Gregg Blanchard March 8, 2023
Email marketing software is a tool used to help businesses create, send, and analyze email campaigns. Email is a remarkably effective marketing tool that can improve brand recognition and loyalty, strengthen relationships, and increase sales. Email is forty times more effective than social media like Facebook and Twitter for acquiring customers.
We combined our experience and reviews from Capterra, GetApp, Shopify, Email Tool Tester, G2, and Trusted Radius to find the best email marketing software you can buy in 2024. But we didn’t stop there; we broke it down to include who each service fits best so you can get a niche product that actually serves your particular business.
In this guide, we’ll show you the best email marketing solutions for 2024 and why. We also cover five tips for better emails and frequently asked questions.
Here are our top seven favorite email marketing tools.
- ActiveCampaign
- Klaviyo
- HubSpot
- MailerLite
- Sendinblue
- GetResponse
- MailChimp
- Constant Contact
- ConvertKit
- Omnisend
- Loops
What is an email marketing tool?
An email marketing tool is a software application or service that helps businesses create, send, analyze, and manage email campaigns. Email marketing tools typically allow users to create lists of individuals or companies that have opted in to receive their emails, campaign templates, analytics to measure the success of email campaigns, and automation tools which allow emails to be sent with pre-defined parameters.
To contrast, an email provider is a place to send/receive personal emails. Tools like one of our favorites, Inbox.com, do this really, really well but they aren't meant for email marketing where you're sending an email to large groups of people at the same time.
What to consider when buying email marketing software
Volume
The volume of your email marketing efforts will be a deciding factor when you choose email marketing software. Nearly every email marketing tool has a pricing structure based on how many emails you plan to send each month and number of subscribers you’ll have on your list.
Cost
Before you start researching email marketing tools, it might be helpful to establish a budget. Sure, the cost of the tool itself is necessary to consider. But don’t forget about the employees or contractors who will execute the work to produce email campaigns and build the audience.
Depending on your company’s size, you might have a team for email, including a strategist, writer, developer, and graphic designer. Smaller companies could do it in-house with just one person or hire a contractor to execute their email marketing plans. No matter which option you choose, it will cost money.
Time
Many tools come with a plethora of features. While that sounds awesome, they each will take time to set up. Plus, if your current staff doesn’t have experience with them yet, they’ll need time to get up to speed.
Before choosing software with fancy features, make sure you can actually use all of them. Those tools generally charge the big bucks. Before committing, it doesn’t hurt to check in with potential email marketing team members.
Is email still a good digital marketing tool?
Yes, email is still a good marketing tool! Email marketing allows businesses to reach their target audience directly with personalized content at a low cost. Email is also a great avenue for lead generation and customer relationships. There are 4 billion daily email users. Just a fraction of that is a massive audience!
While relationships are an important part of marketing, so is data. Email campaigns can be easily tracked and measured, allowing businesses to track their success and adjust their campaigns accordingly. A/B testing is common practice in email marketing for good reason.
5 Tips to Improve Your Email Marketing Strategy
Before you choose an email platform, let’s talk about why your marketing efforts might not be working. Sure, you can change platforms. But first, try optimizing these factors.
1. Analyze your data
You saw this one coming, didn’t you? The details are in the data. Your open, click-through, and spam rates say it all. Email teams who execute A/B testing and analyze their data see up to 28% higher returns on investment.
Are your open rates low? Try A/B testing new subject lines. Click-throughs low? Test new CTAs or link positioning.
2. Segment your email lists
One of the best things about email marketing is that it’s personalized. Segment your lists to make it feel even more personal to your subscribers. That way, they’ll only hear about what they want to know. Often, when they go to unsubscribe, they’ll only unsubscribe from that segment, too, so you won’t lose them forever. Here are some segmentations you can try.
- By demographics: Gender, age, location, interests, job title, etc.
- By purchasing preferences: past purchases, product type, customer loyalty status, etc.
- By engagement level: open and click-through rates, web page visits, purchases, etc.
- By life cycle status: prospects, trial users, loyal customers, former customers, etc.
- By content preferences: topics of interest, desired email format (blog, newsletter, etc.), frequency of emails, etc.
3. Personalize your emails
Segmenting makes email marketing slightly more personal. But five other factors can make your emails feel even more friendly.
- Use the recipient’s first name in the subject line
- Send the email from a real person at your company
- Use plain text emails to create more intimate letters
- Customize suggested products based on their shopping data
- Use the recipient’s name in the body of the email
4. Optimize your email designs
The majority (55%) of email views come from mobile devices. Many users (95%) also prefer dark mode. If your emails aren’t optimized for mobile and dark mode, you’re missing out on current standards!
5. Keep your email lists clean
Are your spam rates high? Clean your list. Yes! Remove subscribers from your own list. Your deliverability rates will rise noticeably if you do. On average, up to 40% of your email list could be inactive. Remove anyone who hasn’t opened an email from you in the past 12 months.
The Top 7 Best Email Marketing Tools
These email marketing software options are sorted by our opinion of best to good. However, remember that the software you pick should match your own individual needs. What we deem as the best, might not work for you. Check out the “best for” attribute under each recommendation to see if it makes sense for your team.
1. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is one of the most robust tools in its price range. With over 150,000 paying users, it’s definitely among the most popular. It’s more than just an email marketing platform.
ActiveCampaign also offers a marketing automation builder with over 135 triggers and actions. Automations in ActiveCampaign can combine email, SMS, push notifications, and site messages. Feeling overwhelmed? You can try one of their pre-built automations instead!
They go above and beyond when it comes to A/B testing, even further than HubSpot does. You can split test paths, like how many emails to send, combining channels, templates, and more, rather than just subject lines, CTAs, or versions. They even have built-in predictive modeling to tell you which might work best.
The only cons of ActiveCampaign is that it probably won’t work for bigger teams. They also don’t have advanced reporting – especially compared to Klaviyo and HubSpot. But for the price, it’s perfect for small teams who want to automate or use multiple channels.
Best for: Ease of Use, beginners, automation, multichannel
Price: $29/month for 1,000 contacts
Features:
- Robust automations
- Split path A/B testing
- 900+ Integrations
- Customer success guarantees
- Free migration
- Data protection
- 24/7 customer support on all plans
- Forms
- Site and event tracking
- Webhooks and API
- Landing pages
- Facebook audiences and ads
- Pop-ups and forms
- Conditional content
2. Klaviyo
Klaviyo is one of the few email marketing tools focusing solely on eCommerce platforms. Over 100,000 eCommerce businesses use Klaviyo. It integrates easily with Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento.
The pre-built automation flows for cart abandonment, upsells, and welcome emails make it easy to get started. The thing that truly makes Klaviyo next level, though, is their predictive forecasts. The platform will predict future revenue and buying trends.
But our favorite feature? Their reporting. It’s called Benchmarks. Benchmarks make it easy to compare yourself to competitors – something we can get behind here at SendView. We like Klaviyo for its intuitive user interface and high-performance functionality. The only cons we see are the pricing.
Best for: eCommerce
Price: $0-$150/month for 250-10k contacts
Features:
- 1000-1500 contacts for $45/month
- 15,000 monthly sends for $45/month
- 150 free SMS credits
- Segmentation
- Automation builder & prebuilt automation workflows
- Forms and pop-ups
- 300+ integrations
- Benchmarks
- Personalized product recommendations
- Automated A/B testing
- Templates
3. HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the most expensive email marketing platforms on this list. HubSpot also offers the most customizable features in an all-in-one platform. They’re expensive for a reason. This is software that was built for marketing pros.
With HubSpot, you can create a website, monitor sales activity, run your email marketing, and manage client relationships. It works best for high-value services and large companies. Their services are highly customizable with HTML custom templates, native testing, robust reporting, built-in customer relationship management tool (CRM), and more.
Their pricing structure can be confusing. It doesn’t hurt to reach out to their sales team before committing to make sure you get the right plan for your business.
Best for: B2B, large scale, all in one
Price: $50/month per 1,000 contacts
Key Features:
- Visual email builder
- Websites
- Landing Pages
- CRM
- Advanced Reporting
- Personalization Tokens
- Dynamic Blocks
- Workflows
- A/B Testing
- Segmentation
4. MailerLite
This might be the most affordable and user-friendly email marketing platform out there. MailerLite’s free plan allows up to 12,000 sends per month! For just $9 a month, you can upgrade to unlimited email sends to 1,000 contacts.
It’s great for nearly any industry if you’re just looking to send bulk email marketing campaigns. If you don’t need a CRM or advanced audience segmentation, this is the cheapest and easiest tool to start with.
If you’re looking for transaction emails with SMS, they offer a separate plan starting at just $1.00 per 1,000 emails.
Best for: Small businesses, beginners, affordability, ease of use
Price: $0-$9/month 12,000-unlimited sends, up to 1,000 contacts
Features:
- Drag and drop editor
- Automation builder
- Website builder
- 10 landing pages
- Sign-up forms and pop-ups
- Digital storefront
- Templates
- Dynamic emails
- Auto resends
- Blogs
- Unsubscribe page builder
5. Sendinblue
Sendinblue has a unique pricing structure. Their plans offer unlimited subscribers. The price increases represent email sends and extra features. Their plans start at $25/month for 20,000 monthly sends.
Most popularly, they offer chat, CRM, and transactional emails. While advanced features like transactional emails, automation, and advanced metrics cost more – the reviews say it’s worth it. These add-ons start at $25/month. You can even manage Facebook ads and contacts (CRM) within Sendinblue.
Best for: Startups, scaling rapidly, transactional emails
Price: $25/month for 20,000 monthly sends
Features:
- Drag and drop editor
- Templates
- SMS marketing
- Personalization
- WhatsApp campaigns
- No daily send limit
- Landing Pages
- A/B Testing
- Send Time Optimization
- Transactional email sending
- Real-time email statistics
- Webhooks
- Marketing automation tools
6. GetResponse
GetResponse was behind the ball with releasing automation features, but when it did, it did it well. GetResponse’s automation features are affordable and robust. They offer automation for drip campaigns, blog digests, workflows, and more.
The free forever plan gets you started with a domain, website, landing pages, forms, and email marketing for up to 500 contacts. Paid plans start at $13.00 a month. Some plans also offer SMS marketing!
Best for: Automation, affordability
Price: $0-$50/month for 1,000 contacts
Features:
- Email newsletters (free forever)
- Automation
- Autoresponder sequences
- Automated blog digests
- Optimal time sending
- Transactional emails
- Drag and drop email editor
- Free gifs and stock photos built-in
- Free email templates
- Segmentation
- Dynamic content
- Basic A/B testing
- Conversion funnels
- Live chats
7. Mailchimp
Easily create email campaigns and learn more about your customers with MailChimp’s free plan. They offer up to 1000 monthly email sends and up to 500 contacts for free. You’ll have to keep their branding, and the tools are limited, but if you’re just getting started with email marketing on a small scale, this is a great option.
Their paid plans are also a great, low-cost option and offer extra features like scheduling, segmentation, time optimization, custom templates, dynamic content, journeys, A/B testing, scheduling, and more.
Best for: Affordability
Price: $0-$20/month
Free Plan Features:
- Up to 500 contacts
- Up to 1000 monthly email sends
- forms & landing pages
- Reporting & analytics
- Templates
8. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is one of the only email platforms to be solely focused on helping small businesses succeed. Users say it has an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that’s great for beginners who want to do both social media marketing and email posts.
They have easy-to-use templates, simple contact lists, and basic analytics. Constant Contact also boasts user-friendly landing pages, social media ads, and text channels. It syncs with other apps you might already be using, like Canva.
The only cons we found for Constant Contact are that it’s not great for teams and that it’s a bit pricey for what it offers.
Best for: Small businesses, nonprofits
Price: $9.99-$45.00/month
Features:
- Templates
- Automation
- Landing Pages
- Event Marketing
- A/B Testing
- List Building Tools
- Social media ad and post integrations
- App integrations
- SMS marketing
- Basic reporting
- eCommerce options
- Forms
- Live chat and phone customer support
- Google ad options
- Dynamic content
- Automated segments
9. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is an easy-to-use, highly-rated email marketing service. Their most popular features include drip campaigns, mobile emails, subscriber management, and security.
ConvertKit markets itself to online creators and bloggers. Their customizable opt-in forms boast great list-building statistics for creators in any niche.
Best for: Beginners, growing small businesses
Price: $0-$25/month
Features:
- Unlimited landing pages
- Unlimited forms
- Advanced segmentation
- Live chat customer support
- Free migration
- Automated email sequences
- Visual automation builder
- App integrations
- Sell digital products and subscriptions
- Unlimited opt-in forms
- Link in bio pages
- Customizable domain
- Opt-in incentive delivery
- Basic reporting
- Newsletter referral system
- Image library
- A/B split testing
- Conditional content
10. Omnisend
Omnisend is another email marketing service targeted at business owners. Their eCommerce-focused beginner-friendly platform does both email and SMS marketing.
With over 80,000 brands using their service, it’s clear that their strategy to offer SMS and email in combination works. They go beyond email to offer holistic marketing automations combining web push notifications, pop-ups, SMS, and email in their advanced automation options.
If you’re looking for a tool that supports your eCommerce business with both email and SMS, this is the best choice for you. But this service really is only for eCommerce brands! The cons we found were their lack of customer service and that they don’t allow you to export by segment – it’s all or nothing.
Best for: eCommerce
Price: $59/month for email and SMS
Features:
- Unlimited contacts
- Unlimited sends
- Unlimited segmentation
- SMS
- MMS
- Push notifications
- Facebook and Google custom audiences
- Email, SMS, push notification automation
- Custom workflows
- Automation splits
- A/B split testing
- Conditional content
- Personalized recommendations
- 7 different types of forms
- Landing Pages
- Wheel of fortune
Bonus. Loops
Loops is an ESP created specifically for software companies. Everything from the interface to the API is design for the unique needs, segments, triggers, events. and campaign types that saas companies need to send in order to be effective.
They're fairly new on a scene that is famous for brands that have been around for 10-15 years, but their platform is incredibly well built and represents what we believe is the future of email marketing.
Best for: Software / saas
Price: Free then $49/mo
Frequently Asked Questions
What tools do you use for email marketing?
Most email marketing software comes with everything you need built-in. Even so, email marketers typically need a few extra tools to get the job done. Most email marketers use the following tools.
- email marketing platform
- competitor monitoring software
- word processer
- graphic design software
- project management tool
- code editor
Why should I use email marketing software?
Email marketing software enables you to effectively and efficiently reach out to your customers, prospects, and other contacts. Using software created specifically for this purpose will also improve deliverability and security. You can’t use Gmail forever! It also saves you time by automating campaigns, managing contacts, and tracking results.
Email marketing software can provide customized campaigns, detailed reporting, and detailed analytics to help you better understand your target audience and refine your message for maximum impact. Additionally, it can streamline customer relationship management and reduce expenses associated with customer outreach.
What is the future of email marketing?
The future of email marketing is bright. As with every technology and marketing effort, it’s changing over time. The best email marketing campaigns in 2024 will take a personalized approach and leverage the power of artificial intelligence to send targeted emails based on a customer’s interests and preferences.
As marketers become more comfortable using new technology, they can create automated email sequences tailored to each customer’s needs. Personalized product suggestions, copy, timing, and segmentation will be defining factors of successful and profitable email campaigns going forward.
Does CRM Software Include Email Marketing?
No, typically, CRM software does not include email marketing, but some software providers may offer this as an additional service or feature. Many email marketing tools do, however, offer CRM software built-in. HubSpot and Sendinblue are two examples of this.
What Does Email Marketing Software Cost?
The cost of email marketing software varies. It depends on the provider, the number of emails you plan to send each month, number of contact lists, and the product's features.