Do you think that email marketing services/tools/software is a priority for your business in 2019? Are you looking for the best email marketing software or mass email service or bulk email marketing services?

Choosing the right email marketing software can have a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign. In this article, we will review some best email marketing services & tools for small businesses.

Do You Need Email Marketing?

If you have a website or online store that has traffic, then you need email marketing. Email marketing gives you the ability to contact with your visitors even after they leave your store.

A few benefits of email marketing are:

• Increase repeat visits: More than 70% of online visitors abandoning your store will never return. When you create an email list, you can build a connection with your visitors by collecting their email addresses and sending them valuable content.
• Build a loyal following: Repeat visitors are more likely to convert into potential customers, compared to first-time visitors. In fact, studies show that it takes 3-4 visits to your website for your potential customers to actually think of doing transaction with you.
• Increase sales: Email marketing outperform both social and organic search traffic. So if you’re looking to make more sales, then you’ll need to start email marketing.

Why Choosing The Best Email Marketing Software is Important?

Email marketing is one of the best cost-effective marketing tools for small businesses. According to the Direct Marketing Association, by email marketing any business can get on average a 4300 percent Return on Investment (ROI) in the United States.

This is just because email marketing is very easy to manage, gives you full control, and allows you to establish a direct contact with your potential customers.

It’s important to understand that the success with email marketing depends entirely on the email marketing software you choose because they are responsible to make sure that your emails actually get delivered.

If you aren’t careful, then you have to pay a lot more money for fewer features and terrible deliver-ability.

A good free email marketing services enables you to create highly engaging emails. It also allows you to manage your contacts, segment visitors into groups, and monitor the performance of your email campaigns.

Most importantly, a good email marketing software ensures that your emails do not end up in the spam folder.

How to Choose the Best Email Marketing Service

Choosing the right email marketing service that fits your requirements is very important for your business. Just because an email marketing agency is popular doesn’t always mean that it’s the best solution for your requirements. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with different choices since there are lots of email marketing solutions on the market. That’s why we’re going to break it down all for you!

Here are the few basic things you’ll need to focus on when choosing an email marketing service:

• Ease of use: It’s important that the email marketing service you choose will be easy to use and fits to your business.
• Automation: Almost all software out there allow you to automate your email campaigns, but in a different way. Take a look at how different tools automate your campaigns and figure out if they help to solve your needs.
• Industry: Some software are aimed at serving certain industries only. For example, ConvertKit was built specifically for publishers. If that doesn’t describe you, then you’ll have to sign up for a service that better addresses your business requirements.
• Pricing: Obviously, the software/service/tool you choose must fit your budget.

Top Email Marketing Software

Here are the top email marketing services:

• SendinBlue (www.sendinblue.com)
• MailChimp (www.mailchimp.com)
• GetResponse (www.getresponse.com)
• Drip (www.drip.com)
• ConvertKit (www.convertkit.com)
• InfusionSoft (www.infusionsoft.com)

If you don’t have the time to read the whole comparison, here are the summary:

Best email marketing services summarized

	SendinBlue	MailChimp	GetResponse
Functionality	5	5	5
Ease of use	4.5	5	4.5
Designs and templates	5	5	5
Free plan	Yes	Yes	No
Starter plan cost / mo.	$25 unlimited contacts 40,000 emails	$30 2,500 contacts unlimited emails	$15 1,000 contacts unlimited emails
EDITOR RATING	4.88 Visit	4.88 Visit	4.75 Visit

Comparison 1: Pricing

Right out of the field, the thing that stands out is that each of the software has a very different pricing model and it’s not that straightforward to compare them head to head.

Some software charge you “per email” sent, others charge “per number of contacts” on your email performs lists. And, of course, the fact that something is cheaper doesn’t mean that it’s the better solution.

Anyway, here’s is the pricing comparison.

Pricing per list size:

No. of Contacts	SendinBlue	MailChimp	Drip	ConvertKit	InfusionSoft	GetResponse
up to 100 contacts	$0	$0	$0	$24	$99	$15
500	$0	$0	$41	$24	$99	$15
1000	$0	$0	$41	$24	$129	$15
1500	$0	$0	$41	$41	$129	$25
2000	$25	$0	$41	$41	$179	$25
2500	$25	$30	$41	$41	$179	$25
5000	$25	$50	$41	$64	$229	$45
10000	$39	$75	–	$99	$299	$65
50000	$173	$240	–	$316	$379	$250
					PLUS one-time $299-$1999 fee for new user training

Full Pricing

SendinBlue	MailChimp	Drip	ConvertKit	InfusuinSoft	GetResponse
$0 for 300 emails / day (9,000 / mo)	$0 for 2,000 contacts and 12,000 emails / mo	$0 for 100 contacts. Unlimited emails	FREE TRIAL: 14 days	FREE TRIAL: 14 days	FREE TRIAL: 30 days
$25 for 40,000 emails / mo.  ($6.25 for 10k emails)  $39 for 60,000 emails / mo.  ($6.50 for 10k emails)	$30 for 2,500 contacts and unlimited emails  ($12 for 1,000 contacts)	$41 for 2,500 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($16.40 for 1,000 contacts)	$24 for 1,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($24 for 1,000 contacts)	$99 for 500 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($198 for 1,000 contacts)	$15 for 1,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($15 for 1,000 contacts)
$66 for 120,000 emails / mo.  ($5.50 for 10k emails)	$50 for 5,000 contacts and unlimited emails  ($10 for 1,000 contacts)	$83 for 5,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($16.60 for 1,000 contacts)	$41 for 3,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($13.67 for 1,000 contacts)	$129 for 1,500 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($86 for 1,000 contacts)	$25 for 2,500 contacts. Unlimtied emails  ($10 for 1,000 contacts)
$173 for 350,000 emails / mo.  ($4.94 for 10k emails)	$75 for 10,000 contacts and unlimited emails  ($7.50 for 1,000 contacts)		$64 for 5,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($12.80 for 1,000 contacts)	$179 for 2,500 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($71.60 for 1,000 contacts)	$49 for 5,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($9.80 for 1,000 contacts)
	$240 for 50,000 contacts and unlimited emails  ($4.80 for 1,000 contacts)		$99 for 10,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($9.90 for 1,000 contacts)	$229 for 5,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($45.80 for 1,000 contacts)	$75 for 10,000 contacts. Unlimtied emails  ($7.50 for 1,000 contacts)
	PLUS there’s the $199 MailChimp Pro Add-on that gives you advanced segmentation, comparative reports, and more		$316 for 50,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($6.32 for 1,000 contacts)	$299 for 10,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($29.90 for 1,000 contacts)	$165 for 25,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($6.60 for 1,000 contacts)
				$349 for 25,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($13.96 for 1,000 contacts)	$280 for 50,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($5.60 for 1,000 contacts)
				$379 for 50,000 contacts. Unlimited emails  ($7.58 for 1,000 contacts)
				PLUS $59 for their advanced sales pipeline automation PLUS $59 for e-commerce integration PLUS one-time $299-$1999 fee for new user training

The pricing of MailChimp, Drip, ConvertKit, and GetResponse is almost in the same range. With some differences at specific line levels. For example, MailChimp is cheaper than GetResponse for up to 2,000 contacts, GetResponse is cheaper for up to 10,000 contacts, and MailChimp becomes cheaper again for email platform lists of 50,000.

SendinBlue is the wild card here in this category. Since they don’t charge you per contact, your expenses may vary depending on how often you want to mail your list. If you’re just getting started with around 1.5 emails per contact each week, you’re going to pay what you see in the table above. If you’re going to send only 1 email per week, it’s going to be even less than that. However, if you’re a high-volume sender (5x per week or more), then email marketing services like MailChimp can be cheaper for you in the long run.

Comparison 2: Features

Here’s a summary of the features you can expect from each of these best email marketing services:

	SendinBlue	MailChimp	Drip	ConvertKit	InfusionSoft	GetResponse
Visual email design tool	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Sending one-off campaigns	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SMTP and transactional email	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
Contact management	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Reports	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Integrations with 3rd party platforms	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
API	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Email templates	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Facebook Lead Ads integration	only via Zapier	advanced integration with Facebook and Instagram ads	Yes	only via Zapier	only via Zapier	only via Zapier
Landing page tool	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Email marketing automation	Yes	only simplified	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

SendinBlue features

SendinBlue has almost everything you might need from an email marketing software, making it a great choice for small businesses. Some of the key features are:

• visually design your email with drag-and-drop option
• email templates
• manage your contacts, tag, and move them between the lists
• in-depth reports
• integrations with third-party tools
• API

Apart from this, there’s also some handful unique features as compared to the other:

• email marketing automation
• transactional email and SMTP
• SMS sending
• landing page builder

This makes SendinBlue an attractive option, and especially if you want to “send more in less time,”. With tools like automation, transaction email, and SMS, you can get to your contacts from multiple different sources, which is great.

SendinBlue is also comparatively easy to use. Learning everything effectively shouldn’t take you more than an hour.

MailChimp features

MailChimp is the most well-known email marketing service that are available. Feature-wise, it’s the only services with all “yes” in the table above, and it really does offer almost everything you need for your email marketing efforts. The downside is that it can be costly.

Here’s what they provide:

• visual email builder with drag and drop option
• email templates and layouts
• contact management tools
• detailed reports
• integrations with third-party tools
• API
• eCommerce integrations

The most unique features of MailChimp are:

• email marketing automation
• SMTP and transaction email via Mandrill
• integrated with Facebook, Instagram, and Google re-marketing ads
• landing page builder

The user interface of MailChimp’s is very special. It’s design is very nice and makes getting to every option easy. The dashboard provides you all the most common areas of the panel and makes the “create campaign” button the main element on the page, which makes sense.

Drip features

Among all the email marketing software that are available, Drip is comparatively ease to use. The platform is comfortable to get around, and the UI highlights what the visitor most likely wants to do.

Feature-wise, you will get almost everything you would expect:

• visual email design tool
• contact management
• email templates
• good reporting
• integrations with third-party tools
• API

The most unique features are:

• email marketing automation – send emails to subscribers based on pre-set triggers
• Facebook Lead Ads integration
• plain text emails
• campaign templates – Drip helps you build whole sequences of emails that are part of a single campaign

The main screen shows your current stats and important pieces of data about your lists.

The key section of the Dashboard is: campaigns, broadcasts, subscribers, forms, automation, and analytics. Each offers the user a similar level of ease of use and clarity.

You can set not only complete workflows based on specific actions that your contacts take, but also simple “if this then that” rules for automations.

ConvertKit features

ConvertKit, email marketing tool basically designed for bloggers, but that doesn’t stop it from offering some amazing features:

• contact management
• reporting
• sending one-off campaigns as well as sequences
• integrations with third-party tools
• API

Some unique features are:

• email marketing automation
• plain text emails – a nice feature to have in the visual-heavy world of the other top email marketing services
• concierge migration – in case you want to move your list over to ConvertKit from another service
• A/B testing – you split test two variants of the subject line, and have ConvertKit determine which one is more effective.

The main interface is divided into five categories: subscribers, automation, forms, sequences, and broadcasts. From there, each option provides an easy to use interface, highlighting the main action that’s available.

Beside these, ConvertKit offers many interesting features to organize your subscribers based on the actions they take and how they interact with your emails. Then, you get to filter through those subscribers and send them personalized emails.

Infusionsoft features

Infusionsoft is another impressive email marketing software. It is an entire sales and marketing automation tool. Meaning, there’s a lot more reasons why you might want to use it apart from just email marketing.

Regarding email, you will get the following features as usual:

• visual email design with drag-and-drop
• nice email templates
• contact management
• reports
• integrations with third-party tools
• API

The most unique features are:

• set marketing to-dos and track them via Infusionsoft
• put leads into pipelines and create sales cycles
• manage your invoices and how much you earn with each lead
• accept payments directly
• landing pages
• email marketing automation
• A/B testing
• integration with Facebook Ads

Infusionsoft is very impressive, and it can help you streamline your whole marketing strategy. Though, it’s a bit costly if all you need is just an email marketing tool.

However, once you get into creating a campaign, the main builder tool looks a bit days of old.

Their template campaigns, which are a great source of inspiration, not to mention that you can use them with a couple of clicks.

GetResponse features

GetResponse is another best email marketing services that offer you the full package of features you might need:

• visual email builder with drag-and-drop
• nice-looking email templates
• contact management
• reports
• integrations with third-party tools
• API

The unique features are:

• email marketing automation
• landing page builder
• webinars
• forms and surveys for your users to interact with

GetResponse really stands out in how they aim to be a complete online email marketing suite of tools and not only an email platform.

The dashboard is very nicely structured and attempts to point you to all the sections of GetResponse.

On the left-hand side, you will get links to some quick actions.

Email-wise, building your campaigns is so easy like nice drag-and-drop tool and can work on your emails visually.

One more thing that can be mentioned is the email marketing automation module. You can design some really advanced workflows there, and cover a lot of alternative scenarios.

Comparison 3: Email design and templates

Here’s what each of these top email marketing services gives you regarding email designs and templates:

SendinBlue

SendinBlue gives you all that you want to approach building your emails. There are three separate design tools: drag and drop builder, rich text editor, raw code editor.

You can also save any of your previous emails as templates, and get to choose from a wide library of ready-made email templates.

The templates are optimized to send different types of email, such as newsletters, holiday greetings, sales, contests, and more.

Once you select any of the designs, you can tweak it until it fits your requirements perfectly.

MailChimp

MailChimp lets you begin working on your emails in a couple of few ways. You can either start with a basic layout, any of your own templates, code an email from scratch, or use any of the email themes.

Here are themes templates:

After picking any of the theme, you can customize it via MailChimp’s drag-and-drop builder tool.

Drip

Drip offers some handful of email templates, which you get to customize however you see fit for you.

There’s no catalog of pre-designed emails, like the other email marketing services and tools offer.

Apart from this, you can also create HTML and plain text emails.

ConvertKit 

ConvertKit isn’t the popular one among these top email marketing services in terms of email design.

Infusionsoft

When creating a new email in Infusionsoft, you get to choose from a the built-in email templates.

The best approach here is to pick up the one that’s the closest to what you want to send out, and then customize it to according to your requirements. You can then save the template as your own and reuse it for your future purposes.

The email builder itself is also quite natural – with drag-and-drop features and friendly interface. You can also add new elements to your email as well as remove the ones you don’t need.

The preview is also very nice touch since it presents both the desktop and mobile view of your campaign.

GetResponse

GetResponse, lets you begin by either going with a drag-and-drop builder or coding your email from scratch.

Once you go with the builder, you’re immediately taken to a template selection window. All templates are categorized based on the niche/market and purpose of the campaign.

Once you select to use any of the templates, you can easily customize it freely.

GetResponse give you a set of templates for the landing page builder as well.

Some More Email Marketing Software

Here are some more software that can be mentioned:

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is the most popular email marketing software for small businesses. It comes with tons of email templates that help you get a head to start.

When getting started, you’ll be prompted to choose your business, and your previous experience with email marketing. Based on your selections, you’ll get customized content and promotion ideas that will help you to level up your email marketing.

It offers unmatched support with live chat, emails, and discussion forums. They also have a huge library of resources.

While most email marketing services offer 14 or 30-day free trials to test the service, this tool gives you full access to their tools for 60 days. After the trial, the subscription starts at a cost of $20 per month for up to 500 subscribers.

Constant Contact is best for smart small businesses who’re just starting out with email marketing.

AWeber

AWeber is one of the most popular email marketing services for small businesses. It comes with all the necessary tools you need to grow your email list. You can design email newsletters with the visual drag and drop builder, email automation sequences, and create mobile-responsive signup forms that looks great on any device.

Best of all, you can integrate AWeber with your WordPress website, landing page builder, or optin form builder with ease.

Getting started with AWeber is very easy. Just visit AWeber’s website and sign up for a 30-day free trial. After signing up, you’ll get access to all their premium tools that help you to grow your email list.

Available support options are live chat, phone, and ticket-based emails.

The pricing starts at only $19 per month for up to 500 subscribers.

AWeber is best for all marketers in general, especially for those who’re just getting started with email marketing.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign combines email marketing with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and sales, so you can send personalized tailored emails to individual users’ behaviors.

With ActiveCampaign, you can easily create eye-catching emails using their drag and drop visual builder. In addition, it also allows you to reach your subscribers on the go by sending SMS messages.

The ability to monitor onsite events makes ActiveCampaign unique from other services. For example, you can monitor and track custom event calls from within mobile apps, billing apps and more. All your potential customer data will be organized in a sales CRM that gives you a complete picture of your customers. You can use this data to create highly effective online marketing campaigns and followups.

WordPress integration is very easy with this tool, and it also offer free expert migration service from other email marketing services to ActiveCampaign.

ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial to test the software.

The pricing starts only at $9 per month for up to 500 contacts.

MailerLite

MailerLite grow your email list for free until you reach 1000 subscribers. They provide you with advanced technologies to attract your users and convert them into subscribers, such as landing page, popups and easy-to-use form visual builder.

MailerLite is best for users who need a simple solution to grow their email platform list. If you’re on a limited budget, then you can go with MailerLite.

Final Words-Choosing the Best Email Marketing Service

If you’re running a small business and just getting started with email marketing, then Constant Contact is the best email marketing software for you. It comes packaged with all the features that you’ll need to grow your email platform list. Plus, you can make use of their 60-day free trial without any cost or commitment.

If you have an eCommerce site where you want to personalize emails based on user behavior such as abandoned carts, first time users, return buyers, etc., then we recommend to use Drip.

If you are a professional blogger who wants to send automated emails that feel personal while increasing your visitors engagement, then you should check out ConvertKit. It’s an email marketing software built specifically for bloggers and publishers.

We hope this article will help you compare some of the best email marketing software and find the right one for your needs.

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