 1,000 contacts, which isn’t scalable. For example, once your email list grows from 1,000 to 2,500 subscribers, the monthly price almost doubles to $147/month.
Ultimately, this tool is best for sales-driven organizations in high-end B2B or B2C industries – companies where automation and sales workflows are more important than sending bulk emails to large lists.
You can get started with Ontraport free for 14 days with no credit card required.
AWeber – Over 20 Years of Email Marketing Experience
AWeber claims to have invented the autoresponder. With over 20 years of operations, it’s entirely possible they did. However, we would have hoped these years of experience would deliver a better email marketing platform – more on that below.
On the plus side, all price plans offer the same features. You get things like A/B testing, email analytics and conversion tracking. They also have a mobile app, so you can send email marketing campaigns on the go.
What we like: Good features for list management and decent support.
What they should improve: AWeber is pretty expensive, which would be fine if the editor wasn’t buggy (after 20 years!). The automations are a bit basic and deliverability is a real issue.
Who is AWeber for: Not sure, to be honest. There are cheaper and better alternatives. ActiveCampaign if you want a really smart solution and MailerLite for a solid email marketing service at a good price.
Benchmark
Benchmark is another leading provider of affordable and flexible email marketing. The tool offers plans starting from $11.89 per month for up to 600 subscribers.
The email provider offers a free plan, which in my opinion is more of a gimmick since it supports only up to 250 email sends in a month.
Interestingly, Benchmark allows multiple businesses share a single account. See more details on Benchmark official website and pricing page.
Zoho Campaigns
Zoho Campaigns is quite similar to MailChimp — both offer free mailing services with only a few limitations.
As a small business new to Email Marketing, Zoho Campaigns is perfect for A/B testing and creating a new effective email marketing campaign without spending a dime.
Once you get the basic and your campaign is working for your business, you can then opt for a paid and unlimited plan with more features, which by the way is also super affordable.
With Zoho Campaigns, you can send as many as 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers every month. See more pricing details here.
SendinBlue
SendinBlue wants to be your all-in-one tool for sales and marketing. It offers loads of features for your email marketing.
You also get support for SMS marketing. If you subscribe for the premium package, you get advanced marketing features like marketing automation, Facebook ads integration, and chat.
To test the waters, SendinBlue has a free plan that is limited to 300 emails per day. For more features, you get Lite package for beginners that goes for $25 and supports up to 40,000 emails per month.
For businesses, the essential package is a great place to start. The plan costs $39 and supports up to 60,000 email sends per month.
For advanced users that need all the bells and whistles, the premium plan is a great choice. It costs $66 and $173 for up to 120,000 and 350,000 email sends per month respectively. See Plans.
Mailjet.
Good for Larger Lists (Free – $15/month)
Mailjet is an email marketing service that started in 2010 and based in Paris. With a catchy name like Mailjet, you’d expect lightning-fast email services – and they do provide that to a certain extent.
With their free plan, you get 6,000 email sends per month or 200 email addresses per day for unlimited contacts. These features work if you have an extensive list, but send few total emails per day.
Pricing:
To remove the send limits, get access to 24/7 support, and send up to 15,000 emails per month, you can opt for their it costs $15/month.
With a simple and intuitive user-friendly interface and no cap on list size, Mailjet is one is a good tool for larger lists.
Drip
Drip is an email marketing tool for eCommerce. The service boasts of its seamless integration with eCommerce solutions like Magento, Shopify, and WooCommerce.
Drip is positioned as an eCommerce CRM providing you with the data you need to automate your eCommerce marketing. You get a 14 day trial period to test the tool with the entry level plan starting at $49 per month for the 2500 contacts. See full pricing here.
Keap
Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) is another tool that boasts of combining CRM to build complete marketing tool for your business.
You get features to enable automate your sales and marketing. The plan starts at $49 with 14 days free trail. Learn more.
Methodology For Choosing The Best Email Marketing Service
Email marketing software lets you stuff your pockets with cash by sending effective marketing emails. The software also helps you stay in compliance with strict regulations that email service providers have to follow.
All so you can reach leads and customers every day in their inboxes.
It works for ecommerce, career coaching, marketing agencies, and any other industry that wants to double or triple revenue with each marketing dollar spent.
When you begin email marketing, knowing which providers give you the best bang for your buck can make all the difference between a successful campaign or not.
So, our detailed research that we used to create this article will be helpful for you.
The six categories we tested and researched are weighted on a scale. Each has a percentage of importance and combines to create the overall score for each provider on this list.
- Price (20%)
- Ease of Use (20%)
- Deliverability Safeguards (15%)
- Templates (15%)
- Marketing Automation (15%)
- Tracking and Analytics (15%)
Users with lists in the tens of thousands and small businesses with zero technical skill and smaller lists all want results from day one.
The same goes for you, right?
This scale quickly shows you each area that’s critical to getting started with email marketing services. By following this guide, you won’t waste any time learning about something you won’t need.
We started by signing up for every paid entry-level plan and describing how simple or hard things are for you to start with. We had our own list of contacts that we imported into each tool.
Then, to see if the mail server IP address assigned to us from each provider was blacklisted or on any watchlists, we created identical plain-text emails and sent them to the email testing address at mailgenius.com.
We figured you’d want to know if there’s a high chance of your email ending up in the spam folder before you even consider spending your time on trying a free trial.
As our research continued, we set up demo campaigns, used each provider’s templates, then sent emails to our contact list we mentioned above.
We saw firsthand how things were delivered and how they looked. It’s all explained in each review.
Email automations, tracking and analysis, and deliverability safeguards are also explained in detail below and in every review above.
Most importantly, we dissected the pricing of each provider. We begin with what each plan costs you over a year and talk about different pricing structures, too.
Conclusion
Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing that is still used by many companies today. It’s a great way to stay in touch with your customers and maintain open communication with them. Email marketing has even been referred to as direct marketing or one-to-one test marketing or even as permission marketing. Using email marketing can be helpful in multiple different ways, especially when it comes to businesses.\
If you are reading this, it is hopefully because you need some help to find the best email marketing tool for your small business. Chances are your business is a startup or you are a small business owner with very few resources at hand.