The 9 Best Email Marketing Services for Small Businesses (2024)

Whatever the size of your business, email is a simple and effective way to reach big audiences. Email marketing software gives you the tools to do it right.

Growing your subscriber list. Creating attractive, engaging emails. Automating campaigns with sequences of emails. Using analytics to decide what you send and when. The best email marketing services let you do all this and more.

But what are the best email marketing services for small businesses? I’ll introduce you to 9 options. And explain what they offer and who they are best for. 

9 Best Email Marketing Services for Small Businesses Overview

Small businesses have different needs than enterprises. If you run a small business, you’re probably pressed for time. You don’t want anything that eats up your precious time or takes weeks to learn. You want tools that are simple, quick and convenient. That lets you get started right away and deliver results fast.

At the same time, value matters. The smaller your operating budget, the more cost-conscious you have to be. But no small business owner wants to trade quality for cost. They still demand products that deliver. And give them room to grow.

The 9 email marketing services I have picked out all meet these criteria. But they all have their particular strengths that make them stand out. Here’s a summary. But make sure you read on to get the details to help you decide which is the best option for you. 

MailerLite – Best for First-Time Email Marketing

MailerLite ticks every box as a small business email marketing service. It’s cheap. It’s easy to use. It has all the features you need if you’re not looking for advanced automation. 

It’s particularly good if you’re new to email marketing. Simplicity is the thing. Everything is very clear and straightforward. Look at the main dashboard below. Four simple options. Clear navigation. The whole tool is like that.

There’s a drag-and-drop editor for creating HTML emails. MailerLite has stacks different of pre-formatted content blocks. You can import product listings direct from an ecommerce store. You can embed RSS and social media feeds into newsletters. You can build quizzes and surveys.

Building sign-up forms and landing pages is just as easy. You can also create ‘drip’ campaigns, or simple automated email sequences.

Beyond email marketing, you can build websites and blogs, too. And you can sell digital products and subscriptions directly.

MailerLite pricing starts at $9 per month for 1,000 contacts and unlimited emails. There is a 30-day free trial that unlocks all paid-for features. There is also a generous free plan with 12,000 emails a month and up to 1,000 contacts. 

or read more about MailerLite

GetResponse – Best for Growing Businesses

You could say there are two sides to GetResponse. It’s a pretty straightforward email marketing service with all the features you’d expect. You can grow your subscriber list with sign-up forms. You can build campaigns with attractive HTML emails. You can segment contacts to target the right people. 

It has the typical drag-and-drop editor for designing emails. It’s very easy to use. And there are 120+ professional quality design templates to get you started. A brand new feature is an AI-powered email creator built on the same technology as ChatGTP. GetResponse claims it cuts the time it takes to build emails by 85%.

The email marketing tools come with GetResponse’s cheapest plan. Then there’s the other side. The next tier-up unlocks a broader suite of marketing automation tools. Things like automated list segmentation and sales funnels. You can also create and promote webinars. The top tier is all about ecommerce marketing. 

This step-by-step progression is ideal for growing businesses. You might want to start small with email marketing. But long term you see yourself running a busy and successful ecommerce operation. GetResponse grows with you.

GetResponse pricing starts at $11.2 per month if you pay for 2 years upfront. You get 1000 contacts and unlimited emails. There’s the free plan which gives you 500 contacts and 2,500 emails a month.

or find out more about GetResponse

ActiveCampaign – Best for Email Marketing Automation

ActiveCampaign is another platform that offers marketing services well beyond email. It has a full set of sales and CRM tools. But what makes ActiveCampaign stand out is its marketing automation.

ActiveCampaign’s automation features hit a sweet spot between sophistication and ease of use. Perfect for small businesses trying to run advanced automation. It has hundreds of automation templates or ‘recipes’ to choose from. These are great starting points. They can be fully customised in a user-friendly workflow editor.

ActiveCampaign also has site tracking to trigger the next steps based on user behaviour. You can set different emails to send when someone visits a product page x number of times. Steps are also conditional, so you can send different messages based on the recipients’ actions.

Similarly, ActiveCampaign’s email builder supports conditional formatting. This means you can personalise emails so different content appears to different people.

ActiveCampaign is great for ecommerce. It links directly to major web store platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce. It will also handle all your transactional emails, like receipts and shipping confirmations. It has high bulk-sending limits and excellent deliverability rates.

ActiveCampaign’s pricing starts at $15 a month for 1000 contacts and 10,000 email sends. Get the 14-day free trial to test the platform.

or find out more about ActiveCampaign

Mailchimp – Best for Email Marketing with Ads

For small businesses, Mailchimp offers decent email marketing. You can build a website, run a small online store, send email campaigns, and create ads. 

It comes with 100+ email templates and a straightforward drag-and-drop editor. But the some of the email templates are pretty basic or outdated. Its automation tools leave some to be desired.

The auto-segmentation tool is a nice touch. it picks out the best contacts for each campaign. The send time optimiser sends when your contacts are most active in their email accounts.

A Content Optimiser tool rates your emails for impact in the inbox.

Mailchimp has 300+ third-party integrations with tools like Canva, Zendesk, Shopify, Typeform, and EZ Texting.

Mailchimp plans start at $13 a month for 500 contacts and 5,000 emails. There are sending and contact limits on all tiers, and limits on how many lists you can have on lower tiers. 

Read our guide about what is Mailchimp to learn more

HubSpot – Best all-in-one CRM with email

HubSpot is a good all-in-one CRM with marketing, sales, and service tools. It also has a CMS and a data syncing tool.

It aims to cater to businesses of all sizes but its products are better for enterprises. Hubspot has a good set of free tools covering its whole product suite. Find out more about the whole platform in this full Hubspot review.

This includes a free email marketing service. You can send 2,000 emails a month for free. Other tools like sign-up forms and automations are limited.

Other free features include:

• SEO and advertising
• Facebook Messenger integration
• Blogging
• Team collaboration
• Prospect tracking deal pipelines
• Web page building
• Live chat

You can scale all of these services up on paid plans, but it gets expensive for advanced features. This leaves many people looking for Hubspot alternatives. There’s a lot to navigate your way around. But when you sign up, HubSpot asks you what your aims are and suggests tools to get started with. It’s designed to be user-friendly. But it’s just such a big platform. There always seem to be lots of steps before you can do anything. 

Price-wise, the Marketing Starter plan starts at $18 a month for 1000 contacts and 5000 emails. This unlocks extra features you don’t get with the free tools, such as pre-designed email templates. CRM and other products are paid for separately. You can build custom bundles to mix and match.

or learn more about HubSpot

Brevo – Best for Free Email Marketing

Brevo is a quality email marketing platform for small businesses. Like HubSpot, its biggest strength is how much it lets you do for free. And not just email marketing. CRM and sales pipelines are included. As are transactional emails and an AI chat widget for your website. 

Its free email marketing service is perfect for start-ups. For one, it’s very generous with its limitations. You can add up to 100,000 contacts. So with Brevo, you can scale your list from zero to 100K, without paying.

There is an email-sending limit of 300 per day in the free plan. That works out at more than 9000 a month. This compares well to free plans from rival email marketing services.

As an email marketing tool, Brevo is excellent. Its slick, up-to-date drag-and-drop email builder is both easy to use and flexible. It’s especially good for customising layouts. You can also import your own branding to apply to every email.

Brevo’s automation options are solid. It comes with a good choice of pre-made workflow templates. And its automation builder is user-friendly. Brevo also supports SMS and WhatsApp. So you can automate multi-channel campaigns to contact people in different ways.

Brevo pricing starts at $9 a month. You get 500 contacts. And you can send 5k emails.

Moosend – Best for Small Business Ecommerce

Lots of email marketing software makes a point of catering to ecommerce businesses. But most target bigger online retailers. 

Moosend is very much aimed at the smaller digital store. It’s great value, with just a single low-cost price plan. It’s built for simplicity, with one of the most user-friendly interfaces around. Perfect for email marketing newcomers.

And no, Moosend doesn’t come with the option to build advanced sales pipelines. But for its price point, it has an impressive set of features. 

You can connect your web store and drop product listings into emails. So you can sell direct through email marketing campaigns. Better still, Moosend comes with advanced tracking tools. These collect data on how contacts behave in your store. It uses this data to make AI-powered product recommendations.

Campaign tracking also powers its excellent automation options. It means you can trigger emails based on contact behaviour, like clicking on a link. And ‘yes/no’ conditional logic means you can send a message even if they don’t click. That doubles your opportunities to reach out to people. 

You can also add conditional content blocks to emails. Which means you can personalise messages with different content for different people.

If all this sounds daunting, don’t worry. Moosend even manages to make advanced automation simple. It has a great choice of automation templates or ‘recipes’ to get you started. And its workflow editor is just as user-friendly as its email builder.

Moosend pricing starts at $9 a month for 500 contacts. There is no limit on email sending. There is no free plan, but you get a 30-day free trial.

or read our full Moosend review

Constant Contact – Best for Easy Email Design

Constant Contact is big on creativity. You can use it to create quality HTML emails. Automated campaign sequences. a landing page builder. Sign-up forms. Social media posts and adverts. Polls and surveys. You can even create and plan for social and event marketing.

For a start, it has more than 200 email templates to choose from. Some of them are outdated, but you can find one that works for your business. The drag-and-drop editor is very easy to use. It has a good choice of content blocks and layout options.

Constant Contact also helps you write your emails. Type a few keywords into its AI content creator, and it will generate suggested text.

You can reach out to contacts via SMS and social media, too. And you can automate campaigns including all three communication channels. Automation in Constant Contact is built around straightforward scheduling and drip campaigns. But there’s a good selection of workflow templates.

You can connect your ecommerce store to promote products. And Constant Contact has a standalone CRM platform with more advanced sales tools. Although it’s expensive for small business budgets.

Pricing starts at $12 a month for 500 contacts and 6000 emails. There is no free plan, but you can try it out for 60 days. Although you can only send a maximum of 100 emails.

Benchmark – Best for Budget Email Marketing

Benchmark is a great introduction to email marketing services. Email marketing is its sole focus. You don’t have to try to find your way through long lists of other tools and features. It’s also one of the cheapest email marketing platforms out there.

There are more than 200 templates to choose from. The email templates are easy to customise in the standard drag-and-drop editor. You don’t get too much flexibility to play around with layouts. Don’t expect an editing experience like in the best drag-and-drop email template builders. But there are lots of prompts to explain what all the tools do. 

There’s also a Smart Content tool which uses AI to automatically generate text. And one of Benchmark’s best features is an Inbox Checker. This tests how your emails will look in people’s inboxes.

Benchmark lets you create sign-up forms and landing pages to grow your lists. You can also make surveys and polls to generate a little more interest among your audience. Segmentation is simple and it comes with strong list cleaning tools to stop you from sending to unused or fake email addresses.

Automation options include behaviour-based triggers and conditional rules. The workflow editor is extremely straightforward. And there is a choice of workflow templates to get you started.

One of Benchmark’s stand-out attractions is how cheap it is. Paid plans start at just $8 a month for 500 contacts and 3,500 emails. The Pro plan starts at $13 with full access to all features, including Automation Pro. There is a Free plan that also lets you have 500 contacts and send 3,500 emails a month.

Which email marketing service to pick for your small business?

Every small business is different. So it’s a great thing that there are so many email marketing platforms out there. There’s something for everyone.

Sure, small businesses often share common needs and concerns. But when it comes to choosing the best email marketing software, focus on what makes you unique.

Are you a brand new start-up or microbusiness operating on a tight budget? Try Mailerlite, Brevo, Moosend, and Benchmark. Email marketing is effective even when you keep things simple. Are you a growing business with increasing subscriber and customer numbers? Go for GetResponse or ActiveCampaign.

Whatever you’re looking for, one final tip. Make the most of free plans and free trials to test out different options. It will help find the best email marketing service for your business. And it doesn’t cost anything.

If you’re looking for a service to only send emails, check out our review of the best free SMTP servers.

Email Marketing Services for Small Businesses FAQ