Email Marketing Services for Small Business: 7 Affordable Tools to Consider

Key features

• Signup form gallery. Grow your email list with professionally designed signup form templates. Choose among pop-up and embedded forms.

• Email broadcasts. Send bulk emails to promote special offers, sales, new products, restock alerts, and any other updates about your brand.

• Email marketing automations. Tag contacts and send emails automatically, under the conditions of your choice.

• Audience segmentation. Segment your contacts manually or automatically, based on their tags, interests, and actions.

Pros

• Generous free plan; pricing doesn’t increase if your list grows
• Large gallery of signup forms and email templates
• Added value with promo popups, coupons, and surveys
• 24/7 live chat support by human assistants
• Clean and easy-to-navigate interface

Cons

• Email marketing A/B testing is unavailable
• Transactional emails are not yet available

Pricing

Getsitecontrol offers a Free plan with all the essential features for email list building and 1000 emails you can send for free. Pro plans start at $19 per month and include audience targeting for on-site campaigns, advanced email marketing features, branding removal, AI smart email timing, and more.

2. Mailerlite: Best for small businesses looking for advanced features

Capterra rating: 4.7

Mailerlite is an easy-to-navigate and affordable email marketing service with extensive features (even on their free plan). It lets you create newsletters and transactional emails, build marketing workflows, segment your subscribers, and clean your email lists.

You can also create a landing page or even an entire website and sell digital products thanks to Mailerlite’s in-built Sites feature.

Top features

• Form builder. Create different form types — embedded or popups — with a gallery of customizable, pre-made templates.

• Email automation templates. Get email automation templates for different use cases — welcome emails, lead nurturing, promotions, events, and ecommerce.

• Transactional emails. Send automated email notifications, such as account activation emails, password reset confirmation emails, or email reminders.

• Landing page builder. Create landing pages with interactive elements such as popups, quizzes, limited coupons, countdown timers, and features like trigger automation, payment integration, and signup forms.

Pros

• Large gallery of email templates, by use cases
• Fast and responsive customer support
• Excellent email deliverability
• Intuitive automation builder
• User-friendly interface

Cons

• Detailed email performance reporting is unavailable
• No templates on the free plan

Pricing

Mailerlite offers a 30-day free trial. From there you can choose between two plans: For marketing and For transactional email service. The former starts at $9 per month/ 3 seats for up to 500 subscribers; the latter starts at $24 per month/ 20 seats for up to 50,000 emails. Both options have limited free plans.

3. Brevo: Best email marketing service with built-in CRM

Capterra rating: 4.6

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is an all-in-one email marketing platform that offers email campaigns, SMS marketing, and a built-in CRM. It’s an excellent choice for growing brands looking for a wide range of tools for maintaining customer relationships – all housed under one roof.

Although for this article we’re focusing on email marketing, you can also use Brevo for building landing pages, providing customer service, and creating loyalty programs for your business.

Key features (email marketing)

• Forms for email marketing. Create signup forms, unsubscribe forms, and update forms to let people join your list, leave it, or change their preferences.
• Transactional emails and SMS. Use API to send password reset messages, order confirmations, and shipping notifications.
• Promo emails & automations. Design emails and send them in bulk or set up automated email workflows using built-in templates.
• Performance reports. Get a clear picture of your campaign performance, including deliverability rates, open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.

Pros

• Free plan including 300 emails per day
• Built-in email automation templates
• 24/7 multilingual customer support
• Easy to use email A/B testing
• Cross-channel campaigns

Cons

• Features like landing pages require a paid plan
• Email template designs are rather limited

Pricing

Brevo’s pricing is based on the number of emails sent, rather than the number of contacts. The Starter plan starts at $9 per month for 5,000 emails/month. The Business plan starts at $18 per month and includes marketing automation and A/B testing.

4. Flodesk – Best for creators and local businesses

Capterra rating: 4.5

Flodesk is an email marketing service for small businesses who value simplicity and aesthetics. It allows you to grow your email list with landing pages and signup forms, send email newsletters, and build checkout pages.

Flodesk is an excellent solution for creators and solopreneurs. It stands out due to its “radically minimalistic”, modern template designs that you can fine-tune and align with your branding.

Key features

• Forms for list building. Create pop-up and inline website forms or put together landing pages, similarly to Linktree, if you don’t have a website yet.

• Versatile email editor. Use ready-made templates or design your emails from scratch, using custom fonts and branded graphics.

• Email automations. Build simple automation workflows, such as welcome sequences, post-purchase emails, click-triggered promos, and so on.

• Checkout feature set. Craft custom sales and checkout pages, accept online payments, and set up digital product delivery and upsells.

Pros

• Flat $38 per month fee, regardless of the number of contacts or emails sent
• Clean, modern template design aesthetics that make emails memorable
• Easy onboarding and intuitive interface designed with non-techies in mind

Cons

• Limited contact segmentation options
• Lack of A/B testing and dynamic content in emails

Pricing

Flodesk operates on a straightforward pricing model based on two plans only. Email plan is available at $38 per month; it includes all the email marketing functionality, unlimited emails and subscribers. Checkout plan is available at additional $24 per month; it includes all the features for selling digital products. The “Link in Bio” tool for list building is available for free.

3. Mailchimp: Best for businesses looking for an all-in-one tool

Capterra rating: 4.5

Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing services for small businesses. In the past two decades, it has evolved from an EMS to an all-in-one marketing and commerce platform for growing brands.

As well as creating and automating email workflows, Mailchimp lets you build a standalone landing page or a website, send surveys, and retarget customers on social media to increase your reach and boost e-commerce sales.

Key features

• Drag and drop email template builder. Create responsive emails from scratch or choose from Mailchimp’s 100+ pre-made templates.

• AI Assistant: Leverage AI tools like content optimization, subject line generator, personalized product recommendations, predictive segmentation, creative assistant, and send day and time optimization.

• Campaign manager. Build marketing campaigns across multiple email and SMS platforms and get data-backed insights.

• Reporting and analytics. Get real-time stats of your marketing campaigns and analyze your open, click, and unsubscribe rates.

• A/B testing. Test different email subject lines, images, layouts, and the best send times.

• Pre-built customer journey maps. Build automated workflows with customizable, pre-made templates and send relevant emails based on how the subscribers interact with your brand.

• Website builder. Create a customizable, mobile-optimized website, and add a website tracking option to monitor website traffic and new signups.

Pros

• Personalized onboarding experience
• Fast and easy-to-use email builder
• Integrates with 300+ apps

Cons

• Limited customization available in the automation feature
• Learning curve needed to understand complex features
• Email scheduling is not available on the free plan
• Less competitive pricing

Pricing

Mailchimp offers a 30-day free trial. Paid tiers start at $27.59 per month for up to 2500 contacts. There’s also a free forever plan for up to 500 contacts.

6. Kit: Best for small businesses selling digital products

Capterra rating: 4.7

Kit (formerly, Convertkit) is a user-friendly email marketing service for small businesses. It lets you create landing pages with pre-built templates, set up no-code email automations, and simplify subscription management with a comprehensive tagging system.

Kit is especially popular among content creators including writers, bloggers, course creators, and artists. The app’s built-in features are tailored to help you sell digital products and monetize your audience.

Key features

• Landing page and opt-in form builder. Whether you have a website or not, you can use Kit to generate leads. Add opt-in forms to your website or landing page as a modal or inline embed.

• Template library. Use email templates as a starting point and customize them to better align with your brand’s style.

• Easy-to-use email builder. Create engaging emails by embedding e-commerce or digital products and other elements like countdown timers and recommendations.

• Visual automation builder. Automate your email workflow with up to five trigger options for the same or different emails.

• List management. Organize your lists by tagging subscribers and building segments. Then, send personalized emails based on what your audience is interested in.

• A/B testing. Test your subject lines to see how you can improve your open rates and optimize campaign performance.

Pros

• Variety of ways of content monetization, including paid newsletters, subscriptions, and “tip jars”
• Handy FAQs and responsive customer support within the platform
• Comprehensive free plan for creators with under 1000 subscribers
• User-friendly navigation despite tons of features

Cons

• Advanced reporting is only available in the top-tier plan
• A/B testing available only for subject lines
• Steep learning curve when setting up automation

Pricing

Kit offers a 14-day free trial and a limited free plan for new creators with under 1000 subscribers.

The two paid plans are called Creator and Creator Pro. Creator costs $15 per month and allows you to use most of the app features, apart from advanced reporting, subscriber scoring, and newsletter referral system. Creator Pro allows you to use all the features available in the platform, for $29 per month.

7. Moosend: Best for advanced campaign reporting

Capterra rating: 4.7

Moosend is another low-cost email marketing service for small businesses that offers advanced functionality such as multi-step automation, tracking, spam testing, and detailed reporting.

Moosend’s functionality works especially well for established e-commerce brands that want to create hyper-personalized promo email campaigns and product recommendations.

Key features

• Form builder. Create a subscription form with ready-made designs, using different formats like inline forms, pop-ups, floating buttons, and wheels of fortune.

• Email newsletter editor. Craft professional newsletters with zero HTML coding knowledge, using a drag-and-drop editor for placing text blocks, images, and videos.

• Integration with social media. Connect your brand’s social media accounts and fetch visuals for your emails directly from there.

• Moosend’s AI. Let built-in AI assistants generate subject lines, give intelligent recommendations, optimize CTAs, and make editing emails easier.

• Unsubscribe page builder. Build an unsubscribe page and use double opt-out to prevent accidental customer unsubscriptions.

• Automation workflow templates. Automate and set up your email campaigns with premade marketing automation templates.

• Reporting and analytics. Get a detailed analysis of your marketing campaigns such as tracking the recipient activity, link clicks, email clients, devices, and location.

Pros

• Intuitive drag-n-drop email editor
• Professional-looking templates
• Precise personalization in email automations
• A/B testing for subject lines, images, and buttons
• One affordable plan with no feature limitations

Cons

• Email opt-in form builder lacks versatility
• Email credits are only available in bulk (starting at $350 for 350,000 emails)

Pricing

Moosend offers a 30-day free trial that includes all the features, except for transactional emails. From there, the price of a subscription starts at $9 per month for up to 500 subscribers – plus, you’ll need to purchase email credits for bulk promo campaigns.

What to look for in an email marketing service

Before picking the best email marketing service for small businesses, let’s run through the key features you might find useful.

1. List management

Robust list management means you can easily add and organize new contacts. Each new contact should have basic fields such as the first and last name, and email address. Ideally, it should also have custom fields where you can add extra information about the contact.

2. Audience segmentation

Make sure the email marketing service lets you build segments based on demographics and a customer’s past behavior. Even if you’re just starting to grow your list, you want to be able to segment your audience into groups to craft relevant and hyper-personalized emails.

3. Email automation workflow

Look for a tool that lets you send campaigns on autopilot without needing to get your head around complex code. For example, does it let you set up triggered emails like abandoned cart emails for shoppers who left products in their carts?

4. Transactional emails

The email marketing service you choose should make it easy to send automated email alerts to notify customers about their account or purchase activity, including payment and order confirmations, shipping updates, and password resets.

5. Signup forms

You need to grow your list — which means you need a way to grow your list. A perfect email marketing service for small business should have the toolset to capture leads using customizable email signup forms.

6. A/B testing

A/B testing allows you to experiment with different parts of your email such as the subject line, email copy, CTAs, and sender name to find out what works best. When choosing your EMS, check out what you can and can’t test.

7. Reporting and analytics

Measure the performance of your email marketing campaigns with metrics such as open rates, click-to-open rates, and bounce rates.

8. Customer support

Make sure the email marketing service you choose offers fast and responsive customer support. Also, check the different types of customer support on offer — phone, email, live chat, or a mixture?

9. Email templates

Make sure your email marketing service offers a library of email templates to choose from. Pre-made templates simplify the manual work of designing emails from scratch and are easily customizable.

10. Integrations

Know the different apps and tools the email marketing service integrates with. Make sure it integrates with CRMs, e-commerce platforms, payment apps (like Stripe), form builders, SMS marketing apps, or any other tools you regularly use in your business.

Pro tip: Take a look at your tech stack and identify the tools you’ll need to integrate with your email marketing service.

Choose the email marketing service that fits your small business needs

Know that choosing the (right) and best email marketing service boils down to your business needs and budget.

So, ask yourself:

• Do I need an EMS with an AI assistant so I don't have to spend much time writing and editing emails from scratch?
• Am I ready to invest my time in understanding the features of EMS with a learning curve?
• Do I need basic performance stats or advanced reporting?
• Do the built-in templates match my brand’s aesthetics?
• How much more will I need to pay when my list grows?

Jot down the answers — and then come back to this article to start your research to find the best email marketing service for your business.

Good luck!