Best Email Marketing Platforms-Top 10 Options for Small Business in 2023

Last Updated on November 28, 2022 by Chimezie Chidi

Best Email Marketing Platforms-Top 10 Options for Small Business in 2023

Email marketing is a vital part of any successful online business in 2023.

Here are the top 10 best email marketing platforms or software that are better equipped with fantastic tools to promote your products and services.

Email marketing is simply the use of email to promote products and services.

It is the sending of commercial messages to develop relationships with potential or existing customers of a business. It is merely a section of internet marketing.

With an effective email marketing campaign, you can send advertisements, request business, appeal for donations or sales and so on.

News updates about your business, upcoming products, events or special offers can quickly be sent to a list of already built up email addresses of interested customers that have provided their information on your website.

And one of its lovely benefits is that email marketing can give you $44 returns on every $1 spent.

However, not many campaigns are effective.

Majority of the spams that are found in our email inbox are a good example of email marketing but not being done in the right way.

Therefore, even as Email marketing can be a significant boost to your investments, it is vital that you carry out your campaigns in a structured manner with a clear objective while ensuring that your customers only get what is relevant to them.

On your own, it would be difficult to carry out your email marketing campaigns proficiently, especially when you have a customer database with more than 1000 subscribers.

The use of Email marketing software will take the grind out of your emailing process, providing you with a solution that saves you time, money and ensures that your customers get the right attention.

What features can you find in Email Marketing Software?

Email marketing services solutions make it easier for you to streamline your email marketing campaigns.

With this software, you can plan, execute and track the success of your email marketing campaigns.

Many of these software solutions come with email scheduling features, email builder tools, already prepared email templates and even automation tools that would give you a natural head start.

Some of this software even allows you to segment your customer list, so you only send relevant materials to the right people.

An even more significant advantage is the fact that you will be able to store information about your customers’ behaviours which will help you improve your campaigns and even your core business processes to bring more success to your business.

However, you should know that not every Email marketing software you find can give you all of these solutions in a single interface.

To help you make the right choice, I have put together a list of 10 of the very best email marketing software solutions for a better outcome.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and purchase an item, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Please see my Affiliate disclosure page for details.

Top 10 Best Email Marketing Platforms/Software

1. HubSpot All-in-One Inbound Email Marketing Software

HubSpot Marketing is a top-rated marketing software that can track and build up a list for a successful marketing campaign.

HubSpot Marketing can segment your contacts into a group according to various criteria. You can schedule and queue the delivery of emails from a personalized sequence. You can also track to know which marketing campaign is successful or not.

HubSpot also lets you prepare static and dynamic HTML messages which means you can customize the design according to your customer’s buyer persona.

It also allows you to create and embed contact web forms on your site and other channels for capturing leads.

This package also comes with some SEO and social media tools that can be used to promote your contents as well.

One adorable thing about the HubSpot Marketing tool is that there are some features you can get for free which you will find as paid features in other email marketing software.

Price: Paid plan starts from $50 per month.  Some plugins can also be included in your monthly plan for free.

Pros

• Real-time email marketing tools
• Social media publishing and monitoring tools
• Custom event automation triggers
• Free CRM and Sales tools

Cons

• A bit too expensive

 2.Drip Ecommerce CRM

Drip is a great marketing tool for bloggers, marketers, and e-commerce.

With Drip, you can personalize and automate marketing.

Drip also integrates easily with website builders like WooCommerce and WordPress which make it easy to connect sign up forms to its ads to generate more leads.

Drip has intelligent marketing automation tools and email segmentation that helps you to reach your targeted customers in your email list and grow your business.

Apart from the lovely features and tools, Drip has an accessible customer service which includes live chat.

They also offer training, webinars, free guides, step by step courses and excellent documentation about Email marketing. You can engage and communicate with your customers on a personal level with their intuitive automation tools.

This tool is excellent for e-commerce sites and business owners who need advanced tools like payment getaways.

Price: Drip offers a free account for up to 100 subscribers, and their plan starts at $49 per month to get all features.

Pros:

• Targeted and personalization tools
• Excellent Automation tools
• Mass email tracking

Cons

• Limited design editing features
• Overwhelming for newbies

3.ActiveCampaign Email Marketing Software

ActiveCampaign gives you access to a comprehensive solution to your marketing needs.

It does not only give you email marketing tools but contact management, marketing automation, and social media marketing tools.

You can equally integrate well over 159 apps with this tool to enhance your sales and services.

There are many other lovely features you can get with the ActiveCampaign solution such as API tools, event tracking, conditional contents, and website tracking.

This is a cost-effective and affordable solution when compared to other systems.

Price: You will receive 14 days upon signup. Plans begin from $15 per month for the monthly plan or $9 per month for the yearly plan.

Pros:

• Powerful automation tools
• Detailed reporting tools
• Free account migrations

Cons:

• Features are so vast that they can be overwhelming.

4.Constant Contact Email Marketing Platform

Constant Contact is one of the oldest email marketing software.

You can easily manage your contacts, email list, templates, email calendar and many more.

Constant Contact tracks and respond, has free image library, segments list, has inbuilt social media sharing tools and integrates seamlessly with FaceBook ads.

You also get auto-responders which can be used to send emails to clients not just after sign-up but also birthdays and anniversaries.

You also get segmentation tools and a photo library that allows up to 2GB of storage.

Their support includes live chats, phone calls, community support, and emails. They also offer online training, personal live seminars, to help beginners learn about email marketing.

Price: Up to 60 days of a free trial. Plans begin from $20 per month.

Pros

• Budget-friendly
• A wide array of templates to choose from
• Intuitive editing tools.

Cons

• Odd glitches and bugs that would mar your ability to use the system
• Many features come at an additional fee

5.GetResponse Email Marketing Machine

GetResponse has an easy interface and makes email marketing easy for small businesses and complete amateurs.

GetResponse comes with responsive forms, tracking and autoresponders to create effective campaigns and increase your sales.

They also great marketing automation tools that help you to create smart automated campaigns.

You can segment emails, group contacts and create campaigns with their drag and drop builder. You can also integrate easily with third-party generation software including Google Docs, OptinMonster, ZenDesk and much more.

In terms of customer care, they offer live chats, email response, and phones. They also provide training with webinars, videos, how-tos, etc.

Price: 30 days free trial. Plans begin from $15 per month for a plan.

Pros

• Able to integrate third-party tools
• Excellent email automation tools
• Intuitive creating tools

Cons

• Email templates are outdated.

You can check my GetResponse review here

6.SendinBlue All-in-One Email Marketing Service

SendinBlue Email helps you to manage your marketing campaigns and transactional emails easily.

It has a drag and drops navigation to help build mobile-friendly emails even when you don’t have programming knowledge.

It also offers autoresponders, and responsive design templates-which can be edited and personalized to suit your customers.

But this tool only recognizes email addresses and not birthdays, gender or text fields.  The other features are tracking, campaign creation, contact management, and email scheduling.

A more recent addition to the SendinBlue package is a wide range of plugins such as analytics, customer relationship management tools, eCommerce and over 42 other plugins.

Their customer support is pretty decent. You can also view tutorials, FAQs and blogs about how to use your new software.

Price: A free plan gets you 300 emails a day. The paid plan begins from $25.

Pros

• Free plan available
• A wide range of excellent plugins
• Autoresponders and transactional email tools
• SMS campaign functionality

Cons

• Takes time to set up accounts
• Templates are too basic and need improvements.

7.MailChimp All-in-One Email Marketing Platform

MailChimp is so easy to use.

Features on this platform include responsive email templates, campaign archiving, alerts for pay-as-you-go customers, Instagram and Facebook ad campaigns as well as free automation tools.

MailChimp can easily integrate with WordPress, Shopify, Magento, and other platforms.

It supports live chats and offers numerous tutorials.

You can equally create marketing campaigns easily from your mobile device because the platform provides IOS and Android apps for that purpose.

Price: Free plan to send up to 12,000 emails every month to 2,000 accounts. Paid plans begin from $10 per month

Pros

• Flexible Pay as you go, pricing model
• Lots of third-party integrations

Cons

• Tracking and reporting is not too good
• Pricing is a bit unclear but upon comparison shows that it is more expensive.

8.   Aweber Email Marketing Software

Aweber is an ancient email marketing campaign tool, but they have managed to remain relevant till date.

They offer numerous email templates, autoresponders, email list management, and tracking features.

Email templates are equally responsive and work perfectly on mobile devices.

They also provide third-party integrations with platforms like WordPress as well as RSS/blog to email functionality.

Aweber also gives you customer support through live chat, email, and phone support.

They have webinars from time to time, but you can also learn from their vast library of tutorials.

Price: 30-day free trial plan. The paid plan begins from $19 per month.

Pros

• A wide range of competitive templates
• Excellent import functionality
• Third-party integrations
• Responsive email templates

Cons

• Some templates are outdated
• RSS to email templates need a lot of work

9.MailJet Email Marketing Platform

MailJet can send emails and track emails. It has an intelligent drag and drops editor that makes it easy for you to create campaigns with its newsletter templates and responsive emails.

It easily integrates with REST and SMTP servers to ensure delivery. MailJet analyses how your customers respond to your emails and collect data.

Pricing is very flexible and affordable. You will also receive access to API tools, and they have a better approach to anti-spam policies.

You can also use their customer service if you need any form of technical support.

Price: MailJet free plan allows to send up to 6,000 emails per month with up to 200 emails per day. The paid plan starts at $7.49 per month.

Pros

• Simple and minimalistic interface
• API and third-party integrations

Cons

• Glitches might hamper on your usage of the system
• You can only send 1000 emails per hour
• You can’t also send emails to people in their timezone if you have international customers.

10.Fresh Mail Email Marketing Service

Fresh Mail is a cloud-based email marketing service which provides you with an exceptional template intuition.

One lovely benefit of this platform is that you will receive industry-specific templates making it easier to interact with your customers.

It comes with great autoresponder tools, auto A/B testing, personalization, dynamic content creation tools, and real-time email tracking tools.

You can benefit from its wide range of advanced email marketing features without any need for programming skills. Also, you can gain access to flexible pricing solutions and content relationship management tools.

Price: Free plan gives up to 200 emails monthly. The paid plan begins from $14 per month.

Pros

• Tracking tools are so easy to use
• HTML email template designs
• Personalization and segmentation tools.

Cons

• Customer service is not impressive
• Functions are also not stable, and there are some glitches to deal with

How to pick the Right Email Marketing Software for your Online Business.

Are you confused about how much it costs to set up your email marketing campaign? Here’s my detailed pricing guide on selecting the right email marketing software for your business. 

Email marketing gives you many surprising ways to engage clients on a much deeper level and connect to potential customers.

Right now, there might be a million questions flowing through your mind, such as; What factors would determine the email marketing service for me? How much does it even cost to send a single email? Should I stick to my generic emailing service? Is automation also worth the price? ….

But, asking how much it costs to send an email or pick the right service is like asking how much it costs to purchase a house. The answer depends on a vast number of factors alongside your business goals and the size of your budget. 

How much should I dedicate to Email marketing service?

Over 82% of marketers have about 20% of their marketing budget set aside for emails. But, it’s ideal to focus about 16% of your total marketing budget.

Nevertheless, this figure may change depending on a lot of factors such as:

• Your products/ services
• Industry
• Whether you generate a significant revenue online
• Your ideal digital income
• Annual revenue

So, you need to bear these factors in mind before selecting the right emailing service for you.

For instance, a company that generates more of its income online may decide to go above the 16% mark for many reasons.

The bottom line is that email marketing is perhaps one of the best ways to reach more clients with lesser funds.

So, we will now address each of those hidden factors to give you a more exceptional view or what it would cost you. 

Factors that influence the cost of Email Marketing 

• Quality of Current Email List

Not all emails you acquire may be active for a long time.

Therefore, you need email verification tools to clean out inactive subscribers from time to time.

These email verification tools will also help you identify faulty email addresses and deal with subscribers that don’t read your emails.

You don’t have to use these tools all the time, but it’s recommended that you periodically clean your emails for higher engagements.

You don’t want to spend money sending emails that don’t bring any returns on investments.

Apart from getting an email verification tool, you may also need ads, SEO, click funnel, and other list building efforts to build your email list.

All of this may significantly increase the cost of your email marketing.

• The complexity of Email design

Although plain text emails are beneficial, an attractive email design can build a higher engagement with your brand.

Would you send email newsletters every other week?

Are you going to send regular timed promotional campaigns, newsletters about your new blog posts, weekly specials, and sales?

Would you use automated abandoned-cart emails or an email autoresponder?

All of these are good and highly successful strategies, but they come at a higher cost. The more intricate your email campaign, design, reporting, management, and so on, the higher your costs per email. 

• Frequency of your campaigns

How many times will you send out promotional emails in a month?

Naturally, sending one monthly newsletter costs a lot less.

Let’s say you pay $0.02 for every recipient and wish to send to about 50K subscribers. That means you will be paying $2,000 for a single monthly newsletter.

However, you don’t have to take these figures to heart. It is grossly exaggerated to establish how frequency affects your email marketing costs.

But the bottom line is that the more emails you send, the more you pay. 

• One or more products

What kind of business do you run?

Are you sending emails for a section of your business or the entire company?

Your products or services will affect the frequency of your emails, which in turn affects the cost.

According to a report, 35% of marketers send two to three emails a month, 19 % per cent send only one while 9% send up to eight emails monthly.

However, there’s no magic number; you just have to find what works for you.  

• State of your supporting marketing efforts

Email marketing alone can’t bring all your marketing goals to fruition.

But you don’t have to do all kinds of marketing campaigns. However, you will need a robust website as your foundation.

You may also use Social media, but you don’t have to use all social media platforms out there.

Having strong support from all of these tools will help you make a higher impact on your clients.

With that reliable support, you can quickly decrease your email marketing costs.

• Your current technology marketing software and knowledge base

Again, the kind of business you run is essential, but this also bears in mind the technological support you have in store.

Look at everything from how you wish to get emails to your subscribers, create data reports to how you want to use those reports to grow your business.

Think about split testing, content management, anti-spam solutions, and much more.

All of these little aspects of your entire email marketing portfolio are the key areas that will actively make it worthwhile. 

• The complexity of the campaign performance analytics and reporting 

Beyond the design and frequency of your emails, would you use dynamic content?

Will, there be custom design elements, sign-up forms, or will you send a series of emails at once to different clients at the same time.

Batch sending emails are effective email practices, but they can come at a higher cost.

You also have to think about the tests you may run from time to time, management, and optimizations of your email campaigns.  

• Delivery rate

Email marketing is all about building better customer relationships.

Depending on your industry, the different days of the week and hours strongly impact whether your customers may open those emails.

Again, not every email service providers can get your emails delivered at the same rate.

You need providers with over 98% delivery rates who have solid supports with Outlook, Gmail, and Yahoo email.

You should also bear in mind that your practices may also influence the delivery rate.

Check the best practices for using the emailing service you select so that your delivery rates will remain as high as ever.

Concluding Thoughts

Email marketing is not about sending promo emails to random people hoping that they become customers; it is communication at its finest with targeted content to targeted people.

Picking the right email marketing platform/software is essential for growing your business and increasing sales.

You must select a tool according to your budget, goals and potential customers.

For instance, running an online store might need the kind of advanced tools offered by Drip or maybe ActiveCampaign.

If you want the best in segmentation, HubSpot Marketing tool might be excellent for you.

Whatever your choice, you will begin to reap the tremendous benefits of using Email marketing software solutions.

Build an excellent email marketing strategy and watch as your business grows tremendously.

Customers will love you for the simple fact that you take time out of your busy schedules to let them know about all kinds of stuff.

Always remember, its not really about the software but more about your strategy.

Ensure that your plans are well structured so that Email Marketing will boost your brand loyalty and lead to higher returns on investments.