17 Best Email Marketing Platforms

Written by: Chris Donald

Published on: 05-17-2023

Chris is Managing Partner at InboxArmy and has more than 25 years of experience in email marketing

Email marketing platforms are the second most important medium after social media marketing to build brand awareness, boosting a 4200% ROI for every $1 spent. And with 21% of emails opened within the first hour of delivery, there’s no reason why email marketing is one of the determining factors for a brand’s success.

There’s a great deal of difference between ordinary and extraordinary email campaigns. The latter puts customers at the heart of email marketing efforts, often elevated by feature-rich email marketing providers (ESP).

What Is An Email Service Provider?

An email service provider or ESP is an email marketing software that assists email marketers set up flawless email campaigns, manage contacts, among others. 

How To Choose An Email Marketing Platform

With multiple ESPs offering a wide range of products, you need to make an informed choice based on your business goals. Let’s have a quick lowdown on what to look forward to while selecting an ESP:

  1. Free vs Paid features. Most of the well-known ESPs have features that are completely free for use. These can include templates, subject line checkers, A/B testing, and so on.
  2. Integrations with other tools. What are the different tools the ESPs integrate with? How can they benefit your email marketing efforts?
  3. What are the designs like? If you’re getting the option of landing page designs, do they align with your brand/business designs?
  4. Does it include email automation?
  5. What are the different types of personalization available (for customers)?
  6. What are the reporting features like?
  7. What’s the cap on free resources that you can create?
  8. How does the customization features for your brand work?
  9. Do they have great customer support?

 Best Email Marketing Platforms Comparison

Tool Price (1000 subscribers/contacts) Free Plan/Trial Unique Feature
sendinblue
SendInBlue
 

 

$25/month

 

 

Yes

 

 

SMS marketing options


Mailchimp
MailChimp
 

 

$60/month

 

 

Yes

 

 

Multi-step custom workflows

Convertjit
ConvertKit
 

 

$15 for 300 contacts

 

 

Yes

 

 

Customizable landing page templates

Hubspot
HubSpot
 

 

$20/month

 

 

Yes

 

 

Powerful CRM tool


mailerliteMailerLite
 

 

$10/month

 

 

Yes

 

 

Open rate by location

Klaviyo
Klaviyo
 

 

$20 for 500 contacts

 

 

Yes

 

 

Detailed insight into campaign performance

Aweber
AWeber
 

 

$40/month

 

 

Yes

 

 

Email testing across devices

Activecampaign
ActiveCampaign
 

 

$29/month

 

 

Yes (14-day trial)

 

 

Event tracking options

Getresponse
GetResponse
 

 

$19 for 1,000 contacts

 

 

Yes

 

 

Automated sales funnels 

Campaignmonitor
Campaign Monitor
 

 

$9 for 500 contacts

 

 

Yes

 

 

Branded transactional emails

Benchmark
Benchmark
 

 

$49/month

 

 

Yes

 

 

User-friendly email editor

Moosend
Moosend
 

 

$16/month

 

 

Yes (30-day free trial)

 

 

Advanced audience segmentation

Omnisend
Omnisend
 

 

$16/month

 

 

Yes

 

 

Best for ecommerce automation

Mailjet
Mailjet
 

 

Free

 

 

Yes

 

 

Good transactional service

Constant contact
Constant Contact
 

 

$35/month

 

 

Yes (60-day trial)

 

 

Event invitations management

Dotdigital
DotDigital
 

 

Flexible pricing

 

 

NA

 

 

Several CRM-like capabilities

Drip
Drip
 

 

$39/month

 

 

Yes (14 day trial)

 

 

N/A

The caveat is that a deluge of ESP options out there, it can get extremely frustrating for email marketers to take a pick.

Does this problem statement resonate with you? Fret not as we’ve done the groundwork for you.

SendInBlue

sendinblue

Sendinblue goes beyond your typical email marketing software. It offers a complete sales and marketing toolkit. Whether you are looking forward to transactional messages, integrated CRM or multichannel marketing tools including Whatsapp campaigns, live chat, push notifications, SMS and more, this one ESP takes care of it all like a boss.

Sendinblue email marketing also comprises of powerful features that includes – 

  • Focused audience segmentation
  • personalized content
  • A/B testing
  • Send time optimization
  • Intuitive drag-and-drop email editor
  • Fully responsive templates 

Marketing automation – Sendinblue also offers a range of marketing automation tools, which helps you leverage –

  • Autoresponders like welcome emails
  • Complex workflows based on user behavior
  • If/then scenarios
  • Lead scoring
  • Automated contact management

The Tracker feature also lets you trigger emails based on a visitor’s interaction with your website. Sendinblue also comes with the option to send transactional emails such as – order updates, account confirmations, password recovery and more. In addition, there are several ready-to-use plugins that allow integrations with ecommerce platforms such as – Woocommerce and Shopify.

What We Love:

  • View detailed heat maps, which are extremely handy for your future email campaigns.
  • Store unlimited contacts at no cost, which is also included as a part of their Free or basic plan.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Reporting: Some users have noted that Sendinblue’s reporting and analytics features may be more limited compared to some of its competitors, particularly for businesses looking for more detailed insights into their email campaigns.
  • Customer Support: While Sendinblue offers customer support, some users have reported that the response time may be slower compared to some of its competitors, particularly for more complex technical issues.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp

Think email, and the layman would think of Mailchimp.

Over the years, the ESP has gained tremendous popularity levels, especially among rookie marketers. And there’s a valid reason for the same – a simple user interface of the drag-and-drop email builder with professional templates available on fingertips, anyone can create spectacular emails within no time.

With Mailchimp it’s also possible to create unlimited landing pages using its pre-loaded templates, use advanced tools like A/B testing, segmentation, add sign up forms, and send time optimization.

What We Love:

  • Option to personalize email copy such as adding product recommendations
  • Pre-built workflows that lets you craft your own customer journeys
  • Amplify multichannel marketing with social media scheduling and ads

Scope For Improvement:

  • Deliverability Issues: Mailchimp has been known to have deliverability issues in the past, with emails sometimes ending up in subscribers’ spam folders.
  • Complexity: While Mailchimp is user-friendly overall, some users may find certain aspects of the platform, such as creating automations, to be more complex or difficult to navigate.

ConvertKit

convertkit

ConvertKit is an email marketing service targeting online creatives like bloggers and YouTubers. Email marketing features include the ability to segment your list and personalize email campaigns using tags, as well as A/B testing for subject lines.

You can grow your audience with customizable landing page templates and signup forms designed to increase conversions. And if you’re using downloadable content as an incentive, it’s easy to automatically send materials after someone fills out your form.

ConvertKit’s automation software provides a visual way to set up email drip campaigns powered by subscriber behavior. The workflow editor shows you what your sequences look like in action and makes it easy to alter the path subscribers take. And if you need help getting started, there are automation templates for use cases like webinars and product launches.

All plans let you send unlimited emails and come with live chat and email support. For paid plans, pricing is based on how many subscribers you have.

What We Love:

  • Visual Automation Builder: ConvertKit offers a visual automation builder that makes it easy for businesses to create complex email automations without needing to know how to code.
  • Integrations: ConvertKit integrates with a wide range of third-party tools and platforms, including WordPress, Shopify, and more.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Limited A/B Testing: ConvertKit’s A/B testing features may be more limited compared to some of its competitors, particularly for businesses looking to run more complex tests.
  • Price: ConvertKit’s pricing may be relatively high compared to some of its competitors, particularly for businesses with larger email lists or those just starting out with email marketing.

HubSpot

hubspot

HubSpot provides email marketing capabilities through its Marketing Hub and Sales Hub (CRM). The Marketing Hub is dedicated to growing traffic and generating leads through email campaigns, landing pages, social media ads, live chat, video, SEO, and content.

In addition to these features, the Sales Hub adds email tracking and scheduling, CRM, predictive lead scoring, sales automation, email sequences, and reporting. For businesses requiring ticketing and support features, HubSpot’s Service Hub provides these capabilities.

HubSpot’s offerings cater to sales-oriented businesses like SaaS and cover all digital marketing areas. The free plan allows users to send up to 2,000 emails per month and store up to 1,000,000 contacts. The Starter Marketing plan starts at $50 per month for 1,000 contacts.

What We Love:

  • All-in-one Platform: HubSpot is one of the best email platforms that offers a wide range of tools, including email marketing, CRM, social management, and more.
  • Advanced Features: HubSpot offers advanced email marketing features, including A/B testing, personalization, segmentation, and automation, making it a great option for businesses looking to create more complex campaigns.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Complexity: HubSpot’s all-in-one platform can be complex and overwhelming, particularly for beginners or businesses with limited technical expertise.
  • Price: HubSpot’s pricing can be relatively high, particularly for businesses with smaller email lists or those just starting out with email marketing.

MailerLite

Mailerlite

MailerLite is one of the best email marketing softwares that is perfect for beginners. With their drag-and-drop editor, you can create any type of email campaign. Additionally, you can expand your email list with signup forms, and even create a complete website with their website builder. To send transactional emails, MailerSend is an option.

MailerLite also includes email marketing automation and personalization based on user behavior. Abandoned cart emails can be sent for Shopify and WooCommerce stores. Contact management and segmentation are also covered.

You can optimize your campaign results with A/B testing and smart delivery by time zone features. Furthermore, MailerLite offers reports and analytics to track your performance.

The free plan allows you to send up to 12,000 emails per month to 1,000 contacts. Additionally, MailerLite offers a variety of paid plans, starting at $10 per month for 1,000 subscribers.

What We Love:

  • Affordable Pricing: MailerLite’s pricing is affordable, particularly for businesses with smaller email lists or those just starting out with email marketing.
  • Advanced Automation: MailerLite offers advanced automation features, including workflow-based automation, making it a great option for businesses looking to create more complex campaigns.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Limited Features: While MailerLite offers many useful features, some businesses may find that it lacks certain advanced features that are available in other email marketing platforms.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo

Klaviyo’s email marketing platform is designed to meet the needs of online shops, offering SMS and advanced email features to increase revenue. The user-friendly editor includes responsive templates, with options for personalizing emails with product recommendations and dynamic blocks.

Klaviyo tracks website interactions and events, allowing for targeted automations and segmentation based on individual customer profiles. Advanced reporting features and customized benchmarks provide detailed insight into campaign performance.

Klaviyo’s free plan provides up to 250 email contacts and 50 SMS contacts, with a limit of 500 emails and 150 SMS sent. Paid plans start at $20 per month for 500 contacts, with the free plan offering 500 emails per month for 250 contacts.

What We Love:

  • Robust Automation: Klaviyo offers robust automation options, such as triggered emails and flow-based campaigns, allowing businesses to create highly targeted and personalized email sequences.
  • Advanced Reporting and Analytics: Klaviyo offers advanced reporting and analytics features that provide detailed insights into email campaign performance, audience engagement, and revenue generated.
  • Integrations: Klaviyo integrates with third-party tools and platforms, allowing businesses to easily connect and automate various parts of their marketing and sales funnels.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Limited Phone Support: While Klaviyo provides support to its users, some businesses may find the support options limited or slow to respond, particularly when it comes to phone support.

AWeber

aweber

AWeber offers user-friendly services with features suited for beginners. Its drag-and-drop editor and templates library are accompanied by an AI-powered design assistant that creates on-brand templates for your email newsletters.

To reach individual customers at scale, AWeber provides tags that you can add manually or automatically. This lets you tag subscribers based on signup information, email opens, and link clicks.

With AWeber’s email marketing you can run drip campaigns for welcoming new subscribers or launching a product. The campaign marketplace offers pre-made workflows with templates for each campaign stage, which you can customize to your brand and audience.

Additionally, AWeber offers a drag-and-drop landing page builder with templates and a stock image gallery. All templates include signup forms, and subscribers can be automatically tagged for better list management.

The price tag: AWeber’s pricing is based on subscriber count, with all plans including chat, email, and phone support. The free or basic plan offers 3,000 emails for up to 500 subscribers, and paid plans start at $19.99 per month for the Pro version.

What We Love:

  • Easy-toUse: AWeber has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to create, launch and manage campaigns.
  • Robust Email Design Tools: AWeber offers a variety of templates and customization options for businesses to create professional-looking emails that are on-brand.

Scope For Improvement:

  • You are charged to host unsubscribed contacts on your account.
  • Can’t include or exclude multiple segments at once when sending an e-newsletter.

ActiveCampaign

Activecampaign

ActiveCampaign offers an all-in-one marketing platform. With ActiveCampaign, you can personalize your emails using contact data and split test up to five different email versions to optimize your content. You can also segment your audience based on insights like email activity and track website visits and actions for even more targeted messaging.

The platform offers a range of premade automation workflows and the ability to create custom automations using various triggers, including website activity. Upgrading to the Plus plan unlocks advanced automation features such as contact scoring and split testing workflows. In addition, it includes SMS and landing page features.

Plans: ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial with limited contacts and email sends. All plans come with live chat and email support. The prices start at $15 per month for up to 500 subscribers.

What We Love:

  • Advanced Automation Workflows: ActiveCampaign email marketing provides advanced automation workflows that allow businesses to create complex automation sequences. These automation workflows can save businesses time and effort in designing and executing their email marketing campaigns.
  • Deep Segmentation: ActiveCampaign’s segmentation features are highly advanced, allowing businesses to create complex audience segments based on a range of variables. This feature can help businesses to deliver highly targeted and personalized campaigns.
  • Multichannel Marketing: ActiveCampaign allows businesses to execute multichannel marketing campaigns, including email, SMS, social media, and more. This can help businesses to reach their audiences across multiple channels and maximize their reach and engagement.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Support: While ActiveCampaign provides support to its users, some businesses may find the support options limited or slow to respond.

GetResponse

Getresponse

GetResponse provides a range of marketing tools for small businesses, with comprehensive services at its core. The platform offers a library of professionally designed email templates with a drag-and-drop editor, allowing users to easily create beautiful, branded messages.

Using powerful segmentation tools, businesses can personalize their campaigns based on customer behavior and interests. Additionally, marketing automation allows users to automatically tag and score contacts, triggering targeted emails. Time-based drip campaigns are also available, and users can view their email sequence on a calendar to see exactly when subscribers will receive messages.

Transactional emails can be sent alongside campaigns, and ecommerce plugins allow businesses to promote their products via email and landing pages. GetResponse also offers tools for creating and managing Facebook ads, running webinars, and pre-made automated sales funnels designed for various industries and purposes.

What We Love:

  • Advanced Automation Workflows: GetResponse offers advanced automation workflows that allow businesses to create complex, multi-step automation sequences. This feature can save businesses time and effort in designing and executing their campaigns.
  • Landing Page Builder: GetResponse provides a landing page builder that allows businesses to create high-converting landing pages without needing any coding skills.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Limited Reporting: GetResponse’s reporting features may be more limited than some of its competitors, particularly for businesses looking for more advanced analytics and reporting capabilities.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact offers a comprehensive marketing suite that goes beyond email marketing. In addition to a vast selection of free email templates, the platform includes an AI-powered tool that generates branded templates based on your website or Facebook page.

Email marketing features include A/B testing for email subject lines and automatic resend to subscribers who didn’t open a campaign. Upgrading to the Email Plus plan unlocks advanced automation functionality such as multi-step automated email series and tools for surveys and online donations.

Advanced email segmentation tools allow you to automatically manage contacts based on their email link clicks or create custom segments based on subscriber engagement or purchase activity using Shopify or WooCommerce plugins. Moreover, Constant Contact lets you create landing pages or even build an entire website or online store from scratch.

You can also manage social media activities such as scheduling posts, responding to comments, and running ads from the platform.

Although there is no free plan, the paid plans come with almost unlimited emails and email and chat support. Prices increase based on the number of contacts you have.

The plans start at $9.99 per month for up to 500 subscribers.

What We Love:

  • Customizable Pop-Ups: Constant Contact allows businesses to create customizable email pop-ups that can be used to capture email leads or promote special offers to website visitors.
  • Event Marketing Features: Constant Contact includes event marketing features that allow businesses to create and promote events, manage registrations, and track attendance all from within the platform.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Limited Automation Features: Constant Contact’s automation features may be more limited compared to some of its competitors, particularly for businesses looking for more advanced automation workflows.
  • Limited Customization: While Constant Contact provides a range of templates, businesses may find the customization options limited compared to some of its competitors.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor’s email marketing service offers an array of user-friendly features that are perfect for beginners who want to build a loyal following. With a vast collection of responsive email templates, the platform’s drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to customize your messages, while personalization features allow you to add a unique touch with contact data.

Optimize your email send time using the platform’s send time optimization tool, and create custom segments of subscribers using multiple filters with the segmentation tool. With Campaign Monitor, you can also create branded transactional emails that are just as personalized. Use the platform’s simple visual journey editor to create email automation sequences with conditions based on subscriber behavior and past interactions.

Caveat: You can use the platform for free for as long as you like, though you can only send campaigns to up to five contacts.

Pricing: The Basic plan is limited to 2,500 emails a month, while the Unlimited plan has no sending limit. As your contact list grows, pricing will increase. Both plans offer email support, but priority support is given to those on the Unlimited plan. 

What We Love:

  • Visual Journey Designer: Campaign Monitor offers a visual journey designer that allows businesses to create complex, multi-step automation workflows in a user-friendly interface. This feature can save businesses time and effort in designing and executing their campaigns.
  • Spam Testing: Campaign Monitor includes spam testing features that analyze emails for potential issues that could cause them to be flagged as spam by email providers.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Limited A/B Testing: Campaign Monitor’s A/B testing features may be more limited than some of its competitors, particularly for businesses looking to test more than two variables at once.
  • Limited Lead Capture Features: Campaign Monitor’s lead capture features may be more limited than some of its competitors, particularly for businesses looking to capture leads through more advanced methods like pop-ups or quizzes.

Moosend

Moosend

Moosend isn’t perhaps the most well-known email marketing platform out there, but it’s a haven for those looking for a feature-rich, affordable email marketing solution.

Moosend provides a user-friendly platform that enables you to create and execute effective email marketing campaigns, landing pages, and subscription forms.

The drag-and-drop editor allows you to create customized email newsletters using interactive features like videos, or choose from a variety of responsive templates. With advanced automation features, you can create tailored campaigns for different audience segments or design custom workflows such as welcome, engagement, or abandoned cart sequences.

Moosend’s real-time reporting and analytics tools provide measurable insights into campaign performance and user engagement, allowing you to make informed, data-backed decisions. Additionally, the A/B Testing feature allows you to experiment with different element variations to optimize your email marketing strategy for better results.

What We Love:

Moosend’s got a nice selection of around 70 email templates to choose from, spam testing, A/B testing and marketing automation.

Pricing: Moosend offers a subscriber-based pricing model that includes three pricing tiers. The free trial provides access to most features and allows users to send unlimited email campaigns.

With the Pro plan, starting at $9 per month, you can send unlimited emails, create automation workflows, forms, and landing pages, as well as send transactional campaigns to up to 500 contacts. If you need more advanced functionality and additional support, the Enterprise plan is available at custom pricing.

What We Love:

  • Advanced Automation Features: Moosend provides advanced automation features, including abandoned cart reminders, welcome series, and post-purchase follow-ups. These features can help businesses save time and improve their customer engagement.
  • Personalization: Moosend offers personalization features that allow businesses to create personalized messages for their subscribers, leading to higher engagement rates.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Limited Customization: While Moosend offers a range of templates and design options, it may not offer as much customization as some of its competitors. Businesses that require more customization options may need to look for other solutions.

Omnisend

Omnisend

Omnisend provides an all-in-one platform that simplifies automation workflows for all stages of the customer journey. What sets Omnisend apart from other email marketing tools is its omni-channel capabilities, enabling greater control over how and where you engage with your audience.

You can incorporate email, SMS, push notifications, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and more in your automation workflows.

With Omnisend email marketing you can build and manage customized, targeted communication workflows. This approach provides a more personalized, less disruptive experience for your contacts while improving audience engagement.

With user-friendly segmentation and omni-channel features, you can deliver the right message to the right person, at the right time, and on the right channel. Omnisend also provides email capture, campaign, and automation workflow templates to streamline your workflow.

Omnisend is one of the best and free email marketing tools if you run an ecommerce business.

It provides behavioral segmentation dimensions based on store activity and shopping behavior, and pre-defined customer segments as well. It also offers pre-built automation workflows organized by type or goal, making it super handy for marketers, even those who are novice.

The drag-and-drop editor can help you get started from a number of ecommerce-focused templates. Alternatively, you can build your own templates with easy-add blocks for product listing, discounts, product recommendations, and more.

Pricing: Regarding pricing, Omnisend has three plans, including a free version with limited features and a customizable pro plan. You can try out the platform with a free trial to determine which plan best suits your needs.

What We Love:

  • Omnichannel Marketing: Omnisend provides omnichannel marketing features that allow businesses to connect with their customers across different channels, including email, SMS, social media, and more. This can help businesses reach customers where they are most active and increase engagement.
  • Advanced Segmentation: Omnisend offers advanced segmentation features that allow businesses to target specific audiences with tailored messages. This can lead to higher engagement rates and better results from email campaigns.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Limited Customization: While Omnisend offers a range of templates and design options, it may not offer as much customization as some of its competitors. Businesses that require more customization options may need to look for other solutions.
  • Pricing: Omnisend’s pricing plans may be more expensive than some of its competitors, particularly for businesses with large email lists.

Benchmark

Benchmark

Benchmark offers cutting-edge features like Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve your email marketing without breaking the bank. The free one includes 25 credits for the app’s “Smart Content” feature, which uses AI to write your email copy for you.

It also includes Smart Sending, which optimizes your list with every send to increase engagement and improve email deliverability.

In addition to AI, Benchmark offers a well-rounded app with a free pricing plan that includes quality templates, user-friendly email marketing automation, basic segmentation, and your choice of drag-and-drop, code, or plain-text editors.

You can also automate more of your email marketing by connecting Benchmark with Zapier.

Benchmark’s email designer is speedy and easy to use, with templates suitable for a wide variety of businesses. The free plan allows you to have 500 subscribers and send up to 3,500 emails per month, but you can send multiple newsletters to those subscribers each month.

Upgrading to the $15 per month premium plan for 500 subscribers and unlimited monthly sends unlocks advanced lead generation, reporting, and marketing automation features.

Benchmark is an excellent email marketing software if you want to opt for free surveys, polls, segmentation, and drip campaigns. If you’re a business with very small lists that need to send out multiple newsletters each month, then this is one of the best email marketing services to rely upon.

What We Love:

  • Responsive Templates: Benchmark Email provides a range of responsive email templates that can be customized to suit the needs of different businesses. These templates are designed to look great on all devices, including mobile phones and tablets.
  • Automation Features: Benchmark Email offers a range of automation features, including autoresponders, triggered emails, and drip campaigns. These features allow businesses to send targeted and personalized messages to their subscribers at the right time.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Deliverability: Some users have reported issues with Benchmark Email’s deliverability, with emails sometimes ending up in spam folders. This can be a significant drawback for businesses that rely on email marketing to reach their customers.
  • Limited CRM Features: While Benchmark Email does offer some CRM features, it may not be as robust as some of its competitors. Businesses that require more advanced CRM features may need to look for other solutions.

Mailjet

Mailjet

We love the clean templates from Mailjet, monthly email send limits, and unlimited subscriber limits. This free also lets you tap into webhooks, APIs, and SMTP Relays for integrations and customized email marketing.

Mailjet’s email marketing services also includes email automation, and an intuitive email editor with no need to touch a line of code; it’s an entirely drag-and-drop tool where you start with readily available email templates and utilize preset building modules.

You can also use its SMS marketing and embedded forms to give your campaigns the much-needed edge.

Mailjet offers a range of features, including unlimited subscribers and a high monthly sending limit suitable for small businesses and startups. It also provides basic statistics with numerical information on open, click, and non-delivery rates.

Access to webhooks, APIs, and SMTP Relays allows for advanced configurations. Users can create custom emails using the drag-and-drop email builder and beautiful templates.

The platform integrates with popular ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, and PrestaShop, as well as with business tools such as Click Funnels, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Google Drive, Salesforce, Jira, and more. Simple subscription forms are available with GDPR compliance, and personalization is possible for all email campaigns.

Free plan: Unlimited number of subscribers, and 6,000 email sends per month. The daily email sending limit is 200.

Premium plan: $15 per month for the Essential plan, with no daily sending limit but a cap of up to 15,000 emails per month. You can also remove the Mailjet logo, segment lists, and add a sub-account.

Use it for – drip campaigns, transactional emails, and smaller newsletter lists.  

What We Love:

  • GDPR Compliant: Mailjet is GDPR compliant, meaning that it follows European Union regulations on data protection and privacy. This is essential for businesses that operate in the EU or have customers in the region.
  • Transactional Email API: Mailjet’s transactional email API allows businesses to send automated and personalized transactional emails, such as order confirmations or password resets. This can help businesses provide a better customer experience.
  • Collaboration Features: Mailjet’s collaboration features allow multiple team members to work on campaigns simultaneously. This can improve team efficiency and productivity.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Limited A/B Testing: Mailjet offers limited A/B testing options, which can be a disadvantage for businesses that want to test multiple variations of their email campaigns to optimize their results.
  • Limited Automation: Although Mailjet does offer some automation features, it may not be as robust as some of its competitors. Businesses that require more advanced automation may need to look for other solutions.

DotDigital

Dotdigital

A Magento premium tech partner, Dotdigital maintains great relationships with CRM platforms including Salesforce and ecommerce platforms such as – Shopify and BigCommerce. This makes it one of the best tools for ecommerce brands owing to the kind of integrations available.

Some salient feature of the ESP include:

  • Workflow capabilities to send communications at the right time
  • Integrations with renowned CRMs like Salesforce
  • Contact management capabilities
  • Lead tracking and built-in scoring
  • Connectivity into platforms like ecommerce solutions
  • Dynamic contact lists that can be automatically populated based on changing contact properties
  • Email template creation and content tools
  • Build and track effectiveness of marketing campaigns
  • Triggering campaigns based on events  
  • Multiple communication channels
  • Lead tracking and scoring

Dotdigital doesn’t publish prices for their services. It generally depends upon your requirements such as –   

  • Number of emails sent per year
  • Number of contacts
  • Number of contact insights elements
  • Support needs (24/5 vs 24/7)

It may not be a true blue CRM, but Dotdigital arrives with several CRM-like capabilities along with marketing automation features.

What We Love:

  • Advanced reporting: The platform provides detailed analytics and reporting, allowing businesses to track the performance of their email campaigns and make data-driven decisions.
  • Integrations: DotDigital integrates with a wide range of third-party tools, including CRM, social media, and eCommerce platforms, allowing businesses to streamline their marketing efforts.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Limited customization: While the platform offers a range of templates and design options, businesses may find the customization options limited.
  • Support: Some users have reported issues with customer support, citing slow response times and limited availability.

Drip

Drip

Launched in 2013, Drip is a common email marketing service prevalent in the ecommerce businesses with state-of-the-art CRM features and intuitive sales and marketing automation. If you own an ecommerce business, Drip is a go-to email marketing software for you to get well-organized with the leads.

The caveat – you’ll get access to all features on all the paid plans except for chat support. Here’s why you should give it a shot:

  • User-friendly interface of the automation workflow editor, which is well-designed and flexible
  • Range of automation triggers such as – page views, tags, purchases, link clicks, etc.
  • Brightly-colored icons make it fun to use

What We Love:

  • Improved engagement: Drip email services can help businesses keep subscribers engaged with their brand by sending relevant and timely messages.
  • Better analytics: Most drip email services provide detailed analytics, allowing businesses to track open rates, click-through rates, and other metrics that help measure the effectiveness of their email campaigns.

Scope For Improvement:

  • Learning curve: Setting up and managing a drip email campaign can be complex, requiring a learning curve for those unfamiliar with the technology.
  • Spam concerns: If businesses send too many emails or irrelevant messages, subscribers may mark them as spam, which can harm their email reputation.
  • Limited creativity: While drip email services can automate the sending of emails, they may limit creativity in email design and content.

The Wrap

Now that you’ve a fair idea of the most popular ESPs, it should be easy for you to compare and contrast to figure out which one will suit your brand or business the most. Since the pricing structure keeps changing from time to time, make sure that you get the latest pricing to see which of these fit your budget. If you need help in selecting best ESP for your business then check our ESP Vendor Evaluation and Migration services

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Chris sent his first email campaign in 1995. He’s worked directly with Fortune 500 companies, retail giants, nonprofits, SMBs and government agencies in all facets of their email marketing and marketing automation programs. He’s also a BIG baseball fan, loves a good steak, and is mildly obsessed with zombie movies. For more information follow him on linkedin

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