Best Email Marketing Services

Once you’ve established your first website, the next step is driving traffic with content and building a following that will return to your site week after week to see what you’ve been writing about in your niche.

One of the best ways to drive that additional traffic is to start collecting email addresses. Thankfully with WordPress and most content management systems, integrating an email marketing service is easier than ever before. For instance, using Thrive Leads with any WordPress website will allow you to display popups with an offer to collect email addresses. Once collected, you can use an email service to automatically deliver content to your readers and update them when you’ve posted something new on your website.

What email marketing service should you be using? Below, you will find the Top Five Advisor top recommendations along with the featured benefits and reasons why they are listed. You will find pricing information on the left which lists some of the more popular tiers that most people pay for.

Our goal is to help you pick the right email marketing service for your website. If you have any questions, please feel free to use our live chat or the contact link on the bottom left of this page.

One of the most frustrating problems people face with email marketing services is getting emails to the inbox without hitting the spam folder first. Aweber offers one of the best deliverability rates in the industry. If you’ve ever tried doing an in-house email delivery system or used a free service, you may have noticed how bad your email open rates are. Aweber has a long history and one of the best reputations in the industry which means more of your emails are trusted by ISPs and therefore, more emails get placed in the primary inbox.

We’ve personally been using Aweber for over 5 years now and have watched the service improve over the years. Now they have a nice HTML5 layout, easier to find and use features and have found it to be one of the easiest systems for our clients to use.

Of course, AWeber is also one of the more expensive email marketing services in the industry but that is to be expected for the quality you receive. There’s no free plan to join but they do offer you a free month to try and use the system as long as you are willing to give your payment information on sign up. Under the free plan, you’ll have full access to all features and can send an unlimited amount of emails to up to 500 subscribers.

During your free month, we strongly recommend asking questions to their customer support. You’ll have access to live chat and telephone support to get the assistance you need to help you get started. Their support is one of the best features they offer, so take advantage of it.

GetResponse is one of the most popular email marketing services available that offers more value and features for a smaller price. GetResponse is also more friendly when it comes to importing your prior email lists that does not require your readers to opt-in again which can cause serious loss to your readership.

Want to test which emails are performing best? Try their A/B split testing feature that allows you to see which one is getting better open rates or click rate. You can test email subject lines and body text to maximize the performance of your campaigns.

They offer over 500 professionally designed email templates and provide access to over 1,000 iStock images to use in your emails.

Manage your campaigns on the go with their new iOS and Android mobile apps.

GetResponse also includes hundreds of video training tutorials that will help you get started as fast as possible.

This service is very popular and trusted, therefore, integration with your WordPress or any other site is a breeze with full support by all of the most popular integration methods.

If you are looking for a better value than AWeber above, we strongly recommend GetResponse as your email marketing service provider.

iContact offers you a traditional email marketing service with most of the features you are looking for but then as you build your customer base, you can add steroids to your list with iContact Pro, a pricey service that will allow you to do way more over your traditional email marketing services.

Take advantage of the iContact customer care service and onboarding team that will help you get up to speed within your first 30 days. You will be assigned a “Customer Success Manager” that will patiently walk you through the service over the phone including the platform’s standard features that you’ll be using with your list. After that, enjoy unlimited technical support as you need to help you maintain your list and take advantage of all the features they offer. A very nice touch that earns high marks with our ratings.

One nice feature they have is mobile-ready messages that are easy to customize with no HTML coding required. Use the MessageBuilder with drag and drop support to build the custom email template of your dreams.

iContact also offers their premier service for those that have grown past 35,000 subscribers and has the capability to handle 5 million subscribers or more. This service will allow high volume sending with the ability to send billions of messages each month.

If you are looking for an email marketing service that will grow with your company and feel your service will get to the point of having hundreds of thousands of subscribers, iContact may be the perfect fit for your needs.

Benchmark Email is a unique service that allows you to pay by the email sent or by the subscriber count. For those that need an email marketing system that will send emails once or twice per month, you can save quite a bit of money by using the “Send Based” plans.

Unlike other services we’ve listed, Benchmark does not allow unlimited sending of messages to your “List Based” plan. Currently, they only allow you to send 7 messages per month to your list before requiring an upgrade to their high volume plans starting at $399 per month which will allow unlimited sending.

One big plus in Benchmark’s favor is the fact that they offer a free for life plan for those that want to maintain a list of less than 2,000 subscribers. You’ll be able to send 7 messages per month totaling a maximum of 14,000 sent emails per month. This will make Benchmark an appealing offer for those that are just starting their first website and need an economical solution to begin capturing email addresses on their website.

Constant Contact is one of the more expensive email marketing services available with an eye on detail.

Besides their regular email marketing service, you will be treated to a wide array of upsells and offers to help you get the most out of your email list. If you need email automation with templates built with your logo and messaging, you’ll need to upgrade to the Email Plus plan that allows these features along with social media integration, coupons, event management, surveys and more. The Email Plus plan also includes a custom template built by their design experts to suit your needs.

Another upsell you will see is for their services that include account setup, design services, marketing management and a full service email marketing plan that will handle everything for you.

If you are looking for an email marketing solution that offers full management so that you can focus on your website and business, Constant Contact might be the perfect solution for you, as long as your budget can afford their fees. If you want to manage your own campaigns, we’d recommend choosing a provider from the above list because you’ll save quite a bit and have access to more features.

The above solutions are what we consider our top five choices for your email marketing needs, however, we’ve also reviewed several other email marketing platforms that may be of interest. See below for those reviews and see if they are a better fit for your needs.

• Pinpointe Review – The starting plan is $49/mo for 5,000 contacts with a monthly send limit of 40,000 emails. They also offer a pay-as-you-go service similar to Constant Contact that charges based on the total emails sent, however, the starting plan for that is $245/mo for 25,000 emails with unlimited contacts. Over 1,000 email templates, flexible drip campaigns, smart segmentation targeting and heat maps are what make Pinpointe email marketing stand out above the crowd.
• Vertical Response – They offer a free plan for up to 1,000 contacts and allows 4,000 emails to be sent per month. After you outgrow that, 2,500 contacts will cost $33/mo which will also remove VerticalResponse branding in your email footers and allows automatic follow-up campaigns for non-responders. For the occasional sender, try the pay as you go model that allows you to purchase email sending credits starting at $7.50 for 300.
• Mailigen Review – Try Mailigen for 30 days free with no credit card or setup fees required. After that, you will pay $10/mo for 500 subs, $25/mo for 2,500 subs and $40/mo for 5,000 subs. Mailigen offers pro services starting at $360 that will help you with management of your list, get you set up and started, design your email template and more.
• Campaigner Review – Try Campaigner for 30 days for free to manage your list and social media accounts. Their plan levels include $19.95/mo for 1,000 subs, $29.95/mo for 3,500 subs and $49.95 for 5,000 subs. Campaigner supports A/B split testing, email automation features and list segmentation to help target your lists for better response rates.
• StreamSend Review –  StreamSend will also allow you to try their service for 30 days without payment which will include 200 emails to be sent. After that, you will pay by the total amount of emails you send. For 2,000 emails sent per month, it is $19.90/mo for 10,000 emails, $39.90/mo and 20,000 emails is $59.90/mo. They do not offer a subscriber-based pricing system and do not have an option for unlimited email sending. StreamSend would be a good service for those that plan to send one or two emails per month to their list.