One of the oldest online marketing channels that is still standing today. Email marketing has been around since the beginning of the internet. But even though this marketing channel might be relatively ‘old’, it’s still as effective as ever. Hell, you could even say that it’s even more effective and efficient in 2021 due to the many new personalization and automation features that are available today.
What can you expect of free email marketing tools?
Most of the free email marketing tools that are featured, have some limitations in their use. Mostly there’s a limitation in the monthly emails you can send or subscribers that you can add to the platform. However, these ‘limitations’ will mostly be sufficient for freelancers or starting businesses.
Pretty much all the featured free platforms offer some sort of email automation capabilities and allow unlimited accounts to have access to the platform.
Quick overview of free email marketing tools:
If you don’t have the time to read everything about the free email platforms tools that we’ve listed below. Here we offer a quick overview of the different platforms.
1. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is probably the most well-known email marketing platform today and has been around for quite a while now. It is used by both large organizations and smaller businesses.
Mailchimp has many advanced features that are easy to implement for both starters and professionals, which makes it such a popular tool for email campaigns.
Features include:
Drag-and-drop builder: the builder is very intuitive and offers many templates and customization options.
Real-time email analytics: To quickly help you figure out what’s working and what’s not.
Advanced automations: Reach your customers at the right place, at the right time with pre-built, customizable automations such as welcome messages, happy birthday wishes and many others.
Many available integrations: Such as WordPress, Hubspot, WooCommerce, Magento and many more.
E-commerce connections: To connect your online store and automate and personalize your emails based on the consumers interaction with your store.
A/B testing: To optimize your content, subjects and copy.
Audience segmentation: To create advanced audiences.
Content studio: To store and manage all your files and content.
Mobile App: Create and track your email campaigns wherever and whenever you want.
In conclusion, Mailchimp is a great all-round email platform that has all the necessary tools to grow your business. Whether you're a large organization or smaller business.
Who is this tool for? Best all-round email marketing tool
Emails you can send per month: Up to 10.000 emails (2.000/day)
Subscribers: Up to 2.000 subscribers
Email automation (drip campaigns)? Yes
Accounts: Unlimited
Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
2. Tiny letter
If you just need a simple platform to send out bulk emails, there’s a great, reliable free email marketing tool that’s loved by the community and has been around for ages: Tiny Letter.
Personalize sign up forms and easily share it with your community via your landing pages, website or social media.
Tiny Letter is all about keeping it simple and straightforward. It offers a clean and intuitive editor that is meant for people who aren’t looking for a ton of advanced reporting and automation options, but just want to send emails to a bunch of people from their subscriber list.
Who is this tool for? Easy platform for sending basic, bulk emails.
Emails you can send per month: Unlimited
Subscribers: Up to 5.000 subscribers
Email automation (drip campaigns)? No
Accounts: Unlimited
Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐
3. Sender
SENDER is a relatively easy-to-use email platform with all the necessary features that will help you to grow an active and healthy subscriber list.
The intuitive drag & drop editor will help you to create stunning newsletter content in a heartbeat without requiring any HTML knowledge.
SENDER also has many advanced email analytics features which allow you to accurately measure and improve your campaigns.
Want to automate your campaigns? No problem! SENDER makes complex automations easy with drag & drop automation options.
Who is this tool for? Sending out bulk emails with a lot of extra features and automation possibilities.
Emails you can send per month: Up to 15.000 emails
Subscribers: Up to 2.500 subscribers
Email automation (drip campaigns)? Yes
Accounts: Unlimited
Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
4. Sendinblue
SendInBlue is an awesome all-round email marketing tool that will help you to create professional-looking emails in no time! The platform offers a ton of features such as an intuitive drag & drop builder and many great-looking templates which could help you to easily create beautifully designed emails within minutes.
SendInBlue also allows you to personalize your emails with dynamic fields such as your contact’s name, but also offers more advanced email personalization features to make your emails even more personal. Besides that, you can test your messages with machine learning-powered A/B testing to optimize your copy, design and sending times.
Finally, you can add unlimited lists and contacts to SendInBlue, so you can group and segment your contacts however and whenever you like, based on the criteria that you choose. In the end this will help you to better target your audience.
Who is this tool for? Great email marketing tool for start-ups.
Emails you can send per month: Up to 9.000 (300/day) emails
Subscriber limit: Unlimited
Email automation (drip campaigns)? Yes
Accounts: 1 account
Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
5. Hubspot
If you prefer to send more personalized emails to your customers, have a look at Hubspot.
Create, personalize, and optimize your marketing emails without waiting on designers or IT.
Create beautiful emails without designers or IT.
Quickly draft email campaigns that look professionally designed and display perfectly across any device – all by yourself.
Get started with one of our goal-based email templates, or choose from dozens of templates in our marketplace that are proven to convert.
Then make it your own with our easy-to-use drag and drop editor. Customize your layout, add calls-to-action and images, and modify your content and colors to match your brand.
Personalize emails to get more opens and clickthroughs.
Get more of your emails opened and links clicked when you tailor each email to each subscriber.
You can use an email subscriber’s lifecycle stage, list membership, or any information in their contact records to automatically serve up the most relevant subject lines, content, links, attachments, and calls-to-action.
Optimize email campaigns with A/B tests and analytics.
Maximize the impact of your most important email campaigns with A/B tests and detailed engagement analytics.
Use A/B tests to uncover the subject lines that get the most opens, and the content and calls-to-action that earn you better engagement rates and more sales.
Who is this tool for? B2B and advanced personalization
Emails you can send per month: Up to 2.000 emails
Subscribers: Unlimited
Email automation (drip campaigns)? Yes
Accounts: Unlimited
Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
6. MailerLite
If you prefer to send more personalized emails to your customers, have a look at Hubspot.
Who is this tool for? Small to medium sized businesses.
Emails you can send per month: Up to 12.000 emails
Subscribers: Up to 1.000 subscribers
Email automation (drip campaigns)? Yes
Accounts: Unlimited
Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
7. OmniSend
If you prefer to send more personalized emails to your customers, have a look at Hubspot.
Who is this tool for? E-commerce stores.
Emails you can send per month: 15.000 (2.000/day)
Subscribers: Unlimited
Email automation (drip campaigns)? Yes
Accounts: Unlimited
Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐
8. ZOHO Campaigns
Smart Email Marketing.
Use smart email marketing tools from Zoho Campaigns to send out emails and make your email engagement experience smooth and rewarding while you convert more contacts to customers.
Integration with Zoho CRM.
If you keep your contact data in Zoho CRM, you can sync your account with Zoho Campaigns, send out emails, and see the results inside your CRM account for an easy follow-up.
Automate your email marketing.
Send follow-up messages with ease using our email marketing automation tools. Email workflows and autoresponders let you trigger emails based on a contact's activity.
Take the guess-work off your email campaigns.
Test, improve, and succeed. Insightful reports tell you every detail of your campaign performance—unique opens, clicks, shares, and more.
Permission-based email marketing.
Achieve better engagement rates by managing approval. Send email campaigns only to those who have opted to receive your emails.
Personal connections with personalized email campaigns.
Go beyond the first name. Make your messages dynamic so that every contact feels that your message is written just for them..
Who is this tool for? Scale-ups.
Emails you can send per month: Up to 10.000 emails
Subscribers: Up to 2.000 subscribers
Email automation (drip campaigns)? Yes
Accounts: Unlimited
Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Bonus: Really good emails
Now that you have found a free email marketing tool, it’s time to get creative and actually create them. But creating a catchy, good-looking email is actually harder than you think. Therefore it’s always useful to have some inspiration. On reallygoodemails.com you can find a curated collection that consists of thousands of the most attractive emails out there.
Conclusion:
Whether you’re looking for email automation or personalization, there are some great free email marketing tools available that will help you in reaching your audience.
Whichever of these tools is the best for your business, really depends on the type of business you run and at what stage you're business and marketing are at. Below, I listed a few options that are in my opinion the best-suited tools within their categories.
Best all-round email marketing tool: MailChimp
Best for B2B: Hubspot
Best for E-commerce: OmniSend
Best for personalization: Hubspot
Want to check out more great free email marketing tools?
Check out our curated collection of tools right over here!