As a business owner, your email list is one of your most powerful assets. An email list gives you a direct line to your customers as well as the opportunity to supercharge your marketing automation efforts. While SEO and social media have their place, email marketing tools make it so you’re not at the mercy of any one platform or update.
Given the amazing benefits of this marketing tactic, there’s no shortage of email marketing platforms to choose from. But which one is right for your brand’s needs? In this guide, we’ll cover the best email marketing software, from simple tools with free plans to complex apps with advanced features.
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Choosing the right email marketing tools for your store
When it comes to choosing the best email marketing software, the truth is, they aren’t always one-size-fits-all. While every email marketing service is a little different, the vast majority offer similar basic features across the board.This makes choosing the right email marketing platform that much more challenging. Even those with years of experience can struggle to find the perfect email marketing tool for their brand.
For example, if you want to run advanced email marketing campaigns with loads of personalization, some options may be better than others. If you want simplicity over technically complex features, that matters too.
There are a few basic features offered by most email marketing services:
- Ready-made templates that can be customized to suit your needs
- Audience-segmentation features for sending targeted emails based on customer profiles.
- Smart automation for scaling your email marketing efforts without constant monitoring.
- Opt-in forms that can be embedded on your website or integrated with your Shopify store.
- Detailed analytics for gauging how an email marketing campaign performs.
- Intuitive UI and UX allowing anyone on your team to run email marketing campaigns.
- High email deliverability rates so you know messages will reach your subscribers’ inboxes.
- Transparent and affordable pricing. You shouldn’t receive a massive bill simply because you grow by a few subscribers.
As you’ll see below, each solution approaches these features a little differently. If you require specialized features not mentioned above, browse through the following list of email marketing software to find the best match for your needs.
The best email marketing software: 11 tools to try
Browse the following list of email marketing services to find the best one for your business.Here are 11 of the best email marketing services for ecommerce stores:
- Shopify Email
- ActiveCampaign
- Privy
- Klaviyo
- Omnisend
- Drip
- SmartrMail
- Constant Contact
- CM Commerce
- ConvertKit
- Mailchimp
These email marketing tools were evaluated using the following criteria to help you assess your options and make the best choice:
🛠 Difficulty: Whether the service is intuitive and simple to use or designed for advanced users
💰 Cost: How much it costs to get started
💡 Unique feature: What makes this platform stand out?
⭐️ Shopify App Store rating: Ranking according to peer reviews (if available)
Let’s dive in.
1. Shopify Email
🛠 Difficulty: Beginner
💰 Cost: Free for your first 10,000 emails every month
💡 Unique feature: Native to Shopify, ecommerce focused
⭐️ Shopify App Store rating: 3.8/5 (965 reviews)
Shopify Email is an easy-to-use email solution to help you connect with subscribers and build long-lasting customer relationships. Its pre-made templates and visual editor make it simple to get started, and it scales with you as you grow, with custom templates, marketing automations, and lead capture forms for your store.
Shopify Email lets you:
- Send branded emails to your subscribers in just a few clicks—directly from Shopify.
- Choose from a growing collection of email marketing templates like products, sales, restock, newsletters, holidays, events, and more, or build and save your own templates.
- Easily customize an email by editing text, buttons, images, and discounts from your store to make it your own.
- Personalize your subject line, preview text, and body text with customer information for a more engaging experience.
- Import customer and subscriber lists into Shopify, and build your list using Shopify Forms on your store (it’s included on all plans!).
- Segment your subscribers based on where they live, what they’ve bought, and other important information directly in Shopify, then send the right email to the right people.
- Automate email campaigns to limit repetitive tasks and connect with customers at the right time in their customer journey.
- Track results like click-through rates and sales with powerful reporting.
Customer review: “Excellent app, fast, and easy to use. Easy to feature one of your products or customize your own campaign. Automatically adds your email subscribers. I have used others and this is hands down my favorite. Saves me tons of time!” —Skin RX Clinic
2. ActiveCampaign
🛠 Difficulty: Easy
💰 Cost: 14-day free trial, then $49/month
💡 Unique feature: Sophisticated workflows and CRM capabilities
⭐️ Shopify App Store rating: 4.4/5 (392 reviews)
ActiveCampaign is an incredibly popular email marketing service trusted by businesses around the world. Once you integrate ActiveCampaign with Shopify, you can access a library of hundreds of pre-built marketing automations to launch email campaigns, like abandoned cart emails or a welcome series. This email marketing software also has hundreds of pre-built integrations so you can connect all your business tools.
ActiveCampaign pulls directly from your Shopify data to send personalized emails that drive sales. Use an email template and deliver 1:1 messages to customers based on past interactions with your brand. This email marketing platform also offers SMS marketing capabilities, as well as integrations with analytics tools.
3. Privy
🛠 Difficulty: Easy
💰 Cost: Free for up to 100 contacts
💡 Unique feature: Ecommerce focused, packed with lead generation tools
⭐️ Shopify App Store rating: 4.6/5 (24,840 reviews)
Privy is one of the highest rated sales and email marketing apps in the Shopify App Store. Privy expands the boundaries of what email marketing tools can do. Its suite of products include automation tools for email marketing, but also conversion and SMS.
With Privy, you get access to intent-driven pop-ups and banners, spin-to-win wheels, and embedded forms for email collection. All mobile friendly and customizable without any code.
Privy also provides features including:
- Support for custom storefronts.
- Automated campaigns based on exit intent, cart abandonment, cart value, and website behavior.
- Automated A/B testing to understand how to impact conversion rates.
- Autoresponders and reminder messages, to turn sign-ups into sales.
- Ability to run cross-sell emails with Add to Cart buttons.
- Lets you automate your email marketing with newsletters, abandoned carts, and purchase follow-up and customer winback emails.
- Drag-and-drop editor with hundreds of email templates.
4. Klaviyo
🛠 Difficulty: Average
💰 Cost: Free for up to 250 contacts and 500 emails/month
💡 Unique feature: Built for ecommerce
⭐️ Shopify App Store rating: 3.9/5 (1,685 reviews)
Klaviyo is one of the few email marketing services designed specifically for ecommerce. It’s also the leading platform in the Shopify ecosystem, with thousands of stores using Klaviyo to send personalized emails, SMS messages, sign-up forms, and more.
Klaviyo provides an impressive set of features:
- Over 100 pre-built integrations with tools like Facebook, ShipStation, and Smile.
- Free and flexible account options: Klaviyo is free until you have more than 250 contacts, then you can pay month-to-month based on the size of your contact list.
- Pre-built forms, templates, and automations to get your campaigns running in minutes.
- Ability to send personalized product recommendations and dynamic content based on past interactions with your brand.
- Targeted SMS marketing, with detailed analytics to track your SMS campaign performance.
- Dynamic forms you can A/B test to optimize copy and improve lead form conversions.
- Growth-focused reporting with email and SMS performance analytics you can see at a glance.
As an ecommerce-first email provider, Klaviyo also supports paid social campaigns. You can quickly sync data to build lookalike audiences for Facebook and Instagrams ads to find more relevant customers for your business. Klaviyo users also get access to insider tips and support from the Klaviyo Community Forum.
5. Omnisend
🛠 Difficulty: Average
💰 Cost: Free for up to 250 contacts and 500 emails/month
💡 Unique feature: Rich in ecommerce features and multichannel automation
⭐️ Shopify App Store rating: 4.8/5 (5,045 reviews)
Omnisend is top-rated email marketing software in the Shopify App Store. It features pre-built marketing automation workflows and intuitive, no-code editing that make it easy to set up advanced email campaigns.
Omnisend comes with beautiful automated emails for:
- Cart abandonment
- Product abandonment
- New subscribers (welcome emails)
- Customers likely to churn (win-back and reactivation emails)
- Customer feedback and product reviews
All messages, subject lines, and workflow settings are ready-made, so you can start running campaigns right away.
Omnisend features also include a drag-and-drop email builder, dynamic coupon codes, automatic product picker, and fully customizable pop-ups. Get access to push notifications and robust segmentation to send messages across SMS. And use the built-in audience sync for Google and Facebook ads.
Omnisend also offers thorough analytics, campaign metrics, and unsubscribe tracking. These help you analyze campaign performance with personalized benchmarks compared against industry brands.
6. Drip
🛠 Difficulty: Average
💰 Cost: 14-day free trial, then $39/month
💡 Unique feature: Behavioral automation triggers
⭐️ Shopify App Store rating: 4.5/5 (73 reviews)
To top it off, Drip provides marketers with tailored email campaign recommendations. You’ll never have to wonder what campaign to build next—Drip will tell you what will make the biggest impact on your sales and marketing.
7. SmartrMail
🛠 Difficulty: Easy
💰 Cost: Free for 250 subscribers and 1,250 emails/month, then $19/month
💡 Unique feature: Backed by machine learning technology
⭐️ Shopify App Store rating: 4.9/5 (559 reviews)
SmartrMail is an easy-to-use, affordable, and powerful email marketing platform. The email tool was built with lots of automation tools for creating email campaigns, including abandoned cart, welcome series, and thank you messages.
SmartrMail has a growing library of email templates to choose from. Or you can create your own with WYSIWYG and full HTML editor. It also can help you decide which products to recommend to customers, using your Shopify data, to improve sales and customer retention.
8. Constant Contact
🛠 Difficulty: Beginner
💰 Cost: Free trial for your first 100 emails, then $12/month
💡 Unique feature: Event management features
⭐️ Shopify App Store rating: 2.8/5 (32 reviews)
Constant Contact was one of the first email marketing vendors, dating back to 1995. In this time, it has become an easy-to-use and beginner-friendly platform to help everyone from ecommerce stores to bloggers improve their email marketing strategy.
With this email marketing service, you can easily organize and build your email list, manage templates, and more. It offers an email tracking system and built-in social media sharing tool. If you’re new to email marketing, you can take advantage of Constant Contact’s library of training and webinars to learn the email automation basics.
💡 Tip: Constant Contact integrates with Shopify and Combidesk for Email Marketing, syncing your customer lists with your subscriber lists automatically.
9. CM Commerce
🛠 Difficulty: Average
💰 Cost: Free trial, then $9/month
💡 Unique feature: Easy HTML email builder
⭐️ Shopify App Store rating: 4.6/5 (1,139 reviews)
CM Commerce is one of the few platforms placing emphasis on transactional emails, in addition to marketing emails, helping you squeeze more value out of every email you send. Its unique visual journey designer makes it simple to keep all of your marketing automation campaigns organized.
10. ConvertKit
🛠 Difficulty: Easy
💰 Cost: Free for up to 300 subscribers, then $29/month
💡 Unique feature: Email marketing made easy
⭐️ Shopify App Store rating: n/a
ConvertKit is one of more popular email marketing softwares on the market today, and continues to be well liked, especially among creatives and those looking to make a living online. Branded as “the go-to marketing hub for creators that helps you grow and monetize your audience with ease,” many up-and -coming and online business owners are flocking to the email marketing platform.
With ConvertKit, you get access to email marketing features like:
- Unlimited landing pages, with its landing page builder
- Unlimited forms
- Unlimited email sending
- Drag-and-drop editor and landing page builder
- Audience tagging and segmentation and more
💡 Tip: You can learn how to integrate ConvertKit with Shopify here.
11. Mailchimp:
🛠 Difficulty: Easy
💰 Cost: Free for 500 subscribers and 1,000 emails/month, then $13/month
💡 Unique feature: Intuitive and easy to use
⭐️ Shopify App Store rating: 3.5/5 (471 reviews)
Some of Mailchimp’s features include:
- Hundreds of easy to use email marketing templates you can use
- SMS marketing
- Easy to use landing page builder
- Intuitive drag-and-drop editor
- World-class email marketing automations
Given Mailchimp has been in the email marketing space for more than two decades, it is definitely an email marketing platform that has earned the trust of its users.
Finding the best email marketing software for your brand’s needs
New email marketing and digital marketing tools for small businesses pop up every day, extending well beyond those on this list. When looking for the best email marketing software consider price, features, and ease of use. You also need an email marketing solution that works for you, your business, and your customers, helping you drive more engagements, more sales, and increased loyalty.
Start with free versions of these marketing software options and start building email campaigns today. With the right tool, you’ll be up and running quickly, with marketing campaigns that help you meet your business goals more quickly.
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Email marketing software FAQ
What is email marketing software?
Email marketing software is a tool used by marketers and ecommerce businesses to create, send, optimize, and report on their email marketing campaigns. Email marketing service providers like Shopify Email and Mailchimp provide businesses with the ability to send emails for marketing, sales, and customer support purposes. These tools often include features like drag-and-drop themes and marketing automation. Sometimes, email marketing software is bundled with other tools and functionality, like a landing page builder or SMS marketing.
What features does email marketing software offer?
Each email marketing solution offers different features. Yet, there are common features most of these tools have in common:
- Data management and CRM integration
- Contact list management
- A/B testing tools
- Merge tags and personalization fields
- Autoresponders
- Analytics and reporting
- CAN-SPAM compliance
- Mobile-responsive emails
- Custom themes or drag-and-drop templates
- A free plan or free trial period
Some email marketing software offer more advanced features, like sophisticated marketing automation capabilities.
What is the best email marketing software for beginners?
The best email marketing software for beginners and small businesses includes Shopify Email and Constant Contact. Both offer easy to use interfaces for those new to email marketing. Create marketing campaigns and segment lists of email subscribers with intuitive functionality and integrations with ecommerce platforms like Shopify. These email marketing services also have free plans or trials so you can test the tool before committing. Other easy email marketing platforms include Privy, ConvertKit, and Mailchimp.
