Online resources for email marketing are in the hundreds. It appears that all you have to do is search for the right answer on Google when you have a query, and it won’t take long. However, when you click on each link, you’ll often find that a large number of these blogs and email websites are out-of-date and poorly informed. Where can email enthusiasts find trustworthy and pertinent information? How can I locate appropriate marketing tools and other materials?

1. MailerLite

MailerLite pros:

• Pre-built content blocks make building emails super quick
• Generous allotments for segmentation and automation
• Affordable upgrade for unlimited users

MailerLite cons:

• No pre-made email templates on the free plan
• Can’t send emails from a Gmail email address

MailerLite doesn’t offer pre-made templates for its free newsletter service, but the dynamic, pre-designed content blocks more than make up for the lack of templates. With blocks for highlighting multiple articles, videos, RSS lists, products, apps, events, and more, MailerLite helps experienced email marketers make quick work of building new campaigns and custom templates.

Your emails can include more than just text and images, too. There’s a countdown timer that dynamically shows the time remaining until you launch a product or before a sale is over. You can add product details, embed a video, pull in your most recent blog posts with a dynamically updating RSS block, and more. It’s a great way to send interactive emails instead of just digital letters.

Beyond email content, MailerLite also includes robust automation and audience segmentation features in the free plan. An intuitive builder makes quick work of mapping out automation workflows—or you can hit the ground running with one of the 15 pre-built flows. Create both persistent and one-time segments and view aggregate statistics by segment, too.

Plus, MailerLite integrates with Zapier—meaning you can automate things like adding new MailerLite subscribers from Google Sheets and sending Mailchimp subscribers to MailerLite.

MailerLite pricing: Free for up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month

2. Brevo

Brevo pros:

• Pre-built, goal-oriented email automation
• Generous automation limits on the free plan
• Broad marketing and sales feature set

Brevo cons:

• Strict 300 email/day send limit

If you’re looking for one tool to handle all your marketing and sales needs, Brevo is a great option. Since rebranding from Sendinblue to Brevo, they’ve added several new features like a full-featured CRM, centralized solutions for sales meetings, calls, and chat, and streamlined deal tracking.

On top of these, the app still offers a variety of templated automation flows, based on your goals. You can choose your workflow to improve engagement, increase traffic, grow revenue, or build relationships.

You can get from account setup to actually editing emails in just a few clicks, and the streamlined campaign creation flow keeps the breadth of available campaign types (Brevo supports email, SMS, WhatsApp, web push, and Facebook ad campaigns) from feeling overwhelming. From there, you can build your emails with dozens of pre-made templates and a drag-and-drop editor. Brevo’s AI Assistant won’t give you much more functionality than copy and pasting from ChatGPT, but it’s integrated well with straightforward, useful prompt buttons. 

Once you’re finished designing, either send your email as a newsletter or use Brevo’s automation workflows to send on a schedule.

You can’t send as many emails at once as you can from other free email marketing tools, but you can manage more contacts—the free plan comes with 100,000 contacts—and split them into focused lists. Brevo also lets you buy prepaid credits to send more than your daily email limit.

Expand Brevo’s capabilities by integrating it with Zapier to automatically create new Brevo subscribers from new Google Contacts, Mailchimp subscribers, Facebook Lead Ads leads, and more.

Brevo pricing: Free for up 300 emails per day and 100,000 contacts

3. Mailchimp

Mailchimp pros:

• User-friendly interface with helpful tips and best practices
• Includes customer journey mapping, list segmenting, A/B testing, and more
• Scalable pricing

Mailchimp cons:

• Relatively limited free plan compared to the other options on this list
• No automation on the free plan

One of the most popular email marketing apps thanks to its friendly branding, Mailchimp is a great place to start your email marketing program if you’re planning to scale it quickly past newsletters. The app includes a landing page builder, customer journey mapping, list segmentation, retargeting ads, and even A/B testing.

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An approachable editor that includes helpful tips and best practices along the way makes Mailchimp an accessible option for both new and experienced email marketers. For example, when setting up a subject line, a dialog box reminds you about recommended character length, emoji use in subject lines, and more.

Once you’re ready to move beyond what the free plan offers, Mailchimp makes scaling accessible with three different paid tiers. Plus, Mailchimp can handle email programs of any size: if you can afford to let it grow with you, you’ll never have to switch to another app.

Mailchimp integrates with Zapier, allowing you to do things like automatically subscribe new form responders, leads, or spreadsheet entries to a Mailchimp list.

Mailchimp pricing: Free for up to 500 contacts and 1,000 sends per month (500 per day)

4. Sender

Sender pros:

• Super generous subscriber and send limits
• Full access to automation and segmentation
• Reasonable upgrade costs

Sender cons:

• Clunky drag-and-drop editor

If you’re looking to get a whole lot of value for free, Sender is your best bet. The ultra-generous free plan includes 2,500 subscribers, 15,000 emails each month, and full access to more advanced features like automation and audience segmentation. At a time when most email marketing apps are reining in their free plans, Sender’s really stands out.

You won’t get a lot of fancy email templates here, but the app does offer more than 60, most of which are of passable quality. The drag-and-drop editor isn’t my favorite, but it works. The automation feature now includes three pre-built workflows—for welcome series, thank-you series, and abandoned cart campaigns. It’s easy to use and includes 11 standard triggers. You can build audience segments based on all the standard dimensions you expect, along with a number of eCommerce-specific ones.

Speaking of which, if you’re looking to use Sender for eCommerce, you’ll probably have to upgrade eventually, but the paid plans are super affordable, too—just $47.50 per month gets you 10,000 subscribers, 120,000 email sends, SMS features, whitelabeling, and up to three users.

Plus, you can use Sender together with Zapier to automate even more of your email marketing workflow, like syncing new Sender subscribers across other apps and publishing emails to other channels. 

Sender pricing: Free for up to 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails per month

5. Loops

Loops pros:

• All features included on the free plan
• Lots of pre-built automation templates
• Scalable upgrade

Loops cons:

• Rich text editor only
• Plain text templates

Loops is an email marketing app built, from the foundation on up, for automation. The app calls automated workflows “loops” (hence the name), and they’re unlimited—even on the free plan.

Loops is designed for SaaS companies, and many of the features reflect that. With 17 pre-built loops to choose from, you can make quick work of building out automations for common subscription use cases like welcoming new paid users, inviting users to upgrade, and encouraging engagement.

The app also includes audience segmentation that’s on the basic side but easy to use. As a whole, Loop’s user interface is simple, clean, and supremely easy to navigate.

Now, this recommendation comes with one big caveat: Loops only includes a rich text editor and a few plain text email templates. If that works for your email marketing strategy, this is a great option—just know that you won’t be building out highly-designed visual-laden campaigns.

You can also use Loops with Zapier to broaden the automation horizons by sending events to Loops, adding new subscribers from other apps, and more.

Loops pricing: Free for up to 1,000 contacts and 2,000 email sends per month

6. Benchmark

Benchmark pros:

• Well-rounded free plan
• Flexible drag-and-drop, plain text, and code editors
• Scalable upgrade

Benchmark cons:

• Low subscriber limit on the free plan
• Unimpressive AI features

If you’re looking for an email marketing tool with a well-rounded (but not bloated) feature set available on the free plan, Benchmark is worth a look.

The app’s free plan is limited to 500 subscribers, but you get a generous allotment of monthly email sends, along with basic access to email automation, audience segmentation, and high-quality email templates. Plus, Benchmark offers affordable and scalable plans once you pass that subscriber count threshold.

With every new campaign, you can choose between drag and drop, plain text, and code editors, making Benchmark great for use across a diverse team.

Benchmark also offers a handful of AI features—including the new “Smart Design” (currently in beta) to design a custom branded template and “Smart Content” to generate email copy—but I wasn’t super impressed with either tool.

You can do even more when you connect Benchmark with Zapier, automating things like adding new subscribers and syncing contacts across your business stack. 

Benchmark pricing: Free for up to 500 subscribers and 3,500 emails per month

7. EmailOctopus

EmailOctopus pros:

• Generous free plan
• Ultra affordable upgrade to paid
• Access (albeit limited) to most features on the paid plan

EmailOctopus cons:

• Clunky editor

Even the most generous free email marketing apps have limits on the subscribers, monthly sends, and features you can access for free. That means, eventually, you may have to upgrade.

While EmailOctopus offers a generous free plan, with allowances for 2,500 subscribers, 10,000 monthly emails, and access to most of the features the app has to offer—in at least some limited way—it’s the ultra-affordable upgrade pricing that sets the app apart. EmailOctopus paid plans are the most affordable and scalable —we’re talking 10,000 subscribers and 100,000 monthly emails sends for $40 per month.

Beyond that, EmailOctopus offers dozens of email templates to choose from and an easy-to-use audience segmentation tool with all the standard dimensions you expect from a free tool, along with a handful of engagement-based ones, too.

You can also connect EmailOctopus with Zapier to get even more out of the tool, automatically adding new eCommerce customers as subscribers, keeping contact data up-to-date and complete, and more.

EmailOctopus pricing: Free for up to 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 email sends per month

The subscriber and email send limits on their free subscriptions won’t get you very far in eCommerce, even while apps like Mailchimp and Sender provide capabilities like online shop integration and audience segmentation parameters tailored to eCommerce.

Regarding email marketing tools designed specifically for eCommerce, Klaviyo and Omnisend—my previous choice—are both incredibly powerful choices. However, we can’t suggest either program if you’re seeking for a free email marketing solution because their free plans severely limit them to only 250 contacts and 500 sends per month—they won’t be free for long. Having said that, free plans allow you to try both Klaviyo and Omnisend for a short time before you have to pay for niche-specific capabilities.

While different platforms will suit different people best, you’ll want to keep an eye out for features like email templates and customization, audience segmentation, automation, scalability, and how many subscribers and sends are included in a free plan.

Email is one of the most effective ways to market your business. Why? Email is universal, as almost everyone has an email address. Plus, email is widely recognized as having a high return on investment (ROI) compared to other mediums. Email marketing software streamlines the entire process, ensuring you’re getting the most out of the time you put into it.