Home > Resources > Top 8 Best Email Marketing Platforms

Top 8 Best Email Marketing Platforms

Written and researched by experts at AvadaLearn more about our methodology

By Sam Nguyen

CEO Avada Commerce

Drive 20-40% of your revenue with Avada
avada email marketing

Email marketing platforms have been around for decades now. As part of online marketing, email marketing is still the highest Return on Investment (ROI) marketing technique today. About 3.9 billion people worldwide used email in 2019. According to the Statista report, this number is expected to rise to 4.48 billion by 2024. As a result, companies that use email marketing keep costs down while creating a loyal client base, broader brand awareness, and growing profits.

Building a list and sending hundreds or thousands of emails takes a lot of time and is inefficient. This is where email marketing platforms help. It automates processes and allows organizations time to concentrate on more important tasks. There is a range of email marketing platform choices to choose from with various features, payment plans, and user-friendliness. In this article, I will introduce to you the best email marketing platforms currently on the market, and hopefully, at the end of the article, you can select the right one for your own needs. Let’s jump right into it!

What are email marketing platforms?

Email Marketing Platforms are tools with which you can create a contact list using forms and landing pages. Then you can set up your email promotions to be sent to your subscribers. After that you can measure their performance and make changes to future campaigns.

Other email tools give you access to additional features such as live chat, chatbots, and CRM to handle your marketing strategies in a single dashboard with email at the forefront. However, it doesn’t take a high-end email marketing tool for you to be able to succeed with email marketing, one with enough necessary features can help you build a loyal audience and increase your sales if it is used correctly.

Why is it important to choose the right email marketing platform?

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing methods out there. This is because it is easy to handle, gives you complete flexibility and helps you to develop a direct relationship with your clients. It’s important to realize that a lot of your email marketing success depends on the software platform you use. It is the duty of the marketing platform provider to ensure that your emails are actually delivered.

Your success depends completely on whether your emails are actually delivered to the recipient’s inbox, and while there are things in your control, such as building a clean email list, creating code error templates, generating spam-free text and images, and running proper tests, email deliverability is not one of them. That’s why it’s so important to look for the right email marketing platform for your company.

What makes a great email marketing platform?

When it comes to selecting the right email marketing platform, there are three important criteria for most people: Deliverability, Ease of Use, ROI. I’d say deliverability is the king of all three because your effort brings nothing if your emails end up in the spam folder.

Ease of use comes after deliverability. A good email marketing platform should allow you to build highly attractive email automations with a simple user interface. You should be able to build event and time-based triggers to send one or more emails to any future or current client based on the requirements set. Although it’s automated for you, your emails need to be viewed as tailored to the recipient. Using the recipient’s first name in any email message is just as important as addressing your text and photos directly to them as if you had a live conversation. It’s all about the engagement.

In addition, your email marketing platform must make it easy to manage your contacts, divide them into segments, and monitor the success of your email marketing campaigns. Last but not least of all, ROI. Return-on-Investment is a vital measure for any business. When you invest monthly or annually in an email marketing platform, you want to ensure the best return on your investment. When comparing the best email marketing platforms, ROI is a combined measure of email deliverability, ease of use and cost.

Best email marketing platforms

AVADA Email Marketing

AVADA Email Marketing is one of the best known email marketing platforms thanks to its forever free plan.

Who suits this email marketing platform?

AVADA email marketing is commonly used by people who just start their company searching for a free email marketing platform. It’s perfect for beginners because of its ease of use and highly competitive pricing. It’s great for the hobbyists. You can read AVADA review from Top 10 Website Hosting here.

AVADA email marketing has all the features you’d expect from an email marketing platform (drag-and-drop email builder, subscriber segmentation, autoresponders, cart abandonment recovery service, cross-selling, A/B testing and a lot of pre-made templates); All of these are at the heart of your email marketing efforts.

AVADA email marketing support available via live chat and email is famously known for its availability and reliability. You can get answers for any questions you may have about the platform almost instantly when you get in touch with its support rep. The free plan provides many of the features that are necessary for one searching for a low-cost but decent email marketing platform.

How much does it cost?

Talking about the costs. The forever free plan provides up to 15,000 emails for up to 1,000 users and free customer support. The only paid plan it offers comes at $9 a month for unlimited emails per month and 1000+ subscribers.

Get AVADA Email Marketing

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign’s goal is to help growing companies create meaningful relationships with their customers. It’s a vision to provide companies like you with an all-in-one email marketing platform. There are many great functions, tools and integrations that this platform provides.

Who suits this email marketing platform?

If you are searching for a way to automate your email marketing based on event triggers or time-based triggers (start an email series on a specified day and time), ActiveCampaign is the right tool for you.

There are several ways you can streamline the marketing workflows with ActiveCampaign:

  • User segmentation based on lists, tags and event/time triggers
  • Trigger customized emails based on subscriber activities
  • Send automated follow-up emails
  • Set up registration forms for your website or landing page easily
  • Combine sales and marketing data with CRM features etc.

How much does it cost?

There are four pricing plans with ActiveCampaign. For up to 500 contacts on your list, you need to pay $9/month on an annual basis and $15/month on a monthly schedule. This is an absolute steal. You will be able to grow with ActiveCampaign as its pricing model remains inexpensive compared to others. You’ll get a free trial of up to 100 active contacts for two weeks.

AWeber

AWeber has been on the market for a while now. It has been very popular and a great choice for many companies over the years. They are also believed to have invented the email marketing platform itself.

Who suits this email marketing platform?

The platform is equipped with almost all the features you’d expect from a marketing platform. You can create emails with a drag-and-drop builder, access a lot of pre-designed templates, and all the planned integrations into the rest of your online business and marketing tools.

Automated email sequences based on customer behavior, email follow-up sequences, A/B test capabilities, and statistics such as delivery speeds are at the heart of the platform. AWeber wouldn’t be an email marketing tool if it didn’t deliver fast and have simple registration forms and banners to embed in your email or landing page software platform.

How much does it cost?

AWeber’s pricing begins at $19/month for up to 500 subscribers and unlimited emails. If you pay on a quarter basis, you can get a 14 percent discount, and you can also get a 14.9 percent discount if you pay annually. Its price policies are competitive compared to its competitors. There is a 30-day trial period available free of charge.

Sendinblue

Sendinblue is another common email marketing platform. Established in 2011 in Germany, their growth has been remarkable.

Who suits this email marketing platform?

Sendinblue is intended for small and medium-sized companies. Based on the concept of compactness and simplicity, it is strong enough for big business as well. Its main pillars are email promotions, content management and smart reporting.

Designing beautiful emails with Sendinblue is a piece of cake. Simply select your favorite template and use the drag-and-drop editor to organize your content. All their templates are mobile responsive, so you can rest assured that your emails will be mobile-ready from the outset. When you are not sure which email copies to choose, find your winner with its A/B testing feature. Sendinblue will automatically classify and send out the best-performing version.

You can import your contacts in just a few clicks and leave the rest to them. Sit back in there and enjoy automated list management. With various free plug-ins, you can easily combine your favorite CMS, CRM and eCommerce platforms.

Do you want to create more tailored campaigns? Segment your contacts based on common characteristics, and hit them with relevant content they’re really going to enjoy. Sendinblue provides analytics in real-time. A holistic, easy-to-read report will be produced for each campaign you start. You can conveniently keep track of all your most significant KPIs – from distribution and open rates to CTRs and conversions.

How much does it cost?

Sendinblue provides a free account for up to 1000 subscribers and 1000 emails per month. Payment plans start with $20/month for up to 10,000 subscribé, unlimited monthly emails, and 10% discount on the annual plan. Register forever for free. There’s no money back guarantee, since there’s a free plan.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit is popular with professional bloggers, writers and social media celebrity. It’s easy to use and very powerful.

Who suits this email marketing platform?

ConvertKit is built primarily for creative people who want to spend their precious time making content, not email marketing automation. It’s a graphic builder that’s popular because you can really visualize how your email series will look and feel for your recipients. It also facilitates easy content updates, such as rewards or sign-up forms.

ConvertKit has built-in landing page features that allows you to host your landing page within the platform and not your website or landing page software at extra cost. Customer management as well as tagging and advanced email segmentation are also available and simple to use. ConvertKit provides email-based support, comprehensive knowledge base, great learning materials and a quick community where you can get tips and tricks from other users.

How much does it cost?

ConvertKit’s pricing starts at $29/month for up to 1,000 users on a monthly basis and $25/month on an annual plan. The price policies are competitive, and convertKit provides a 14-day trial and 30-day money back guarantee.

GetResponse

GetResponse is a very popular, user-friendly email marketing platform. Besides its core features, it also provides powerful add-ons, such as landing page and webinar capabilities.

Who suits this email marketing platform?

GetResponse is an all-in-one marketing tool with a broad user base. It comes with awesome marketing automation software, including their drag-and-drop construction, which is amazing. You can develop campaigns, segment contacts, submit different content to particular user groups in addition to being able to conduct A/B testing, design embedded landing pages or construct awesome responsive sign-up forms.

The perfect timing function is unique in the industry. This feature can help predict the best time of day to send emails to increase open rates. GetResponse’s hot new ‘Autofunnel’ functionality is a ready-made, automated sales funnel generator. It helps you to create your landing pages, automate your emails, sell your goods, recover abandoned carts, and convert all your customers to one location. Support is offered by live chat, email and phone, as well as a library full of learning resources, videos, webinars and guidebooks.

How much does it cost?

GetResponse’s pricing starts at $15/month for 1,000 subscribers. An 18% discount is applied to annual payments, and 30% to the two-year payment. You can have access to a 30-day free trial. There is no money-back guarantee because of the free trial, and the subscription can be cancelled in the middle of a month.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is one of the fastest growing email marketing platforms. It’s popular with beginners as well known for its simple handling of email lists, contacts, email templates, marketing calendars, and more.

Who suits this email marketing platform?

Constant Contact is perfect for total beginners who are concerned about how to get started. Its user interface is easy to navigate. It’s also easy to access email lists, templates, contacts, marketing calendar as well as monitoring and integrated social media networking tools, a free image library and strong integrations such as Facebook Advertising and Shopify eCommerce.

Your eMail plus accounts (additional charge) comes with powerful features such as email automation, surveys & surveys, coupons and subject line A/B testing to help you optimize your open rate. Constant Contact provides excellent access to their help through chat, email or phone. They have a really strong library, video training, webinars and a diverse community where users assist users.

How much does it cost?

Constant Contact’s pricing begins at $20/month for 500 contacts. If you pay on a quarterly basis, you can earn a 10% and a 12% annual plan discount. Both quarterly and annual plans are available free of charge for the first month. Email plus begins at $45 a month and comes with the same savings as with the base package. Growth-aligned pricing is relatively competitive. Free trial duration is 60 days with a 100% money back guarantee.

Drip

Drip is a popular and relatively new email marketing platform for bloggers, eCommerce site owners and marketers. Ease of use combined with a wide variety of email marketing automation stools makes Drip attractive for newbies.

Who suits this email marketing platform?

Drip is a solid choice if you are the owner of the eCommerce platform, offering a wide range of digital and/or physical items. It’s strong strength to consider the intent of the client and to buy behaviors. With Drip, you can develop an in-depth knowledge of your customers and clients with awesome metric tracking features.

They provide seamless integration for WordPress and WooCommerce, among others, enabling early sign-up forms to be added to your website or more leads to be captured. It’s sophisticated research sets it apart from the competition. Metrics include returning visitors vs. new ones, visitors who have abandoned their cart, and email recipients who have clicked on a connection vs. those who have not. Drip provides support through live chat, webinars, eLearning, free guides and documentation.

Drip might not yet be as well recognized in the marketing world, but I’m pretty sure it will be soon. Based on our experience, Drip is possibly the best email marketing platform available to eCommerce site owners.

How much does it cost?

Drip provides a free account for up to 100 users and unlimited emails. With $49 a month for up to 2,500 subscribers, which makes Drip competitive on the market. The price of more than 5,000 subscribers is at the upper end of the scale. Drip provides a 14-day trial and a 30-day refund policy.

Final Words

That’s it! I hope that you can find your ideal email marketing platform from this list. Please feel free to leave comments below for further recommendations on this topic. :-)


Sam Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Avada Commerce, an e-commerce solution provider headquartered in Singapore. He is an expert on the Shopify e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Sam loves talking about e-commerce and he aims to help over a million online businesses grow and thrive.