Email Marketing is an integral part of your marketing strategy. It allows you to re-engage your leads in several different ways, and depending on the type of email received, this can be used in very creative ways. The best part about Email Marketing is that it’s not just about sending your audience newsletters. There are also other uses for Email Marketing, which I will cover in this list of the top Email Marketing tools available at the moment.
Here, we cover the top free email marketing tools that can command optimum results.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world primarily because they offer a forever free email marketing service plan.
Mailchimp comes with an easy drag-and-drop email builder, autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, and simple tracking for analytics. It also allows you to setup delivery times based on user’s timezones, and you can setup segmenting based on geolocation.
You can easily integrate MailChimp with WordPress, Magento, Shopify, and many other platforms. If you are using WordPress, then see our ultimate guide to using Mailchimp and WordPress for detailed instructions.
When it comes to marketing automation features, Mailchimp platform is quite limited when compared to other providers in our list such as HubSpot, Drip or ConvertKit.
In the recent years, Mailchimp has attempted to add many of the “advanced” features, but having tested many of these, they’re not truly advanced.
Mailchimp support is offered by email, live chat, and a large tutorials knowledge-base. However their support is often slow and no match to the quality of service that you get from Constant Contact.
Mailchimp offers a forever free plan which allows you to send 12,000 emails for up to 2,000 subscribers. This plan is fairly limited because you don’t get features like send-time optimization, advanced segmentation, multi-variate testing, etc. You are also required to display their branding in your email. Last but not least, support is restricted to email only which is fine if you’re a hobbyist but as a serious business, you need reliable support that you can count on.
Their paid plans start from $10/month for up to 500 subscribers, and the pricing increases in the increment of 500 subscribers.
However if you want unlimited audiences, advanced audience segmentation, multivariate testing, and comparative reporting, then you’d have to move to their $299 per month plan.
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.
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.
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.
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
These tools come in very handy for small as well as large-sized operations as you’ll be able to see an increase in your email subscriber list and it will also help you happen new contacts which you can follow up with via email. I’m not saying that this list of tools will help you automate the whole process but it will surely help and ease some effort and time of yours.