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What is the best email marketing software? That is what I’ve been trying to find out, and to do so, I tested ten different email marketing software tools, and this is my roundup review. In this video, I’ll compare all of them, and I’ll tell you which ones are the best for which purpose, which ones you have to avoid, and why we’ll make an actual price comparison between these platforms, which can be pretty tricky because of all the different features and tiers. I’ll also show you my top overall recommendations.

Hi, my name is Robbin from creatoregg.com, where we help you find and use the best marketing tools. I’ve been using email marketing for a very long time in my business, and I’ve helped dozens of companies reach another level by utilizing a broad set of email marketing strategies.

So, I went on a quest to find the best email marketing tool. In this video, we’re comparing the following email tools: ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, MailerLite, GetResponse, Sendinblue, HubSpot, Constant Contact, and AWeber.

You can use the timestamps to navigate to the relevant part for your situation.

The Review Process

I want to mention that none of these email marketing tools paid me for reviewing their tool, i.e., I’m not motivated to say only good things about some email tools because they sponsored this video. I can say whatever I want, and as you’ll see later in this video, I make some bold recommendations of the email tools I don’t recommend you should use. Why bold? Because the websites that rank high in Google when searching for the best email marketing software advise you to use some of the tools I suggest you avoid. More on that later.

What we will cover in this video

Going through all the pros and cons, looking at all the different features, and comparing everything for all the ten various email marketing tools would take hours. And despite this not being a 10-min video, it isn’t endless hours either.

So, instead of exhaustively going through everything, I want to compress everything down to what’s most beneficial for you. So, first, we’ll make a price comparison of these email tools.

Then we’ll do an elimination round where I discuss the ones you shouldn’t be using and why. 

Next, I’ll explain different scenarios as to why I feel email tool X best suits scenario Y, etcetera. Because as you’ll know, every tool has its pros and cons, i.e., not every tool is the best for all situations.

If you want more details, I have different videos on each of these email marketing tools. I also have separate written reviews on all of them, and I’ll add a link to those in the description below. Keep in mind that because I’ll move relatively fast through the content of this video, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t do my due diligence of insanely testing every feature of these tools. As previously mentioned, I don’t want this video to be infinitely long, so I only talk about the things I feel are essential.

So, are you ready? Let’s dive in.

Review Criteria: what makes a good email marketing tool?

When finding the best email marketing tool for your situation, we’ll have to compare the following features:

#1 Best free plan

Although not everyone is looking for a free email marketing solution, many people still prefer to start a newsletter on a low budget or even without spending any money. However, when looking for the best free plan, we have to consider the limitations these tools add to their free plans, e.g., the number of subscribers, how long you can use the free plan, if there’s marketing automation possible, etcetera.

#2 Newsletter features

Secondly, the newsletter features, e.g., are there limits to how many contacts I can have, how many emails I can send, the newsletter builder, scheduling options (e.g., is it possible to send an email at 9 am with a worldwide audience?), etcetera. 

#3 Email Automation Features

Third, we have email automation features. While some only offer you to automatically send new subscribers a series of welcome emails, others allow you to use more advanced techniques like notifying one of your sales reps when a new lead opts in for one of your forms.

#4 Opt-in form and landing page features

Next, I also took in deep dive into their opt-in form and landing page features since you’ll be using them to gain new subscribers or leads for your business. Ideally, I want opt-in form features that allow me to create unlimited sign-up forms, welcome and exit popups, add timers, cool designer templates, and so on. It’s a bummer when I can only create one sign-up form, one popup, or when the design options are minimal.

In terms of landing pages, I want to be able to change the design of the landing page to ensure it has the same look and feel as my brand. 

#5 Pricing

Then there’s pricing. I obviously want to receive value for my money.

#6 CRM features

I took into account that some of you want to use CRM features, so we’ll also cover that.

#7 Support

Lastly, support. I prefer 24/7 chat support because it’s annoying to wait a couple of days to receive an answer, especially if that question keeps you from moving forward.

Price comparison

These tools don’t make it easy to compare their prices because every plan offers different features. Some plans provide email automation, while others do not. Some offer unlimited opt-in forms, while others limit you to a maximum of one opt-in form. 

The pricing table you see here includes all the different tiers of all the ten different email marketing companies I tested. Keep in mind that these prices are annual prices and not monthly prices. Every tool also offers monthly plans, but since most email tools offer annual discounts and email marketing is a long-term game, I decided to include discounts for purchasing annually. 

So, the top horizontal bar represents the number of subscribers. Most email marketing companies charge you more money if you have more subscribers. The only email marketing tool that charges you differently is Sendinblue. They charge you based on the number of emails you send monthly, making it one of the cheapest email tools if you aren’t a frequent email sender.

Warning: don’t let some email tools’ first tiers fool you into thinking that those are inexpensive, i.e., worthwhile your time and money. I advise avoiding these tiers: Constant Contact Core, ActiveCampaign Lite, AWeber Lite, Mailchimp Essentials, and GetResponse Email Marketing. This is mainly because these tiers either lack essential features or are overpriced. Most often, it’s a combination of both, lacking critical features and more expensive than other tools that offer more features.

So, looking at these prices. The cheapest email marketing tool is MailerLite. Keep in mind that cheap doesn’t mean bad, as you’ll find out later in this roundup video. I’ve been a MailerLite user for one of my businesses for quite some time now, and I’ve no complaints. MailerLite’s growing business plan and the advanced tier are priced relatively cheap compared to its competitors. Despite the lower prices, MailerLite is still a great tool because they provide features like automation, unlimited emails, unlimited sign-up forms, landing pages, no branding on your newsletters, custom domains for your landing pages, etcetera.

That’s why I gave you that warning earlier. Some tiers might seem cheaper, but they are missing essential features.

To name one example, see Mailchimp’s Essentials tier. It’s often a few hundred dollars more expensive than MailerLite’s growing business plan and, in some cases, even more than $1,000 more expensive annually. Despite this higher price, it doesn’t has an unlimited email sending option like MailerLite, it doesn’t offer unlimited email automation, like MailerLite, you can’t use if/else actions in your automation, it doesn’t have unlimited sign-up forms, like MailerLite. I think you’ll get the point, or do I have to keep going?

I should also mention that aside from MailerLite, Sendinblue is one of the cheapest email tools, but as mentioned previously, they charge you based on the number of emails you send. If you send a few emails monthly, Sendinblue is probably cheaper than MailerLite. If you have to send more frequently, MailerLite is perhaps less expensive. But do note, MailerLite offers unlimited monthly emails to up to 50,000 contacts. After that, there’s a cap of 12X your contact count. If you send daily emails and have more than 50,000 subs, you might want to check out GetResponse or ConvertKit. They both offer unlimited email sending, no matter your subscriber number.

Then there are discounts. And I’m not talking about the annual discounts most email tools offer. There are also special occasion discounts, e.g., Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Valentine’s day, etcetera. The tool that always has excellent deals is GetResponse. The great thing is that they offer lifetime discounts, which often is 40% during these special occasions. 

Elimination round

So, there are three email marketing tools I don’t recommend using at all.

Firstly, we have Mailchimp. Mailchimp is relatively expensive while not offering the best product features, i.e., I don’t recommend it because I feel there are better alternatives available, which might be weird to you since they are highly recommended on some of the top pages of Google when searching for the best email tool. It does make me wonder how much time and effort those websites put into their reviews.

I mentioned that I recommend avoiding its first paid plan, Essentials, but its most popular plan, the Standard plan, doesn’t justify its higher price either. For example, the biggest failure is that it doesn’t support multiple opt-in forms, i.e., I can only create up to 1 opt-form, which is weird, in my opinion. I usually have numerous opt-in forms across my web pages and not only one.

Secondly, there’s Constant Contact. Constant Contact was a popular email tool back in the day, but no longer. It doesn’t offer the best marketing features, and it also doesn’t provide the best price. In other words, what’s the ideal Constant Contact customer? I don’t know. That I’m not recommending Constant Contact might surprise you since many websites recommend them. One thing I especially don’t like about Constant Contact is that I cannot connect a custom domain to a landing page I create, i.e., you have to use their default URLs for your landing pages, which isn’t the best when optimizing for conversions. And one other thing, similar to Mailchimp, Constant Contact also limits us to one popup and one inline form, which is weird.

Third, AWeber. Do I recommend using AWeber for your email marketing? The short and generalized answer is no. AWeber has many great features, so I’m not saying it’s a bad product or that my opinion cannot change when it adds/improves on its product. In my view, looking at all its features, AWeber doesn’t stand out. It isn’t the cheapest, It doesn’t offer the best free plan, It isn’t the most user-friendly, It doesn’t provide the best user-interface design, It isn’t the best for complete beginners, It doesn’t offer the best ecommerce functionalities, and It doesn’t provide the best/extensive email automation functionalities.

My recommendations

After these eliminations, it leaves us with seven email marketing tools to choose from. And although it might seem impossible to narrow it down to 1 email tool you should go with, I’ll do my best to help you share my thoughts on each of these.

Recommendation 1: MailerLite

Let’s start with MailerLite. I can 100% recommend MailerLite for your business since I’ve been using it for one of my businesses, too, since November 2021. MailerLite is one of the best budget email marketing solutions. If you haven’t watched the part of the video where I compare all the prices of these tools, make sure you skip back.

You can see on MailerLite’s growing business plan that it allows you to create unlimited landing pages, including custom domains, unlimited forms, unlimited popups, unlimited email sending for up to 50,000 subscribers, and, most importantly, unlimited email marketing automation. Also, they have cool scheduling features like Delivery by timezone, and email split testing tools, ecommerce tools, etcetera. You have to pay a lot more money for many of these tools and features when accessing them with its competitors. So the bottom line, it’s the best bang for your buck.

Recommendation 2: Sendinblue

Sendinblue is my top budget recommendation, too, if you don’t send that many newsletters. They charge you based on the number of emails you send monthly instead of your subscriber number. So, if you have 100,000 subscribers and send one newsletter monthly, Sendinblue will be cheaper than MailerLite. Another thing is that Sendinblue offers CRM features, which come in handy if you’re a real estate agent or in another industry that requires 1-on-1 sales. There are only two others that offer CRM features, which are ActiveCampaign and HubSpot, but they are way more expensive.

Recommendation 3: ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a more robust email tool that offers one of the best newsletter features and marketing automation features, including SMS and CRM features. If you’re planning on using your email tool with multiple people like sales reps, etcetera, ActiveCampaign will not let you down. 

Recommendation 4: ConvertKit

If you’re looking for a simple, straightforward email marketing tool, ConvertKit is the one for you. I’ve used ConvertKit for multiple years, and it served my business perfectly. Its newsletters, sign-up forms, and landing pages are easy to use and set up. It’s one of the most user-friendly email tools I’ve used. Do keep in mind that ConvertKit offers similar features to, for example, MailerLite and Sendinblue, but it is more expensive. If you don’t mind paying a little extra for user-friendliness, then ConvertKit is the way for you.

Another thing that might concern only a fraction of the people watching this video; ConvertKit, offers you to use the template language liquid inside its emails. Keep in mind that using liquid is far from beginner-friendly or simple or straightforward, but it does allow you to create dynamic emails. In a nutshell, it is more similar to coding your newsletter instead of just writing it. MailerLite, for example, doesn’t offer liquid templating. 

Recommendation 5: Klaviyo

The short answer is that Klaviyo is the best for ecommerce. Yes, all the email tools in this roundup offer ecommerce integrations, including the most inexpensive email tool MailerLite. BUT Klaviyo is just more user-friendly and offers way more ecommerce features than these other email tools. 

Two examples; when comparing the product block you can add to your newsletter, there’s a whole world of difference. You can add dynamic product feeds that you can import from your Shopify store, which you cannot do with other email tools. Another thing is all the different automation workflow templates Klaviyo offers. MailerLite, for example, only offers three templates. When comparing Klaviyo with more robust email tools like ActiveCampaign or GetResponse, you’ll see the difference isn’t as big as when comparing it with MailerLite. However, there are still differences since Klaviyo is just built for ecommerce websites, especially if you’re running your store on Shopify. So again, I’m not saying you have to use Klaviyo, but it does offer way more options for optimizing your marketing campaigns.

Recommendation 6: GetResponse

When considering GetResponse, I would go for its most feature-rich option, the Ecommerce Marketing tier. I’m not a big fan of the other tiers because of the limitations. The thing is, it does charge more money compared to MailerLite, or ConvertKit. Compared to ActiveCampaign or HubSpot, GetResponse is a cheaper option but keep in mind that GetResponse doesn’t have CRM features.

What I like about GetResponse is that it offers unlimited email sending, an advanced automation builder, the best opt-in form functionalities, webinar features that no other email marketing tool has, and 24/7 chat support that not that many email tools offer. With the ecommece marketing tier you can get up to 300 people in your webinars, and it also offers on-demand webinars. Webinar software can quickly become pricy, i.e., using GetResponse as your email tool while at the same time having a webinar solution can be a great cost-efficient solution for doing your marketing. Keep in mind that GetResponse has multiple times per year great offers for up to 40% lifetime discount. For example, if you have 10,000 contacts, you’ll pay $1433 for getresponse’s ecommerce marketing tier. If you have 5,000 contacts, you pay $1217 for the ecommerce marketing tier, and with 2,500 contacts, it will be $1,001. 

Recommendation 7: HubSpot

Lastly, there’s HubSpot. If you are a 1-army business, I don’t feel you’re the right fit for HubSpot. Instead, you can find a more affordable tool that can do a better job at email marketing than HubSpot can. But suppose you are working in a bigger team or need to report the results of your work to your superior or your customers, HubSpot is an excellent choice. Aside from email marketing, it offers many different packages. For example, HubSpot is comparable to Salesforce, a great CRM marketing tool that includes email marketing. The thing is, in terms of pricing, Salesforce is way more expensive than HubSpot.

1-minute summary

So, what’s the bottom line of all of this? What are my top 3 recommendations? 

Well, if you’re just looking for a decent email marketing tool to get your newsletter game up and running, I would recommend MailerLite. It’s budget-friendly, and it’s the best bang for your buck.

Secondly, if you want to take your email marketing game to the next level or immediately want to start at the more advanced level, I suggest ActiveCampaign. You can’t go wrong with them.

Lastly, if you’re into ecommerce and don’t want to take the beginner’s approach with a tool like MailerLite, I suggest you immediately start with Klaviyo. Similar to ActiveCampaign, you can’t go wrong with them either.

If you’re still unsure and watch this video on YouTube, check out my full written review on my website. It covers everything we’ve just discussed and more. There’s a link in the description, including links to all individual reviews. Remember that I also created tutorials for all these tools, and I’ll also link to those in the description below.

If you enjoyed this review, please click the thumbs-up button and comment below because it will help more people find it. Another thing, if you want to support my channel, you could help me by using my partner link if you decide to sign up for any of these tools, whether that’s a free or paid plan. Some of these tools have an affiliate plan where I receive a commission if you decide to become a paying customer at no extra cost to you. Keep in mind that this didn’t affect my review process. For example, AWeber and Constant Contact are email marketing tools that pay the most money if you refer customers to them. Still, I decided to eliminate those two in the elimination round, and I don’t recommend using them. I only recommend tools I would use myself and not because of any money I would receive from them.

If you have any questions or suggestions for other tools I should add to my future reviews, please let me know in the comments below.

Email Marketing Quiz

Before we split ways, let’s do a quick 8-question quiz together to find the best email marketing tool for your situation. 

Question 1: can you afford a paid plan?

A: Yes

B: No, I’m looking for a free email tool

I’ll give you 2 seconds to decide, and then I’ll explain.

If you chose B, I suggest you go with MailerLite since they offer the best free plan. For example, you can send 12,000 emails monthly (which is more than most other email tools), you can have up to 1,000 subscribers (more than most of its competitors), and it offers full marketing automation (most competitors do not offer automation).

Question 2: What’s your email sending frequency?

1. Daily newsletter
2. Weekly newsletter
3. Monthly newsletter
4. Don’t know

If you chose C, I suggest you take a look at Sendinblue. Their pricing structure makes it more affordable if you don’t send that many newsletters. If you chose A, you’re probably best off choosing one of the email tools that offer unlimited email sending. The table you see here shows what email tool and what tier offers unlimited email sending and who doesn’t. For example, MailerLite’s growing business plan offers unlimited email sending to up to 50,000 subscribers. After that, the growing business tier isn’t available, meaning you have to upgrade to the advanced tier, but that one doesn’t offer unlimited email sending. It only provides 12X your contact number, which is probably not enough if you send daily emails. The ones that offer unlimited email sending are convertkit, GetResponse, AWeber, and ActiveCampaign.

Question 3: Are you willing to pay (more) for the best ecommerce features?

1. Yes, I need the BEST ecommerce features
2. No, I don’t want to pay more for better features

If you chose A, take a look at Klaviyo. It’s my top recommendation for ecommerce companies, especially if you’re using Shopify for your ecommerce platform. Remember that all email tools offer ecommerce features, but Klaviyo is just at another level.

Question 4: Are you going to build complex email automation workflows?

1. Probably not
2. Yes, I need sophisticated features

If you chose B, I suggest looking at ActiveCampaign, which has the best marketing automation features.

Question 5: Are you looking for an email tool that offers CRM features (pipeline, deals, tasks, etcetera)?

1. Yes, I need CRM features
2. No

If you chose A, look at either Sendinblue, ActiveCampaign, or Hubspot. Sendinblue is way cheaper, but those others are more robust marketing tools. Especially HubSpot offers way more than only email marketing. 

Question 6: Are you looking for a beginner-friendly and simplistic email tool?

1. Yes
2. No, not necessarily

If you chose A, I’d suggest taking a look at ConvertKit. It’s one of the most simplistic and beginner-friendly tools.

Question 7: Do you need an email tool offering webinar features?

1. Yes, I need webinar features
2. No, I don’t need an email tool that offers webinar features

If you chose A, then take a look at GetResponse. They are the only email marketing tool allowing you to do webinars. Purchasing a separate webinar tool is, in most cases, more expensive when purchased separately. If you aren’t planning on using webinars GetResponse might be a bit pricy. 

Question 8: Are you looking for a marketing tool for your entire organization? In other words, marketing team, sales team, customer support team, etcetera.

1. No, it will be me and maybe a few freelancers
2. I need a marketing tool for my marketing and sales team
3. Yes, I need a tool for my entire organization

Of course, there are always exceptions, but if you chose A, then ActiveCampaign and HubSpot are probably a bit of an overkill for you, and there are cheaper alternatives.

If you went for B, I feel ActiveCampaign is better than HubSpot. 

If you chose C, then check out HubSpot.

Thank you for watching, and to support the channel, please use my referral link if you decide to sign up for any of these tools.