Are you looking for the best-rated email marketing software? Is email marketing your top priority for turning your business around or improve your business in 2021?
Today, email marketing has been a fundamental tool in the digital marketing space. The importance of email marketing cannot be over-emphasized, as it takes the hassle off in coordinating existing contact lists to nurture and engage potential customers.
Email marketing software is a tool that helps manage your contact lists, helps you design and send compelling emails, and track whether these were opened and read. As a result, email marketing ensures high visibility and engagement that other promotional platforms can boast of.
According to a report, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for small businesses. Again, email marketing can easily be managed, and it allows you to establish direct contact with your customers, which gives you full control of your marketing.
Email marketing combined with email automation can help keep customers engaged, update them with marketing info, track their customer journey, and boost sales. Without a doubt, the popularity of email newsletters, which help businesses and brands reach subscribers directly in their inboxes, has increased, and all these are possible through email marketing.
If you want to grow your business and need the best-rated email marketing software that’s easy to use, affordable, and will turn your leads into customers, we have compiled the list. We understand that choosing the right email marketing service can have a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign. So, we position ourselves to help you choose the best software out of an overwhelming number of email marketing tools, in a dynamic market environment and with every email marketing company’s website saying the same thing.
In this article, we will review and compare the best-rated email marketing software for small businesses. You have access to the features that make each outstanding and compare the best-rated email marketing software that’s objective. It’s needful to mention that it does not cost much to get started with email marketing, nor is it a very difficult undertaking. Before then, let’s see what to look for before choosing the best email marketing software.
What to Look for in the Best-Rated Email Marketing Software?
To select the best email marketing software, various factors such as research price, reliability, technical support, template designs, ease of use, deliverability, automation, integrations, and any additional features you need must be considered. In other words, the best-rated email marketing software must come with functionality that allows you to design emails easily, segment your list, personalize your messaging, and view analytics reports.
Besides, good email marketing software should come with an easy user interface (ideally drag-and-drop editor), ensuring you create highly engaging email newsletters. Apart from that, your email marketing tool must equip you with features that help you manage your contact list smoothly, put users into groups, and track the performance of your email marketing campaigns.
Above all, the best-rated email software works well by ensuring that your email campaigns do not end up in the spam folder. In the end, the best-rated email marketing software should easily send personalized bulk emails that are targeted without stress. This is also known as marketing automation.
Having established the important features to look at, let’s see the best-rated email marketing software and help you to choose the best for your business.
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7 Top-Rated Email Marketing Software
- Constant Contact – best for small businesses and startups
- SendinBlue – best for SMS and email marketing
- Drip – best for eCommerce and bloggers
- ConvertKit – best for professional bloggers and authors
- AWeber – best for small and medium-sized businesses
- GetResponse – best for small businesses
- MailChimp – best for WordPress
1. Constant Contact – best for small businesses and startups
The first on our list is Constant Contact. Constant Contact is one of the fastest-growing email marketing software in the world with a large acceptance. It is a beginner-friendly email marketing software because it is the easiest to use. And, you can easily manage your email lists, contacts, email templates, the marketing calendar, and more.
When you opt for their services, you have access to unlimited emails, easy tracking and reporting, built-in social media sharing tools, and a powerful eCommerce integration for Shopify stores which make it suitable for eCommerce businesses.
What’s more?
Constant Contact is one of the best-rated email marketing software with powerful features like email automation, campaigns, surveys and polls, and online donations, which helps you send targeted emails. With great customer support using live chat, phone calls, email, community support, and a vast library of helpful resources, Constant Contact offers quality customer support to its users.
Apart from their online training, anyone from the US can take advantage of their in-person live seminars. Small business owners are equipped to quickly learn the basics of email marketing and start using it to grow their business like a pro. If you’re looking for the best-rated email marketing service for small businesses and startups, Constant Contact is the answer.
Pricing
You can access a 60-day free trial from Constant Contact with no credit card required.
They have 2 plans, one for small businesses and organizations looking to create professional emails, build customer relationships, and drive real results, which starts at $20/month, while the second plan named “email plus” is designed for small businesses and organizations ready for even better results with automated emails and other powerful features that engage their audience. But, again, the price starts at $40/month.
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2. SendinBlue – best for SMS and email marketing
SendinBlue offers a complete SMS and email marketing software with a down-to-earth easy, and simple interface to create beautiful and highly engaging emails for businesses. They provide an excellent tool that comprises of simple drag-and-drop email editor that is perfect for beginners with no experience in email marketing.
SendinBlue is a fast-growing email marketing business in Europe, with features that allow you to send transactional emails, create workflows for automatic follow-up emails, and segment users. These features are included in their marketing automation tool. SendinBlue is considered the beginner-friendly email marketing software and is equipped with a feature that helps select the best time to send bulk emails using their AI algorithms, ensuring the best email deliverability.
What’s more?
New advanced features have been added to the premium plan, including landing page builder, live chat, sales CRM, and Facebook ads integration. This means users can now enjoy more value for the same price.
If you need a separate SMTP bulk email marketing service that you can use to power automated or transactional emails from your WordPress site, SendinBlue is equipped with this feature. This is helpful if you have a large website and want automatic real-time content-based emails.
Pricing
Peradventure, you’re limited in the budget for a start; Sendinblue offers a completely free email marketing plan that allows you to send up to 300 emails per day. The only shortcoming is that all your emails will have their branding. But, you can take advantage of their paid plans which start from $25 per month for Lite, which covers 10,000 emails.
If you desire to include the SMS feature in your account, the pricing will vary based on your sending requirements. Their Premium package goes for $65 per month, which covers 20,000 emails. And their Enterprise package is designed for marketers who need more which comes at a negotiable price.
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3. Drip – best for eCommerce and bloggers
Drip is another best-rated email marketing software. It was designed as a powerful enterprise email marketing platform to cater to the needs of eCommerce, bloggers, and digital marketers. As one of the best-rated email marketing software, it provides a wide range of tools suitable for marketing automation, sales funnels, and personalization and makes them easy.
Drip can be integrated with all popular website builders, including WordPress and WooCommerce, seamlessly as a powerful email software. Therefore, you can easily add pop-ups/opt-in signup forms to your website and capture more leads.
Besides, Drip is distinctive from other email software because of its intelligent marketing automation tools, smarter email segmenting, split testing features, list groups, and a visual workflow builder. With these features in place, you can reach your targeted customers in your email list to get more sales.
What’s more?
When you get their premium package, you have access to their support options, including live chat support, webinars, automation training, detailed courses, free guides, and excellent documentation.
For any smart eCommerce owner, Drip can take your business to the next level. Drip allows you to send bulk emails while connecting and engaging with every customer using the eCommerce marketing automation feature. Also, their eCommerce revenue attribution feature can show exactly how much revenue is generated from each email marketing campaign.
Even though Drip’s email software tool is costly and not quite affordable, its tool is equipped with suitable features for eCommerce websites and business owners who want more advanced features to maximize their marketing efforts. For example, the recent update confirmed the addition of SMS notification as a feature to all plans, which allows you to connect with your users on both email and SMS marketing channels.
Pricing
The pricing system for drip covers 1-500 people for just $19.
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4. ConvertKit – best for professional bloggers and authors
Are you looking for a robust email marketing platform suitable for professional bloggers, authors, and marketers? ConvertKit is the email marketing software that meets the requirement.
ConvertKit is designed with features that make it exceptionally easy to use and powerful. With these features on the ground, you can easily offer content upgrades and incentives with email signup forms. Also, you can easily manage auto-responders on the email marketing tool as it allows you to send drip emails from their emailing service.
Email marketing handling has now been easy with ConvertKit, which allows you to segment subscribers into those interested and those who have already purchased your products/services. The importance is that it increases conversions in your automation marketing, and this is called targeted email marketing. So, you make more while your cost is under control.
What’s more?
ConvertKit leaves no stone unturned as their email marketing software is equipped with powerful features you’d expect from a top-notch email marketing service such as a/b testing, beautiful email templates, landing page builders, smart workflows, and more. And, if you find it difficult to run the tool, ConvertKit provides email-based support and has an extensive knowledge base with great learning material.
Besides, ConvertKit focuses on creators and professional bloggers, with features such as paid newsletters specifically designed to meet their demands. That’s why ConvertKit is rated as the best email marketing service for professional bloggers.
Pricing
ConvertKit offers 3 pricing plans. The first one is a free plan that allows you to send emails to up to 1,000 subscribers for free. The second plan is for $29/ month and covers up to 1,000 subscribers with automated funnel and sequences.
The third plan goes for $59/month with added features like Facebook custom audiences and a newsletter referral system. ConvertKit also offers a 30-day refund policy. And on the top of their package is the ability for users to sell digital products & subscriptions from the same platform.
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5. AWeber – best for small and medium-sized businesses
AWeber is quite a notable name in the email marketing industry. As one of the most popular and leading email marketing service providers globally, AWeber offers small and medium-sized businesses a wide range of tools needed to manage their email marketing.
Using AWeber is easy, and as a starter, it is simple. With a platform that offers a seamless connection to most platforms, including WordPress, you have a tool that takes your email marketing to the next level. You can learn more on how to connect AWeber to WordPress.
What’s more?
AWeber is robust and matches other notable email marketing software with powerful email marketing features such as AMP emails, automatic RSS-to-email for bloggers, and tag-based subscriber segmentation. In addition, you can easily access the HTML email templates, list management, autoresponders, a/b testing, and email tracking with detailed insights and be ready to fly in your email marketing journey.
If you need quality support when you want to take off or at the cross-road, AWeber offers different support options, including live chat, phone support, email support, live webinars, and a vast library of how-tos and tutorials.
Pricing
For the trial, you can enjoy a limited free plan for up to 500 subscribers from AWeber. AWeber offers a pro version with different pricing starting from $16.15/month for annual billing. They also offer flexible pricing as you can either signup for quarterly or annual plans to save even more.
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6. GetResponse – best for small businesses
Here comes another best-rated email marketing software known as GetResponse. Among other email marketing software, GetResponse is a notable and trendy email marketing solution. With a down-to-earth, easy-to-use platform, GetResponse simplifies email marketing for small businesses.
GetResponse email marketing software is equipped with some amazing marketing automation features which allow you to create outstanding automated campaigns. The software also comes with drag-and-drop builder functionality, which can be used to create campaigns, segment contacts, and send any number of emails designed for specific groups of people. As a result, you can get the best out of GetResponse as those features help you to create effective email campaigns to boost your profits.
What’s more?
You’ve access to beautiful responsive forms, landing pages, A/B testing, unsubscribe tracking, and autoresponders when you stick with GetResponse as your email marketing software. Much third-party lead generation software like OptinMonster, SalesForce, Google Docs, ZenDesk, etc., can easily be integrated with GetResponse, which is an added benefit.
Access support from GetResponse through phone, live chat, and email. Loaded within the support section is the free learning material, including videos, webinars, how-tos, and guides that help you to get through the software.
Pricing
GetResponse provides a 30-day free trial to give a test to the software. GetResponse operates 4 pricing plans with the basic for $15/month, and the most popular plan goes for $49/month. The professional plan goes for $99/month, and the Max plan is designed for custom pricing.
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7. MailChimp – best for WordPress
MailChimp is also one of the most respectable and popular email marketing service providers online. Their acceptance lies in offering a forever free email marketing service plan.
With an easy drag-and-drop email builder, you get your email automation setup done in a moment. Also, you’ve access to autoresponders, the ability to group contacts into different sections, and simple tracking for analytics when you use Mailchimp. MailChimp can also help you to set up email delivery times based on user’s timezones.
What’s more?
You can easily integrate MailChimp with your website, whether WordPress, Magento, Shopify, or many other platforms.
However, Mailchimp is limited in functionality when comparing its marketing automation features to other top email marketing software providers like AWeber, ConvertKit, and Drip. But you have access to 12,000 emails free emails for up to 2,000 subscribers. You can get support through email, live chat, and a large tutorial knowledge base. And so, their support is often. Mailchimp has a cheap plan, and with this plan, you’ve no access to top-notch features, and your email displays their brand name.
Pricing
Mailchimp offers 4 different plans, starting from the free plan that covers up to 2000 contacts, which is free. Their Essential plan can accommodate up to 50,000 contacts and goes for $9.99/month. The Standard plan is $14.99/month with features that can accommodate 100,000 contacts. Finally, their premium plan is $299/month and is built for 200,000+ contacts.
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Bottom Line
Depending on your budget and the result needed, there are dozens of email marketing services out there. All you have to do is to choose the right one for your business needs. For instance, ConvertKit is primarily designed for professional bloggers because their platform is quite easy to use and loaded with features needed for your business to grow.
However, all the best-rated email marketing software listed here are suitable for small business, non-profit, and a new blogger. You enjoy absolute top-notch support, while you don’t have to spend a fortune monthly renewing the plan.