Every email marketing platform say they are the best. Comparisons between them is often biased and leans towards highlighting one great offering against all the poor ones. We have made a list of the top 11 (plus one) email marketing tools and compared their free or lowest priced plans. Take a look at it and make an informed choice.
Here are the best email marketing tools compared.
Our evaluation criterion: We evaluated each product on four key areas: email volume and subscriber (or contact) limits on free plan, average customer rating by TrustPilot (the world’s leading and most trustworthy rating platform), features included in the free plan and the cost of the next upgrade plan.
Evaluation weightage in our comparison:
The rest 20% is divided equally between the free features included and the first paid plan’s price.
How we chose which products to compare: We picked the 10 products in two ways: Half of them based on brand popularity (or at least brand recognition) and the rest based on what various other articles have recommended as alternatives.
tinyEmail
Sure it’s us, but let’s be completely transparent and compare us to the other most popular email marketing providers out there. tinyEmail’s free plan is the industry’s most compelling, our human live support chat is loved by our users and our features and tools are made by marketers who understand what pains businesses.
What customers say
The free plan
The tinyEmail free plan gives you up to 15,000 free emails per month, unlimited subscribers storage but sending is capped at 500 subscribers. Which means you send an email a day to 500 subscribers without paying a cent. You can have unlimited audiences.
tinyEmail free plan features
- 15k emails/mo
- 500 subscribers limit
- All integrations
- 100+ Templates (new every week)
- World's best email editor
- Unlimited audiences
tinyEmail Pricing
After the free-forever plan, paid plans start at $15/mo with unlimited subscribers and 15,000 emails/mo. Flexibility to choose between features based on your email volume needs.
Ideal for eCommerce customers (like Shopify and WooCommerce), businesses who want great-looking emails and dynamic interactive emails.
The nearest upgrade from the free plan is $15/mo.
Mailchimp
Once the most loved email marketing tool that was a champion for small businesses is now a bit fallen from grace. With falling customer trust and increased pricing, it’s tough to recommend Mailchimp. Nonetheless, it’s a well known brand and because of that still draws in a large number of users. Hence their place in our comparison.
What customers say
The free plan
Up to 2,000 contacts, monthly email send limit is 10,000 sends (daily limit of 2,000). You can have only one audience in the free plan which we feel is a major limitation.
Mailchimp free plan features
- Drag & Drop editor
- Social posting
- Marketing calendar
- Limited to 1 audience
- Limited templates
Mailchimp pricing
Mailchimp’s pricing is complex mix of the number of contacts, an associated limit on the volume of emails you send, and what features are available. Meaning there’s forced upgrade either for features or email volume irrespective of whether you need only one of these.
Good for businesses where email is no longer the most important part of their customer communication and they want solutions for social ads and asset creation as well.
Nest upgrade is $11/mo for 500 contacts and 5,000 emails. When you exceed your limit, you incur additional charges of $5.50/mo per additional 250 contacts (comes with additional 2,500 email sends).
Klaviyo
Klaviyo made its name by tailoring its offering to purely eCommerce customers alone. Considered powerful but also complex to use. Similar to tinyEmail’s robust eCommerce capabilities but minus the simplicity in our fair opinion.
What customers say
The free plan
Klaviyo’s free plan feels very restrictive with up to 250 contacts, 500 email sends and only email support. Their features however, are accessible on all plans which is a plus.
Klaviyo Features
- Product catalogue
- All features on all plans
- SMS separate
- No designer templates
- Clunky interface
Klaviyo Pricing
Klaviyo email plans are determined by the number of contacts in your account and the number of emails you send out each month. Paid plans start from $20/mo.
For businesses who need to combine email and SMS as a must but we’d recommend shopping around more as the email volume limits are one of the lowest we have seen.
Klaviyo’s nearest to free upgrade plan is for $20/mo for up to 500 contacts and a maximum of 5,000 emails.
Omnisend
Omnisend is another platform that doubles down on email + SMS together. As an added channel, they also offer web push notifications.
What customers say
The free plan
Their free plan includes up to 250 contacts and 500 emails/mo, 60 SMS
and 500 web push notifications.
Omnisend Features
- Email automations
- SMS
- Web push notifications
- Limited template selection
- Alright segmentation
Omnisend pricing
Omnisend offers all features on all free and paid plans. Paid plans start from $16/mo. All users on any plan get free SMS credits. Free credits can be used to send SMS and/or MMS.
We can see websites that rely on website push notifications and SMS along with email marketing wanting to try out Omnisend.
Nearest paid plan to their free tier is $16/mo that gives up to 500 contacts and 6,000 emails/mo, up to 60 SMS, and unlimited web push notifications.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is an email marketing tool that has been around since 1995. The platform went through a more recent facelift and transitioned into a platform targeted at larger organizations with a need for sales tools.
What customers say
The free plan
Constant Contact no longer has a free plan.
Constant Contact Features
- Basic email marketing
- Designer templates
- Social media posting
- Limited segments
- No conversion tracking
Constant Contact Pricing
Pricing starts at $9.99/mo for 500 contacts and 12,000 emails per month. Plans have a monthly send limit of 24 times your total contacts and an overage fee of $0.002 per email.
If you are in need of a decently featured paid advertising integrated tool that also doubles up as a CRM aside from generic email marketing capabilities.
With no free plans, the first upgrade plan starts from $45/mo for the same 500 contacts with additional features.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue is a well rated marketing platform that combines email marketing with a lot of other functionality that mid to large organizations can make the most of if they need a large variety of marketing automation tools.
What customers say
The free plan
Sendinblue’s free plan gives you unlimited contacts, up to 9,000 emails per month but this is capped at 300 emails per day which makes it quite limiting.
Sendinblue Features
- Designer Templates
- Basic personalization
- Live chat
- Pay-as-you-go SMS
- Daily sending limits
- Really basic reporting on free plan
Sendinblue pricing
The Lite Plan (from 20,000 emails/month for $25/month) is the lowest priced option. A big downside we see is that tablestakes reporting and analytics are addons.
Sendinblue shines when you have complex email marketing as well as developer API-based transactional emails. SMS is an added benefit but the cost is an overhead.
After free, the first upgrade will cost you $25/mo for 20,000 emails. However, you only get email support and removing the Sendinblue logo and advanced statistics are both addons.
Moosend
Moosend grew very quickly into a popular free email marketing provider but cancelled their free tier entirely. The platform seems to focus on offering a longer list of features instead of deep functionality which works for some businesses.
What customers say
The free plan
Moosend no longer offers a free plan but instead a 30-day trial. During the trial, you can send up to 1,000 emails to a maximum of 1,000 subscribers.
Moosend features
- Landing pages
- SMTP Servers
- Multiple team members
- Limited reporting
- Email volumes are sold as credits
Moosend pricing
Moosend allows you to send emails based on credits which could be good for seasonal senders, aside from subscription fees. Each email recipient costs one credit. Plans start from $9/mo for 500 contacts.
Companies that need multiple members to use the product and have SMTP based transactional emails will benefit the most.
The first paid plan starts from $9/mo which gives you up to 500 subscribers and unlimited emails per month.
HubSpot
HubSpot is probably the most well-known marketing and sales CRM out there. Email marketing has never been their strong suit but they have built some campaign capabilities around their sales and support automation tools.
What customers say
The free plan
The free plan gives you a million contacts on their CRM but only 2000 email sends per month, with HubSpot branding. You get basic CRM capabilities and branded live chat with the plan.
Hubspot Features
- Gmail integration
- Up to 1M contacts free
- Free, powerful CRM
- Very limited reporting
- Very basic email templates
HubSpot Pricing
HubsSpot is a great free tool to being with if your business is into B2B sales. The free CRM with 1M contacts is great for startups. For marketing automation it gets expensive very quickly. Plans range from $50/mo for 1,000 contacts to $890/mo for just 2,000 contacts.
Sales driven organizations that need a powerful CRM that they can grow into.
The first paid plan for marketing tools starts from $50/mo for 1,000 contacts and 5,000 email sends.
SendPulse
SendPulse is an email marketing platform with additional channels: SMS, web push notifications, WhatsApp and Facebook chatbots.
What customers say
The free plan
The free plan gives you up to 500 subscribers and up to 15,000 emails per month. Templates and reporting are functional.
SendPulse Features
- CRM
- Landing pages
- Web push notifications
- Chat bots
- No subscriber level analytics
SendPulse Pricing
SendPulse’s pricing starts on the lower end but has very limiting caps on feature usage such as the number of segments possible and even image storage limits. Plans start from $8/mo for 500 contacts.
Businesses who need a suite of tools across chatbots, online course creation tools and CRM capabilities.
The first paid plan is for $8/mo which gives you up to 500 contacts and unlimited emails.
MailerLite
Popular for their eCommerce storefront capabilities combined with functional email marketing tools. MailerLite started as a dedicated email marketing solution that now is focusing expansion into landing pages and website building.
What customers say
The free plan
The free plan gives you up to 1,000 subscribers, 12,000 emails per month and only email support. No designer templates in free plan and limited number of audiences.
MailerLite Features
- Website builder
- eCommerce Storefront
- Landing pages
- Some designer templates
- Limited audiences
- Limited segmentation
MailerLite Pricing
MailerLite pricing is limited on the number of subscribers you can have along with feature access restrictions. You do get unlimited sending on all paid plans. Plans range up to $21 /mo for 1,000 subscribers.
Great if email marketing is secondary to your business and need more solopreneur-friendly tools like building simple websites, landing pages or want to sell digital goods.
Paid plans start from $10/mo for up to 1,000 subscribers and unlimited emails.
Honorary mention: Benchmark
The final name in our list is Benchmark Email which is a fairly simple email marketing tool with some basic integrations and campaign capabilities.
What customers say
The free plan
Benchmark’s free plan gives you up to 500 contacts but only 250 emails/mo. You get self-serve support only and no access to product help documentation.
Benchmark Features
- Drip campaigns
- Landing pages
- Basic integrations
- Basic templates
- Basic email design tools
Benchmark Pricing
Benchmark’s pricing is based on the number of contacts you have and all paid plans have unlimited sending.
Summing it up
All customer ratings, prices and limits are accurate at the point of us creating this comparison. tinyEmail ranks the highest on customer satisfaction and still gives the most robust set of features when it comes to what we do best. – design and send interactive emails easily.
