Email marketing stands as a simple yet effective way how to reach your audience and develop a firm relationship with your customers. It worked well years ago, and it still does today. The goal for this blog post is to present a comprehensive guide on great email marketing software for small business owners who want to reach their target audience with maximum effectiveness.
E-blast is what this review is about. Email marketing that gets you connected to thousands of audience. So, Let’s dive in!
Sendinblue (www.sendinblue.com)
Sendinblue has a great free plan (unlimited contacts) along with support for SMS text message sending, SMTP, in-depth analytics, powerful marketing automation features all in the same dashboard. Sendinblue is also headquartered in France, so you’re guaranteed to comply with GDPR.
How many emails/subscribers do you get for free?
The free plan lets you have an unlimited number of contacts, but you’re limited to 300 emails per day. For that reason, this platform might not be a great option if you want to send out email blasts to all your subscribers at the same time. However, if you have lots of drip campaigns, it’s quite flexible because there’s no subscriber cap.
The first upgrade is called the Lite plan, which offers 10,000 emails per month at $25.00 per month. The daily sending limit is removed.
What makes this one of the best free email marketing services?
- A strong drag-and-drop email editor.
- Impressive automation with things like autoresponders, coupons in emails and abandoned cart messages.
- Integrations with platforms like Shopify, Salesforce, and Intercom.
- Heat mapping and A/B testing to see how your emails are doing.
- SMS marketing that can be linked to your email campaigns.
- A feature-rich WordPress plugin that lets you manage everything from your WordPress dashboard. Plus, you can handle your transactional emails through Sendinblue as well.
- Chat feature to reach out to visitors in real time. One of the unique features with an email marketing service.
- A unique CRM solution that’s integrated into the main Sendinblue package.
Who should use it?
Because of the way the free account works, Sendinblue is a great email marketing solution if you have lots of subscribers but you don’t need to message them all at the same time. If you’re only going to be sending a reasonable number of emails each day, you won’t have to pay for Sendinblue at all. It’s also a good option for WordPress users because of its official plugin and it has better analytics than many of the other free email marketing services.
We are using Sendinblue at Themeisle. Because of this relationship that we have with them, they’ve offered an exclusive 30% discount for the first month on all paid plans. If you end up buying any of them, communicate with this email to redeem the discount: axel+codeinwp [at] sendinblue.com.
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.
TinyLetter
Free Plans: TinyLetter is free
Paid Plans: No paid plans; you can sign up with TinyLetter creator Mailchimp, though.
TinyLetter is entirely free. You can have up to 5,000 contacts—any more and they recommend signing up for Mailchimp. With TinyLetter you can create forms to let people sign up for your email newsletter, complete with a custom background and some branding, but that’s all you get for customization. The TinyLetter email editor is simple and similar to Medium’s post editing tool. You simply type out your thoughts, add a bit of formatting, and send it off. You’ll get stats on how many people opened each of your emails, but that’s all. If you’re looking for a simple solution, this is as simple as it gets.
Mailchimp (mailchimp.com)
Mailchimp is a favorite of many bloggers and small businesses because it was one of the first big email services to offer a completely free plan. Not only that, but Mailchimp has some excellent eCommerce and email marketing tools.
How many emails/subscribers do you get for free?
The free plan includes 10,000 emails per month for up to 2,000 subscribers.
If you would like to upgrade to unlimited emails it costs $10 per month – the catch is that you can only have up to 500 subscribers – which isn’t the case for some alternatives.
What makes this one of the best free email marketing services?
- The drag-and-drop editor, along with the beautiful templates that you can personalize, are some of the best in the business.
- You get a landing page builder – use them to promote special offers.
- Mailchimp has tools for Instagram and Facebook ads and posts.
- Connect with tools like Shopify, Eventbrite, and Salesforce.
- The automation tools include options for abandoned carts, welcome campaigns, and product recommendations.
- A/B testing and segmentation make your emails more effective.
- Great award-winning customer support available 24/7.
Who should use it?
We like Mailchimp for any small business owners and bloggers who appreciate great designs and stellar deliverability (it will also help you optimize your open rates). It’s also nice if you have an eCommerce store or plan on automating emails and you’d like to make your workflows more efficient.
ExpressPigeon
Free Plan: Free email tools are limited to 1,000 sends per month and 500 subscribers.
Paid Plans: ExpressPigeon’s paid plans start at $1,000 per month.
ExpressPigeon is a good solution for businesses with small lists that are sending to important, high-priority subscribers. It provides the tools you need to create and personalize emails, automate your email responses, and send a high volume of emails each month. With the free plan, you get access to the premium services but you’ll have low send priority.
Stripo
Free Plans: Limited free plan includes 2 email templates, 5 test emails daily, and 1,000 monthly views.
Paid Plans: Stripo paid plans start at $125 per year.
Stripo offers two types of email editors: one for marketers with little (or no) design experience and the other for email developers (with an HTML code editor). You can use Stripo’s drag-and-drop editor to create personalized emails.
MailChimp – making email marketing fun
Let’s face it – email marketing can be a little dry sometimes. MailChimp is a breath of fresh air, and their fun and quirky branding, paired with some solid, user-friendly features, have helped it quickly become the world’s most popular email marketing service.
Their free account gives you 10,000 emails a month for up to 2,000 contacts, with access to landing pages, forms and reporting. However, if you want ad-free emails and access to features like A/B testing, chat/email support, inbox previews, and time zone delivery, you’ll need to upgrade to one of their monthly or pay-as-you-go plans.
What we liked: They have a great variety of well-designed and (mostly) mobile-responsive templates, with plenty of flexibility to edit as needed. Their reporting is comprehensive, with stats on conversions, social activity, e-Commerce tracking and email domain performance. You’ve also got forms that easily integrate with your site, landing pages, and over 800 third-party integration options.
Where they should improve: Although they promote themselves as ‘the world’s largest marketing automation platform’, their automation could be massively improved with a workflow editor and more automations beyond just autoresponders. Emails also have a tendency to end up in Gmail’s Promotions tab – fine if your emails are promoting sales and offers, but less than ideal if they’re informational or transactional. The interface could also be a bit more user-friendly. Find out more in this Mailchimp alternatives post.
Who is the free plan suited to? Marketers who want to send nice-looking promotional emails to a relatively large number of subscribers, and access to deep-level reporting. Be aware that Mailchimp doesn’t have the most competitive prices in their paid plans.
Sendicate
Free Plans: Sendicate is free up to 500 subscribers and 1,000 emails per month.
Paid Plans: Sendicate’s paid plans start at $9 per month.
Sendicate is almost as easy to use as TinyLetter, but comes with a few more customization tools. You can change the layout of your emails using columns, headlines, and image or video blocks. You can also add sections to create longer emails. Once you’re done, preview your email in one of Sendicate’s templates.
Conclusion
Another part of the job as a marketer is managing your subscriber list and sending out emails to your customers. For some companies, this is a huge task, and there are many tools and services available to help businesses manage their email lists and sending emails. But we’ve put together a list of our top bulk email software services so you don’t have to waste time researching.