Free tools for email marketing are an invaluable weapon in your marketing arsenal. Whereas other marketing channels can shift and fluctuate with the vicissitudes of modern online marketing, email marketing generally holds fast. Facebook marketing can be finicky, Google’s algorithm can pull the rug from under your feet with new updates, and the less said about recent changes to Twitter, the better.
Yet email marketing tends to be highly reliable, and always offers an excellent ROI. What’s more, it’s possible to make great use of free email marketing tools and services that mean your company’s coffers swell instead of emptying.
There are so many free email marketing services, in fact, that it can be dizzying trying to make heads or tails of them. Which free software for email marketing is actually worth using? Which ones can be safely disregarded? Are there any paid email marketing tools with free trials that you can take advantage of?
Let’s take a more in-depth look at the free email marketing tools that can make a difference for you and your company.
Table of Contents
Free Email Marketing Tools: Our Top Picks
- Best one-stop shop email tool incl. free option: HubSpot
- Best free tool with unlimited subscribers: SendInBlue
- Best no fuzz newsletter designer: MailerLite
- Most generous free package: Mailjet
- Leading the field in AI email marketing: Benchmark
Read on for more information and a detailed review of these and other email marketing tools.
Some of the descriptions in this post contain affiliate links.
HubSpot
HubSpot is without a doubt the best automated marketing platform out there. It’s a one-stop shop for those looking to get the most out of their email campaigns, and offers a robust collection of free email marketing tools that mean you don’t have to spend a penny before you start seeing results.
With a free HubSpot account you get 2000 emails a month, support for up to 105 mailing lists, and informative reports on all of your campaigns. If you’re satisfied with your free HubSpot account (and it’s hard to imagine you wouldn’t be), you can take the plunge and upgrade so that you have an entirely new set of email marketing tools at your disposal such as customer relations management (CRM), sales assistance, customer service, and fully automated marketing tools.
HubSpot doesn’t waste time getting you into the thick of it. After you’ve completed registration it takes you straight to the email template editor, meaning you’re ready to go immediately. There is also a newbie-friendly and comprehensive user guide that gets you up to speed quickly, whether you’re an email marketing old hand or a greenhorn.
Where HubSpot particularly excels is with its fantastic segmentation options. Your 105 mailing lists feature 100 static and 5 ‘active’ mailing lists. It’s the latter which impresses, with its options for quickly segmenting subscribers by hard bounces or openers who don’t click through. HubSpot also integrates with Zapier, making it extremely easy to keep your contacts up to date, as well as plugging leads from your ad campaigns directly into HubSpot.
All in, quite simply one of the strongest free email marketing services out there.
SendInBlue
SendInBlue definitely has one of the most impressive free plans out there. You get unlimited subscribers (which is great for a free email marketing service), SMS support, a robust suite of analytics tools, excellent automated marketing support and transactional email functionality. What’s more, all of these features are controlled from the same dashboard. SendInBlue is headquartered in France, too, meaning that you won’t fall afoul of the EU’s GDPR.
As noted, SendInBlue allows an unlimited number of subscribers. You are limited to 300 emails a day, which can make it a bit of a non-starter if you’re hoping to hit 1000 subscribers with the same email at the same time. It’s great for drip campaigns, however, due to the lack of cap on subscribers.
Those wishing to take things to the next level with SendInBlue can pay $25/month to up the email cap to 20,000/month, with no daily cap.
Even if just using SendInBlue for its free software for email marketing, it’s still well worth considering. Its drag-and-drop template editor is quick to get to grips with and very intuitive, they offer excellent segmentation tools, there are real-time reporting tools for immediate feedback on your campaigns, and it offers integration with other platforms like Shopify, Google, RSS and WooCommerce.
Omnisend
A fantastic, all-inclusive platform replete with free tools for email marketing, Omnisend is a great option for those looking to save on email marketing costs. It’s designed, at the free end of the spectrum, to be used either by small businesses, businesses that have just started to expand into email marketing, or both. You’re capped at 500 emails a month, but with that comes automated workflow tools, mass mail functionality and even limited international SMS capabilities.
If you’re satisfied with Ominsend’s free email marketing tools, it’s worth upgrading. At the most basic level you can send emails up to twelve times the size of your subscriber base, get limitless web push notifications for your subscribers, and receive a boost to the number of SMSs you can send. Your segmentation and automated workflow options also become much broader, allowing you to send abandoned cart or personalized emails out automatically.
Omnisend’s suite of features may pale in comparison to some of the other big names in free email marketing services, but it’s well worth checking out if only for its international SMS functionality.
MailerLite
MailerLite is a simple, barebones free email marketing service that offers an intuitive, no-fuss newsletter designer with some extremely effective tools such as landing pages and marketing automation options. They have a ‘forever free’ plan that grants you access to almost all of their tools.
MailerLite is ideal for small businesses who have little email marketing experience and have a mailing list of smaller than 1000 subscribers. You can send a whopping 12,000 emails a month (again, limited to 1000 subscribers), and landing pages and simple automated workflows (single-trigger only) are included in the free plan.
MailerLite’s suite of tools is a little lacking (there’s no A/B testing or multi-trigger automated workflows, for instance) and there is no email template, making this a little inaccessible if you don’t know how to design your own, so it’s not for everyone. For small businesses looking to make a start with email marketing, though, it’s a great starter email marketing platform.
Zoho Campaigns
Zoho Campaigns has unfortunately scaled back the generosity of its free plan, but it is still an excellent staging point for businesses dipping their toes into the waters of email marketing. The free plan nets you 2000 subscribers, 6000 emails monthly, and up to five active users on your account. The free audience segmentation tools are not inconsiderable, and there is SMS and social campaign support.
As with many free email marketing platforms, there is an integrated drag-and-drop template editor that removes much of the busywork from getting your mass mail ready. It even features the ability to personalize individual blocks within the email, so that different subscribers see different things within the same email. This is, it almost goes without saying, fantastic functionality for a free account.
The automation workflows on offer with the free plan are incredibly robust and granular. There are multiple templates for creating fully automated workflows that can respond to a customer’s habits, responses or preferences. It’s completely possible to have fully functioning workflows that take care of abandoned cart, re-engagement, onboarding, retention, and eCommerce automated emails. Again, for a free service, this is simply incredible.
Should you choose to move up the ladder with Zoho, you can connect your account to the many other apps the company offers, as well as linking it with Zapier. It also offers a number of upgrades to its already-amazing workflow suite.
Mailjet
Mailjet is a solid option for an email marketing platform simply because its free package is extremely generous. Its templates are crisp and clear, you can send up to 6000 emails a month, and you can have an unlimited number of subscribers. The only drawback is that you can only send 300 emails a day, but this isn’t an issue unless you prefer burst – rather than drip – campaigns.
Mailjet’s drag-and-drop builder is similar to that offered by many other automated marketing platform, but it does the job and offers extremely bold and simple email templates that catch the eye. The number of integrations on hand is also staggering; Prestashop, WooCommerce and Shopify are on hand for your eCommerce integration needs, and for those looking to link with other business tools, you’ll find that you’re able to connect your Jira, Google Drive, Salesforce, Facebook and Click Funnels account, as well as a few more.
Mailjet is, simply put, perfect for smaller businesses and those who are geared towards drip campaigns or transactional emails. If you’re looking to hit all your subscribers at the same time, however, it’s probably best to look elsewhere.
EmailOctopus
EmailOctopus does a decent job of offering all the basic automated marketing basics in its free plan. Named the “Shrimp Plan” (in keeping with the platform’s marine theme), the plan is run in partnership with Amazon, which leads to a rather strange system – although EmailOctopus allow you to send as many emails as you like on their free plan, Amazon starts charging 10 cents per thousand emails after you’ve surpassed 62,000 emails a month. 62,000 is obviously a massively generous amount anyway, however, and if you’re a small business you’re probably unlikely to surpass that.
It’s also worth pointing out that with the Shrimp Plan, all your emails will be branded with EmailOctopus’ watermark, and your analytics information will only be held for 90 days, making long-term analysis difficult.
If you’re happy with the basics, EmailOctopus’ first paid plan allows up to 10,000 subscribers, retains your analytics indefinitely and removes the watermarks, making it quite the upgrade. However, there is no landing page builder, and segmentation tools are limited even on a paid plan.
In all, EmailOctopus is a good option for those wishing to make use of drip campaigns, but there are better packages out there for someone looking for a free email marketing service.
Sender
One of Sender’s biggest strengths, and something that makes it easy to recommend over other free email marketing sites, is just how smooth and intuitive it is. It also has a generous free package that permits 2500 subscribers and 15,000 emails monthly. Even at the free level there’s a hefty package of tools thrown in, too – push notifications, contact forms, automated workflows and transactional emails are all included.
The automation tools are great even on the free plan, with the ability to automatically re-segment subscribers based on their habits and responses, abandoned cart follow-ups, and custom field edits on the fly. Despite the apparent complexity of these sorts of features, they’re actually deceptively simple to use.
If you’re looking for a simple and straightforward email marketing company that doesn’t complicate things with a surplus of unwieldy features, then Sender is a safe bet.
Benchmark
One of the few automated marketing platforms to have stated exploring the possibilities of the nascent AI field in marketing, Benchmark is leading the field in allowing you limited access to AI tools without spending a penny.
With your free plan you receive 25 credits that can be used to have Benchmark’s machine writing software write your email copy for you. It will seldom be perfect, but it is a good starting point for those who struggle with figuring out how to get started on their email copy.
The use of AI on the free plan doesn’t stop there. Every account has Smart Sending, a machine-learning-powered feature that refines and optimizes both deliverability and engagement with every single email sent. Because Benchmark’s AI is taking care of all of this behind the scenes, it means that you don’t have to do a thing.
Their AI features aside, Benchmark offers an expansive suite of email marketing tools to make sure you’re getting the most out of your campaigns. They have a sizeable catalog of email templates, basic segmentation tools, a number of email template editors including plaintext and drag-and-drop, and easy-to-use automated email tools.
Benchmark also offers integration with Zapier, making it easy for you to feed leads through to the platform and make the most out of them.
MailChimp
MailChimp is a mainstay of the automated email marketing world because it was one of the first kids on the block, and the first to offer a completely free plan. Its suite of email marketing tools is as broad and varied as you’d expect from one of the industry’s titans, too.
The free plan supports 500 subscribers, 2500 emails per month, and a daily send limit of 500 (not too shabby compared to many competitors). The drag-and-drop template editor is extremely easy to use but features a lot of customizability, so that you can be assured that your mass mails do not resemble those of other users’. It also features integration with Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, making it easy to get even more reach out of your emails by getting them out on social media.
One of MailChimp’s more unique features is its “creative assistant”. This feature allows you to import your own color scheme and branding, and it then works to ensure that your template mimics these as closely as possible. It’s a great way to ensure consistent branding and generate brand awareness without needing to be a graphic designer.
Another feather in MailChimp’s cap is its unparalleled customer service. Available 24/7, they’re considered industry-best and are always on hand to help with any queries or issues you might have.
Despite all of these plus points, MailChimp has gradually downsized their free plan; whereas they once offered support for up to 2000 subscribers on their free plan, they now only offer a quarter of that. It’s still a fantastic option for small businesses and bloggers, but beyond that you’ll either want to look at a free plan, or another email marketing provider altogether.
SMTP
SMTP isn’t a free email marketing platform in the sense that they offer a free account, but they are an email marketing tool with a free trial. You can sign up and get 30 days completely free of charge.
Where SMTP shines is in their capacity to monitor and maintain the health of your mailing lists. It uses its proprietary data collection technology to constantly monitor your lists and offers in-built protection against bounces, meaning that in the long run your lists are healthier, and your domain/IP reputation is kept in good standing with ISPs. In turn, this ensures that your delivery rate is kept high.
SMTP also offers first-rate customer service that is always on hand to deal with any issues you might have, and their segmentation tools – while not the best on the market – are broad enough to get the job done.
Conclusion
As we have seen, there is no shortage of free email marketing solutions out there – it’s just a matter of picking the right one for you and your business. Whether you’re a small firm looking to cater to an equally small mailing list with a monthly newsletter, or you’re a larger firm that needs robust and dynamic segmentation and automated workflow options, there are plenty of free options out there that have you covered. It’s just a matter of picking the right one!
