Is email dead?
It seems like digital marketers have been asking this question for years. And despite the emergence of new channels such as live chat, chatbots, messenger bots, and marketing automation — email marketing still shows no signs of slowing down.
In fact, 99% of consumers check their email every day and workers spend an average of 3.1 hours per day checking their email. That’s a whole lot of time — nearly one month a year!
As a marketer, you should see this eyeball time as an opportunity. Now more than ever, it’s essential that you understand how to create quality messages and optimize your email campaigns. The biggest factor that will lead to your success with email is what email marketing software you use.
We’ll review our favorite email marketing solutions for your business, along with the most unique feature and pricing structures of each product.
The 9 Best Email Marketing Software Choices for 2020
- HubSpot
- MailChimp
- Constant Contact
- SendinBlue
- ActiveCampaign
- Drip
- GetResponse
- AWeber
- ConvertKit
1. HubSpot
The all-in-one email marketing software suite
HubSpot’s platform has grown throughout the years, now featuring a popular free CRM as well as sales tools. But it all started out as a marketing automation and messaging platform, with email marketing being their bread and butter.
With their email tool, you can create on-brand emails without having to get engineers or designers involved. The software includes dozens of templates that can be optimized around a goal and customized to better convert traffic.
Additionally, within HubSpot, you can preview an email campaign you’re working on as a specific recipient, on a specific device type, or within a specific email provider. This helps you do quality assurance and to make sure your email looks good any way a customer or prospect is viewing it.
And since HubSpot also is a CRM, you’re able to use other information you’ve collected about a subscriber to make your communications even more personalized. You can bring in a subscriber’s lifecycle stage, list membership, or more to serve up relevant CTAs, headlines, and more!
Additionally, HubSpot has a powerful A/B testing engine and gives you a dashboard with the performance of every marketing campaign you’ve run. You can compare campaigns and gather insights to improve the performance of your entire marketing program.
Notable feature:
Easy to use personalization token & a seamless tie-in with HubSpot’s CRM.
Pricing:
- Priced by: Plan & Contacts
- Cost: Starts free for Marketing Hub; $800/month for Marketing Hub Premium
- Discounts for startups
2. MailChimp
The smart mailing list (and more) software
JailBlimp? KaleLimp? MailShrimp?
Nope, it’s MailChimp — the brand that knows how to perfectly poke fun at its hard to pronounce name. But what they lack in ease-of-pronunciation, they make up for in features.
MailChimp started as a mailing list software, and while that’s still their bread and butter, they have expanded to offer a whole host of other tools as part of their marketing platform — such as landing pages, digital ads, CRM, and more.
Their email tool is built all around functionality and design — making it an appealing choice for any business that sells a physical good. Plus, it’s easy to drag and drop content across the screen to create beautiful emails.
With MailChimp, you’re able to connect your online store to send product recommendations, retarget your content on social channels, and track analytics with Mailchimp’s built-in analytics tool.
Notable feature:
Integrates with more than 200 other software tools.
Pricing:
- Priced by: Plan, Contacts
- Cost: Starts at $0/month for Free; $9.99/month for Essentials; $14.99/month for Standard; $299/month for Premium
- Discount for using two-factor authentication; 15% discount for nonprofits & charities
3. Constant Contact
The email marketing software pioneers
Since 1995, Constant Contact has been helping small businesses and business owners send out emails to their unique customer lists. In their two decades of existence, they’ve helped pioneer many of the tools in email marketing and they continually have expanded their product offering.
Constant Contact provides over 100 mobile-optimized, customizable templates that you can use to send all types of emails — from newsletters to automated checkout campaigns. Plus, their templates are flexible to use and have the same drag-and-drop functionality that you’re used to seeing on so many other platforms.
When signing up for the platform, you’ll have the option to choose between two plans — Email and Email Plus. Both plans contain many tools to help you create professional emails and drive sales for your business, such as email list building tools, segmentation, tracking, and more. But with the Email Plus plan, you’ll unlock several other features such as RSVP, Subject Line testing, Dynamic Content, Surveys, Polls, and Coupons.
Notable feature:
The ability to send segmented and automated emails from Shopify and BigCommerce sales.
Pricing:
- Priced by: List Size, Plan
- Discounts for nonprofits and yearly payments
- Cost: Starts at $20/month for Email plan (up to 500 contacts); Starts at $45/month for Email Plus plan (up to 500 contacts)
4. SendinBlue
The solution for “I don’t send a ton of emails but have a huge list”
SendinBlue is a great option for beginners to the email marketing space. With their platform, you can easily create a professional looking email, personalize the content, build custom lists, and send out messages intelligently.
The most unique quality of SendinBlues’ software versus other providers on this list is that they charge based on emails sent rather than the size of your list. You can have unlimited lists and you only get charged when you actually send. This can be a huge differentiator if you have a large list, but rarely send emails.
Notable feature:
A targeted SMS marketing feature is available as an add-on.
Pricing:
- Priced by: Emails sent, Plan
- SMS add-on available
- Cost: €0/month for Free plan; €19/month for Lite plan; €29/month for Essential plan; €49/month for Platinum plan; Custom quote for Enterprise plan
5. ActiveCampaign
The marketing automation experts
Like many other providers on this list, ActiveCampaign has built up a one-stop shop for email marketing tools. On their suite, you can do everything from marketing automation to CRM to machine learning.
With regards to their email marketing software, you can do many cool things. You can send broadcast emails to your entire list, send triggered emails based on unique activity, send targeted emails to part of your list, launch email autoresponders, setup email automation, and even schedule emails for important events.
ActiveCampaign includes a sleek, drag-and-drop email designer that can help you quickly and effortlessly launch beautiful email marketing campaigns. You can additionally segment your campaigns to different visitors, create dynamic content, and personalize your emails based on any contact information you have around a visitor — from name to email address to industry to recent city. Powerful features, powerful platform…
Notable feature:
You can site track & connect your email marketing campaigns to your contact’s on-site behavior.
Pricing:
- Priced by: Plan, Contacts
- Cost: Starts at $9/month for Lite; $49/month for Plus; $129/month for Professional; $229/month for Enterprise
6. Drip
The e-commerce CRM (that also does email marketing)
Unlike most of these software tools, Drip is built specifically for one industry: E-commerce. With that in mind, their CRM is designed to enable businesses that sell physical or digital products to create specific behavior-based automation and multichannel touchpoints.
Since Drip is a marketing automation tool and an email marketing software tool second, it gives you a lot of flexibility to create personalized and optimized campaigns. For instance, you can target new and returning visitors with different campaigns — or you can retarget customers who left an item in the shopping cart.
Most of their personalization and automation features are built around selling more product — and if that’s your forte, this could be a great email marketing service for your business.
Notable feature:
Pre-made visual workflows such as a Shopify cart abandonment flow or a birthday/anniversary sequence.
Pricing:
- Priced by: Plan, List Size
- Cost: Starts at $49/month for Basic plan (up to 2500 active people); $122/month for Pro plan (up to 5000 active people); Custom quote for Enterprise
7. GetResponse
The solution with a plethora of templates
GetResponse is a great all-in-one platform that allows your brand to do everything from email marketing to marketing automation to easy landing page creation.
On their email marketing platform, you can use over 500 expertly-designed templates and 5000+ stock photos to deploy professional campaigns in minutes. Then, you can go a step further and dynamically swap out elements in an email, deliver messages at the right time for each subscriber, and launch automations to make everything even more delightful.
One thing that GetResponse can certainly brag about is their 99% email deliverability rate. Deliverability is an important factor when choosing an ESP — and GetResponse certainly doesn’t falter here.
Notable feature:
Perfect timing delivery is a feature that allows you to reach a subscriber at their most active inbox time.
Pricing:
- Priced by: List Size, Plan
- Discounts for yearly payments
- Cost: Starts at $15/month for Basic plan; $49/month for Plus plan; $99/month for Professional plan; $1199/month for Enterprise plan
8. AWeber
The “I don’t want to write a newsletter every week” option
Over the last 20 years, AWeber has helped over 1,000,000 people grow their businesses. That’s a pretty good bit of social proof…
AWeber includes many of the standard features you’d expect from an email marketing software provider. You can automate campaigns, collect subscribers to your list, run split tests, and segment your subscribers into different groups.
With regards to email creation, you can create HTML rich templatized messages or alternatively launch drag and drop together emails using 700 mobile responsive email templates.
Notable feature:
Save time by automatically creating emails from new blog posts (via RSS)
Pricing:
- Priced by: Subscribers
- Discounts: Discount for quarterly or annual billing
- Cost: Base plan starts at $19/month for 500 subscribers
9. ConvertKit
The email marketing service for creators
ConvertKit is designed for creators, coaches, and others that make their living through genuine interaction with a defined online audience.
With that defined audience, they have built a series of features to help creators grow and engage with their followers. To grow your audience, ConvertKit offers easy-to-embed forms alongside quick reporting metrics. To increase conversions, you can utilize workflows with “if this, then that” automation rules. You can also drag and drop sequences using personalized, automated emails.
Notable feature:
Hassle-free switching, and concierge migration for accounts with 5000+ subscribers.
Pricing:
- Priced by: Subscribers
- Discounts: Discount for annual billing
- Cost: Base plan starts at $29/month for 1000 subscribers
What’s the best email marketing software in 2019?
It really depends on the wants and needs of your team. But you’ll be in good hands choosing one of these 9 tools on this list. Consider the feature set of each product, think about how often you send messages, how large your list is, and then decide on the option that most meets your wants & needs. If you’re shopping for other marketing tools to add to your site, be sure to take a look at our Best Live Chat and Best Marketing Automation reviews.
