To grow your email list, you need to have a consistent strategy in place. Fortunately, there are a number of free email marketing applications available for small businesses and startups. Choosing the right email marketing tools for your business can be a challenge. You will want to factor in cost, ease of use, and tech support when choosing the right tools.
To help you out, we have compiled a list of 5 of the best free email marketing software applications that offer the greatest value to businesses trying to build their email lists online.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp – Easy & Reliable Email Marketing Software for Startups & SMBsMailchimp – Email DesignerMailchimp – Sample reportMailchimp DashboardMailchimp – Email DesignerMailchimp – Sample reportMailchimp DashboardMailchimp – Email Designer
Mailchimp is one of the most popular and one of the best email marketing software out there, with most companies who are looking to experiment with email marketing defaulting to this app.
Why is Mailchimp so well-received? First of all, setting up a Mailchimp account is both easy and straightforward — even those who are completely new to email marketing find it relatively easy to get their bearings with Mailchimp. Secondly, Mailchimp has grown into an all-in-one marketing platform with email, CRM, landing pages, social campaigns, website builders, marketing automation, and much more.
Another amazing reason why Mailchimp has won heart is their new feature to >allow employees to sell goods and services. This has allowed Mailchimp employees to review the product, both as a user and as an employee. This perspective is definitely going to help Mailchimp build better features and support their customers in their growth journey.
Of course, there’s also a free plan on Mailchimp.
If you’re on this plan, you can send up to 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers per month, and you even get access to Mailchimp’s marketing automation function. Pretty sweet!
Best features:
- Best email designer
- Many integrations
- Best delivery rates
- Advanced segmentation
- Customer journey builder
First and foremost, we love Mailchimp’s email designer, which is easy and intuitive to use.
Once you create a campaign in Mailchimp, you’ll get access to 80+ pre-built templates, all of which are mobile-responsive.
You can either choose a template based on its look and feel, or go off the goal you want to achieve (your options include: Sell Products, Make An Announcement, Tell A Story, Follow Up, Educate, etc).
After choosing your template, the next step is to use the visual editor to customize the template.
You have access to all your editing tools on the right, and your changes will reflect in real-time in the preview pane on the left.
Moving on… email designer aside, Mailchimp also offers a whopping 700+ integrations, which means it’s the most heavily supported email marketing service by far.
Last but not least, Mailchimp’s deliverability rates are generally pretty high.
That said, Mailchimp does detail the steps it takes to >maintain a great sending reputation (which affects deliverability).
For instance, every time a Mailchimp user sends a campaign, the app’s automated abuse-prevention system, Omnivore, scans the campaign to identify addresses that might affect the delivery of the campaign.
Mailchimp not just enhances email marketing campaigns but also enables its users to build customer journey roadmaps. You can create a roadmap for every possible path that a customer can take while interacting with your brand or services. This path is determined by the customer engagement data and customer profiles saved inside Mailchimp. Not just this, Mailchimp lets you put your customers on a journey that is relevant to them so that you are never out of their minds.
Pricing: Forever free plan available. Paid plans start from $9.99 per month.
Integrations: You can connect Mailchimp to 100+ apps like Facebook Lead Ads, Salesforce, Google Sheets, Shopify, etc. using connector apps like Automate.io. Below are a few most popular integrations you can use right away:
Marketing & Lead Generation Apps:
E-Commerce & Payments Apps:
CRM Apps:
Best suited for: Startups and small companies on a tight budget. Quality email marketers, who have a set of independent campaigns to send out based on seasonality or a recurring newsletter or even a specific announcement campaign.
Mailchimp’s Forever Free plan is perfect for companies who can’t afford to spend much on email marketing. With this plan, you get to send up to 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers each month.
You won’t be able to use all the reporting and testing features, and your subscribers will see a small Mailchimp banner in your newsletter’s footer… but considering that it won’t cost you a single cent, we say: go for it.
Aweber
AWeber – Simple & Easy-to-use Email Marketing App for Newbiesaweber – drag n dropaweber-reportingaweber dashboardaweber – drag n dropaweber-reportingaweber dashboardaweber – drag n drop
Aweber is an email marketing tool that’s particularly popular amongst small businesses and entrepreneurs. This email marketing app has been in business since 1998, and they keep improving upon their product to bring value to their users.
Best features:
- Flexible opt-in process
- Best autoresponder
- Split testing opt-in forms to increase subscriber base
- Near about 700 responsive email templates (across devices)
Aweber’s flexible opt-in process helps it stand out from the crowd.
More specifically: Aweber allows its users to choose whether their subscribers are added via a single or double opt-in.
With a single opt-in, your customer will be subscribed immediately after completing a form. If you use a double opt-in, your customer will have to click on a link in a confirmation email to complete their subscription. Most email marketing tools only come with one option, so it’s nice that Aweber allows for more flexibility in this area.
Aweber Smart Designer – Aweber has a free & intelligent design assistant that scans through your website & social profiles to gather images, brand colors, and helps you create a branded email campaign in seconds.
Being among the first email marketing platforms implementing it, Aweber is on par with the ongoing trends with their AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) powered emails along with – Image Carousel in the drag & drop editor. This will help Aweber users deliver a better email experience for their prospects like signing up for an event, ordering a product, answer a survey, etc. all from the email itself.
Pricing: No Free Plan. Plans start from $19 per month.
Integrations: You can connect Aweber to 100+ apps like Facebook Lead Ads, Salesforce, Wufoo, GoToWebinar, etc. using connector apps like Automate.io. Below are a few most popular integrations you can use right away:
Marketing & Form Apps:
CRM & Payment Apps:
Best suited for:
The simple & easy-to-use features would help a newbie in the email marketing domain. Best for businesses who look forward to understanding their campaigns in-depth and get insights. Aweber’s team provides excellent support for its customers to understand their campaign metrics.
Aweber has won awards in the US National Customer Association’s Stevie Awards for three consecutive years (2016 to 2018), and we can see why.
The company offers a great deal of support to its customers; you can reach them via phone, email, AND live chat (in contrast, the majority of the other email marketing tools only offer email and/or live chat).
Plus, Aweber doesn’t hide their phone number or email details deep within their site or make you click through a knowledge base before you can submit a query. They display their contact details loud and proud, and getting in touch with them is a breeze.
If you foresee yourself needing help with your email campaigns, then definitely consider Aweber!
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.
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).
Conclusion
Email marketing is an effective internet marketing strategy that you can use to engage with your audience. Understanding how to send emails in bulk means that you’ll be able to reach more people, without spending so much time on each message. There are many different platforms to choose from, but the best one is MailerLite.