Email is an intimate form of communication, and your inbox is one of the easiest ways to grow your social circle, revenue, and reputation as a content creator. But once your email list starts growing, sending hundreds or thousands of emails a day can become unmanageable.
That’s where email marketing software comes in — they can help you design emails and selectively run targeted campaigns to ensure your messages are relevant to your recipients and grow your audience further.
Here are some of the best email marketing software on the market so that you can choose the one that best suits your needs.
1. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an online marketing suite for beginners and intermediate creators — and it’s also the most popular suite on the market right now. It’s user-friendly and the easiest to use and navigate. It can host over 3,000 integrations for customizing your email marketing campaigns.
You can upload contacts by uploading a contacts file or manually copying and pasting emails.
From the Audience dashboard, you can also create separate segments to filter by adding contact information that meets certain criteria and send them targeted messages.
Building email marketing campaigns on Mailchimp is fairly easy thanks to its user-friendly design. There are some useful templates available, which can be especially handy if you’re just getting started. The drag and drop builder is also helpful, allowing you to customize the overall look of your emails — though, the blocks for text, images, and so on can be a little fidgety.
You can send a test email or enter preview mode to check how your email looks. Although the features provided lack the modernity of other software like ConvertKit, they are easy to use.
Mailchimp gives you access to four comprehensive reports: Email Campaigns, Automations, Landing Pages, and Ads. Each of these gives you a deeper analysis of your email marketing campaigns’ performance, including clicks, signups, and other essential metrics for tracking audience engagement.
Pricing: Mailchimp offers four different pricing plans — Free, Basic, Standard, and Premium. Their pricing plans depend on the number of contacts you have.
2. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a beginner-friendly email marketing software with a very simple email marketing campaign manager and an easy-to-use interface. However, it lacks some standard features, such as drag-and-drop tools and comprehensive pre-made templates. You can send an unlimited number of email broadcasts to all contacts in the plan you choose. With ConvertKit, you only get one list of subscribers, but you can use tags to organize that list. There are 3 ways to upload data on the software: one by one, import via CSV file, or import via other providers. The whole process is easy and fast.
There is no drag and drop feature to build the email marketing campaign you want. The design is very simple but needs some improvement. For example, I didn't know how to format a single sentence/paragraph of text until 5 minutes later - select the text you want to format.
Finally, the written text can be previewed and can be sent immediately or scheduled to be sent later.
Of particular note is the comprehensive and helpful ConvertKit Help Center. If you ever get stuck, you can plug your query into its search bar and it will help you find your way around the software.
Creating landing pages and forms is also a breeze with its template library. Once you’ve sent emails to all your contacts, you can also access performance reports.
Pricing: ConvertKit offers a free plan, a Creator plan, and a Creator Pro plan. Prices are charged per subscriber. You can also migrate email data from other third-party services.
3. GetResponse
The whole process of email marketing on GetResponse is friendly, smooth, and fast for beginners.GetResponse is great for any creator at any level who is only looking for the necessary analytics. You can upload contacts individually by uploading a file, integrating the software with a third-party application, or copying and pasting from a file. The whole process is very smooth, but it may take some time if you have a long contact list.
You can also create lists of your complete contacts and divide them into different categories. However, the free trial version only allows you to add 1000 contacts.
Designing emails on GetResponse is quick and easy. The hassle-free experience is fresh and user-friendly. There are pre-designed templates to choose from. An HTML editor is available, and you can also drag and drop sections and multimedia and format the message style. Each element also has the option to be hidden from mobile devices, which I particularly like. This is useful when you know that a certain image, video, or multimedia file won't work well on smaller devices or won't be adaptable. Images must be edited after they are added—GetResponse doesn't offer an image editor.
You can preview emails before sending them, and you can also send test emails. Emails on GetResponse can also be sent immediately or scheduled to be sent at another time.
This simple process can be replicated multiple times to create autoresponders, forms, or landing pages.
Reports on how well your email marketing campaigns, landing pages, or autoresponders are performing can be checked in the Reports section of the application. I found this helpful because, unlike other software, we didn’t have to hunt for analytics for different email campaigns.
Analytics could use some improvement and are always deeper for those with larger audiences. No spam reporting or analysis of how long a contact stays in an email thread.
Pricing: GetResponse offers four pricing plans — Basic, Plus, Professional and Max. Prices are charged based on the number of contacts you have. You can enjoy a 30-day free trial without entering your credit card details
4. Constant Contact
ConstantContact goes a step further and gives you “suggestions” on how to improve your analytics. It’s not pretty, but ConstantContact gets the job done with a simple, foolproof process.
Similar to other software, you can add contacts by entering them manually, uploading files, or importing from third-party applications. The process is obvious and hassle-free.
You can customize your email marketing campaigns or use existing templates. Constant Contact’s drag-and-drop functionality is intuitive and easy to use. Adding images requires you to first add a block, upload the image, and then drop the image into the block — which can be a bit tedious and time-consuming.
Emails can be previewed for errors and corrections before being sent directly or can be scheduled to be sent on a different date. You can also segment your audience for selected targeted emails and set up auto-email responders.
Unlike competitors Mailchimp and ConvertKit, Constant Contact’s website lacks aesthetic appeal.
The reporting features are also simple and easy to understand. You can also check open rates, click-through rates, spam reports, and other necessary metrics. There is also a "recommendations" feature for improving your metrics game, which I love. This is an extra feature for users that other software don't bother to get involved with.
Pricing: Constant Contact offers two plans — Email and Email Plus. There is no free version. Like many competitors, the price depends on the number of contacts you have. For any plan you choose, you get a 60-day free trial, but you are limited to 100 contacts during that time.
5. AWeber
Although this is the oldest email marketing software on the market, AWeber is only suitable for creating short-term email campaigns. Additional features such as adding tags, landing pages, and signup forms are great on AWeber, but the user interface could be improved a lot.
You can add each subscriber at once, copy-paste the list on the dashboard, or drag and drop a file to upload your contacts. If you want to upload a file or enter the contacts one by one, the whole task can be completed in just 5 steps. It involves adding more data about your contacts, and here you also have the option to add tags if you want to segregate your audience based on certain conditions and whether you want them to receive a confirmation email or not.
The whole process may seem tedious, especially when you just want to send out informative content. But it can be especially beneficial for those who are looking to quickly launch a newsletter for their website.
First, there are some email marketing campaign templates that can come in handy just in case, or you can choose to start with a blank slate and make your own design.
You can choose your campaign to be “On Subscription”, which means when someone is added to your list, this campaign will start, or you can choose “Tag Applied”, in which case you can choose to send the campaign only to a segregated set of audiences that have been tagged and tagged in your database import.
When I tried to create an email marketing campaign, I found the design to be less than user-friendly. Many of the tags, questions, and triggers can be left at the end, rather than being a prerequisite to starting campaign editing.
I even found the drag and drop feature a bit glitchy as I needed to click a few times on my laptop to adjust the alignment I wanted. The process of sending an email campaign or message is quite tedious, especially for beginners. It requires constant use of the software to get the hang of it and make it smoother the next time.
I really like AWeber's dashboard because it gives a quick overview of yesterday's subscribers. I can glance over and see how many new subscribers were added since yesterday, how many people unsubscribed today, etc. This would be a great, quick insight for someone who is growing a business and wants to track day-to-day changes.
There are multiple ways to check your email list reports and track analytics. I found it confusing and unhelpful. Broadcasts shows quick stats, while Reports shows the detailed version — at least that’s what AWeber’s Help Center says.
I have checked the analytics and how it looks like with my email as a subscriber, but the system does not show any data for 24 hours. This makes me doubt the authenticity of the data that AWeber was providing before.
There is also an option to create a landing page, which surprisingly I found easier than creating an email campaign, which kind of defeats the purpose of the software. It is a simple drag and drop tool that can be used on your website. The features are in line with current aesthetic trends and are handy for beginners too.
Pricing: AWeber’s pricing plans are pretty straightforward. There is a free version, but you can only keep up to 500 audiences and send up to 3,000 emails per month. Website tracking, custom branding, and advanced reporting are also some of the features that the software doesn’t offer for free. Annual payments are required. There is no option for monthly payments on AWeber.
6. Drip
In terms of design, Drip is top-notch, especially when compared to all other email marketing software. The analytics are only suitable for beginners, and the main difference of Drip, besides its design, is its unique pricing model.
Contacts can be imported by uploading a CSV file format, importing from other email marketing software like Mailchimp, copying and pasting an email list, or adding contacts individually. The process is smooth, easy, and beautiful because the website is beautifully designed!
It is also possible to categorize the audience by tagging them into separate segments and segments. The process of creating a broadcast or email campaign is very smooth and simple. The software deserves applause for its cutting-edge aesthetic appeal.
You can also select the features you want and then place them accordingly in the template or start from scratch. You can preview the final content in different device sizes before sending. There are not many steps — the whole process is fast, simple and straightforward. You can schedule the send or send it immediately. There is also an option to resend the email after a set number of days (which you can customize) if someone doesn't open the sent email.
Drip’s reporting is comprehensive and well-organized: you can check metrics for your email marketing campaigns, filter by date range or campaign/automation, you can check opens by hour, clicks by link, etc. You can also view your entire campaign in Drip’s “recent activity” for the day. This is a handy way to keep track of email campaigns or automated emails you’ve sent.
All analytics can be exported to a CSV file. While the analytics features are sufficient for beginners, intermediates might appreciate deeper analysis of subscribers, the option to blacklist individual emails, and spam reports — similar to Constant Contact’s software.
Pricing: This is the essential difference between Drip and its competitors. It does not offer a standard plan like other software in the market. It is charged based on the number of users you have. There is a 14-day free trial for you to test it out. Since there are no fixed plan tiers, you will not miss out on any features. You can also send unlimited emails in Drip.
7. Active Campaign
Active Campaign is a unique software that allows you to send email campaigns in six different ways. There are features that save a lot of time, such as the image editor in the email marketing campaign window, the simple workflow creation process, and the extremely easy-to-master analytics system. Contacts can be uploaded by copying and pasting, importing from a file, or connecting a third-party service to automatically add them to the system directory.
Active Campaign also gives you the option to assign labels to contacts to isolate them, or you can create contact lists so that you can send selective emails only to audience members who meet certain criteria with just one click.
You can create many different email campaigns — standard, automated, autoresponder, use date, and more.
The process of sending the email is a simple 5-step process, just like AWeber: you select the campaign type and give it a name if you want, you choose the contact list you want to send it to (you can also create new segments or lists in this step), you finalize the design and content (you can start from scratch or customize an existing template), and finally review it and hit send.
The design process is a simple drag-and-drop operation. But Active Campaign goes a step further and includes an image editor within your email marketing campaigns — a huge time saver! There’s also an option to edit each element
On the Summary page, you can turn specific metrics on and off, such as tracking how many times your emails have been opened. There's also an option to run a spam check — this shows you how likely your message is to be considered spam. While this feature is unique to Active Campaign, I'm not sure how accurate this metric is.
In my personal opinion, Active Campaign’s automation features trump all the others. There are many existing templates to use (unlike Drip), and the whole process is largely hassle-free and beginner-friendly.
My favorite part of Active Campaign, aside from automation, is its reporting capabilities. For starters, it’s easy to find, unlike many other competitors on the market. It’s neatly organized for tracking specific campaigns, and there’s a completely separate menu for tracking engagement for automation projects.
The analyses are in-depth and easy to understand for beginners, but also useful for advanced levels.
You also get very in-depth contact reports on top contacts, contact trends, and open/read trends. You can also view contacts by day, hour, list, and tag. I find this very useful for those who are at an advanced level in their email marketing campaigns and are looking for more valuable data to improve their marketing.
Pricing: Active Campaign offers four plans — Lite, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise. You can view the features of each specific plan based on your business type. For example, you have Salesforce integration as a feature available in B2B business and newsletter as a feature available in digital business. Pricing is based on the number of contacts you have.
8. SendinBlue
If you’re a beginner in email marketing, SendinBlue is the perfect tool for you. The software is intuitive to use and the features are very user-friendly. Plus, there’s absolutely no limit to the number of contacts you can add.
There are three ways to import contacts: you can download a sample CSV file and export data from it, you can copy and paste contacts from an .xls file, or you can add contacts individually.
Depending on the requirements, there are three ways to create a marketing campaign: you can use the simple drag-and-drop feature (ideal for newsletters), you can use the rich text editor (ideal for creating simple informational emails), or you can copy and paste your HTML code.
I tried the drag and drop editor first. I found it very effective. There is no need for a user guide and there are no complex terms that are difficult for beginners to understand. The design is very user-friendly, especially for beginners. You can also send a test email to an email ID of your choice to check how it displays.
There's also an option at the top to check how your campaign will look on different devices: mobile phones, tablets, and laptops.
If you don’t like testing emails, SendinBlue sends a summary page showing the settings, design, etc. before you hit the “Send” button — it serves the same purpose, you just can’t see how it will look in an email.
On your account dashboard, you can quickly view the number of contacts, emails opened, emails clicked, and emails blacklisted.
If you run multiple email campaigns, you can also check and filter for the email campaigns you want to see these analytics for.
If you want to dive deeper into the analytics of your email marketing campaigns, SendinBlue allows you to check various metrics and even apply those checks only to a specific date range. You can use this feature under the Statistics button in your account.
The software also allows you to create workflows and has many existing templates to use. I found the workflow to be more difficult to use than the email marketing campaign design.
Pricing: SendinBlue offers four different plans: Free, Lite, Premium, and Enterprise. In the Free and Lite versions, you can only select up to 2,000 contacts for marketing automation. Some other features are not available in the Free and Lite versions, such as landing page builder, Facebook ads, redirect IP.
The free version lets you send 300 emails per day, while the business version offers a custom quote for the type of service you want. All emails sent under the free version will include their marketing content. SMS can also be sent to your account, but the price will vary depending on your requirements.
9. HubSpot
HubSpot email marketing software is easy to use, but the analytics and extra features aren't for beginners. If you're an enterprise or advanced creator, HubSpot might be for you.
You can create contacts individually, import files (and opt-out lists), or integrate data from third-party applications. The last option is paid, but there is a 14-day free trial.
The entire dashboard is only available for the contacts you own on HubSpot. You can also assign contact owners, apply filters, and create your own views to segment your contacts. However, I couldn't find any options to segment the contact base list or add them to separate tabs.
To create an email marketing campaign, you can choose from several of their free templates (or use a premium template). After that, it's a very basic drag-and-drop feature for all the elements. You can send a test email or preview how the email will look in your browser. Send your email immediately or schedule it to be sent when you want.
Automations and sequences can be created only in paid plans. HubSpot's main reporting and analytics are basic: emails opened, email volume, etc. There are six standard reports, but you have the option to create your own. I don't find the reporting too attractive because, unlike its competitors, it's not that comprehensive. If you want to get some useful information from the analytics, you have to create the report yourself. But the most prominent feature in the reports is the creation of dashboards. You have the option to track your own metrics by creating one or choosing a pre-existing metric as a template. The process is not that user-friendly and requires some practice to master it.
Pricing: HubSpot offers plans based on the type of business you run: Marketing, CRM & Sales, Customer Service, or CMS. They also have a free version that lets you send 2,000 emails per month. Some plans also offer a 14-day free trial.
10. Ontraport Ontraport’s features are geared more towards businesses than creators building an audience. The UI and design aren’t impressive, and the entire site can be tacky. Overall, Ontraport’s user experience is poor. Adding contacts is tricky. I could easily find out how to add contacts individually, but couldn’t find out how to bulk upload contacts or import them from a third-party service. I tried clicking the Visit button on the Contacts page multiple times, but it didn’t work.
But the level of detail that can be added for each contact is impressive. You can log calls, deals, tasks, text messages and keep track of all of them. You can also create groups to separate contacts into different categories. This kind of detailed contact addition and analysis can be useful for businesses, but it may be unnecessary for creators with many contacts.
The site is a bit sticky and there is no "save" button on the contact page. I tried looking for it in every corner before I realized it was auto-saved.
If you own an online store and sell items through email marketing campaigns, then Omnisend is perfect for you. But if you are a creator without a website (or store), then don't waste your time on Omnisend. What sets Omnisend apart from its competitors is that it can connect with your contacts via SMS, push notifications, Facebook, and more.
You can export contacts on Omnisend in four ways: add each contact individually, copy and paste contacts, upload a file, or import from Mailchimp. The process is simple and hassle-free.
Contacts can be isolated by creating segments or assigning tags. What I like is that you can create segments based on how your contacts behave. There are options to filter by users who clicked on your campaign link and those who have placed an order, etc. This is handy for creators who only want to send follow-up emails or connect with a portion of their audience based on specific criteria. These features are more suitable for people who sell products through email marketing campaigns.
The process of creating an email marketing campaign is very simple. You select the subject, email sender, and title in the first step and see how it will appear in your inbox. You can choose from their standard or themed templates and edit them with a simple drag and drop feature. You can create an email marketing campaign by clicking on "Message" and create it via HTML, Raw Email, OntraMail, SMS, or Task.
I don’t like “Simple Mail” — it’s like Gmail, but for your marketing campaigns. No way to add multimedia or other design elements. Fine for basic uses, but a bummer for anything more.
Pricing: Ontraport offers four different plans — Basic, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise. You get up to 1,000 contacts in the Basic plan and up to 20,000 contacts in the Enterprise plan. Ontraport offers custom pricing if you have more than 20,000 contacts. Custom pricing is also available for over 5 million emails per month. You can test all of their plans with a 14-day free trial, but this limits you to just 200 emails per day. Any additional emails will be sent slowly.
11. Omnisend
If you own an online store and sell items through email marketing campaigns, then Omnisend is perfect for you. But if you are a creator without a website (or store), then don't waste your time on Omnisend. What sets Omnisend apart from its competitors is that it can connect with your contacts via SMS, push notifications, Facebook, and more.
You can export contacts on Omnisend in four ways: add each contact individually, copy and paste contacts, upload a file, or import from Mailchimp. The process is simple and hassle-free.
Contacts can be isolated by creating segments or assigning tags. What I like is that you can create segments based on how your contacts behave. There are options to filter by users who clicked on your campaign link and those who have placed an order, etc. This is handy for creators who only want to send follow-up emails or connect with a portion of their audience based on specific criteria. These features are more suitable for people who sell products through email marketing campaigns.
The process of creating an email marketing campaign is very simple. You select the subject, email sender, and title in the first step and see how it appears in your inbox. You can choose from their standard or themed templates and edit your campaign with simple drag and drop functionality.
You can preview emails before sending or send them to a test email. You can also create automated workflows through Omnisend, although again, the site offers templates and actions that are more friendly to people who sell their products. I found this feature to lag behind its competitors, such as Drip, which is more user-friendly and inclusive in terms of templates. The site also hung for a while when I was using it.
You can’t get any reporting or analytics on your email marketing campaigns or workflows unless you connect your store to Omnisend, which I find unnecessary, especially since connecting your URLs to Omnisend is a tedious process of adding a code snippet on every page of your store’s website. It’s also not an inclusive tool, as creators who only have an email list and no website can’t use it to track their metrics.
Pricing: Omnisend offers four plans — Free, Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. Pricing depends on the number of contacts you have. In the free plan, you can receive 2000 emails per day. If you are a business, you must contact Omnisend for custom pricing. Each paid plan comes with a 14-day free trial.
12. Klaviyo
Klaviyo is easy to use, but there is a learning curve for each feature. The site can be a bit slow, but the analytics and custom reports are great for any small business or creator looking to create specific reports for some company-specific metrics.
You can upload contacts by copy-pasting or attaching a CSV file. The file must be uploaded in a specific format and follow certain guidelines. It's not hard to do, but a bit time-consuming compared to other software. If all the columns are not present, the file will not upload. This is tedious for someone who just wants to add email addresses and send them common transactions or information campaigns.
You can create lists of contacts and also segment those who meet certain criteria. There is also an option to tag your contacts.
Creating an email marketing campaign is a simple process, and typical steps include adding a subject, choosing a pre-existing template, or starting from scratch. You can design a plain text email, or decide to custom code it through HTML with the usual drag-and-drop options.
One feature that really stood out to me about Klaviyo is the My Templates menu. When you set up your account, it automatically selects your logo and displays the standard templates under this menu.
Despite all its features, we could not find an option to add videos or other forms of multimedia. There was also a slight delay if I added too many blocks.
You can send the email after previewing it, or send a test email or schedule it to be sent later if needed.
Klaviyo also has the ability to build a signup form. The process is simple and hassle-free. Again, the site is a little slow to load, and the blocks can be sticky. I also think the blocks could use an upgrade since they don’t have a lot of options.
It is also possible to do A/B testing in Klaviyo and integrate it with your social media. Klaviyo also has the ability to create custom reports by adding metrics of your choice and applying specific filters to them. It may take a while to get the hang of it, but it can be useful, especially when you want to create reports based on certain metrics. Pricing: Klaviyo's pricing is just as simple as Mailerlite's. You enter the number of contacts you have and they give you a price as well as the features. You can add up to 250 contacts and send 500 emails for free. It is not clear whether you can only send 500 emails in total or if you can send 500 emails per month if you use the free version.
Other Email Marketing Software Worth Mentioning
To see what’s possible with email marketing, I also explored other options. Zoho Campaign has a similar aesthetic and user-friendliness to Drip. One standout feature of Zoho Campaign is that they have a forever free plan that lets you send 12,000 emails per month to up to 2,000 subscribers.
Autopilot is another piece of software that's aesthetically comparable to Zoho Campaign. It also has the option to upload detailed information about your contacts, like Ontraport's.
If you're a business that prefers to export your contacts via Salesforce, Campaign Monitor gives you that option.
Final Thoughts
By the end of 2024, there will be approximately 4.48 billion email users worldwide.
Email marketing can generate up to 4400% ROI, earning $44 for every $1 spent. It’s very convenient for creators who have built an email list and want to provide their audience with the best features in this decades-old tool.
We recommend choosing the product that best fits your functional requirements. If you’re a blogger and email design isn’t a priority for you, go for something simpler and cheaper. But if you’re a creator who sells products and relies on visual cues from your contacts, invest in the software that does that best.
Keep a list of essential features for you and decide on the email marketing software accordingly. Consider software that has all the modern features — drag and drop, email sequences, automated workflows, autoresponders, etc. Without these features, there are high chances of missing out on potential revenue. You may also need these resources:Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/chainpeakGlobal Kol Resource Group: https://t.me/globalcryptokolGlobal Mod Resource Group: https://t.me/web3modglobalOur Services: http://chainpeak.notion.site
