See now a list of the best free email marketing software solutions to help your business to grow and you stay in contact with your users/clients easily with mailing.
As a small business marketer with my own entrepreneurial dreams, I’m a big fan of the show Shark Tank on ABC. If you’re not familiar with the show, every week, small business owners and entrepreneurs get up in front of the “sharks” (i.e. millionaire venture capitalists) and pitch the VCs on why they should invest in their business. One of the most common—and, in my opinion, weak—rebuttals when one of the sharks asks an entrepreneur why they should invest in a fledgling business with little to show for itself thus far is, “Because we haven’t put any money into marketing yet!”
For some reason, many small business owners still falsely believe that, in order to scale, they need the money to invest in a million-dollar TV commercial or put hundreds of thousands into radio and print ads to get the word out. But thanks to the widespread reach of the internet and the number of time consumers spend online these days, reaching your potential customers has never cost less.
Free Email Marketing Software Solutions
Perhaps the fastest and most cost-effective way to reach your customers today is with email marketing software—especially when there are so many 100% FREE email marketing solutions available.
While email marketing might seem like a passé marketing tactic of the ‘90s and 2000s, it has grown up quite a bit since those times. In the past 5 years, customers across all industries have increasingly turned online to take control of the sales and marketing process. Whether reading and leaving online reviews, asking for product recommendations from peers via social media or performing online research and reading blogs before making a purchase, the customer is now increasingly in charge of their communications with businesses.
As such, email marketing software is no longer just a batch and blast system that allows marketers to push out their message to the masses: it has evolved to include advanced automation rules, integrations with blogs, mobile devices, and social media, allowing you to not only reach customers through their inbox but also through the variety of other channels that they frequent in 2014.
So, below, I’ll delve into ten of the most well-known free email marketing software systems that you can use to scale your small business marketing:
1. Benchmark for Mailing
Founded in 2004, Benchmark focuses on simple email marketing and appeals to those with an eye for creative design thanks to its ability to customize email templates.
Free Plan: Free for Life plan for up to 2000 subscribers and 14,000 emails a month
Paid Plans: Send-based plans to start at $9.95 per month; list-based plans at $11.95 per month
Pros
- Firstly, User-friendly, clean templates, including the ability to send video email marketing.
- Secondly, Built-in A/B Testing and Inbox Checker that shows you how your emails look on recipients’ mobile devices and various browsers.
Cons
- While you can have unlimited contacts in your Free for Life plan, they have to come from your Benchmark subscriber sign-up form—not uploaded from your CRM or other sources.
- In addition, Limited customer support on weekends; only some chat and email support on Saturdays.
2. Pabbly Email Marketing
Pabbly Email Marketing lets you send bulk emails just at half the price of others. Moreover, you don’t even need to pay any extra amount for connecting to any professional SMTP servers. Also, you are provided with in-built delivery engines that assure 99% deliverability rate at very affordable rates.
Free Plan: Free plan allows you to explore the platform & connect up to 3 SMTP’s.
Paid Plans: The starting plan comes at $29 per month & allows you to send unlimited emails/month to 5,000 subscribers.
Pros:
- Pabbly Email Marketing has an inbuilt email list cleaning feature that allows you to clean bad emails from your contacts list automatically. Moreover, With this, you can maximize the efficiency of your email marketing campaigns and protect your email sender’s reputation.
- On the contrary to other email marketing services, it has an inbuilt unique feature of SMTP Routing that permits you to integrate with multiple SMTPs relays for sending emails as per your requirement. Hence, it allows you to select the number of emails (in %) to be sent dynamically from each SMTP relay.
- Pabbly Email Marketing comes with Zapier integration with which you can connect 50+ apps you use, automate tasks, & get more out of your data.
- In addition, Its dynamic automation features give you the flexibility to create your workflow exactly as you want. It allows you to create an email series with diverse emails & steps to keep up with where your subscribers are within the workflow. Also, it provides an activity report that informs you about the subscriber’s states.
Cons:
- Though the Pabbly Email Marketing’s interface looks quite conventional. But, it contains all the latest features that can be accessible by all the users very easily.
3. Reachmail Free Email Marketing
Reachmail was founded in 2001, and the company states that they strive to have the best, personal customer service in the industry.
Free Plan: Free for up to 5,000 contacts and 15,000 emails per month
Paid Plans: Start at $10 per month for up to 7,500 contacts and 30,000 emails/month
Pros
- Firstly, No contracts and no commitments, plus free training and unlimited support.
- For an extra fee, they’ll scrub your email list to make sure your email deliverability rates don’t suffer due to bad addresses.
Cons
- Firstly, Free, custom email template designed by Reachmail’s design team is only available with a paid account.
- In addition, Despite built-in integrations with Google Analytics and WordPress, Reachmail doesn’t advertise any built-in integrations with CRM systems, meaning you have to rely on their API to create a sync with your customer relationship management software.
4. MailChimp Free Email Marketing
MailChimp is perhaps the most widely-used email marketing system for small businesses, and based on a recent email marketing survey we performed of 60 small business owners, it received rave reviews from its users.
Free Plan: Forever Free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month
Paid Plans: Start at $20 per month for unlimited email
Pros
- Huge integration list—Integrates with WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, Magento, Salesforce, ZenDesk, BigCommerce, Drupal, Mandrill, and Google Analytics, to name a few.
- Nice analytics—easy-to-read graph reports that show side-by-side comparisons of your email performance compared with past emails or others in your industry.
Cons
- Difficult to customize sign-up forms.
- Some features excluded in the free version, include autoresponders, spam filter diagnostics, email client testing, delivery by time zone, and advanced social media monitoring.
5. VerticalResponse
VerticalResponse was founded in 2001, and the company currently has more than 1 million users. Its suite of web-based marketing tools includes ways to reach customers and prospects through email, social media, mobile, and more.
Free Plan: Free for up to 1,000 email contacts and 4,000 emails per month
Paid Plans: Start at $22 per month for unlimited email sending plans
Pros
- Included social media scheduling tools for unlimited posts on Facebook and Twitter.
- Built-in integrations with many of the major CRMs, such as Salesforce, SugarCRM, ZohoCRM, Nimble and more.
Cons
- No automation features such as auto-responders or event-triggered emails.
- Unsubscribes from any Vertical Response emails are also opted-out from all of the Vertical Response users’ databases, so you might lose some subscribers through this system.
6. Mailify
Mailify does not just nurture the reputation for being a very complete, modern and efficient app, but also for providing the best customer service. It integrates SMS with email marketing automation campaigns, whilst showcasing features such as the Heatmap and an advanced Email Builder.
Free plans: Free version enables you to send 500 emails
Paid plans: 3 different plans with unlimited emails and other perks
Pros:
- There are no limits on importing contact lists
- Specialized coaching support
- A powerful tool to combine SMS with bulk email
Cons:
- Still not very well-known
7. Mad Mimi
Mad Mimi is a popular solution for beginning email marketers because solutions really don’t come much simpler than this.
Free Plan: Free for unlimited emails to 100 subscribers
Paid Plans: Their first paid plan starts at $10/month for up to 500 contacts
Pros
- It’s a phenomenal system for email marketing newbies because it’s both easy to work with, and has excellent customer service.
- Emails are 100% customizable, with no need for any knowledge of HTML.
Cons
- Their free plan is exclusively for very, very small companies.
- There are no templates.
- You can’t A/B test your emails.
8. Freshmail Free Email Marketing
Freshmail is not for marketers new to email marketing – mainly because it’s less of an email marketing system and more of a marketing automation system. But all of those extra features are a boon to marketers who need to stay cheap, yet have the skills to implement more advanced email campaigns.
Free Plan: Unlimited emails for up to 500 contacts for mailing.
Paid Plan: $7 for 1000 emails; pay as you go.
Pros:
- You can create email nurture tracks and create dynamic content. (Some upsides of Freshmail being more of a marketing automation system.)
- Freshmail can generate barcodes to send in emails – which makes it ideal for retailers.
- A/B testing functionality.
Cons:
- 500 contacts are very easy to outgrow for a company that is ready to use marketing automation.
9. Company Email Marketing
Campayn is a strong solution for beginners with very competitive pricing.
Free Plan: 20,000 emails to 500 subscribers for mailing
Paid plan: $20/month for unlimited emails to 1000 subscribers for mailing
Pros:
- It comes with a built-in contact manager, which is ideal for companies that are too small for CRM. (Although, with so many free CRMs out there, are you ever really too small for a CRM?)
- It allows you to embed opt-in forms on your website to easily collect email subscribers.
- Company has an excellent customer service team.
Cons:
- Campayn can get pricey if you get on the paid version, as you have to pay to have more than 1 user, as well. A plan for 10,000 subscribers and 3 users comes out to $79/month, for instance.
10. Mailerlite Mailing
Mailerlite is one of the cheapest email solutions around and makes everything easy for first-time email marketers.
Free Plan: Unlimited emails to 1000 subscribers for mailing.
Paid Plan: Unlimited emails to 5000 subscribers for $6.66 (when paid annually).
Pros:
- Firstly, Mailerlite really is a lite solution. As the name implies, first-timers won’t be confused by a lot of features.
- Mailerlite has a drag-and-drop editor and a photo editor.
- It comes with A/B testing, autoresponder capabilities, and embed forms to gather emails.
- They have an iPad sign-up app so that you can easily collect emails in person.
- Mailerlite is incredibly cheap, so outgrowing the free plan is hardly a big deal.
Cons:
- Mailerlite really is a lite solution – so advanced marketers may find that it lacks many features they need.
11. Elite Email Marketing
Elite Email targets small businesses, enterprise organizations, and nonprofits alike with their mass email marketing solution.
Free Plan: Free for up to 500 contacts with unlimited mailing
Paid Plans: Start at $15 per month for 500+ contacts and pay-as-you-go plans
Pros
- Geo reports tell you where your customers are located and where they’re engaging with your emails through interactive maps
- You get unlimited emails and unlimited list segments, which allows for more targeted sending.
Cons
- Firstly, no mobile app to deploy emails on the go from your mobile device.
- Does not include any basic automation features, such as A/B testing and drip programs.
12. SendinBlue Mailing
SendinBlue is a four-year-old email marketing service from France. They now have a North American office, and offer their service in French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German.
Free Plan: 9000 emails/month to unlimited subscribers.
Paid Plan: $7.37/month for 40,000 emails/month to unlimited subscribers.
Pros:
- Firstly, the free plan is very generous. 9000 emails to a 500 person list are 18 emails in a month.
- Secondly, they offer automated text messages as well – so you have two channels of marketing to your customers within SendInBlue.
Cons:
Reviewers of this mailing service are split on SendinBlue’s customer service. While some customers love it, others seem to have had truly rough experiences.
