We’ve looked at a lot of email marketing services, and concluded that Sendinblue is the best overall email marketing software. It's closely followed by Zoho, due to its high value for money.

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to keep your customers engaged with your brand or products. By having a strong email strategy, you’re able to stay fresh in your customers’ minds and encourage repeat purchasing. In fact, email marketing software can have a return on investment up to 4,400%, meaning for every $1 you spend, you can make $44.

An email marketing platform is the backbone of a good email marketing strategy, allowing you to optimize your online campaigns in terms of both customers and sales. Fortunately, there's a wide variety of options for software that allows you to more effectively conduct your email marketing campaigns. We’ve analyzed and reviewed the best email marketing software platforms, looking at what they’re good at, and where they can improve.

The Best Email Marketing Software

Tech.co has put 80+ hours of research into finding the best email technology for your business, based on features, price and more.

The top ten email marketing software providers are:

1. Sendinblue – Best all-in-one marketing solution
2. Zoho – Best overall value for money
3. Moosend – Best pure email marketing platform
4. Mailchimp – Best for eCommerce
5. MailerLite – Best for analytical features
6. HubSpot – Best for large businesses
7. Constant Contact – Best for small businesses
8. GetResponse – Best value for basic email marketing features
9. ActiveCampaign – Best for automation
10. Campaign Monitor – Best value for transactional emails

1. Sendinblue

Best for: Best all-in-one marketing solution

Highlights:

• Lead scoring
• Task tracking and automation
• Outstanding CRM

Sendinblue is our number one pick for email marketing software. The platform comes loaded with a ton of useful features, and with a wealth of CRM and automation tools, Sendinblue covers almost all its bases.

Sendinblue Features

When looking at their CRM options, Sendinblue by far exceeds any other platform on this list. They offer task tracking and task automation, which are what they sound like – tools to keep track of your goals and your paths to reach them, while automating basic tasks so you can focus on more important and complex issues.

Sendinblue also comes with lead scoring, which is the process of ranking possible leads by their sales readiness, showing how ready they are to move on to the next step. All of these CRM options come in every plan – even the free one.

When it comes to what Sendinblue doesn’t do, it could benefit from implementing a survey builder into the software. It’s not a particularly common feature in competitors, but it could certainly round out their package quite well.

They could also stand to integrate more social media, as there is currently no way to draft or send out social media posts (like tweets or Instagram pictures) through the platform. If this is important to you, Sendinblue won’t be a good fit, so you might want to spring for HubSpot or Constant Contact, which offer a lot more social media functionality.

Finally, it could also use a mobile app, as it’s one of few platforms that doesn’t offer one.

Sendinblue Automation

In terms of automation, its standout feature is its A/B testing, which allows you to gauge the effectiveness of two different emails, each sent to a different list of recipients. This can be crucial in experimenting with two different campaigns.

Sendinblue Pricing

When looking at cost, Sendinblue is around the same ballpark as most other software on this list, which actually means you get more value for money due to the amount it offers elsewhere. The cheapest paid plan is $25 per month, while the steepest is $755 per month.

However, Sendinblue also offers bespoke plans, where you can pick and choose what you want with a price that reflects your options. Finally, they do offer a very well-stocked free plan, so you can try it out for as long as you want without spending a dime.

2. Zoho Campaigns

Best for: Overall value for money

Highlights:

• Very affordable
• Great automation
• Click mapping

Zoho has one of the cheapest services around, but we were pleased to see this didn’t compromise the quality of their platform. They also offer some great automation options, as well as analytics that you can really sink your teeth into.

Zoho Campaigns Features

Zoho excels in analytics, too. It offers click mapping, which shows where users are most engaged with your email, and platform tracking, which shows you what email platforms are the most receptive to your emails. Combine this with A/B testing, and you should see your email engagement improve greatly.

If Zoho could improve anywhere, it would be with implementing social media and CRM options – but at such a low price point, it's a good choice if you don’t need these more advanced features. Note that Zoho does offer a CRM software, but this is sold separately from its email marketing platform.

Zoho Campaigns Automation

Zoho does very well when looking at automation. They offer A/B testing, which allows you to experiment with the effectiveness of two different emails; user segmentation, allowing you to compartmentalize your contact list; and workflow automation, which lets you create and manage work processes that might otherwise take up your time.

Zoho Campaigns Pricing

Starting with their pricing structure, Zoho has two plans, each with their own tiers – these are the “email-based plan” and the “subscriber-based plan”. The email-based plan is only $3 a month (less if you pay for the year), while the subscriber plan is still only $5 a month.

Compared to other providers' top-end products, the highest tier of Zoho’s email-based plan is a relatively low monthly $375, while the top of the line subscriber plan is a monthly $350. There is also a free plan on offer with no time limit, which will obviously have lower limits on email volume and contact lists.

3. Moosend

Best for: Purely email marketing

Highlights:

• Easy email automation
• Free plan
• Click mapping

It’s possible you’ve read up to this point and have had no interest in any of the extra bells and whistles that we’ve been talking about, and you’re only after something that can simply send emails to your customers. If this is the case, Moosend is for you.

Moosend Features

As far as analytics go, Moosend lets you dive into how your emails are received and see how they perform among various demographics, as well as where people clicked within your email, showing what they were most interested in.

If it isn’t obvious from how we’ve been talking about Moosend, the platform is very limited beyond sending emails. There is no social media or CRM integration whatsoever, but if you’re only interested in emails, this will be just the platform for you.

One thing to note is that Moosend doesn’t have a mobile app. Even though the appeal of Moosend is its barebones nature, the lack of a mobile app can be frustrating for anyone looking to work on the go.

Moosend Automation

You can send as many or as few emails as you want to up to 200,000 people. These emails can be easily automated, although Moosend doesn’t offer an A/B testing feature or much else in terms of specific automation features.

Moosend Pricing

Since it’s more of a specialized experience, the cost of Moosend is a lot lower than a lot of our other platforms. There is a free plan on offer, with the paid tiers starting at $10 per month, going up to $760 per month at the top level. These are both lower if you pay by the year.

4. Mailchimp

Best for: ecommerce

Highlights:

• Loads of ecommerce integration
• Helpful social media integration
• Easy to attach transactional emails

Mailchimp is the best bet for anyone running an ecommerce business. It can be integrated with a whopping 41 ecommerce apps, which means you’ll be able to put things like discount links and customer reviews straight into your emails.

Mailchimp Features

Mailchimp is an attractive option when looking at its social media options, as you’re able to use it to schedule posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as receive very comprehensive analytics.

Speaking of analytics, Mailchimp doesn’t just succeed in social media – its standard email analytics are also great. You can track click maps, platforms, and list growth, allowing you to optimize the rate at which you gain new customers.

As well as some great templates and dedicated IP options, which allow you to avoid being put on automatic blacklists, Mailchimp is the only software here that offers reputation monitoring, which lets you keep track of how your online prestige is faring as you send out your emails.

Mailchimp Automation

The final jewel in its crown is transactional emails – emails that are intended for specific users rather than a large group, like receipts or welcome emails. You can pay to easily attach transactional email blocks to your plan, and then use them however you please.

While Mailchimp one of the few platforms to offer built in CRM, it is fairly limited. It would be nice to see some lead scoring, especially since this is such an important feature when it comes to foreseeing possible sale opportunities.

A more fleshed-out platform like Sendinblue or ActiveCampaign would be a better option if you're looking for CRM.

Mailchimp Pricing

When looking at price, the lowest tier will only cost you $9.99 a month, while the top tier will run you $1,190, which is in line with MailChimp’s competitors. There is also a free plan, as well as options for higher priced bespoke plans.

5. MailerLite

Best for: Analytical features

Highlights:

• Great analytics
• Free plan
• Affordable paid tiers

If you’re someone who wants to get a good grip on the minute details behind your emails, MailerLite is the best software in terms of analytics, allowing you to dive into the numbers and analyze your emails’ impact.

MailerLite Features

MailerLite's analytics offering is definitely the best on this list. It's comprehensive, and features a click map, platform tracking, list growth, and engagement segmentation – none of which are locked behind paywalls, as they’re all part of the free version.

That’s not to say that analytics is the only trick up MailerLite’s sleeve. It comes loaded with over 100 templates, as well as some handy automation tools that can make your life easier, like date-based automation and workflow management resources.

MailerLite Automation

However, with such a focus on analytics, there were bound to be a few areas left lacking. For starters, there is absolutely no CRM or social media whatsoever, so if you’re looking for either of these in any capacity, MailerLite is not for you. You might want to look at ActiveCampaign or Constant Contact for those features.

MailerLite Pricing

As far as your wallet is concerned, at a minimum, you’ll be paying $10 per month. At the absolute peak, you’ll need to pay $1,915 per month. However, there is a free plan if you’re looking to experiment, or run a smaller scale campaign with no more than 1,000 contacts and 12,000 sends.

6. HubSpot

Best for: Large businesses

Highlights:

• High email limits
• Great social media integrations
• Great automation tools

HubSpot is a good platform for larger businesses who have a larger customer base, as the limits on the number of emails and contacts are absolutely massive – breaching 1 million and 20 million, respectively.

Hubspot Features

It’s not just the software’s volume limits that excel, however. It does incredibly well in its other services too, like social media integration and analytics. However, some aspects of these functions – including social media posting and scheduling – are behind paywalls.

Hubspot Automation

In fact, while you can use some of its services through the free plan, a lot of HubSpot's features (such as list growth) are only accessible through paid plans. While it does offer automation options and transactional emails, these are again only accessible through the higher tiers.

Hubspot Pricing

As you'd expect from software with larger limits, the price point is a fair bit steeper than the other software we’re looking at, with the lowest option costing $50 a month, and the highest costing a massive $9,950 per month – plus an onboarding fee of $6,000. To offset this, the free plan has no time limit, but will still put caps on your amounts.

This is an obvious negative when taken at face value, but there aren’t many beyond that. HubSpot offers brilliant service in every department, with its weakest being CRM. It still offers decent CRM coverage – it could just use lead scoring or task automation, then it would be firing on all cylinders.

7. Constant Contact

Best for: Small businesses

Highlights:

• Great social media integration
• In-depth analytics
• List growth functionality

Constant Contact is our pick for small businesses. With a lower price point and great social media options, you’ll be able to reach loads of different people, and hopefully expand your customer base.

Constant Contact Features

If you had to pick one platform on this list for social media options, it would be Constant Contact. You can create and schedule posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as make ads for Facebook and Instagram.

The software also affords you some great social media analytics, giving you feedback on impressions, reach, and overall engagement on both posts and ads. All of these social media options are also available on the cheapest tiers.

This feedback isn't limited to social media, though – after all, Constant Constant is primarily email software.

There is one other area that Constant Contact excels in, and that’s email analytics – this is fitting for a small business, as you want to know the best way to grow, based on what’s working and what’s not.

The platform offers great email analytics, providing email click maps, platform tracking, and perhaps most importantly, list growth – allowing you to expand your business by attracting new customers.

Constant Contact Automation

If Constant Contact was to get a boost, it would want to be in CRM and automation, as it doesn’t currently offer much in that realm. After all, once you use social media and your analytics to lock down some more customers, you'll want to be able to hold on to them!

Constant Contact Pricing

As can be expected for software suited to small businesses, the price point is pretty low. On Constant Contact's lowest tier, you’ll only be paying a monthly fee of $20, while their highest will run you $335 ($261.02 if you pay on an annual basis). And while there is a free trial, this will only last so long.

8. GetResponse

Best for: Value for basic email marketing features

Highlights:

• Vanilla but functional
• Ad analytics
• 220 templates

If you’ve never been one for bells and whistles, and prefer to have a sandwich over foie gras, GetResponse is for you. It’s the most vanilla software here, very much serving as the jack of all trades.

It’s easy to view the fact that GetResponse doesn’t excel in any one area as a fault, but sometimes it pays to remember the extended saying: “Jack of all trades, master of none, oftentimes better than a master of one.”

GetResponse Features

A good example of this philosophy is the fact that you can use GetResponse to craft ads for Facebook and Instagram, as well as receive analytics on these ads – although you can’t create posts themselves.

Overall, while it has an acceptable range of add-ons, this software mainly focuses on its core purpose – creating and sending the emails themselves – and has 220 templates to help you craft your campaign.

While the lack of too many extended features hasn’t been cited as a fault here, we will mention that it would be nice to see any kind of CRM support, as the platform currently has nothing in that area.

GetResponse Automation

The platform offers good automation, allowing you to stay on top of your workflows and schedule emails, but doesn’t allow for A/B testing, which can be crucial in nailing a campaign.

GetResponse Pricing

GetResponse treats your wallet pretty well. The lowest tier is $15 a month, while the maximum price you could pay is $580. There is a free trial, but this isn’t a full plan, just something to let you get the lay of the land before you decide if you want to buy.

9. ActiveCampaign

Best for: Automation

Highlights:

• Outstanding automation
• Customisable workflows
• Amazing CRM features on higher plans

True to its name, ActiveCampaign aims to let you sit back while it does the work for you. Its automation options are second to none, allowing your email marketing to run semi-autonomously while you focus on more important things.

ActiveCampaign Automation

ActiveCampaign has every automation option you could dream of, including customizable workflows and workflow templates. It offers both behavior and date based automation, allowing personalized emails to be sent based on customer behavior, or at certain times of day.

The only automation feature locked behind a paywall is A/B testing, which we think is worth the money as an important feature for those looking to optimize their email marketing campaign performance.

ActiveCampaign focuses on automation, and does this well. While it doesn’t offer social media integration or great transactional email options, if automation is what you’re after, ActiveCampaign is a great choice. But if you insist on social media or transactional emails, you might want to look at Sendinblue or MailChimp.

ActiveCampaign Features

There's more to ActiveCampaign than automation, though – the Plus plan offers some stellar CRM functionality, allowing you to automate tasks, score potential leads, and view interaction history with certain customers.

It also has some decent analytics at its disposal, allowing for list growth and engagement segmentation. However, there's no email click map, and platform tracking is nothing earth-shattering.

ActiveCampaign Pricing

ActiveCampaign is pretty cheap, only costing you a monthly $15 if you’re on the lowest tier. The highest tier costs $505 per month, which is extremely cheap when compared to other platforms. The platform also has a free trial, but this has a time limit, so you’ll want to make your mind up if you’re going to commit.

10. Campaign Monitor

Best for: Value for transactional emails

Highlights:

• Unlimited transactional emails
• Very affordable
• Click maps and list growth

Transactional emails are where a lot of platforms can fall short. So when a platform like Campaign Monitor excels in this area, it definitely deserves a mention.

Campaign Monitor allows you to send unlimited transactional emails, so you won’t have to keep tabs and make sure you’re not running out before the month ends.

Campaign Monitor Features

While they're only offered on the bespoke plans, Campaign Monitor also offers dedicated IP, which can establish an entire IP address just for your outgoing emails. This is important for avoiding being blacklisted by email servers like Gmail, the bane of all email marketers.

As far as cons go, Campaign Monitor offers no social media support, nor does it offer any CRM functionality. If you’re looking for excellence in transactional, this might not be a problem, but those things can still be nice to have.

Campaign Monitor Automation

Campaign Monitor also has decent automation functionality, as well as some good analytics options. It doesn’t offer A/B testing, but it retains most other automation functions you’d want. It also has all the analytics tools you could need, like click maps and list growth.

Campaign Monitor Pricing

As far as the mighty dollar is concerned, you won’t have to worry. The lowest tier is only $9 a month, and the highest is $989 a month. There is a free trial, but it stops being free once you have more than 5 contacts, which should hopefully happen pretty quickly.

Get More Email Subscribers

Once you've set up your email marketing account, your next priority should be growing your email lists. While there are many ways to do this, what you should never do is buy lists of accumulated emails.

At best, the people receiving your emails will be frustrated to receive emails from businesses they don't know and quickly unsubscribe, at worst, the legality of these lists is questionable.

What you should do is slowly accumulate willing email recipients over time. Every time a customer checks out or makes an account with you, make sure to ask if they want to be added to your emailing list. Anyone willing to accept this prompt will be more likely to convert through a future email, so these should be the people you're targeting.

Research Methodology

We’ve based our top 10 ranking on the following aspects:

• Email templates: How creative can you get with your emails? A service with a lot of email templates can allow you to experiment with things like image placement, fonts, colors, and a number of other fun things
• Analytics options: How much data can you see about how your emails perform? This could be things like the open rate, average time spent reading an email, or the amount of time a link is clicked
• Automation: Can you automate emails based on customer behavior?
• List segmentation: Can you break your list of customers into sub-lists? For example, having one list for people interested in your newsletter, but another list for those only interested in any sales
• Advanced features: Some software will offer unique features that simply can’t be found in others. We’ll go into more detail when the time comes about what these features can actually be

Benefits of Email Marketing Software

Email marketing is one of the best ways to get return on investment (ROI) on digital marketing strategy. In fact, email marketing can have a return as high as 4,400%, meaning you can make $44 for every $1 you spend.

It doesn’t just save you money – using an email marketing platform will also save you time. Rather than having to stay on top of sending out your emails and posts throughout the weeks and months, you can spend a few hours scheduling them all ahead of time. They’ll then trickle out at their predetermined time, and you won’t have to worry about being there to press the send button.

Instead of one big feature, email marketing software provides a load of smaller services than can add up and save a lot of time and hassle, allowing you to focus on the larger and more important parts of your business.

Verdict: What’s the Best Email Marketing Software?

Overall, Sendinblue is the best email marketing platform. While there will always be some areas where other platforms exceed, Sendinblue is the best all-rounder – you won’t be disappointed, no matter what you’re looking for in a platform.

Every platform we’ve discussed has its own merits, and every business is going to need different features. Whether you’re focused on the data (MailerLite), looking for the best value for money (Zoho), need a platform that manages both your email and social media marketing (Constant Contact), or just looking for a great overall package (Sendinblue), there is going to be a platform for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Duncan is an Australian-born writer for Tech.Co. His articles focus on software that allows small businesses to improve their efficiency or reach, with an emphasis on email marketing or accounting. In his free time, Duncan loves to deconstruct video games.