How To Find the Best Email Marketing Service

Why use special tools for email marketing

Email marketing services, or ESPs are providers that help you create, target, and deliver messages to your audience. These messages can be of different types: newsletters, promotional and lead-nurturing emails, transactional emails, etc.

Can you do the same on your own? Sometimes, business people wonder whether their in-house developers can build a mailing system from scratch or even whether they can send campaigns from their Gmail accounts. Technically, yes. We have an article with instructions on how to send mass emails in Gmail and Outlook. And your developers can create a piece of software for sending emails to a list of contacts. So it looks like it’s enough.

You can try sending emails manually from a free service, but:

• You won’t know who opened them or clicked links and who didn’t.
• Your messages will look either extremely minimalistic or strange.
• You’ll be having a hard time reaching everyone, if at all. Your emails will most likely end up in spam folders and you won’t know it either.
• You will have to somehow manage unsubscriptions yourself (mostly by receiving angry feedback).
• You can make mistakes like flashing your whole list to everyone in it.

As for the idea of creating a mailing system with the help of a developer, then this option is not free even if you have someone on board — developer salaries are high. Plus, it will be difficult to create a beautiful email template with product cards, banners, and buttons from zero so you’ll have to have someone for this too.

Meanwhile, email marketing services provide:

• Ease of use — ESPs spend years improving their products’ usability and you can feel it. No need to install an app — everything is accessible on a website.
• Cost-effectiveness — email marketing itself has a very cost-effective ROI of $36 and other benefits. But only when done professionally.
• Much better deliverability — email marketing services are designed for mass mailings. Their specialists are constantly working to ensure that your emails are avoiding the spam folder.
• Detailed analytics — you’ll be able to track opens, clicks, unsubscribers, and other metrics to fine-tune your email strategy.
• Flexibility — it’s easy to switch to another email service provider. You won’t lose any contacts or other valuable data.
• No risks — some of the best email marketing services offer free plans or trials. So you can explore the ESP’s features before committing to a subscription.

In other words, you need a whole group of specialists, whereas email marketing services let you have it all in one place. No need for help from a developer or even a designer (more on that next).

Let’s look in more detail at what features they are likely to have in common.

Standard email marketing services’ features

Business tasks are different but there’s something you cannot live without if you use an email marketing service. Below is the list of indispensables — check whether the platform of your choice has it all.

Easy email creation (with templates!)

You don’t need to know HTML and recruit someone to design an email if you use an email marketing service. ESPs have block editors (email builders) — tools that let you simply drag and drop the necessary blocks onto an email template for further editing. You build your message piece by piece, like this:

Block editors are very useful for both small and large businesses. Small businesses rarely have specialists whose sole job is to create emails. Large companies benefit from them too: Even if they send a lot of emails, it’s much easier to create simple templates in a block editor with the help of one person and outsource the complex designs.

What matters: When choosing an ESP, sign up for a free account and check how convenient the block editor is and what its capabilities are. Email builders are similar but can vary in functions.

Make sure that it supports responsive layouts for subscribers who like to browse their inboxes on smartphones and whether an ESP has ready-made templates that you can use right in the editor.

Bulk emails

Free email services like Gmail and Yahoo are not designed for bulk emails. They are nothing like ESPs in terms of deliverability speed, volume, and sender reputation (on which, by the way, it largely depends on whether a message will end up in spam).

Email marketing services have everything: volumes, speed, reputation, analytics, the ability to send emails at a specified time, set up automatic email chains, and use merge tags to personalize emails. Add to that support that tries to make sure that everything is in order with your bulk mailing.

What matters: When sending mass mailings, especially to a base of hundreds of addresses, the speed is important — the number of emails that a service is able to send in an hour. It varies for different services: Some can send 30 thousand emails per hour, others — 10 million or more. The weight of an email also matters — it’ll take an equal amount of time to send a lot of light messages and a few heavy ones.

However, it’s difficult to estimate the delivery rate using free plans, since they are often limited. To find out this information, contact the support and they’ll tell you how many of your messages a service can send.

Easy management of contact lists

In any email service, you can import a list of email addresses from a file or add contacts manually. If a file contains certain types of information like names or birth dates, it will be added to the table automatically under the corresponding columns:

Also with the help of email services, you can create built-in and pop-up subscription forms to collect emails with double opt-in functionality — a type of subscription, which implies extra confirmation.

In addition to collecting and importing, email lists need constant care removing abandoned addresses and spam traps, monitoring user activity, and conducting re-engagement campaigns. All this is much easier to do with the help of built-in email service tools.

What matters: Don’t try to use purchased lists or contacts collected from open sources without the consent of their owners. Mailing to such addresses is not only ineffective but illegal — most likely, you will not even be able to go through with it. Email services take good care of their IPs and will block any mailing to a suspicious list. If you don’t know how to find subscribers, read our guide on email list building.

Automation

Email marketing automation is a process when the sending of an email or chain of emails is triggered by some user action. A marketer sets it up once and then a system does everything for them. It saves a lot of time and effort and increases efficiency.

One of the most simple and popular examples of automation in email marketing is welcome emails:

There are also confirmation emails, abandoned cart emails, recommendations, transactional emails like payment and delivery notifications. More complex examples include auto sales funnels that guide clients from the moment they visit a website to purchasing.

What matters: It’s great when an ESP lets you set up various triggers (by clicking on a link, by day of the week, by date), check the analytics of each individual email and the entire chain as a whole, change custom fields, etc.

You can also look for so-called recipes or templates — these are pre-made automations for popular marketing occasions. It’s easier to start with basic automation templates and go from there.

Segmentation

Segmentation is one of the most used features in email marketing, so it’s a must. By using segmentation, you can select a specific audience from your contact list and send them a targeted message.

All mailing services have a basic set of contact fields:

• Email
• Phone number
• Name
• City

In addition to the main fields, you can create your own fields for storing data, like gender:

There are also more complex segmentation parameters, for example, RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary value) analysis. It is an approach that combines the recency of purchases, their frequency, and the average check.

What matters: Segmentation is the basis of almost any personalization technique. In combination, they make messages relevant to subscriber groups and individuals. And that, in turn, drives engagement and sales. To be useful, your email service provider of choice should offer sophisticated segmentation and personalization functionality.

Tracking the performance

Marketing without analytics is like a lottery with random luck. With the help of analytics, you can compare the effectiveness of your delivered campaigns, determine the most successful days and periods for launching the next ones.

By default, in all mailing services, you can see:

• The number of emails sent and delivered.
• How many emails were opened.
• How many subscribers went to the website from emails.
• The number of spam complaints and unsubscriptions.

Besides these basic parameters, there are other analytics that an ESP can provide. A click map that shows where your readers clicked on, campaign dynamics over time, joint reports to compare different emails, etc. 

Merge tags

Merge tags are special variables in parentheses in email subject lines or bodies that get replaced with certain information. The simplest and most popular type of merge tags is substituting the {name} tag with a person’s name:

Marge tags can also be for cities, dates of birth, phone numbers, promo code numbers, links, and more. You can use both system email merge tags that an ESP already has available or create your own.

Unsubscribe management

All mailing services automatically add an unsubscribe link to emails, which can unsubscribe a user in one click. Without this link, emails will end up in spam and you’ll have a lot of spam complaints.

Email marketing services’ features that can vary

Now let’s take a look at the features that may differ. Where comparisons are possible, we will take Selzy, GetResponse, MailerLite, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, and Sender. These are among the best email marketing tools out there, and for a reason.

Deliverability

Deliverability measures the number of emails that get in the inbox instead of spam folders and elsewhere. It’s a complex metric that relies on many indicators. It depends on the marketer more than on the service they chose. All popular mailing services monitor the overall deliverability and the factors that depend on them. The rest of the responsibility lies on the marketer, i.e. what, how, and to whom they send. Although there are studies that say that deliverability varies from service to service.

To be less dependent on the mailing service, we advise you to:

• Use dedicated IP addresses.
• Set up email authentication.

Convenience and clarity of the interface

In most reviews about email marketing tools, you can find references to how “clear” or “confusing” they are. Sometimes it happens that one service is universally considered clear, while another is more complex.

The thing is, the interface convenience is a purely subjective factor. Plus, it depends on the experience of a particular marketer. A beginner will find any service complicated while an experienced marketer will figure it out much faster.

Want to find out whose interface is clearer? Sign up for a few and try it yourself.

Ease of registration

In fact, this parameter can also play a role in choosing the best email marketing software. Let’s compare and arrange services from the one with the simplest registration to more complex ones.

* MailerLite’s managers manually confirm every user before they can start mailing. They say that all the information from the organization address and further on is not required in all cases but users are advised to fill in the form to get the confirmation done quicker.

A cluttered registration process can discourage. If you are looking for a quick start, opt for a service that only requires email verification to access the workspace.

Ease of learning

Email marketing is constantly evolving with trends and possibilities, laws, and requirements. To become a specialist, a marketer needs to be in the know. Here’s where ESPs’ knowledge bases, video tutorials, and blog articles come in handy.

All services that we took as an example have knowledge bases with instructions on how to use their products and blogs with articles on email marketing best practices. Although they are alike, they vary in extensity, details, and structure. Some feature forums, others — video instructions, and even separate courses on email marketing in general or the usage of a particular email marketing software.

Support

The speed and quality of support responses are some of the main criteria for choosing a service, especially for novice specialists. It’s vital for them to quickly find answers and understand the functionality of their new ESP.

What support can help you with:

• Capabilities of the service
• Emails got into spam
• Campaigns were rejected
• There’s a bug
• Upgrades

Good support:

• Is available 24/7.
• Has different channels: chat, email, phone.

*Premium plan only.

**No free plan, free trial only.

If English isn’t your preferred language of communication, check the ESP’s support languages. Some of the services provide email and/or chat support in Portuguese, French, Spanish, etc.

Availability of a free plan

Free plans help to find out which service is more convenient to work with. But the conditions are different:

In short: most of the email service providers have free plans except for ActiveCampaign. Free plans are usually limited in terms of features.

Pricing plans

We recommend using only paid plans for your regular mailings for better conversions.

As your email list grows, you’ll have to switch to the paid plans anyway, plus, some of the functionality is limited. For example, they often skimp on automation and A/B testing features, support is less prompt, and deliverability can be lower if you don’t set authentication.

Apart from the contact number, different payment plans can include different features. For example, if you have 5,000 subscribers, you can choose one of the three Selzy paid plans. The Light is the most affordable and includes all the service’s functions. The Standard one adds an Anti-spam helper and chatbots, and the Premium one provides full campaign management, deliverability tips, and a subject line assistant. 

In the table below we gathered the lowest possible prices for each service based on the number of contacts.

*Billed annually

**For 1,500 subscribers

*** Many email marketing platforms provide a “pay as you go” option. It is not a subscription with a monthly rate. Instead, it is an opportunity to pay for each email sent. Sometimes you can also buy credits for a specific number of emails. If you do not plan to send emails regularly, choose a service that has this payment plan.

**** Sender prices do not include VAT.

Availability of ready-made integrations

All email marketing platforms have some integrations available, but the specifics can be different. Direct integrations are better than integrations using third-party services because:

• It’s quicker.
• The data is more secure.
• It’s more reliable and protected from data loss.

We recommend you simply check whether a service has ready-made integrations with the tools that you are already using, for example, if you work with a specific CRM or CMS.

If your tools or tasks are non-standard, the developers can always create custom integrations with the help of the open API. It’s the technology that lets you integrate any tool into any email marketing platform.

The number of ready-made email templates

You can also upload your HTML template if you want a custom email and you have the resources for a designer or know how to HTML yourself.

Apart from the sheer number of templates you should also consider customization. In Selzy, for example, you can freely move and change parts of a template to make it more personal and on-brand. That’s why truly the number of templates in Selzy — and other services that allow customization — is infinite.

AI features

Arguably one of the most exciting innovations in modern technology, AI has affected email marketing just like any other industry. If you are looking for tools that are future-proof, research the AI features in ESPs. 

Different services offer AI for different purposes. In Selzy, for example, there is an AI email assistant for email and image generation, multilingual copy creation, and analysis. Besides these, common AI features in ESPs include copy translation, subject line and sending time optimization, personalization, and more. 

Check out our articles on AI in digital marketing to learn how you can use the technology.

Best-rated email marketing services in 2024

Now let’s run through the shortlist of some of the best email marketing tools and see what they are good at and what their clients wish to have. We have chosen 6 of the best email marketing services and analyzed their benefits and drawbacks. Below you’ll find the essence of tens of user reviews about platform complexities and recommendations for marketers in some particular industries.

Selzy

While Selzy is relatively new to the US market, it has over a decade of expertise and has managed to gain a fanbase, considerable reputation, and lots of experience in the meantime.

What’s good

➕ In terms of functionality, Selzy has the entire basic set, including a built-in constructor for email templates and subscription forms, and 40+ free templates to explore. It features a convenient block editor, clear even for first-timers. Selzy also offers chatbots as an additional communication channel and a set of AI features. 

➕ To make your messages stand out and be the perfect showcase of your products, you can add timers, stickers, GIFs, free stock images or generate something tailor-made with AI — without leaving the editor. You can use the AI assistant to write, proofread, and optimize your email copy.

➕ Selzy’s big selling point is its price. It has all the features of a standard ESP, starting at $7 per month.

➕ If you exceed plan limits, the service doesn’t block your mailings — you simply pay extra for the excess. It’s very convenient when working with companies that have lengthy approvals for invoice payments.

➕ In their reviews, Selzy’s clients often mention the convenience of its interface. They stress its thoughtful design and details that make life easier like a button that quickly creates a list or re-sends a campaign to subscribers who haven’t read it the first time.

➕ The service has a very fast delivery which is crucial for a niche like online education where invitations to webinars should arrive the minute they are supposed to. You’ll also see the statistics of a campaign right away. The numbers will be updated in real-time.

➕ One of Selzy’s stellar features is the support that’s fast and helpful 24/7, ready to explain what and how you can do. The support team doesn’t use scripts but tries to understand the essence of the problem and offer several solutions. So even if you didn’t find a dedicated function, you can get the job done in other, often easier, ways. You can also inform the support that you need something specific and they will forward your proposal to the development team.

➕ There’s also the Help Center that stores the information on the service. Sometimes, clients find it easier to get answers to their questions there. 

➕ What’s more, Selzy’s blog has helpful articles on themes like email marketing content and A/B testing as well as topical discussions on AI and fun tests.

What to improve

➖ Although many users like a visual constructor for the automatic mailing chain, they note that automation needs some further work.

➖ For example, some of them find trigger mailings analytics insufficient and a bit superficial. They lack detailed work with periods that would be available by default and in-depth analytics for separate emails in a chain.

➖ Other users would like to have a separate page for segmentation to combine and form groups of segmented lists.

What it’s for

Selzy is great for marketers who want to quickly send emails without overpaying for unnecessary bells and whistles and quickly start mailing from scratch. Thanks to its interface and essential email marketing features, the service suits beginners, as well as those who have a tried and true way of doing things. 

Selzy is a great choice for small businesses that may not have an email marketing department. Thanks to generative AI and helpful support, campaigns can be made in mere minutes. Plus, you can start for free and switch to a paid plan when you grow your subscriber base.

It’s not specifically designed for e-commerce as some of the other services are, but it works especially well for content newsletters, info business, automatic funnels, and irregular campaigns.

Mailchimp

What’s good

➕ Mailchimp has long been the buzzword for email marketing. Clients praise it for its intuitive interface, the variety of free templates and forms that you also customize, quality tutorials, and many integrations.

➕ It’s a streamlined, all-in-one platform with simple navigation. It’s easy to create and edit email templates, landing pages and websites, subscription forms, and multichannel designs for branding.

➕ All in all, using Mailchimp lands you with email campaigns and other marketing assets that are simply done but look modern and professional.

What to improve

➖ Although Mailchimp’s clients note the quality of its support, those of them using the free plan say that it’s not the same for them with support becoming virtually non-existent after the first month.

➖ The free plan also lacks automated emails. It can be a problem if a business owner doesn’t know whether email marketing will work in their case and with their audience, especially with an old list. Some small companies may get disappointed in email marketing in general.

➖ Mailchimp is also one of the most expensive services on the list which is bad for small to medium businesses. So, if you have a ton of subscribers, the price becomes steep very fast.

➖ Clients also wish that Mailchimp’s reports were more customizable and easier to understand for non-marketing people.

➖ Their email builder is good but a bit behind in development and lacks certain flexibility.

What it’s for

Mailchimp is great for newbies in email marketing and marketers who want to have it all in one place — it’s easy to understand what it’s all about.

GetResponse

What’s good

➕ GetResponse is often compared to a Swiss army knife. In addition to the email marketing platform, they have other features like marketing automation, forms, landing pages, and lead funnels.

➕ It’s easy to set up and get started with an interface that’s more complex than Selzy’s or MailerLite’s but poses no problem for an experienced marketer. There’s the largest selection of email templates, so you can save on the designer.

➕ Many users like the Perfect Timing feature that analyzes user activity and sends emails individually according to time zones and user peak hours to get into those slots when they are most likely to open and click emails. It really increases the open rate.

➕ GetResponse’s analytics is comprehensive and nicely visualized.

➕ They have an advanced automation module in terms of a set of blocks and filters (there’s an “out of the box” abandoned cart feature, for example). The editor allows you to build a visual automated email chain, quickly make adjustments, and see how contacts move along it.

➕ GetResponse features powerful dynamic content and APIs, including a set of methods tailored for e-commerce and a separate API for transactional messages.

➕ They have a lot of in-depth training on email marketing, including the courses that you can complete for the certificate.

What to improve

➖ Payment is confusing. GetResponse doesn’t refund its clients even when there’s an error on its end and has an ambiguous payment policy in general that sometimes gets negative reviews from confused clients.

➖ Their tutorials can be a little invasive at first and customer service is slower for clients based outside of the EU, but it’s offset by the help docs being really good for troubleshooting.

➖ A portion of marketers says that they’ve experienced deliverability issues more than with the majority of other ESPs which is backed by the deliverability survey by EmailToolTester.

➖ Although GetResponse is often praised for its automation features, most of the capabilities are only present in the top-tier pricing plans.

What it’s for

GetResponse is a good fit for marketers looking for a solid, versatile tool with the latest features that’s more than just an email marketing platform. It’s great for the service sector, EdTech, info business, automatic funnels, and in most cases, e-commerce.

MailerLite

What’s good

➕ “Lite” in their name speaks for itself. Considering that MailerLite is the simplest and easiest ESP on the list to work with, it’s great for beginners. In March 2022, the service undertook a huge upgrade and continues to develop new features.

➕ It has the most intuitive and approachable interface with a smooth UI and UX, an enjoyable email builder where you really have to try hard to break something. You can adjust colors, add photos and videos, and brand your email campaigns. Plus, there is a large gallery of all types of content blocks you may need.

➕ Most users also highlight a handy and straightforward interface for running A/B tests.

➕ The service has a very strict anti-spam policy, making sure that your domain is gradually warmed up (they don’t allow you to send to a large database at once).

➕ Marketers also like that almost all MailerLite’s features are included in every account level, so you don’t need a huge list to be able to gain access to premium services.

What to improve

➖ MailerLite’s simplicity has a downside. When your list grows beyond 100k, you might want to use a more robust system to perform sophisticated actions that the service lacks. For example, their analytics, segmentation, and automation features are too basic for large companies with that level of resources.

➖ Support is prompt and proper but may lack deeper knowledge of the technical aspects and is not as caring as Selzy’s, for example. 

➖ Some users note the smaller amount of templates and customization limitations. For example, it’s not possible to change the width of a button in a mobile version of the email. 

➖ In MailerLite, users can’t update a subscriber’s email address. 

What it’s for

MailerLite is designed for small and medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs. There’s nothing superfluous, everything is simple. Marketers have a great experience using it for one-off mailings.

ActiveCampaign

What’s good

➕  ActiveCampaign focuses on automation so it’s the list’s frontrunner in this respect. They do everything to let you spend no more time on operational tasks than necessary and focus on other marketing issues. You can automate everything by tracking any subscriber action and using the built-in CRM system even if your task requires a complex if/when/then logic. There are ready-to-use automation recipes specific to different industries and businesses. In short, with enough knowledge of ActiveCampaign’s capabilities, you can program funnels of ANY complexity.

➕ ActiveCampaign’s users are pleased with the clear and multifunctional editor, and with a good UX in general.

➕ It’s easy to integrate with other platforms and tools.

➕ ActiveCampaign is flexible — there are usually several ways to do nearly everything you’d ever want to do with marketing automation, integrations, and email marketing.

What to improve

➖ In contrast to MailerLite, ActiveCampaign is great with all things complex and technical but has a more complicated interface and somewhat confusing UX/UI that takes some getting used to.

➖ Users note that the reports are lacking: There is no real-time data, some information is missing, etc.

➖ ActiveCampaign has stiff prices that are restrictive to small and even medium businesses. 

➖ Some marketers note occasional bugs — for example, segmentation functions becoming limited for some unknown reason.

What it’s for

ActiveCampaign is well-suited for large companies and complex projects that involve a lot of data. Marketers use it for automated and manual mailings that require a lot of segments and separate audiences.

Sender

What’s good

➕ Email & SMS automation — easy setup with just a few clicks, and you can use the most effective omnichannel marketing automation for the best results.

➕ Smart segmentation & personalization — super important. When it comes to sending a message, you don’t want to send the same message to all. That’s where segmentation comes in — segment your audience and send the right message to the right people with a personal touch.

➕ Intuitive interface & high email deliverability. Sender’s IT crew constantly ensures that your emails avoid the spam folder.

➕ Easy-to-use drag & drop email builder & free pre-made email templates. You won’t need any HTML or design knowledge yet will create the best-looking emails.

➕ Popups & forms for collecting quality leads.

➕ Free forever plan available with all features and even 15,000 emails/month to up to 2,500 subscribers.

What to improve

➖ Lack of Sender integrations with other SAAS software for e-commerce business.

➖ It’s a bit slower than the rest of the ESPs, taking more time to do even basic things like loading a campaign or importing a large contact list.

➖ You cannot send the test emails to a list (just to one email address). So if you’d like to send a test email to a list of receivers, you won’t be able to. At least for now.

What it’s for

If you’re looking for an email & SMS marketing tool for your business growth — look no further. Sender is the best email marketing software for e-commerce businesses that want to scale. Marketing automation, smart segmentation & personalization, popups & forms, and much more — even with a free forever plan.

Finding the right thing for YOU

Let’s sum up.

Shout-out to the experts who helped to write this article:

• Mariia Lo — Email Marketer and the Founder of email marketing agency Emailix

• Yuliana Kalaytanova — Director of Marketing at Bershena Agency (in Russian)

• Yevhen Fesiuk — Email Marketing Specialist 

• Experts who left their reviews on G2 and Startpack (in Russian).

This article was originally published in 2021 and was updated in April 2024 to make it more relevant and comprehensive.