Email marketing is one of the effective and affordable channels for every business. Email marketing alone generates maximum return on investment compared to other channels. Email marketing is a powerful channel that generates almost $42 to every $1 spent. But to make it an effective channel you should choose the right email marketing platform that grows your business and generate more revenue.
Email marketing platform is not just sending emails and tracking tool. You can run an entire business and website with an email automation tool. Email marketing platform offers audience management, list segmentation, autoresponder, landing page builder, Form and popup builder, website builder, advance reporting, behavior-based action, SMS marketing, chatbots, and more.
All marketing automation features are required to run a successful online business. There is around 450+ email marketing platform to choose from. But choosing one right platform for your business is very difficult.
After using several email automation platforms, we have selected the best and affordable email marketing platform based on price, functionality, deliverability, and ease of use.
Here is the Best Email Marketing Platform for Startups, Small businesses, and eCommerce
1. GetResponse
GetResponse is the most popular and reputed email automation platform that fit for small business to the large business group. It is a simplified, powerful tool to send emails, create landing pages, capture leads and automate your entire marketing system. GetResponse is a perfect solution for inbound marketing. Trusted by major players like IKEA, Zendesk, Shaw, Stripe, University of Nottingham, Carrefour, and more.
GetResponse Key Features
- Email marketing – Send beautiful responsive emails and get more engagement and conversion. It has everything to run a successful campaign. Including list management, email creator, autoresponders, email analytics, transactional emails.
- Website builder – Easy drag and drop website builder with predesign mobile-friendly themes. It has everything you need to create a professional website including built-in forms, domain management, customize coding, and predesign templates.
- Marketing Automation – One of the most useful features in online marketing. You can completely automate email communication including welcome emails, upsell, re-engagement, and more. It has features like tags and scoring, prebuilt and customized automation workflows, visitor tracking, abandoned cart email, and much more.
- Webinars – GetResponse has in-built webinar functionality where you can conduct webinars and engage with your audience. No need to rely on third-party tools to conduct webinars. It has Screen sharing, Whiteboard, Polls, and Surveys functionality.
- Paid ads – You can also run paid ads through GetResponse. Easily integrates with Facebook ads and Google ads where you can manage ads within the GetResponse platform.
- Landing pages – Create a beautiful landing page and maximize website visitor conversation.
- Live Chat – Live chat features to connect your customer online.
- Web push notifications – Push notification features to get in touch with your audience.
- SMS marketing – You can also send SMS through GetResponse.
- 24/7 Customer Support.
GetResponse Pricing Details
- Free Forever Plan that includes all features and upload up to 500 contacts.
- BASIC Plan – It will cost you $12.30/mo for 1000 contacts.
- PLUS Plan – It will cost you $40.18/mo for 1000 contacts.
- PROFESSIONAL Plan – It will cost you $81.18/mo for 1000 contacts.
- MAX Plan – Customize pricing based on your requirement.
2. Sender
Sender is the world’s most affordable and EASY to use Email marketing and SMS marketing platform. Perfect email marketing platform for startups and small businesses. Create beautiful and branded emails from the Sender library and grow your business faster while spending less on email marketing. Trusted by 100,000+ companies including HP, Deloitte, Disney, Pizza Hut, Honeywell, WWF, Quicken Loans, Emirates, and many more.
Sender Key Features
- Template Library – Compose stunning newsletters with ready-made templates.
- Deliverability – Get the highest email deliverability with top-class email infrastructure.
- Marketing Automation – Save time and increase your revenue by automated entire email communication.
- Integration – Easily integrate with leading content management systems, CRMs, and eCommerce platforms.
- SMS Marketing – Leverage SMS marketing and create deep connections with customers.
- Reporting – Analyze and boost your campaign results.
- Customer Support: Dedicated support to your success.
Sender Pricing Plans – Pay as you go
- Free Forever Plan – Upload 2,500 subscribers and send 15k emails per month without any cost.
- Standard – Upload 10,000 subscribers and send 120k emails per month at $20.75. Including features like Email automation, SMS and MMS, and more.
- Professional – Upload 10,000 subscribers and send 240k emails per month at $100. Including features like Email automation, Free SMS and MMS, Dedicated IP address, Advanced automation, Premium Support, and more.
3. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a complete email automation and CRM platform. Best for startups, eCommerce, B2c, and B2b companies to increase customer engagement. Largest user’s community around 150000+ business use ActiveCampaign to grow their business. Create outstanding email, send email to the right audience at the right, and offers the highest delivery rate in the industry.
ActiveCampaign Key Features
- All in one email marketing platform – Includes Broadcast emails, Triggered emails, Targeted emails, Email autoresponders, Email funnels, Scheduled emails, and more.
- Beautiful Email Template – It has more than 125+ ready-to-use templates.
- Marketing Automation – It has more than 500 pre-built automation workflows to generate high-quality leads.
- Email Personalization – Send personalized emails based on customer information. Apart from the first and last name you can use the city, customer history, recent purchase details to give a personalized experience to customers.
- Lead Scoring – Provide points to each lead based on website activity.
- Landing Pages – Create landing pages in minutes and capture more leads.
- Forms – Create sign-up forms and popup forms to convert visitors into leads.
- Ecommerce – Automate complete e-commerce function including Abandoned cart emails, Track order fulfillment, Loyalty program, and more.
- SMS Marketing – Reach your customer with automated SMS marketing and increase customer engagement.
- Site tracking – Track your website visitors with site tracking features.
- Integration – Integrates with more than 870 third-party tools and platforms.
- Advanced reporting – It makes your marketing works and create new opportunity to grow your business.
ActiveCampaign Pricing Details
Each plan comes with additional features, choose your plan based on your requirement.
- Free Plan – Offer 14 days free trial with unlimited features.
- Lite Plan – For 1000 contacts it will cost you $25/mo.
- Plus Plan – For 1000 contacts it will cost you $49/mo.
- Professional Plan – For 1000 contacts it will cost you $129/mo.
- Enterprise Plan – For 1000 contacts it will cost you $229/mo.
4. Aweber
Aweber is one of the oldest and trusted email marketing platforms. Its outstanding features and customer support team help you to grow your business online. Best for small business, startup, and eCommerce companies with affordable prices.
Aweber Key Features
- Email marketing – Reach your goal faster with an easy-to-use email marketing platform. Includes email designer, drag & drop editor, pre-built templates, segmentation, automation, tagging, and more.
- Landing page templates – Grow your audience with optimized landing page templates and sign-up forms.
- Email templates – 600+ email and newsletter templates.
- Email automation – Complete automation system to increase open rate and conversion.
- Pricing – Simple pricing plan with value-added features.
- Ecommerce pages – Setup eCommerce store in a minute, start selling and accepting payments online.
- Web push notifications – Easy to send push notifications and increase website visitors.
- Free Stock Images – Make use of free stock images to create an awesome email.
- Email deliverability – Outstanding IP and domain reputation management that leads to maximum inbox rate.
- Reports & Analytics –Measure your campaign performance and goals with an effective reporting dashboard.
Aweber Pricing Details
- Free Plan – Upload up to 500 subscribers and send 3000 emails per month.
- Pro Plan – Upload up to 501 – 2500 subscribers and send unlimited emails, which will cost you $26.15 /mo.
If you have a list of more than 25000 subscribers then contact the customer support team.
5. SendPulse
SendPulse is a multi-channel marketing automation platform. Send emails, SMS, and build chatbots for Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and WhatsApp. Trusted by small to big brands like Samsung, PWC, Puma, TCS, Jack Wolfskin, Karcher, and more.
SendPulse Key Features
- Email Campaign – Send email campaign with outstanding free templates.
- Automation 360 – Automation makes marketer job easy, set-up email sending, push notification, SMS, based on user action and behavior.
- Tagging- Use tagging to organize contacts and send relevant emails.
- Personalize emails – Send personalized emails with replaceable text.
- Subscriber Form – Create a form with your brand design and color.
- Subscriber Rating – Rate your customer based on website and email interaction.
- Statistics – To monitor email performance.
- Landing Pages – Build landing pages in just 10 minutes and share with your audience.
- ChatBots app – Create auto-replies for Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and WhatsApp.
- Bulk SMS service – Send SMS campaign for free.
- Push notification – Notify the user with browser push notification.
- Email Verifier – In-built email verification service will help you to verify email addresses and improve delivery rate.
SendPulse Pricing Details
SendPluse offers a competitive and affordable pricing plan. Each plan offers additional features.
- Free Plan – Offers all core email marketing features. Upload up to 500 subscribers and send up to 15000 emails.
- Standard Plan – For list size 501 to 1000 will cost you $9.60/month.
- Pro Plan – For list size 501 to 1000 will cost you $11.52/month.
- Enterprise Plan – For list size 501 to 1000 will cost you $16.13/month.
6. SendX
SendX is the most affordable email marketing platform with extraordinary features. Best suitable for marketers, small business owners, accountants, and accounting firms. Select any plan and send unlimited emails. It’s one of the leading all-in-one marketing automation platforms.
SendX Key Features
- Email Marketing – Sending unlimited emails with the highest delivery rate.
- Embedded Sign-Up Forms – Use the sign-up form and grow your email list.
- Email Drip Campaigns – Send nurture campaigns and convert your leads into customers.
- Email Automation – Use automation and put your marketing on auto-pilot.
- Pop-up forms and Landing pages – Convert more visitors with attractive pop and landing pages.
- WYSIWYG Drag & Drop Email Editor – Create awesome emails without coding.
- Dedicated IP – Provides you dedicated IP to manage your email deliverability.
- Click Heatmap – This provides you click heatmap for email campaigns.
- Embed A Video Inside Drip Emails – You can insert embed videos inside email templates.
- Integrations – You can easily integrate with CRM, Payment gateways, webinar tools, Zapier, and more.
- Google Analytics- Track and measure landing page performance with Google Analytics.
- Reporting & Analytics – Create a custom report and analyze your campaign performance.
SendX Pricing Details
SendX provides the industry’s cheapest and reasonable pricing plan. It charges based on per subscriber and offers unlimited features.
- Free Plan – Offer 14 days free trial with unlimited emails and features.
- List size between 1 – 1,000: It will cost just $7.49 with all features.
- List size between 1,001 – 2,500: It will cost $14.99 with all features.
- List size between 2,501 – 5,000: It will cost $29.99 with all features.
- List size between 5,001 – 10,000: It will cost $39.99 with all features.
- List size between 10,001 – 15,000: It will cost $44.99 with all features.
7. Drip
Drip is an Email and SMS marketing software that helps growing ecommerce brands. Drip is specially designed for ecommerce companies with multi-channel marketing features that drive more sales and revenue. More than 30,000+ marketers are using Drip to connect their customers. Use Drip and take your marketing to the next level.
Drip Key Features
- Email Marketing – Create a multi-touch campaign with ease.
- Pre-built Workflow – Make use of pre-built automation workflows like welcome series, abandoned cart, post-purchase campaigns, and more.
- Customer Data – Collect each and every information of customer including clicks, cart add, purchase website activity, location, offer, first touchpoints, and more.
- Personalization – Create a personalized experience by using customer data and meet your customer expectation.
- SMS Marketing – Make use of SMS marketing to engage customers effectively.
- Optimization – Easily check all the data and optimize it based on performance.
- Ready-made Templates – Create awesome emails without coding skills.
- Ecommerce Integration – Compatible with ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and more.
- Customizable Forms – Grow your audience with attractive branded opt-in forms.
- Revenue Attribution – Shows clear report, which email or SMS is driving more revenue and customers.
- Support – Customer support is available through Chat, Email, and Phone.
Drip Pricing Plans
No hidden charges, pricing is based on a number of emails or SMS you send.
- Free Plan – Drip provides 14 days free trial with all the features. No credit card is required.
- Paid Plan – It starts at $19 per month for 1-500 contacts. Includes all features, unlimited email sends, email support, and more. If you are looking for Email+SMS then the same plan will cost you $22 per month that includes 200 SMS.
Conclusion
It’s hard to choose the right email automation platform for any business. But you should consider these 11 points while choosing the right email automation platform.
1. Deliverability – Choose a platform that provides the highest deliverability.
2. CRM – Choose a platform that has GDPR compliant and manage your customer database accordingly.
3. Pre-built or Ready-made template – Use a platform that already has a pre-built email design and optimized template. That will save a lot of time and launch your campaign instantly.
4. Email Automation – It is the most useful feature and must require for any marketers or business owner to auto-pilot complete marketing function.
5. Landing Pages and Forms – Important features you must have in the email automation platform to capture leads.
6. List segmentation – Easy to segment your list based on interest, behavior, and website activity.
7. Integration – Choose a platform that has effortless integration capability.
8. Customer Support – Choose a platform that has a world-class customer support team.
9. Pricing – Choose a platform that has an affordable and reasonable price to reduce marketing costs.
10. Paid Ads – Manage your paid ads with an all-in-one marketing platform.
11. Reporting and Analytics – In-depth reporting and analytics to measure marketing performance and organization goals.
After doing a lot of research and considering all the major points of email marketing, we have chosen a reputed and trusted email automation provider that produces a higher return on investment.