9 Best Email Newsletter Software Platforms & Tools

What is newsletter software?

Newsletter software is a tool designed for crafting and distributing mass emails from businesses and creators, and monitoring analytics on your email campaigns. Most email marketing platforms combine these three functions in one product.

With the modern email marketing tools, learning how to create an email newsletter takes less time. Most tools on the market let you produce and analyze your email marketing campaigns without advanced coding, design, or analytics skills. You can craft the newsletter in a drag-and-drop editor, set the distribution via software with a simple intuitive interface, and check the analytics in real time.

However, there are dozens of email marketing platforms to try. How to choose the best one for you?

What to pay attention to when choosing a newsletter tool?

The newsletter software market has a lot to offer — keep your business goals in mind so you don’t get lost in all these tools. Сheck the criteria marketers should consider when choosing the best newsletter tool.

Pricing

Pricing is important, especially if you’re running a small business and can’t afford to spend a fortune on marketing automation tools. Here’s what you should consider while comparing different email newsletter platforms:

• Free plans. It’s great when software has a free subscription plan — you can use one to see if the email newsletter tool fits you. When it comes to email marketing platforms, a free subscription plan may offer a smaller possible number of recipients. For Selzy, it is 100 email addresses, which is definitely enough to test the service and decide whether it fulfills your business goals.
• Pricing models. Take a look at what you’ll be paying for — most platforms provide a detailed list of features for every plan. Different subscription plans provide various features like segmentation, automation options, anti-spam check, extra functionality like a native CRM, etc. There are subscription plans that provide complete campaign running. Different newsletter platforms may calculate the price based on the number of contacts, the number of email sends each month, or both. Again it’s best to focus on today’s business needs to get exactly what you need and not to pay for the unnecessary.

One interesting pricing system that Selzy offers is pay-per-email. It means that, instead of getting a package with limits on contacts, you get an unlimited number of contacts and only pay a small fee each time you send an email campaign. It’s a great low-budget solution — especially if you’re implementing emails as a promotional tool for the first time. 

Different segmentation options

Segmentation can help you make the most of email marketing. So, the more detailed and focused your segmentation can be, the better. Segmented campaigns get a higher open rate, fewer unsubscribes, and, even better — more sales. 

For proper segmentation, you might need to integrate your email marketing platform with CRM and other software you use. In general, segmentation options can be divided into three groups:

• Where and who the subscribers are. That includes location, gender, age, etc.
• What they like. What are their interests, what articles do they read, what do they add to cart? Note that you can only get this information via other sources like CRM or whatever you use for analytics.
• How they act. How often do they open your emails, do they follow links, do they use web or mobile, iOS or Android? Using these criteria can help you send retention emails and other types of campaigns. 

Selzy has 70+ criteria for segmentation. That gives a business an opportunity to choose those that fit its needs best.

A wide range of templates

Ready-made newsletter templates provide you with the design for various purposes. You simply change the email copy and add pictures if necessary — and your newsletter is ready to go. It’s better to have different templates for different occasions and layout options.

For example, here’s a sneak peek of some templates in Selzy’s recently updated email builder.

Simplicity and ease of use

Make sure the software you chose is intuitive and has a simple understandable interface. It might be a good idea to check several services to find out which one fits you best. It should also provide all the features your business needs.

It’s not always easy to figure out whether the software fits you — for example, you can’t understand how comfortable the learning curve of a tool is if you haven’t tried it yourself. Even if you get the trial to test the tool, it might take plenty of time to check whether it provides everything you need. You can browse reviews on G2 and other resources that collect the best software descriptions and reviews to get the big picture. 

Integration capability

You might need to integrate your newsletter software with other digital tools you already use, like a CRM system, e-commerce solution or form builder. Make sure the email newsletter platform of your choice has a capacity to integrate with those. For example, Selzy easily integrates with:

• CRM systems like Bitrix24, Zendesk, and Komo.
• E-commerce services like Shopify, Ecwid, and WooCommerce.
• Form builders like Typeform, Jotform and Formaloo.
• CMS tools like WordPress, Webflow, and Wix.

Some newsletter platforms also offer integrations with other “integrators” like Zapier or Pabbly Connect. Such tools allow you to, for example, add a Stripe integration for paid subscriptions if your ESP doesn’t offer that feature natively. By the way, Selzy uses Pabbly for exactly that and more.

Analytics and reporting

You need to monitor your email campaigns analytics in real time to fix the bottlenecks and improve conversion. The best email marketing platforms should provide different kinds of analytic reports to let you make data-driven decisions.

Here are some basic metrics you definitely need in your reports:

• Deliveries — the number of emails delivered to the recipient. The newsletter can fail to land in the inbox for many reasons. Check out the free deliverability course to learn more about it.
• Opens — the number of emails opened by the recipient. Open rate shows whether you nailed it with the subject line and whether you actually send the relevant content your recipient is interested in.
• Clicks — this metric shows how many users click the buttons and links in your newsletter. In other words, it measures engagement.
• Unsubscribe rate — the number of users who unsubscribed from your newsletter.

Customer support

There are several factors to consider when evaluating the custom support performance:

• Communication channels. Check the channels where you can reach the support: email, phone, chat, etc.
• Schedule. When is the support team available? Can you contact them 24/7? If not, does their schedule match your working hours?
• Language. Make sure you and your customer support can speak the same language on an advanced level.
• Availability for free subscription plan/priority support for paid subscription plans. Make sure that you get the support on either plan and find out whether you get the priority support when you start to pay.

Make certain the support gives you rapid feedback and is result-oriented. There’s nothing worse than facing your issues with a new software alone with customer support that answers for ages or gives you irrelevant scripts without an intention to do their best to solve your problem as quickly as possible.

9 best newsletter platforms & programs

Though there are a lot of tools on the market, there’s a shorter list of the best ones for different budgets and needs. Check the overview of the best newsletter platforms and programs we selected for you.

Selzy

Selzy provides fantastic email templates and various personalisation opportunities. It has a super handy email builder with various intuitive blocks which let you craft any newsletter you need in no time. The UI is transparent and super easy — you will be able to start your first campaign in under 15 minutes.

Selzy integrates with the CRM systems and e-commerce services easily and even has a chatbot builder. You can collect email addresses via chatbot and use them for your email campaign on the spot. There are more than 70 segmentation options in Selzy. Also, the support team is working 24/7 even for free users.

The free subscription plan lets you keep a contact list of 100 email addresses. You will get more subscribers on paid tiers, plus you’ll be able to use A/B testing and segmentation. If you pay 11$ a month for each extra 1,000 email addresses you get all that plus anti-spam helper. And if you get Premium and pay 220$ a month for each extra 1,000 email addresses you get Selzy professionals run your campaign and educate your staff.

Omnisend

Omnisend is a popular platform for marketing automation. Great thing about Omnisend is that it is not limited to email marketing and provides omnichannel promotion to let you communicate with your audience on different platforms, for example in SMS and web-push. 

Omnisend is focused on e-commerce and provides tons of automation options for that. For example, you can add a product from your store and add it to your newsletter automatically. The software integrates with Facebook, SMS tools and other marketing channels. Unfortunately it has a relatively small number of email templates. It also doesn’t have a lot of customisation options.

Moosend

Moosend has everything you need for running email marketing campaigns and integrates with many apps including ecommerce solutions. The software has a simple user-friendly interface and advanced tracking and reporting systems. Moosend can be connected to your website for in-depth campaign tracking.

There’s a wide range of segmentation tools to work with your audience. Over 75 ready to use email templates for your emails and even the workflow templates available.

The service offers a 30-days free trial. 

AWeber

AWeber is one of the email newsletter tools for designing and sending campaigns. It can import the mailing lists, offers a wide range of email templates, has an autoresponder function, segmentation options, A/B tests, the “Feed” feature for sending blog posts via email, and even a landing page builder.

AWeber has over 600 email templates, although you get access to all of them only on the Plus subscription plan for $29.99 per month. Some templates have a slightly outdated feel to them though, so the quantity doesn’t guarantee the quality. 

The design for templates on a free subscription plan is really basic.

Brevo

Before May 2023, Brevo was known as Sendinblue. Apart from a strong email marketing platform functionality it also has some additional features, including the SMS marketing capabilities, CRM tool, the Conversations app, and WhatsApp campaigns.

Brevo has a very clean user-friendly interface.

Brevo is slightly more expensive than other products and has a different pricing model: you pay for the number of emails sent, not for the number of email addresses you use. The analytics dashboard looks quite simple in comparison to other platforms — detailed analytics is provided only on the Business plan.

What is really important, Brevo’s email deliverability has room for improvement.

GetResponse

GetResponse is a sophisticated email marketing platform with a lot to offer. Starting your first campaign is easy — the software gives you advice all along the way. There are many email templates, a form builder, a landing page builder, and a funnel builder.

GetResponse integrates easily with any CRM or e-commerce platform. It lets you conduct A/B tests, offers great tools for email automation and has great customer support.

Check some automated flow templates the platform has to offer.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the most well-known marketing platforms. It has a great drag-and-drop email editor, user-friendly interface, lots of free features and convenient email templates. Apart from that, Mailchimp has a free website builder, online stores, appointment scheduling, domains, landing pages, social media ads and even a full mailing service for postcards.

Mailchimp is a well-known and trusted brand, it really fits anyone. However, that can be a disadvantage of choosing this platform. It is designed for a wide range of customers, so it might not be the perfect solution for your niche.

Mailjet

Mailjet is an email solution that can be easily integrated with WordPress, Google Cloud, Zapier, Megento, MS Azure and other platforms.

One of the great features of Mailjet is a super generous free plan. You can send up to 6,000 emails a month, with a maximum of 200 emails per day. It’s also great that the team can work on an email in real time, like in a Google Doc. The dashboard is really intuitive.

One of the cons is the extremely complicated process of deleting the unsubscribed contacts from your email list. The segmentation options of the platform are relatively poor. Also, you can’t edit the workflow once it is activated.

MailerLite

MailerLite is a great platform for producing emails, pop-ups, workflows, and websites. It suits marketers of any skill level and is really intuitive. 

MailerLite has some interesting features — for example, it allows you to sell digital products like online courses, books, and so on. It also has a Stripe integration that accepts recurring payments from 135+ currencies, which makes it one of the best Substack alternatives. The app also lets you not only build newsletters but also web pages to promote your newsletter and products.

MailerLite allows users to create regular, A/B test, RSS feed, or auto resend campaigns.

The email templates are modern and customizable.

The automation tools of MailerLite are really basic in comparison to other platforms. The  overall bird’s eye view of reports is available per campaign only and the dashboard report is still not very detailed.

Conclusion

It is not easy to choose the best email marketing service that fits your business goals. There really is no best platform for every email marketing campaign — each solution has its pros and cons. Focus on what’s most important for your business to choose the tools that definitely will cover those needs.

Factors to consider when choosing the email marketing platform:

• Pricing — how many plans the email newsletter software offers and what the difference between them is.
• Segmentation — variety of options and room for customization
• Templates — variety and quality
• UI — simplicity and ease of use
• Integrations — so you can use the data from your third-party CRM or other software for email campaigns frictionlessly
• Reports — transparent and full analytics
• Customer support — availability on your subscription plan, communication channels, language, and schedule