Best Free Email Marketing Tools and Software in 2023

Tested and Compared, Hereโ€™s Your Winner

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If you're on the lookout for some free email marketing software, then you're in the right place! In this comparison, we have six of the very best tools for you! These are the leading free email marketing services that are making their mark in 2022. We'll look at their features, free plan limitations, the price of an upgrade, and overall pros and cons. After scouring the market for a while, here's the final lineup we've landed on:

Summary table:

To help you make up your mind, we've prepared this quick comparison table:

Best Free Email Marketing Tools
Tool Emails for free Contacts for free Upgrade cost
HubSpot Email Marketing 2,000 / mo 1,000 $45 / mo
Sendinblue 300 / day (9,000 / mo) Unlimited $25 / mo
AWeber 3,000 / mo 500 $16.15 / mo
ConvertKit Unlimited 1,000 $25 / mo
Omnisend 15,000 / mo Unlimited $16 / mo
MailerLite 12,000 / mo 1,000 $7 / mo
Sender 15,000 / mo 2,500 $11 / mo

Here's what each of these free email marketing platforms brings to the table:

HubSpot Email Marketing

hubspot free email marketing tools HubSpotโ€™s email marketing software is part of its CRM platform, which is designed to help you grow your business by offering personalized experiences to your customers and audience. HubSpot is known for its world-class CRM and is a widely popular option among SMBs and large enterprises, as evidenced by their 100k+ customers. The CRM collects all sorts of information on your website visitors and contacts, and that information is used across the platform so you can provide better experiences for them. The email marketing and automation features are particularly popular among HubSpotโ€™s user base and the native CRM integration makes for a strong and highly engageable strategy.

Features in the free plan: ๐Ÿงฐ

  • A drag-and-drop email builder
  • Customizable pre-built email templates optimized to your specific goal
  • Personalization tokens so you can segment and personalize your emails based on your subscribersโ€™ information
  • Email reply tracking
  • Automated follow-up emails
  • Free CRM
  • Free landing page builder, form and popup builder, live chat, and more to have a full lead generation funnel
  • A WordPress plugin

Limitations of the free version: โœ‹

  • Up to 2,000 email sends per month
  • 5 dynamic lists and 1,000 static lists
  • Free HubSpot CRM and tools for marketing, sales, customer service, and operations

Cost of upgrade: ๐Ÿ’ฐ

When you upgrade your HubSpot email marketing tool, you actually upgrade HubSpotโ€™s entire marketing platform and thus get a whole lot more value than a simple email marketing software. There are 3 paid plans to choose from:

  • Starter: Starts at $45 per month and you can send 5,000+ emails. You can also remove the HubSpot branding from your emails.
  • Professional: Starts at $800 per month and lets you send 10,000+ emails. You get most of the automation and a/b testing features as well as advanced analytics, blogging and SEO tools, and more.
  • Enterprise: Starts at $3,200 per month and is best suited for larger companies that want a full marketing automation platform.

Who should get HubSpot: ๐Ÿค”

HubSpot is an excellent option if youโ€™re a one-person operation or a small business looking to grow and automate certain tasks, but also if youโ€™re already relatively big and need a tool that can support your growth. Itโ€™s also ideal if you prefer to not have to manage multiple tools and like to have everything in one place, and if you value personalization.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Check out our HubSpot Marketing Hub review.

Best Free Email Marketing Tool – Sendinblue

Best free email marketing software: Sendinblue Sendinblue is a relative newcomer to the email marketing space, and a bit of a smaller player compared to some of the other tools that we're featuring later on this list. So why is it the no. 1 then? There are a few good reasons: What's great about Sendinblue is that it's actually an exceptional all-around online marketing solution that goes beyond just email. It also offers SMS messaging, a customer chat tool, CRM, landing pages, and even Facebook Ads integration. Overall…impressive. But let's get back to its email features: Sendinblue has basically every email marketing quality you could ask for. You can send standard broadcast campaigns with it, get great deliverability, enable email automation and drip campaigns, and even send transactional emails from a compatible ecommerce store (Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.). The fact that you get all this under one roof means that you'll quite possibly never have to change your email marketing platform as your business grows. Sendinblue has it all for you, no matter how large or small your operation might be. Then, of course, many of Sendinblue's goodies are available for free, which is what you came here to learn in the first place.

Features in the free plan: ๐Ÿงฐ

  • A visual email builder tool that's mobile-friendly and works with drag-and-drop
  • Broadcast email campaigns
  • A library of email templates
  • SMS marketing
  • Email and SMS personalization (include the recipient's name, etc.)
  • Customer chat tool (Sendinblue gives you a chat module you can install on your site)
  • Contact segmentation
  • Customizable signup forms
  • Sales CRM
  • Email marketing automation with a workflow editor
  • Real-time reporting
  • GDPR Compliance
  • API integrations with RSS, Google Contacts, Typeform, and more
  • A WordPress plugin

Limitations of the free version: โœ‹

  • Sendinblue doesn't limit your number of subscribers (this is the only tool here that offers this)
  • You can send up to 300 emails per day in total
  • Marketing automation features available for up to 2,000 contacts

Cost of upgrade: ๐Ÿ’ฐ

Sendinblue offers three main paid tiers based on the features and email volume you need:

  • Lite: from $25/mo for 10,000 monthly emails and up
  • Premium: from $65/mo for 20,000 monthly emails and up
  • Enterprise: negotiated individually

The Lite and Premium plans also offer additional advanced features on top of what you get in the free tier. Most importantly, you're getting A/B testing, send time optimization (based on time zone), a whole additional landing page builder tool, and better reporting.

Who should get Sendinblue: ๐Ÿค”

Sendinblue is a great all-around email marketing solution for any business. This might sound like a blanket statement, but that's really what the case is. Sendinblue doesn't disappoint in any aspect of what you'd expect from a tool like this and also delivers some fairly original features that are not commonly seen from the competition. It's known as one of the best Mailchimp alternatives out there. The fact that the free plan is awesome has a lot to do with that – you being able to send to unlimited contacts.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Check out our Sendinblue review here.

AWeber

Best free email marketing software: AWeberQuite on the opposite end of the spectrum to Sendinblue, AWeber is one of the most recognizable brands in email marketing and one of the oldest such tools on the market – established in 1998. AWeber offered email marketing features back when only the most hardcore online marketers used them. All this experience has to pay off somehow…and it does! AWeber is really focused on making your email marketing campaigns as effective as possible, while also offering you all the features you might need in one place. That being said, AWeber‘s free plan is kind of a new thing. The company went through some rebranding lately and has now opened the doors to small businesses that don't have much of a budget to dive into email marketing head in. Feature-wise, you won't be disappointed. AWeber gives you a smart email design tool that works with drag-and-drop and is AI-powered (that's a trendy thing these days), a landing page builder, a library of email templates, and much more. There are also handy automations if you ever want to take things to the next level.

Features in the free plan: ๐Ÿงฐ

  • A visual drag-and-drop editor for crafting your emails
  • Broadcast email campaigns
  • Email automation tools and autoresponders
  • RSS to email (send newsletters based on your latest blog posts automatically)
  • A library of email templates
  • HTML emails
  • Dynamic content (based on presets)
  • AMP-friendly emails (hyper-optimized for mobile viewing – will increase your open rates)
  • Thousands of professional images to pick from and include in your emails
  • Landing page creation tool (you can build an unlimited number of them)
  • Landing page templates
  • A library of signup forms
  • Email list segmentation
  • Simple subscriber and message analytics
  • AWeber Ecommerce – you can sell products directly through email
  • Web push notifications
  • A WordPress plugin

Limitations of the free version: โœ‹

  • Up to 500 contacts
  • Up to 3,000 emails sent a month
  • Up to 50,000 web push notification subscribers

Cost of upgrade: ๐Ÿ’ฐ

Upgrading to a paid plan starts from $16.15/mo (billed annually). For that price, you get the same 500 contacts, but you do unlock some extra features, like split testing, behavioral automation, cart abandonment features, white labeling, custom list segmentation, better reporting, and a couple more. Then, if you want to increase the volume (billed annually):

  • $26.15/mo for 2,500 contacts
  • $46.15/mo for 5,000 contacts
  • $66.15/mo for 10,000 contacts

Who should get AWeber: ๐Ÿค”

AWeber is great if you're just getting started with a very small list of subscribers or you'll be building a list from scratch. You should also consider AWeber if you want to experiment with the idea of commerce over email – via AWeber Ecommerce.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Check out our AWeber review here.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit ConvertKit was originally marketed as the perfect email tool for bloggers. There certainly is something to it. Where most of the other email marketing services focus on helping you “build a customer base,” ConvertKit is more geared to helping you “connect with fans.” Granted, this is perhaps only a difference in positioning, but it does paint a picture as to the kind of user that ConvertKit is hoping to attract. The entire platform is focused on helping you figure out what type of content you want to share, how to connect with your audience, and how to structure your stories in an effective way. Then, of course, all the fancy email marketing and automation features are also there so that you're able to turn your messages into income for your business.

Features in the free plan: ๐Ÿงฐ

  • A visual email creation tool with templates and access to a catalog of images that you can use freely
  • Tools for creating landing pages, sales pages, link pages (a sort of bio page for social media where you can link to all your projects)
  • Connect a custom domain name to your ConvertKit profile
  • A signup form creation tool
  • Free delivery of opt-in incentives in welcome emails (for instance, when you offer people a gift in exchange for signing up to your newsletter)
  • List segmentation
  • Reports
  • Email automation and autoresponders
  • ConvertKit Commerce – a tool allowing you to sell digital products straight from your email newsletters
  • You can run a paid newsletter (charge subscribers for access), also on a membership basis (with recurring payments via credit cards)
  • A WordPress plugin

Limitations of the free version: โœ‹

  • Up to 1,000 contacts
  • Unlimited email sends
  • Unlimited traffic to your pages

Cost of upgrade: ๐Ÿ’ฐ

Upgrading to a paid plan starts from $25/mo (paid annually). This plan has the same subscriber limit of 1,000. If you need more, the price starts increasing pretty rapidly: 5,000 subscribers will cost you $66/mo or $93/mo depending on which tier of the paid plan you choose. Overall, ConvertKit is not the cheapest tool out there once you decide to upgrade. The extra features you get include a migration tool (if you're moving your list from another email marketing service provider), automated funnels and sequences, integration with Facebook custom audiences, a referral system for your email newsletters, and advanced reporting.

Who should get ConvertKit: ๐Ÿค”

ConvertKit is a great choice if you're a blogger who wants to get started with a basic set of features that will allow you to connect with your audience. And, at the same time, you're okay with a limited number of contacts you can serve on the free plan. All those extra tools, like landing pages, sales pages, an ecommerce module, and so on, will help you get off the ground fast and perhaps earn your first income before having to upgrade your ConvertKit plan.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Check out our ConvertKit review here.

Omnisend

omnisend homepage - free email marketing services Omnisend offers one of the most powerful and simple to use email automation tools in the market. The solution was developed with e-commerce in mind as it features top shopify integrations (and several other third-party integrations). Since its launch in 2014 as Soundest, the brand has since become one of the leading e-commerce email marketing platforms available today. Omnisend comes with so many inbuilt template options that you can use to design personalized emails. There are also many automation features for segmenting your email list and sending emails. In addition to that the solution integrates seamlessly with your SMS marketing campaigns and Facebook messenger. Also, as anyone who's ever run an email marketing campaign knows, lead generation is a crucial phase. And Omnisend also possesses features that enable you to create powerful, compelling and engaging lead generation forms. There are so many different form styles to pick from, most notably the following (all of which you can blend into your email marketing campaigns):

  • Interactive and engaging wheel of fortune type form
  • Signup boxes
  • Pop-ups

Finally, but definitely not the least, every email marketing campaign must have thorough analysis. And this is where Omnisend's reporting features shine. The solution's reporting features come with real-time dashboards and click maps so you can be certain that you have access to all the data required to properly and adequately evaluate your email marketing campaign's success. Overall, Omnisend provides everything that you will need to simplify and automate your email marketing processes.

Features in the free plan: ๐Ÿงฐ

  • Pre-built email templates that you can choose from, customize, and send
  • 15,000 emails per month with 2000 emails per day.
  • Drag and drop email editor
  • Publish 3 active signup forms
  • Click maps
  • Sales reporting
  • Email Segmentation
  • Website tracking for one month of data

Limitations of the free version: โœ‹

  • You can only create a few email segments with the free offer but in the paid plans, you can design from 20 email segments upwards.
  • The audience segmentation feature is not available in the free plan.
  • Priority support is not available in the free plan.
  • Regardless of the size of your email list you can only send 15,000 emails per month and 2000 daily.

Cost of upgrade: ๐Ÿ’ฐ

Omnisend offers 3 paid plans that users can upgrade to:

  • Standard Plan: Starts at $16 per month for 15,000 emails monthly. The cost and number of emails that can be sent increase with the size of your email list.
  • Pro Plan: Starts at $59 a month for 15,000 emails per month and $99 worth of free SMS credits per month. The cost and number of emails that can be sent increase with the size of your email list.
  • Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for unlimited emails monthly and free SMS credits.

The standard and pro plan also feature additional functions not available in the free plan like pre-built workflows, email automation, web push notifications, priority support, and SMS campaigns and automation.

Who should get Omnisend: ๐Ÿค”

Omnisend is great for ecommerce marketers who are sales-driven and are searching for advanced and automated email marketing tools. Functionalities such as a drag-and-drop editor, pre-built email templates that can be customized makes the email marketing process very seamless. The solution goes steps above what you expect from generic email marketing platforms by offering features like automated emails, audience segmentation, and in-depth analytics and reporting with real-time dashboards. So, if you're searching for an email marketing solution that automates the process and is built for eCommerce success, then Omnisend is for you. For example, Omnisend integrates seamlessly with over 30 apps such as Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Stamped.io, ShipStation, and Smile.io. This makes using this email solution a lot easier for ecommerce brands.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Check out our Omnisend review here.

MailerLite

MailerLiteMailerLite stands out for at least two reasons. First, it has a free plan that's generous enough and on par with everything else out there. Second, it's one of the cheapest email marketing solutions on the market once you're ready to invest in your email efforts. Don't let the “Lite” part of the name fool you. Nothing is missing from MailerLite's offering in terms of features. You can be confident that the platform will be able to handle all your email marketing needs. MailerLite has been trusted by more than 1 million businesses and startups around the world, so they clearly have to be doing something right.

Features in the free plan: ๐Ÿงฐ

  • A user-friendly drag-and-drop email builder
  • Built-in photo editing tools (to make every picture in your newsletters look great)
  • File management (to take care of all your digital assets that you're sending to subscribers)
  • Newsletter templates that are mobile-friendly
  • A landing page creation tool
  • Signup forms and templates (they also work as pop-ups)
  • Great list management tools
  • An unsubscribe page builder (not a feature that's common in other tools)
  • Email automation features
  • Advanced segmentation
  • RSS campaigns (to automate newsletters built from your new blog posts)
  • A/B testing (not commonly seen with free tools)
  • Reports and analytics
  • Surveys (you can create them and then embed in emails)
  • GDPR compliance

Limitations of the free version: โœ‹

  • Up to 1,000 contacts
  • 12,000 email sends monthly
  • Customer support only through email
  • You get one mini-website and five landing pages
  • Unlimited traffic to your mini-website and forms

Cost of upgrade: ๐Ÿ’ฐ

As I mentioned, MailerLite is one of the cheapest tools out there once you're ready to upgrade. The entry-level plan will cost you $7/mo for 1,000 subscribers (paid annually). After that, the next tiers are:

  • $10.50/mo for 2,500 subscribers,
  • $21/mo for 5,000 subscribers,
  • $35/mo for 10,000 subscribers,
  • and so on.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Also read: The ultimate guide to MailerLite pricing.

Who should get MailerLite: ๐Ÿค”

Overall, MailerLite is a great email marketing provider for small business owners who have a very limited budget and would like to keep things affordable for as long as possible. MailerLite also isn't lacking any key features, so it's not like you're making a trade-off considering the low pricing. Lastly, MailerLite is one of the few tools on this list that offer A/B testing for free.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Check out our MailerLite review here.

Sender

SenderSender is an established email marketing platform that's been around for a while but started making a larger splash only recently. The first thing that stands out about Sender's offering is the generosity of the free plan. It's not common for an email marketing platform to allow for up to 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails/mo without paying. What's even more interesting is that the list of features isn't limited in any way compared to the paid plans. The only difference is in how many emails you're allowed to send.

Features in the free plan: ๐Ÿงฐ

  • A visual email design tool with drag-and-drop to customize your emails easily
  • A catalog of templates (all of them responsive and mobile-friendly)
  • Advanced tools for HTML email creation
  • Email list segmentation
  • Signup form templates and pop-ups
  • Integrations with popular ecommerce solutions (WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop, and more)
  • Abandoned cart emails
  • Email automation
  • Reports and analytics on different metrics
  • Integrations with third-party tools
  • A WordPress plugin

Limitations of the free version: โœ‹

  • Up to 2,500 subscribers
  • Up to 15,000 emails monthly

All features are included in the free plan with no other limitations. Cost of upgrade: ๐Ÿ’ฐ Upgrading to a paid plan with Sender is very affordable. The entry-level plan is only $11/mo, and it allows you to send up to 60,000 emails to 5,000 subscribers. This already is very impressive. If you want more, Sender is also one of the cheapest email marketing tools when sending to:

  • 10,000 subscribers – $22/mo
  • 20,000 subscribers – $46/mo

Who should get Sender: ๐Ÿค” Sender doesn't have a super-huge list of features, but all the essential stuff is there. If you want to have a good cushion to support up to 2,500 subscribers for free, this might be a solution for you. In the end, you can build beautiful emails with Sender and then make sure that they get delivered to all the right places.

What's your free email marketing software of choice?

There you have it, a list of six of the best free email marketing tools available on the market! As you've seen, all of them offer functional free plans that should be more than enough to get you started with email marketing. Then, the upgrades in most cases aren't expensive either. It's about time you stop using Gmail or Zoho for your marketing communication. But, at the same time, why would you overpay for tools like Constant Contact, GetResponse, Salesforce, or HubSpot, when you can use these ones instead, right? Don't forget to check out this quick comparison table:

Best Free Email Marketing Software
Tool Emails for free Contacts for free Upgrade cost
HubSpot Email Marketing 2,000 / mo 1,000 $45 / mo
Sendinblue 300 / day (9,000 / mo) Unlimited $25 / mo
AWeber 3,000 / mo 500 $16.15 / mo
ConvertKit Unlimited 1,000 $25 / mo
MailerLite 12,000 / mo 1,000 $7 / mo
Sender 15,000 / mo 2,500 $11 / mo
Moosend Unlimited 1,000 $8 / mo
If you have any questions about the email marketing tools featured in this post, feel free to comment below. Or maybe you're using something else, like Omnisend, Benchmark Email, SendPulse, or Mailjet? Let us know how you've been enjoying those solutions as well.

Featured image via Depositphotos.

Karol K

Karol K. (@carlosinho) is a WordPress figure-outer, blogger, and published author of "WordPress Complete". His work has been featured all over the web on sites like: Ahrefs.com, Smashing Magazine, Adobe.com, and others.

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