Businesses have faced challenges especially as they do not own the channels through which they want to reach customers. This results in the ground beneath them shifting without a warning. Then again, these businesses have a glimmer of hope: email marketing comes in handy in such situations.
But there is some good news and a glimmer of hope, too. An entire ecosystem of free tools in email marketing, plus the best email marketing service provider chosen by experts, will be revealed as well. These tools have the features businesses need to create their email marketing systems.
What factors help create the best email marketing service?
Email marketing apps and services loaded with features (plus their free counterparts) are far from mutually exclusive. There are many options that provide flexible subscriber and send thresholds, along with strong features businesses desire without a price.
Those who recently got started with free marketing tools can certainly try out all present options before they opt to sign to a paid plan. The latter will provide them a wide array of choices and options to choose from. Here are some factors to examine before choosing the best email marketing service provider for their requirements:
- The number of subscribers and sends can be present without a price tag. There are some email marketing platforms and service providers that are quite generous in this regard. They provide a lot of free email sends each month. Some others include some low caps (meaning features at low prices), but it indicates that such platforms are not free for long.
- When it comes to customization and email templates, no user has to begin from scratch. Some providers have the best services and provide users with pre-designed professional templates to begin with. This helps many start their work without hesitation. In case there are no free templates, the email editor can shine through its user-friendly nature and helpful customer support.
- When it comes to automation and audience segmenting, success is in the ability to deliver to the right people the right email, and that too at the right time. Growing businesses require capable features for audience segmentation and automation either without a price or at a bonus pricing option.
- When businesses start their email marketing work for free, they can also grow out of it. Some of the best free email marketing platforms and tools are scalable and can grow with the business when necessary. They may demand a reasonable payment for additional services, but it goes quite well with businesses that are growing.
- Some platforms provide full email marketing features. They are also capable apps that are designed for a particular kind of email (newsletters, transactional emails). The focus here will be on apps with complete features that can be used across the entire email marketing operation.
After narrowing down the list based on that criteria, here are some factors that have finalized the contenders that provide worthwhile email marketing services:
- Making the account and completing the onboarding offered.
- Looking at core features of each service provider, like a drag and drop editor, template library, and the overall flow of campaign creation.
- Testing out additional features such as automation, segmenting customers, and using alternate editors (HTML, Plain Text) as well as determining any applicable limits for the features on the free plan.
- Testing niche features for eCommerce, Universal Branding, Wider Marketing Automation, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and plugins plus a host of other tools.
- The expenses for each app scale up as the free plan is outgrown and businesses go for paid plans.
Business owners, marketers, and testers from a recognized mobile app development company alike considered the ease of use for primary and secondary features. Why? Because the features available today (plus freely available features) should be easy to use.
Some of the best email marketing service providers worth using
MailerLite
| Pros | Cons |
| Already built-in content blocks make email creation very quick. | It however has no email templates present in the free plan. |
| Generous allotments for both automation and segmentation. | Moreover, emails cannot be sent from a Gmail ID. |
| Affordable upgrades for limitless users |
MailerLite does not have any pre-made templates to offer in its free newsletter service. Yet the dynamic and pre-designed content blocks it provides more than make up in face of the absence of templates.
MailerLite has blocks that can highlight multiple articles, apps, RSS lists, products, events, videos, and vice versa. Experienced email marketers can make quick work when it comes to making new campaigns and templates.
Brevo
| Pros | Cons |
| Its email automation mechanism is already built and objective-oriented. | It has a strict 300 emails per day sending limit. |
| It provides generous automation limits on the free plan. | |
| It also has a wide range of features for marketing and sales. |
Those who are looking for a single tool to manage all their requirements for marketing and sales then they can certainly use Bravo. They were previously known as SendinBlue. Ever since their rebrand, they have added many new features, especially:
- A customer relationship management (CRM) system with full features.
- Centralized solutions managing sales meetings, sales calls, and chat.
- Streamlined deal tracker.
The app still offers a wide array of automation flows and their templates. Companies can choose their workflow based on their goals for the following:
- Build relationships.
- Grow revenue.
- Increase Traffic.
- Improve engagement.
Kit
| Pros | Cons |
| It has a very generous subscriber and send allowance system. | Its editor is not advanced. |
| It is built specifically for promoting and selling digital products. |
Kit was formerly known as ConvertKit and is known to offer the best free plans in subscriber and send allowances. It offers unlimited sends to up to 10,000 subscribers.
It started as a newsletter app and has now grown into an email marketing tool that is more than capable. Kit is made for creators desiring to monetize their businesses. The app has many features to help promote and sell digital products, content, and subscriptions with ease.
Sender
| Pros | Cons |
| The platform has very generous limits for subscribers and sending. | It has a very clunky drag and drop editor. |
| It provides complete access to automation and segmentation. | |
| It has affordable upgrade price packages. |
Companies looking to get the best value for money can opt for Sender. The tool is quite generous because its free plan includes 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails per month. It also provides full access to more advanced features especially automation and audience segmentations.
Sender’s plans stand out especially when most email marketing platforms have started curtailing their free services.
Loops
| Pros | Cons |
| The free plan has all features included. | It only has a rich text editor. |
| It has many already built automation templates. | It has plain text templates. |
| It is scalable and upgradable too. |
Loops is an email marketing app built solely on automation. The app calls its automated workflows ‘loops’ which hence became its name. It hardly has limits even on the free plan.
SaaS companies find Loops quite suitable thanks to its features. It has around 17 pre-built loops to choose from and users can make good work of creating automations for common subscription uses cases especially:
- Welcoming new users (paid).
- Inviting users to upgrade their plans.
- Encouraging engagement among users.
Conclusion
Two of the aforementioned email marketing service providers thankfully provide a lot of generous features for free. The rest are paid but their prices are optimized and give subscribers the best features too. Hence, no business should shy away from using any of the aforementioned email marketing service providers.