Budget-Friendly Email Marketing Services for Small Business
Apr 8, 2024 — 10 min readFinding the right email marketing service for your business can be tough.
You want to find a service that lets you segment new contacts, deliver bulk emails, and send welcome sequences — but you don’t want to break the bank paying for a tool with features you might not ever need.
Two things further complicate the situation:
- Most email marketing services have complex automation — many SMBs find it hard to navigate.
- Most EMS work on a subscriber count pricing model — which gets pricier as and when the email list grows.
Don’t worry — we've got you covered.
We've curated the best email marketing services for small businesses. These tools have all the features you need to get started and grow without too many overwhelming and unnecessary extras (or a high price tag).
Ready to find your perfect fit?
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.
5 Best email marketing services for small businesses you can try
Based on our observation and analysis from review sites like G2 and Capterra, here are the five excellent email marketing services for small businesses to consider.
1. Getsitecontrol: Best for businesses looking to grow their list faster
Getsitecontrol is an affordable email marketing service with a minimal, clean, and easy-to-navigate interface.
It lets you run on-site promos and capture subscribers, create professional-looking promo emails, build automations, segment your audience, and monitor the performance of your campaigns.
Getsitecontrol works on all website platforms and offers a dedicated Shopify app for stores running on Shopify. In addition to email marketing, you can use Getsitecontrol to promote coupon codes, feature sales, create post-purchase surveys, and prevent cart abandonment.
Key features
- Signup form gallery. Grow your email list with professionally designed signup form templates. Choose among pop-up and embedded forms, customize them, and use targeting settings to display them at the right moment.
Email broadcasts. Send bulk promo emails to promote special offers, sales, new products, restock alerts, and any other updates about your brand.
Email editor. Create emails from scratch or browse a gallery of pre-made emails and customize them using content blocks like the countdown timer, scrolling text, product cards, and coupons.
AI writing assistant. Give prompts to the AI assistant to generate an email copy from scratch or enhance existing text. Use it to change the tone of voice, shorten or lengthen the text, fix grammar issues, or translate your emails to another language.
Automated email marketing workflows. Tag your contacts and send them emails automatically, under the conditions of your choice. Set up follow-up automations, automations triggered by new subscribers, email link clicks, and more.
Audience segmentation. Segment your contacts manually or automatically, based on their interests, actions, or demographics.
Performance reports. Get detailed reports on your email signup forms and emails. Access overall open rate and click-through rate statistics or view how each contact has interacted with your emails.
- Third-party integrations. Connect Getsitecontrol with your CRM, Google Sheets, Google Analytics, or hundreds of other apps via Zapier.
Pros
- Large gallery of professional forms and email templates to choose from
- Pricing doesn’t increase if the number of email subscribers grows
- Added value with promo popups, coupons, and surveys
- 24/5 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 subscription-based plans tailored for businesses at different stages:
Creator plan. For $9 per month, you get all the essential features for email list building and sending bulk emails (you can send your first 1000 emails for free).
Pro plan. For $19 per month, you get automated email marketing workflows, advanced email editor features, and more precise targeting settings.
Free trial: 7 days (14 days if you’re on Shopify)
Capterra rating: 4.7
2. Mailerlite: Best for small businesses looking for advanced features
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 pre-made email automation templates based on different use cases — welcome emails, lead nurturing, promotions, retargeting subscribers, events, special deals, and e-commerce.
Transactional emails. Send automated email notifications, such as account activation emails, password reset confirmation emails, or email reminders.
AI writing assistant. Built directly into the drag-and-drop editor for campaigns — AI automatically generates subject lines, improves the tone of voice, and embeds AI-generated images.
A/B split campaign. Test the different elements of your email against one another, like the subject lines, content, or the ‘From name’ personalization.
Smart sending feature. Use built-in AI to analyze past email interactions, sign-up dates, and time zones to determine the optimal time to send emails.
Comparative reporting. Choose a set of dates, compare your email campaigns, and analyze metrics such as open rates, best-performing automation, page conversions, form signups, etc.
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 different pricing for marketing and transactional email campaigns:
For marketing. Starts at $9 per month/ 3 seats for up to 500 subscribers; has a limited free plan for up to 1000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails.
For transactional email service. Starts at $24 per month/ 20 seats for up to 50,000 emails; has a free plan where users (1 seat/ user) can send 3,000 emails.
Free trial: 30 days
Capterra rating: 4.8
3. Mailchimp: Best for businesses looking for an all-in-one tool
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 starts at $27.59 per month for up to 2500 contacts, and comes with a free forever plan for up to 500 contacts.
Free trial: 30 days
Capterra rating: 4.5
4. Convertkit: Best for small businesses selling digital products
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.
Convertkit 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 Convertkit 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
Convertkit offers a limited free plan for new creators with under 1000 subscribers. Apart from this, there are two paid plans available:
Creator. For $15 per month, you can use most of the app features, apart from advanced reporting, subscriber scoring, and newsletter referral system.
Creator Pro. For $29 per month, you can use all the features available in the platform. Both plan prices are calculated for up to 300 email subscribers.
Free trial: 14 days
Capterra rating: 4.7
5. Moosend: Best for small businesses looking for an affordable EMS with advanced reporting
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 ecommerce brands looking to go the extra mile in setting up 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 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.
Free trial: 30 days
Capterra rating: 4.7
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!
Lizzie Davey is a freelance content writer and strategist for ecommerce and marketing software brands. Over the past 10 years, she's helped hundreds of companies deliver excellent experiences and increase conversions with engaging customer-centric content.
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