Best Email Marketing Software: 7+ Noise-Busting Reviews (2023)

by Jesse MacLeod

on

The best email marketing software is essential for every industry that intends to cultivate loyal customers. 

Utilizing this software will quickly grow your email list, save you time on automation, and boost traffic to your content. 

So who has the best email marketing service? 

Undoubtedly one of them will provide the best ROI (Return on Investment).

But, with so many choices out there, where do you start?

Don’t worry; we’ve got your back! 

Here’s what we’ve got planned:

✅ Provide the cold hard facts

✅ Define plans and pricing

✅ Lay out the pros and cons of each service

✅ Investigate who should use each email marketing service

We’ll be with you every step of the way so, without further ado (and in no particular order)… 

1. MailChimp

screenshot from mailchimps homepage

MailChimp is one of the most well-known marketing platforms available — and for a good reason, they’re super user-friendly.

In fact, they are the go-to for beginners who want to create lists from scratch, import subscribers, and customize emails. 

They also offer an excellent suite of additional products. 

From free website builders, landing pages, and online stores to appointment scheduling and domains, they’ve got you covered.

If you’re looking for a one-stop shop, MailChimp is the perfect email marketing platform allowing you to grow your business with confidence. 

Plans & Pricing

Pricing is determined by the number of subscribers, and the higher your plan is, the more features you can access.

Marketing Platform:

  • 1-month free trial is available
  • Free Plan: $0/month 
  • Essentials: $13/month
  • Standard: $20/month
  • Premium: Starts at $350/month 

Websites and Commerce:

  • Free Plan: $0/month 
  • Core Plan: Starts at $10/month
  • Plus Plan: Starts at $29/month

Transactional email:

  • Customers purchase “blocks” of emails (1 block = 250k emails.) 
  • Customers pay according to their monthly email transactions.
    • Example:
      • $20/block for 1-500k emails
      • $10/block for 4 million+ emails

Pros

  1. Regularly add new features to the platform.
  2. Offer a solid free newsletter service.
  3. Forever free plan; for users with less than 2,000 subscribers.

Cons

  1. Pricey for subscriber lists larger than 150k subscribers.
  2. Minimal phone support.
  3. Free templates are limited.

Who Should Use MailChimp?

MailChimp is excellent for digital creators and new businesses. 

You can’t go wrong if you’re searching for a trusted brand that’s easy to use and experiment with, especially if you have a smaller audience.

2. Zoho Campaigns

screenshot from zoho's homepage

Zoho Campaigns offers secure and professional email services.

They have a complete Zoho CRM (Customer relationship management) platform that will improve business relationships. 

This helps you stay connected to customers, streamline processes, and improve profitability.

Already using other Zoho solutions? You’ll find their intuitive drag-and-drop interface responsive with good interactivity.

Plans & Pricing

Zoho Campaigns provides a full-feature free edition for a 15-day trial period. 

After that, you’ll only have access to their basic free plan; unless you decide to upgrade.

  • Mail Lite: $1/month (5GB) to $1.25/month (10GB)
  • Mail Premium: $4/month (50GB)
  • Workplace Standard: $3/month (30GB Mail storage, 10GB WorkDrive storage)
  • Workplace Professional: $6/month (100GB Mail storage, 100GB WorkDrive storage)
  • Workplace Email: $1/month (email only)

Pros

  1. Low monthly price for paid versions.
  2. Up to five business email addresses with the free plan.
  3. Extensive library of custom templates

Cons

  1. Lacklustre design makes it feel outdated.
  2. Needs more advanced features.
  3. Difficult to set up.

Who Should Use Zoho Campaigns?

Zoho Campaigns is straightforward and reliable, making it an excellent choice for startups and small businesses with basic marketing needs.

So, why not give them a go? After all, you have a full feature free trial to take advantage of.

3. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

screenshot from salesforce homepage

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a convenient all-in-one solution for larger businesses looking to manage a marketing campaign. 

You’ll find this sophisticated platform provides a wealth of tools designed to save you time. 

Integrate their CRM platform to combine social media marketing, lead generation, and email management. 

And benefit from data reporting to maximize your marketing efforts.

Plans & Pricing

Multiple pricing strategy solutions are available for all business types.

  • Sales Cloud: $25 to $300/month
  • Service Cloud: $25 to $300/month
  • Marketing Cloud: Engagement: $400 to $3750+/month
  • Marketing Cloud: Account Engagement: $1250 to $15,000/month

Pros

  1. Excellent for social media marketing.
  2. Robust and comprehensive marketing automation feature.
  3. The customer service team provides 24/7 live chat and phone service.

Cons

  1. Onboarding an entire team is expensive.
  2. Complicated to set up and use, potentially requiring training for some users.
  3. Email Studio is expensive.

Who Should Use Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is ideal for companies with large sales teams looking to improve their email and marketing strategies. 

Small business owners searching for basic functions might struggle with the marketing platform.

However, Salesforce’s strength is in its long-term planning. 

They cater to complex, long sales cycles enabling multiple decision-makers to contribute to the process. 

4. AWeber

screenshot from aweber's homepage

AWeber is a popular, robust email marketing software platform. It boasts easy-to-use marketing solutions for quick results at a lower price than other services. 

It’s beginner-friendly from the moment you sign up, continually improves, and integrates well with most tools. 

As well as the usual suite of email automation features, Aweber facilitates tagging, ab testing, and reporting. 

This shows you how your messages are received and whether they get clicked!

Plans & Pricing

Pricing is determined by the number of subscribers.

  • Free Plan: $0/month, up to 500 subscribers
  • Lite Plan: $12.50/month
  • Plus Plan: $20/month
  • Unlimited: $899/month

Pros

  1. Excellent drag-and-drop automated email editor.
  2. Large selection of 700+ templates to choose from.
  3. Canva integration for ease of use.

Cons

  1. No visual marketing automation feature.
  2. Ab testing is only available on the paid plan.
  3. A dedicated section for segmentation would be helpful. 

Who Should Use AWeber?

AWeber is an excellent fit for startups, creators, agencies, or small businesses. They benefit from AWeber’s excellent customer service and easy setup. 

The bottom line is you don’t have to be a tech expert while working with AWeber. 

They’ll be available to help you build responsive landing pages, manage your contacts, send push notifications, and more.

5. Hubspot Marketing Hub

screenshot from hubspot's homepage

Hubspot Marketing Hub is a great all-purpose software. 

As the free HubSpot CRM is included, your key marketing tools and data are ready to go from one platform.

As with many email marketing services, landing pages, blogs and social media integration are all featured. Personalized emails are also included.

Expect to create and track conversion-ready emails, design and utilize forms, and easily monitor leads.

Plans & Pricing

Pricing is determined by the number of subscribers.

  • Free Plan: $0/month
  • Starter Plan: $45/month
  • Professional Plan: $800/month
  • Enterprise Plan: $3600/month

Pros

  1. An excellent free plan to start with and build on as you grow.
  2. Create beautiful emails without designers or IT.
  3. Optimize your email marketing campaign with marketing analytics.

Cons

  1. Learning curve for beginners on how to accomplish tasks.
  2. Onboarding training is confusing.
  3. Migrating a new customer can take time and effort.

Who Should Use Hubspot Marketing Hub?

Hubspot Marketing Hub automation tool is the go-to for marketers and B2B service companies. 

They’re a staple in several industries, such as retail, real estate, marketing, sales, construction, accounting, and more.

It’s hard to deny the reach Hubspot Marketing Hub provides. 

They are scalable and facilitate monitoring outbound and inbound leads while providing inbound marketing campaigns. 

6. Active Campaign

screenshot from activecampaign homepage

Active Campaign is an affordable and functional email marketing service. 

Would you like to integrate your apps? 

Well, with a batch of well-known email marketing automation apps to choose from, you have flexibility at your fingertips.

Plus, their visual email editor is extremely powerful, offering various email templates and an excellent landing page builder.

Plans & Pricing

  • Lite Plan: $29/month
  • Plus Plan: $70/month
  • Professional Plan: $159/month
  • Enterprise Plan: $279/month

Pros

  1. Email automation capabilities are top-notch.
  2. Add live chat to your site.
  3. Deep integrations that manage various marketing channels.

Cons

  1. Outdated UI (user interface).
  2. No phone support for Lite or Plus plans.
  3. Lacks landing page creation.

Who Should Use Active Campaign?

Active Campaign offers advanced automated workflow features. They’re widely used by users who need control over their productivity. 

That being said, ActiveCamapign’s clean and responsive email template designs and excellent support make this email marketing software accessible to all users.

7. Moosend

screenshot from moosend's homepage

Moosend is one of the best comprehensive email marketing platforms on the market. It comes with some of the most advanced segmentation and automation tools around.

If design is important to you, you’ll love the beautiful landing pages and fully customizable email template designs. 

Plans & Pricing

Moosend utilizes a scalable pay-as-you-go pricing model.

  • Free 30-day all-access trial
  • Pro Plan: Varies depending on the number of subscribers.
    • Example:
      • $7/month for 1-500 subscribers (billed annually)
      • $252/month for 25k-50k subscribers (billed annually)
  • Enterprise Plan: Contact for custom pricing.

Pros

  1. Offer real-time weather data to determine the best upsells and cross-sells based on weather patterns in the area.
  2. Best-in-class personalization and segmentation capabilities.
  3. It’s straightforward to integrate this platform into any third-party service.

Cons

  1. Importing a CSV (comma-separated values) file takes time to understand and follow.
  2. Landing page builder interface could be more straightforward.
  3. Free plan could include more features.

Who Should Use Moosend?

Moosend is popular with small businesses due to its ease of use and excellent support.

And if you add in their feature-rich, affordable email marketing solutions, a user-friendly interface, and an intuitive dashboard… you can see why.

8. MailerLite

screenshot from mailerlite's homepage

MailerLite is a powerful email marketing tool with great social media integrations. 

You can confidently create an engaging email campaign, knowing their 24/7 award-winning support is always on hand.

Users benefit from advanced tools for creating professional newsletters, landing pages, and websites

And one stand-out feature is the ability to deliver messages by time zone.

Accounts also require administrative approval. This stops spammers from signing up and maintains email deliverability rates.

Plans & Pricing

MailerLite offers a flexible, tiered plan; based on the size of your contact list. 

They have a generous forever-free plan if you have less than 1,000 email subscribers.

  • Free Plan: $0, up to 1k subscribers and 12k monthly emails.
  • Growing Business Plan: Varies depending on the number of subscribers.
    • Example:
      • $9/month for up to 1k subscribers.
      • $205/month up to 50k subscribers.
  • Advanced Plan: Varies depending on the number of subscribers.
    • Example:
      • $19/month for up to 1k subscribers.
      • $1600/month up to 500k subscribers.
  • Enterprise Plan: Contact for custom pricing.

Pros

  1. Manage an email marketing campaign using the iOS app.
  2. Personalize address users.
  3. Segmentation that divides subscribers into groups based on age, location, and behavior.

Cons

  1. Free plan customer support needs improvement.
  2. Free plan doesn’t include templates.
  3. Lack of advanced automation options and email analytics features. 

Who Should Use MailerLite?

MailerLite is an excellent solution for small businesses and freelancers who want affordable, easy-to-use software with well-designed features and functionality.

Did You Spot The Best Email Marketing Software For You?

As you can see, there are a ton of great tools to choose from, but ultimately, it comes down to the following:

✅ Decide on your budget

✅ Know which features are essential to you

✅ Understand your technical ability

Luckily, it doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or in charge of an entire email campaign — we’ve provided you with the best email marketing software options.

So, which one are you going to choose? Did you spot one you’d like to explore?

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Jesse MacLeod

Jesse Macleod is a Smart Blogger certified Content Writer, SEO Strategist, and Blog Editor. Jesse is also a lover of movies, music, comic books, writing stories, and dreaming of a galaxy far, far away.

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Written by Jesse MacLeod

Jesse Macleod is a Smart Blogger certified Content Writer, SEO Strategist, and Blog Editor. Jesse is also a lover of movies, music, comic books, writing stories, and dreaming of a galaxy far, far away.

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