13 Best Email Platforms For Small Businesses (2022)

1.- ActiveCampaign – Best email service provider

ActiveCampaign is #1 on the list. Overall, it is the most flexible and powerful email marketing software since it has the most advanced automation capabilities and deliverability.

You can also do automated your marketing tasks with ActiveCampaign. Automated email marketing is one of the platform’s core features, including integration with 850+ other apps like Shopify, Facebook, WordPress, and more.

ActiveCampaign’s Predictive Actions identifies complex queries about your consumers, automatically executes actions for you, and leads them down the sales funnel. ActiveCampaign’s machine learning capability is incredible.

List segments can be automated in several ways, and you can create list triggers and migrate users based on changing email content, sales follow-ups, and more.

Workflows for email communications are great and easy to control. All of this data is synced with their built-in CRM, giving sales teams access to advance lead scoring system.

ActiveCampaign has an incredible lead scoring system. If you’re not familiar with lead scoring, it’s a method for rewarding individual email subscribers based on your chosen activities. They either enter a new automation funnel or can be contacted by your sales team once they reach a point threshold.

Here are the steps: 

• The first step is to choose your engagement metrics. They might range from an email open or click to a content download or consultation request, for example.
• After that, you apply your lead scoring rules and points based on these criteria. These should be determined by the amount of effort required as well as the potential to convert.
• Consider how many points it takes to learn that a new user just opened your email and what kind of information they’re looking for. Maybe an open email is worth two points, and a link click is worth five. Alternatively, actions like non-opens or unsubscribes are penalized. When a subscriber reaches a pre-determined point threshold,

It’s a fantastic method for nurturing email leads in the most customized manner possible by large businesses.

Another advantage is email deliverability, which ranks higher than any other platform on this list. Their emails have the lowest spam detection rates and are most likely to be delivered to Gmail and Outlook primary inboxes.

ActiveCampaign Pricing:

Pricing is based on the account features and the size of your email list. All plans come with a 14-day free trial.

Overall, ActiveCampaign is the best solution if you’re searching for the best email platform that provides email marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), and automation in one package.

Get started with ActiveCampaign today!

2.- ConvertKit – Best Email Tool For Content Creators

ConvertKit is a powerful marketing tool used by professional bloggers and authors. It comes with a 14-day free trial and packed with lots of useful features such as subscriber segmentation, auto-responders, and content upgrades.

This might be the right choice for content creators and professional bloggers who want to connect with their audience and make a living from writing.

The pricing starts at $29 per month after the 14-day free trial period has ended.

3.- GetResponse – Best Email Blast Service For Webinar Marketing

GetResponse is a simple and straightforward email marketing service that is designed ideally for small businesses. This platform offers lots of helpful features and tools to help you succeed in your marketing campaigns. For instance, the drag and drop feature lets you decide the kind of content to send for a particular group.

GetResponse is a visually appealing tools, help you create beautiful campaigns and landing pages. This increases traffic to your site, thus boosting sales.

GetResponse pricing system that starts at $15 per month. A 30-day free trial is also offered. Those not so familiar with the platform can get support through live chat, webinars, videos, and other learning materials.

4.- Zoho Campaigns – Best All- In- One Marketing Automation Suite

Zoho Campaigns not only links to Zoho’s other business products, such as Zoho CRM, Zoho Forms, Zoho books, and more. But it also works well as a standalone email marketing software for producing email campaigns and newsletters.

The design of Campaigns is intuitive and straightforward, with a few pre-designed templates to choose from. It’s excellent for beginners who want to produce appealing emails quickly. Zoho Campaigns is well worth considering.

Pricing and Plans

Zoho Campaigns offers a pay-as-you-go plan. This is similar to competitors like Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp, in which you acquire email credits and then apply them to the emails you send. 

Zoho is a cloud-based email provider that is well known for its number of features. Zoho’s prices start at $6 per 250 emails and go up to $750 per 100,000. However, there is also a plan based on subscribers rather than sends, so you pay for your list rather than the number of emails sent.

The Zoho Campaigns web dashboard is where you’ll spend the most time using this service. You can create a new campaign, build a contact list, and do more efficient tasks such as A/B testing and surveys from here. You may also set up autoresponders and sign-up forms so that subscribers can join your email promotion.

Zoho is a powerful tool for small businesses as well as big companies as well. Zoho offers so much service under one platform, which is well worth considering.

5.- AWeber – Most Popular Email Service Company

AWeber email marketing software offer marketing solutions to both small and medium-sized businesses. It is a popular platform that has been in existence for many years.

It is easy to use and contains lots of helpful features such as autoresponders, email list management, email template, and email tracking. These features give you a deep insight into how your subscribers and contact list respond to your marketing campaigns.

AWeber pricing starts at $19 per month. You save more if you choose the annual plan.

6.- Constant Contact – Great Email Platform For Small Business

Founded in 1995, Constant Contact is one of the most extensive email marketing services across the globe. It has a user-friendly interface that gives you full control over your contacts, subscribers, and calendar. 

Their email automation software allows for multiple integrations on social media platforms such as Facebook ads and online stores. You can market your small business on social media through coupons. 

Constant Contact offers helpful guides for those with little experience in marketing. This is facilitated through email and phone support, live chat, and community support. 

There is a 60-day free trial. After that, the Email Plan starts at $20 per month, and the Email Plus plan starts at $45 per month. 

7.- Mailchimp – All-in-One Email Platform For Business Owners

Mailchimp is another popular email marketing platform that offers a unique service plan, free forever. In this plan, you can send up to 12,000 emails.

However, the free plan denies you access to some essential features such as advanced segmentation and live chat support. The only support provided is through email.

Their paid plan, which starts at $10 per month, comes with email builder, contact segmentation, and tracking. Mail is delivered to subscribers according to their time zones and geographic location.

Integrating Mailchimp with other platforms such as WordPress and Shopify is simple. However, Mailchimp still does not offer multiple automation features compared to the other emailing platforms reviewed. This is true even though they recently added lots of features to their platform.

8.- MailerLite – Most Affordable Mass Email service

Mailerlite is designed to help you grow your subscribers and build stronger ties. A notable feature of MailerLite is the drag and drop editor (which is also available in the 14-day free trial plan), that allows you to create beautiful and professional campaigns and newsletters.

Other notable features, such as email automation and segmentation, make it easy to send personalized emails to the target group.

The Track Results tool aids in monitoring the performance of your campaigns through reports, surveys, and click maps. It is also possible to see the response of subscribers by location.

MailerLite pricing system starts at a free trial period, which includes up to 1,000 subscribers, allowing you to send up to 12,000 emails. For an unlimited number of emails, the plan starts at $10 per month and goes up to $50 per month.

MailerLite offers support through video tutorials and 24/7 email and lives chat support.

9.- Keap – Best Email Service For Small Business

Keap is one of the best email marketing services that simplify work for small businesses so that they can focus on creating more leads. Founded in 2001, the platform organizes your subscribers’ information in a single place so you can avoid repetitive tasks.

Keaps’ Customer Relationship Management (CRM)features include calendar, email marketing, lead scoring, mobile access, segmentation, and territory management. These tools ensure mail is delivered to the right audience.

Keap offers support through in-person, live chat, webinars, and documentation. The paid plan starts at $79 per month and gives you access to all the advanced features.

10.- SendinBlue – Best Bulk Email Service For Beginners

SendinBlue is simple and easy to use and one of the best email newsletter services that are rapidly gaining popularity in Europe. Even beginners with little experience in marketing can comfortably use the platform.

Their simple automation tools help you create professional and beautiful campaigns, create and monitor workflows, send bulk emails, and segment customers. SendinBlue Al algorithms ensure excellent mail delivery rates.

The free plan includes up to 300 emails per day, but the emails will be delivered with their logo. The Lite plan starts at $25 per month and goes up to $66 per month for the Premium plan, which allows you to send up to 120,000 emails per month. Recently, there were additional advanced features to the premium plan, such as live chat, Facebook ads, and landing page builder.

You can easily integrate your WordPress site to the bulk email marketing service offered by SendinBlue as a separate feature. You might find this feature helpful if you own a large website and want to send emails based on specific content.

11.- Drip – Best Email Marketing Automation Tools

Drip offers powerful yet straightforward automation tools for bloggers, startups, and digital marketers. Drip can be seamlessly integrated into other platforms, thus making it easy to create more leads.
Tools designed to help you reach more customers include quick email segmenting, workflow builder, signup forms, and list groups.

Drips’ smart eCommerce marketing automation is a feature that lets you send bulk emails without losing your personal touch.

Drip email pricing starts from $49 per month, even though there is a free trial. Support options include webinars, free guides, live chat support, and documentation.

12.- SendPulse – Multi-Channel Marketing Automation Platform

SendPulse is a free email service that was just established in 2015 and has had a lot of excellent recent reviews. The free mail plan from SendPulse is quite generous, allowing for a mailing list of up to 2,500 people and 15,000 emails each month.

Premium accounts start at $9.85 per month ($7.88 if paid annually), which removes all limits. They also offer a pay-as-you-go plan for 10,000 emails for $32 (per email) or a monthly pay-per-use plan with 20,000 emails for $120 ($0.0012 per email).

Although the basic plan offers a high maximum amount of emails sent, certain users have reported slower performance and limited template choices. Advanced features such as SMS workflows and push notifications to many devices, on the other hand, make up for any performance problems.

13.- Mailjet – Great For Larger Lists

Mailjet is a Paris-based email marketing company that was founded in 2010. With a name like Mailjet, you’d expect lightning-fast email services – and they do provide that to specific clients.

With their free plan, you can send as many emails as you want, which includes 6,000 emails every month or 200 new email addresses every day for unlimited people. These characteristics are effective if you have an extensive list but send few unlimited emails each day.

You can buy UNLIMITED emails from SendGrid for $9.65/month with unrestricted daily send limits, 24/7 support, and the ability to send up to 30,000 emails per month.

The main disadvantage is that some of their features, such as marketing software and A/B testing tools, are behind a premium paywall.
Mailjet is a fantastic option for huge lists since it limits list size and has a simple and user-friendly interface.

What Are the Benefits of Email Marketing Platforms?

The most effective method to create a devoted following, generate income, and discover individuals where they hang out, is through email marketing.

When users join your email list, they’ve expressed an interest in your business and are ready to receive your communications. Email is a natural progression of word-of-mouth communication since 74% of purchasers believe it impacts their purchasing decisions.

In addition, email is the third most powerful source of information for B2B audiences, behind only personal workplace connections and industry thought leaders’ recommendations.

You may cost-effectively deliver messages at scale, chat to warm leads without cold email outreach, and avoid paying a fee outside of your monthly subscription if you use an excellent email platform service.

Here are some of the advantages of using an email marketing platform or service:

• Email is one of the many forms of multi-channel marketing that increases customer loyalty and brand recognition.
• Email marketing is a time-saving, cost-effective method with a demonstrated return on investment (every dollar spent may result in a $44 return on investment).
• Ease of use and pre-designed email templates make it simple to put together beautiful and mobile-friendly emails.
• You contact your customers where they are – in their inbox.
• Personalization allows marketers to connect with their target audience and deliver valuable, timely, and dynamic content – 74 percent of marketers say personalization increases customer interaction.
• Automated emails such as abandoned cart notifications, welcome emails, and post-purchase communications allow you to develop new revenue quickly with little effort or time.
• There are several different email marketing alternatives available, and if you’re a small firm or a large corporation, there are plenty of simple tools accessible.

How Does Email Marketing Software Work?

Email marketing software (also known as e-mail marketing) delivers mass email communications to your list of subscribers through the internet. This approach allows you to acquire new consumers better, build connections, and encourage client loyalty.

With email marketing campaigns, You can quickly reach your target audience where they are without spending money on Google or Facebook advertising.

Here are a few essential features of the best email marketing software:

1.- List segmentation – The more time your audience spends reading your email list, the more information you collect, including open rates, interests, purchase history, and other information. And from there, you can choose which list you want to put them in.

2.- Automation – The ability to send email sequences when a person joins your mailing list or visits your website. These could be anything from purchasing goods to removing their shopping cart.

3.- Advanced features – Keep an eye out for more exciting elements to include in your campaigns, such as polls, contests, coupons, and events.

4.- Custom email templates – Drag-and-drop email campaigns remove the code requirements from email marketing, allowing you to spend more time on adding content and pictures to your emails.

5.- Dynamic content – You may modify your emails with merge tags to customize them for each member of your email list, depending on their settings.

6.- Analytics dashboard – The best strategy to enhance your email campaign is to read through your analytics, open rates, click-through rates, purchases, and more.

What Are Some Email Marketing Best Practices?

Writing an email and sending it to a list of people isn’t as simple as it sounds. There are several best practices for using email marketing, as well as industry targets to exceed.

Here are some of the most critical email marketing best practices to follow this year:

1.- Use a Welcome Email Series for New Subscribers.

The subscription sequence in an email database is where you want to apply the most effective automation. Most of the time, it’s used in a series of emails that welcome new subscribers to the list. When new consumers sign up for your list, these free autoresponder emails are sent automatically.

You can send these emails on a specific day, such as day one, day three, day five, or even day ten. Only you know the optimum frequency for these emails based on your company’s objectives.

For example, an e-commerce business may provide a 10% discount on the first welcome email. They can continue to tell their brand narrative, product catalog, and social media accounts in emails 2 and 3. A welcome email series is wonderful since it runs automatically, connects with your list, and cultivates clients from prospects.

2.- Write Compelling Subject Lines.

The subject line for your email should be short, intriguing, and create a sense of urgency while yet delivering all the necessary information so that the recipient knows what they’re receiving. Isn’t it perplexing? Don’t worry; it’s not complicated.

Email marketers should aim for a subject line length of 30-50 characters. They should cut through the clutter and encourage people to take action. Numbers, symbols, well-conceived emojis, and innovative special offers and discounts can all improve your open rates.

3.- Do Not Use Purchased Email Lists.

Email marketing is so successful because people desire to be connected with your business and hear from you. Buying email lists infringes on their implicit trust in you by flooding their inboxes with unwanted material.

The guidelines are straightforward; however, the penalties for not following them are quite severe. According to Keap (formerly Infusionsoft), you may be fined up to $16,000 per incorrect email under the CAN-SPAM Act if you don’t follow the rules.

The open rate is essential for the success of your email campaigns. If you’re interacting with a purchased list, you’ll almost certainly have terrible open rates, spam complaints, and even be blacklisted.

It’s worth noting that, with the recent General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) implementation, buying email lists is never a good idea. To maintain your contacts up to date, you should also clean your email list on a regular basis.

4.- Personalize Content with Merge Tags.

A more personal approach is to address your emails to “Dear {first name},” rather than simply “Member.” Any data you gather from your email subscribers should be used to customize the material they receive.

A merge tag may fire if the item is in a column next to their email address in a CSV file. A merge tag is a piece of ESP-specific code that allows you to incorporate unique elements of user data from your email list into your emails.

The most frequent merge tags at an email marketer’s disposal are first and last names. In addition, you may utilize other cards such as business name, date of the previous visit, number of emails opened, goods purchased, or survey responses.

Creating your email more personal is a great place to start building your email by using merge tags in your initial greeting.

Most Frequently Asked Email Marketing Questions.

Can I Do Email Marketing for Free?

• Yes, you can do email marketing with a free email marketing platform like convertKit if you have a small list size. For example, convertKit offers free plans where you can manage up to 1,000 subscribers, create unlimited landing pages & forms, send email broadcasts, and sell digital products & subscriptions.

However, other well-known software has a higher deliverability rate, more unique designs, and more automation capabilities. You get what you pay for.

What Are the Types of Email Marketing? (Yes, You Can Send Three Different Sorts Of Emails To Your List:

1. Newsletters and marketing emails are two examples of email that is sent to your list regularly. These are emails that provide current information, news, and incentives to your subscribers.
2. Behavioral emails are those that are triggered by subscriber behavior, such as welcome emails when a user signs up for your list, upsell/cross-sell messages, post-purchase review messages, re-engagement messages, or free trial expiration notifications.
3. Transactional emails are those that inform a recipient about a transaction or a service. These emails might be things like order confirmation emails, receipts, invoices, and shipping confirmations.

How Do You Do Email Marketing?

To get started with email marketing, you must follow these steps:

1. Select one of the email service providers from this list and sign up for their free or paid service.
2. Gather contact information by using opt-in forms to build your email list.
3. Create your first set of email templates.
4. Create a series of welcome emails.
5. To guarantee that your material is free of mistakes, use one of the best grammar checkers.
6. To enhance open rates, A/B test your subject lines.
7. Examine your email on the platform to be sure it looks good on all devices.
8. Schedule your email to out at the best times of the day and week.
9. Always Review your email analytics to increase engagement.

When is the Best Time to Send an Email?

The timing of your email sends on your customer data and your business type. For example, Tuesdays and Wednesdays tend to have the best engagement, with more people apt to open, read, and click your emails. Also, 8 am, and 4 pm tend to be the best times of the day to send email messages.

How Do You Optimize Email Campaigns?

Always test one variable at a time to learn how your data responds. For example, you can try the time of day, email subject lines, customer segment, email content, imagery, and call-to-action.

To boost your emails’ engagement, conduct A/B testing and get insight into analytics reports to improve your results.

Take note of the changes in your reports, view how they impact your open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, and profits once you’ve made a hypothesis about what to test.