6 Best Email Marketing Software for Small Businesses in 2022

Email marketing success often depends on finding the right software. The best email marketing software for small businesses is affordable and easy to use for email campaign creation, automation, reporting, lead nurturing, and triggered emails to increase conversions. We compared dozens of providers and narrowed it to the six best email marketing services to make your decision easier.

Based on features, overall value, cost, and usability, here are the best email marketing platforms for small businesses:

• Mailchimp: Best email marketing software for small businesses overall
• Sendinblue: Best platform for sending transactional emails like order confirmations, password reset emails, or delivery notifications
• HubSpot: Best free email marketing tools, with landing pages and a built-in customer relationship manager (CRM) for lead nurturing
• Constant Contact: Great email marketing service for small businesses needing basic ecommerce tools and integrations
• SendX: Top pick for cheap email marketing software, especially affordable for large contact lists
• ActiveCampaign: Best email automation tools for conditional drip campaigns

Best Email Marketing Software for Small Businesses at a Glance

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*Some email marketing features require subscription to a paid plan
**Billed annually or pay $15 month-to-month

1. Mailchimp: Overall Best Email Marketing Software for Small Businesses

Mailchimp is the best email marketing service for small businesses overall thanks to its robust feature set, ease of use, and affordability. Plus, it’s fast becoming an all-in-one marketing hub. In addition to email marketing software, you will now find a website builder, landing page builder, built-in CRM, marketing tools for social media, and even direct mail postcard marketing.

However, Mailchimp’s bread and butter is still email marketing. It includes a variety of features to help you manage a master contact list, create email campaigns, automate triggered email sends, segment your audience, and analyze the success of each campaign you send. It’s easy to build web forms in Mailchimp and then embed them on your website and on social media to streamline list building and lead generation.

Best of all, you can use it for free up to 2,000 email subscribers with access to quite a bit of functionality, including automated emails. Plus, as a leading email marketing service, it integrates with more than 300 other apps, including all-in-one website builders like Squarespace and various sales CRMs and ecommerce software.

Mailchimp is an ideal option for small businesses just starting with email marketing looking for a free, easy-to-use solution. However, it’s also a great choice for any business looking for a comprehensive email marketing tool with social ad integration and more A/B testing options than competitors.

Customer support is harder to come by, though—for phone support, you have to upgrade to the highest-priced plan at $299 per month. Likewise, advanced features like predictive analytics, multivariate testing, and tools for adding email subscribers through look-alike audiences require a Standard or higher subscription.

Mailchimp Pricing & Plan Features

*The monthly cost of any plan increases based on number of contacts

How It Works

Learning how to use Mailchimp’s email marketing platform and drag-and-drop email editor is easy and fairly intuitive, and there are built-in prompts to guide you through the process. During account setup, you can also opt-in to emails filled with tips to improve your email marketing efforts.

Mailchimp makes it easy for you to create and segment contact lists (called “audiences”), and you can create and send emails to any of your audiences or audience subsets based on tags. When setting up an email marketing campaign, Mailchimp will automatically evaluate your subject line and make suggestions for how to improve it.

Use premade templates or start from scratch to create individual or automated email campaigns. Send automated responses when someone subscribes to your list or fills out a contact form on your website. Easily set up triggered emails, such as an abandoned cart notification, using Mailchimp’s drag-and-drop editor.

Mailchimp automatically creates a text-based version of your email and adds a footer with the information required per the U.S. CAN-SPAM regulations. The preview mode lets you see what your email will look like when viewed on desktop, mobile, or tablet devices. Plus, you can quickly send a test email to one or more email recipients to make sure your email is error-free, all the links work, and it’s audience-ready.

The Campaigns reports show open rates, clicks per open, delivery success rate, and responses to surveys. The data can help inform you of what you need to improve or what’s already working, and you can even see who opened your emails or clicked on links to identify hot leads that may be ready to convert. Mailchimp’s new Content Optimizer will even make suggestions for you.

Our Expert Opinion

Mailchimp’s free plan is a great choice for any new small business just getting started with marketing emails. As your business grows, it’s easy (and affordable) to upgrade to a paid plan to get more features or add more contacts. Mailchimp limits the number of emails you can send each month, so if you’re looking for email marketing with unlimited sends, consider Constant Contact for ecommerce integrations or SendX for large contact lists.

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2. Sendinblue: Best for Sending Transactional Emails

Sendinblue has a bevy of tools to promote your business, generate and nurture leads, and stay in touch with current customers. It offers a free plan that limits you to 300 emails per day, whether they are marketing or transactional in nature. The number of contacts you can have is never limited, regardless of which plan you choose.

Most businesses rely on transactional emails to communicate with customers when they make online store purchases or users who make changes to their accounts. Set up automated transactional emails with order confirmations to send invoices or to provide updates on shipping and delivery to keep customers aware of what they purchased and when it should arrive.

Transactional emails are helpful in other ways, such as when a customer requests a password reset for their account or changes their password or login information, or for double opt-ins when someone subscribes or sets up an account. Managing all these types of emails manually would take way too much time, which is why you should use an email tool like Sendinblue.

Transactional emails often involve more than one software application. Sendinblue won’t let you down in this area, with dozens of ready-to-plug-and-play third-party integrations as well as Zapier, which can facilitate thousands more.

Pricing is low compared to some Sendinblue’s competitors, but higher than the more affordably priced SendX. Plus, some of the features you may take for granted on low-tier plans with Mailchimp or Constant Contact, like A/B testing, are available only on higher-plan tiers or require purchase of an add-on.

Sendinblue Pricing & Plan Features

*Remove branding and add A/B testing on the Lite plan for $12 per month as an add-on

How It Works

Sendinblue makes it especially easy (and free) for ecommerce businesses to send transactional emails, such as confirmation emails when a purchase is made on your site. Personalize emails with the contact’s information or send text marketing messages via short message service (SMS), even on the free plan.

Get your email campaign or transactional email designed quickly using one of the dozens of template designs or layouts available. Once you choose a template or layout, it’s easy to edit your campaign with Sendinblue’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor.

The size of your contact list doesn’t matter with Sendinblue, since there are no limits on the number of contacts you can have, but you may need to pay more to increase your monthly email sends within the plan you choose. Upgrade to a paid plan for more monthly emails and features, such as advanced analytics (location and heatmaps, for example), a landing page editor, and integrated Facebook ads.

Our Expert Opinion

When it comes to sending transactional emails to your customers, the best option is Sendinblue. The forever-free plan is generous in its features, but you’ll have to live with Sendinblue branding unless you upgrade to the Lite plan (plus an add-on) or the Premium plan. However, removing branding to white label your business emails starts at just $11 with Mailchimp.

Visit Sendinblue

3. HubSpot: Best Free Email Marketing Tools for Lead Nurturing

HubSpot is well-known in the marketing world for its data studies, free tools, and as a comprehensive sales and marketing platform. Email marketing and the HubSpot CRM are included among the free tools, so you can build your mailing list at zero cost. HubSpot is also an excellent email marketing service for list management, with advanced tools for segmenting audiences and personalizing campaigns.

The drag-and-drop landing page builder by HubSpot is another free tool you can use to increase email campaign conversions. Use one of many templates and simply change the images and content to suit your business.

HubSpot templates are all mobile-friendly; they are as easy to view on a mobile phone as a desktop. Each template is designed to produce conversions, from getting people to visit a landing page to signing up for a demo or purchasing a product from your website.

The free plan includes HubSpot branding, but moving to a paid plan removes branding from your emails, forms, landing pages, and live chat app on your site. All these additional tools boost your email marketing efforts because you can use them to build contact lists, direct traffic to high-converting landing pages, or add web forms and a chatbot to your website to get visitors to sign up for marketing information, a demo, or a free trial.

HubSpot is the undeniable leader as a robust all-in-one sales and marketing solution. However, HubSpot’s lowest-tier plan is somewhat limited—Mailchimp is far more generous in email sends, number of features, and contacts. You get a lot more with HubSpot’s more expensive plans, but for a high price—$800 to $3,200 per month, which is a bit out of reach for most small businesses.

HubSpot Marketing Hub Pricing & Plan Features

*You can have up to 1 million non-marketing contacts on any plan
**Displays HubSpot branding

How It Works

Use HubSpot’s free tools to create marketing emails and landing pages from scratch or customize premade templates. With any paid plan, HubSpot branding goes away and you can start sending mass email campaigns. At its core, HubSpot is an inbound marketing tool, so you use the tools to capture emails to convert site visitors to subscribers and landing pages to encourage sales.

Our Expert Opinion

HubSpot offers some of the best free email marketing tools for lead generation and nurturing, with robust features for building and managing contact lists and creating landing pages. The lowest-priced paid plan is more limited in terms of features and number of contacts allowed compared to providers like Constant Contact, but its combination of email marketing alongside scalable, comprehensive sales and marketing software is unmatched.

Visit HubSpot

4. Constant Contact: Best Software for Basic Ecommerce Sellers

Constant Contact started its life as event management software but evolved into a cross between a CRM and an email marketing tool. It integrates seamlessly with ecommerce platforms like Shopify and has loads of customizable templates.

One of the most appealing features of Constant Contact is easy integration with and the ability to add products from your Shopify store to marketing emails. Similar to Mailchimp, the drag-and-drop email editor is easy to use, and Constant Contact offers about twice as many templates as other providers. Also, Constant Contact doesn’t limit the number of emails you can send per month.

Although Constant Contact doesn’t offer a free plan, you can take it for a test drive with a 30-day free trial. After that, you’ll have to subscribe to a plan based on the size of your contact list. You’re limited to 500 contacts on the lowest tier, and if your list goes over 500, you’ll be automatically upgraded to the next tier at $35 per month.

Constant Contact makes it easy to post to social media simultaneously, which can save you a lot of time. Likewise, Facebook and Instagram ads can be managed from the platform. However, Google Ads integration, surveys, and nearly all email automation is locked behind its more expensive Plus plans, starting at $45 per month up to 500 contacts.

Constant Contact costs more than Mailchimp as well as our cheapest email marketing software provider, SendX. Mailchimp is free up to 2,000 contacts, including surveys, but for the same number of contacts with Constant Contact, you’ll pay at least $35 per month. With SendX, you can send unlimited emails to up to 2,500 contacts for $14.99 per month, and all of the platform’s features are included with your plan.

Constant Contact Pricing & Plan Features

How It Works

It’s easy to use Constant Contact, regardless of prior experience with email marketing tools. There are hundreds of easy-to-modify templates to get you started when creating an email to send to your contact list.

The drag-and-drop design editor is easy to use, and managing your contact list is intuitive too. Add tags to segment your audience based on whatever you want (products, location, sex, or any other information you have about your subscribers).

Shopify users will appreciate the direct integration with Constant Contact, and you can drag and drop products you sell in your store to an email to make selling them easier for you and your customers. Preview your email before you send it out to ensure you have no missing links or typos and compare its look on desktop vs mobile. But unlike Mailchimp, you can’t see precisely how it will look in different inboxes (e.g., Gmail vs Outlook).

A/B testing is available with Constant Contact, but only for subject lines. Comparatively, Mailchimp allows you to split test up to three different elements of an email, such as body text or the time sent—not just subject lines. Likewise, you can create and send surveys with the free version of Mailchimp, but must now upgrade to the Plus plan with Constant Contact for surveys.

Our Expert Opinion

Constant Contact is a top email marketing platform for businesses with smaller contact lists that want to send lots of emails (contact list size is limited, but the number of emails that can be sent is not). It’s ideal for smaller Shopify sellers who want to add products directly to emails. However, its tools aren’t as sophisticated as ActiveCampaign’s, and it’s not as affordable as Shopify-friendly competitors like Mailchimp and SendX.

Visit Constant Contact

5. SendX: Cheap Email Marketing Software for Large Contact Lists

SendX is far and away one of the cheapest options for startups and small businesses. While there is no free plan, pricing starts under $8 per month, and the cost increases level-to-level based on the size of your contact list are modest, especially compared to Constant Contact, HubSpot, and even Mailchimp.

While we haven’t talked a lot about user reviews for other providers, it’s worth a mention here. SendX has very high user ratings (e.g., 4.6 out of 5 on G2) and many SendX reviews especially citing the quality of customer care they received. For startups and solopreneurs who have to do it all marketing-wise, this type of support is invaluable.

Another thing to like about SendX is that advanced features aren’t locked behind higher tiers. Every user gets access to drip campaign automation, A/B split testing, web forms, and conversion-generating features like auto-responders, triggered and condition-based automation, and list segmentation.

A few things are lacking in SendX that you get free with HubSpot and Mailchimp, most notably advertising and social media integrations. Likewise, there are no survey tools as what come with Mailchimp starting in the free version. And while SendX offers far fewer ready-made integrations, it does include some important ones like WordPress, Shopify, and Pipedrive CRM, plus the ability to create thousands more through Zapier.

SendX Pricing & Plan Features

How It Works

Create an account and set up your first campaign in minutes with SendX. Try it free for 14 days, no credit card required, including creating and sending up to 100 emails. There are dozens of premade templates to help you get started more quickly and the email editor is easy to use.

The SendX user interface is very clean, modern, and easy to navigate. Follow step-by-step “get started” instructions, including embedding code onto your website to ensure your domain is white listed for increased deliverability. Like Mailchimp, it’s easy to import your contacts via comma-separated values (CSV) files or drag and drop a preformatted comma-separated list (Email, First Name, Last Name).

Create pop-up or embedded forms to increase sign-ups and conversions on your website. Add forms to your landing pages or create landing pages for them in SendX. Embed videos and even add a countdown timer to create a sense of urgency for site visitors.

Our Expert Opinion

SendX is the best cheap email marketing software you probably never heard of. All features come standard and the cost is affordable regardless of the size of your contact list. While it doesn’t have Survey tools and ad integrations, it has all the essential features most small businesses need, including multilayered automations.

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6. ActiveCampaign: Best for Email Marketing Automation

ActiveCampaign has the most advanced email marketing automation capabilities. If you have fewer than 2,500 contacts, it’s more affordable than marketing automation juggernaut HubSpot. There are many different options for automating emails, such as time triggers to encourage more opens and action or behavioral triggers, like after a contact opens an email or clicks a link.

Since ActiveCampaign includes a multideal sales CRM beginning with the Plus plan, HubSpot is its closest competitor feature-wise. The sales CRM includes deal assignment, pipelines, and lead scoring, and uses machine learning to send email content when a lead is most likely to convert. Beginning with the Plus plan, get integrations with more than 870 apps, including Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce.

ActiveCampaign has comprehensive ecommerce tools for list building, dynamic content based on the lead, and tools for customer retention and loyalty. Though you’ll pay more for ecommerce tools with ActiveCampaign than Constant Contact, the return provided by sophisticated ecommerce and CRM features could be worth the cost.

There is no free version, but the Lite plan starts at $9 per month. While it’s low compared to HubSpot’s $45 per month base tier, it only includes 500 contacts. With any plan, you will pay more as your contact list grows. For example, if you have 5,000 contacts, you’ll pay $79 per month on the Lite plan or $209 for the Professional tier.

ActiveCampaign is far more expensive than SendX, especially as your contact list grows. Likewise, if you don’t need super-robust CRM features, the customer relationship management tools that come standard, even in Mailchimp’s free version, could be a better choice for your business.

ActiveCampaign Pricing & Plan Features

How It Works

Setting up automations is easy with ActiveCampaign’s visual workflows, and you can set up layered “if-this, then-that” conditional logic-style flowcharts to create email drip campaigns. You can also create automations for triggered transactional emails, so customers get an email confirming a purchase or an appointment, get follow-up emails when an item ships, and receive reminders for upcoming service appointments.

Segmentation is also a big deal for ActiveCampaign. As with other email marketing tools, you can create separate groups based on tags, but you can also create custom fields to track specific information from emails. You can even create multistep forms to segment contacts as they fill out web forms on your landing pages.

You can also send SMS text marketing campaigns with ActiveCampaign with all but the Lite plan. Sendinblue is the only other provider on this list to offer that functionality.

Our Expert Opinion

ActiveCampaign offers a lot of value for the money. It’s the best option for any size business that wants complex and advanced email marketing automations for lead nurturing and sales, as this comes in every plan. It can get pricey overall as you grow your contact list though, so Sendinblue’s no-limit contacts feature may be better for companies with lots of email contacts.

Visit ActiveCampaign

How We Evaluated the Best Email Marketing Software for Small Businesses

To choose the best platforms, we considered more than just email marketing features, cost, and ease of use. We looked at apps that further aid your campaigns, whether through marketing automation, data enrichment of your contacts, contact management, third-party integrations, and extras like landing pages for conversions.

We chose Mailchimp as the best email marketing service for small businesses. It offers features for everything from building a contact list and segmenting audiences to creating campaigns, automating drip emails, setting up triggers, analyzing results, testing A/B variations, and sending email blasts to your customers.

It’s also an affordable email marketing tool as a small business can use it for free for up to 2000 contacts, and scale to higher plans as the business grows. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with hundreds of other business apps and has a form builder you can use to build custom lead generation forms to embed on your website and social media.

Visit MailChimp

Here are the factors we considered in choosing the best email marketing platforms:

• Cost and fees: To be accessible to small businesses, software must be affordable. We considered whether a tool offered a free version or free trial as well as the overall cost and pricing structure of each platform.
• Ease of use: We only chose apps easy to learn and use, otherwise a business might not get the maximum value or results they need to grow. Ease of use also impacts overall value for the money.
• Features: Regardless of primary functionality, the best services offer robust features, including features to boost marketing emails from good to great and provide a good return on investment (ROI).
• Customer reviews: How current customers rate and what they say about a company is one of the best ways to find out whether it’s right for your small business. We considered what customers had to say and how they ranked each company on our list.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the best email marketing software for beginners?

While we recommend Mailchimp as the best overall for most small businesses, SendX is the best email marketing software for beginners. It has a more intuitive interface and email editor, and reviews show it provides great customer support. All features come with your plan, all email marketing tools are at your fingertips, and it’s the cheapest, especially as your contact list grows.

Are there different types of email marketing?

Marketing emails can encompass a variety of topics but generally pertain to four types: newsletter, promotion, acquisition, and retention (or loyalty) emails. You can also consider them as informational, behavioral (e.g., when a contact performs or doesn’t perform an action), and transactional, such as receipts, confirmations, or password change request emails. Learn more by reading our email marketing guide.

Is email marketing still effective?

Email marketing has a high average return on investment (ROI) of $32 to $45 for every $1 spent. Success depends on finding the best provider, targeting your audience, and providing valuable content, and it’s affordable and easy to get started with any of the providers above. Learn how to successfully introduce your business to prospects via business emails in our article with nine effective business email introduction templates.

Bottom Line

Finding the right platform comes down to your budget, features desired, your contact list size, and how many marketing emails you want to send each month. Our top pick for small business email marketing is Mailchimp. It has a robust feature set, provides an all-in-one marketing hub, and has plans to fit almost every business. A forever-free plan is available to startups, solopreneurs, and small businesses, with plans that scale as your business grows.

Visit Mailchimp

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