The Best Free Email Marketing Software: An Honest Roundup

In case you didn't know, email usage is at an all-time high. In fact, more than 3.7 billion people use email worldwide. So it's no wonder we all constantly receive marketing emails from businesses. Put simply, email marketing works. This is true even in the B2B space.

In fact, 86% of B2B marketers rely on email marketing campaigns to promote new business. This begs the question — are you using email marketing effectively for your business?

There are a variety of email marketing service tools available today to help you with your email marketing — some of which are completely free forever. But, it's important to note, not all free email marketing tools offer the same features.

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Free Email Marketing Tools

Fortunately, we have you covered — here, we've listed and reviewed the best free email marketing tools available today.

1. HubSpot Free Email Marketing Tool

Price:Free; paid plans with Marketing Hub: $45/mo (Starter), $800/mo (Professional), $3,200/mo (Enterprise)

HubSpot offers a reliable and feature-packed email marketing tool that’s suited for growing businesses — for free. Create professional, personalized, and on-brand marketing emails that engage and grow your audience.

With the drag-and-drop email builder, you don't need to wait on IT or designers to help you create your emails.

Additionally, the tool is automatically integrated with your free, all-in-one CRM platform. This means you can easily tailor and personalize emails based on relevant data stored in your CRM (e.g. name, company, previous purchases, previous sales conversations, previous support tickets, etc.).

You can also leverage HubSpot's AI Email Writer to generate copy for your emails.

Lastly, with the tool's email reporting analytics, you’ll be able to identify exactly what is and isn't working among your audience members.

2. Moosend

Price:Free; $9/mo (Pro); Custom price (Moosend+ and Enterprise)

Moosend is ideal for beginners and those new to email marketing since it’s user-friendly and has a minimal learning curve. You can start with a 30-day free trial that lets you test the platform's full functionality (you can send unlimited campaigns to 1,000 subscribers) and see if it's the right fit for your business. As your needs scale, you can move on to the Pro plan, with a price that starts at $9/month. If you need premium features, you can select the add-ons you want and build a custom plan without the overhead costs.

Among the key benefits of Moosend is that all paid plans include advanced functionality like countdown timers, an AI Writer, and eCommerce blocks and recommendations.

Apart from its intuitive email editor, the platform has robust automation options that are easy to implement. You can set up automated email based on a wide range of triggers, while you can also automate your list segmentation. You also get customizable signup forms, landing pages to promote your products/services, and transactional email campaigns

3. SendPulse

Price: Free; $8/mo (Standard), $9.60/mo (Pro), $13.44/mo (Enterprise)

Send Pulse has over 130+ templates to choose from or you can create your own using the drag-and-drop editor. Under the free plan, you'll have access to Send Pulse's highly regarded support team, including support via live chat.

In terms of functionality, Send Pulse has a "Resend" feature that allows you to resend unopened emails with different subject lines, which is valuable for time scrapped marketers. They also offer web pushes, SMTP, Viber, and more.

4. Sendinblue

Price: Free; $25/mo (Lite), $65/mo (Premium), request a custom quote (Enterprise)

If your business relies heavily on transactional emails, such as forgotten password help and invoice receipts, then Sendinblue might be ideal for you. With their extensive developer APIs, you'll be able to integrate with their email system to achieve custom and required technical processes.

With Sendinblue's free plan, you'll have access to a vast array of templates, personalization, A/B testing, contact management, workflow editor, and real-time reporting.

5. EngageBay

Price: Free; $12.74/mo (Basic); $55.24/mo (Growth); unlimited contacts at $101.99/mo (Pro)

EngageBay is an all-in-one, affordable email marketing automation software for small businesses, startups, and solopreneurs. With EngageBay, you get over 1,000 free email templates, a visual automation builder, email personalization, contact segmentation, drip campaigns, and more.

You also get A/B testing, customizable landing pages, predictive lead scoring, visual and powerful dashboards, and plenty of native integrations.

EngageBay lets you get the most out of your customer relationships through CRM, activity timelines, customer journey mapping and touchpoint management, social media suite, and more. 

6. ZeroBounce

Price: Free; $16/2,000 email addresses (Pay-As-You-Go); $15 (monthly subscription); request a custom quote (Enterprise)

ZeroBounce is an email validation and deliverability software that keeps your email list clean and helps your emails land in the inbox. The 99% accurate email verifier detects invalid and fake emails, spam traps, and disposable contacts that cause your campaigns to go to spam.

ZeroBounce also provides an email finder and an email deliverability and engagement toolkit. On the platform, you can test your email deliverability, monitor your email blocklist status, and identify your most active subscribers so you can target them for higher engagement and ROI.

More than 250,000 companies use ZeroBounce to keep their email lists healthy and get their campaigns into the inbox. Plus, ZeroBounce integrates with HubSpot so you can keep the data in your CRM valid and fresh with just a few clicks. 

7. Netcore Email API

Price: 30,000 emails free for the first 30 days, then100/ day free, forever; paid plans start at $25/mo for 150,000 emails

Netcore Email API (formerly Pepipost) is an integrable SMTP relay service for fast email delivery. That means your emails are sent to your customers in less than three seconds.

Easy email APIs give you the freedom to connect custom apps and platforms or use open source marketing platforms like Mautic and Mailtrain for sending your emails.

Once your emails are sent, the dashboard displays real-time updates about your campaign performance including the number of deliveries, opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and bounces.

The AI-powered servers optimize your emails based on the success metrics for the type of email you send. For example, the predictive engagement feature automatically prioritizes delivery to users who are most likely to engage, and send-time optimization ensures your emails are sent at the most optimal time.

You also gain access to in-depth analytics that can also be delivered straight to your internal systems with the use of powerful webhooks. And if you experience any issues, the 24/7 email experts on chat resolve those quickly.

8. Mailchimp

Price: Free; $9/mo (Essentials), $14.99/mo (Standard), $299/mo (Premium)

Mailchimp offers access to email marketing features such as list segmentation, A/B testing, contact profiles, and more. However, it's important to note you'll have Mailchimp branding in your email footers with the free plan and won't have access to premium support.

Mailchimp integrates with ecommerce providers including WooCommerce and Magento if you have an ecommerce store. Additionally, the tool integrates with WordPress, if that's your CMS software of choice. Lastly, Mailchimp offers reports and analytics for emails so you can identify areas of opportunity.

9. Zoho Campaigns

Price: Free; $3/mo (Email-Based Plan), $4.50/mo (Subscriber-Based Plan), $7/mo (Pay by Email Credits)

Zoho Campaigns provides access to features such as A/B testing, reports, and email templates. If you're already using the Zoho CRM, it makes sense to check out Zoho campaigns to see how email and CRM work together. This type of email marketing tool and CRM integration will improve your workflows and productivity.

It's important to note that while the free version provides a variety of email marketing features, most of them have limitations.

10. Bouncer

Price:100 verifications for Free, Pay-As-You-Go rates

Bouncer is a powerful tool for accurate e-mail list verification, e-mail validation, and deliverability technology. With Bouncer, the email checker allows marketers to ensure deliverability for their campaigns. By leveraging a proprietary algorithm and analyzing your list in its entirety, Bouncer will accurately calculate how many emails may bounce back after the campaign has been sent.

In addition to its list and API verification capabilities with a zero downtime policy, users can also take advantage of features such as E-mail Toxicity Check and Deliverability Kit to ensure their deliverability standards are met. Plus, with a vast integration library that enables up to 200 000 verified emails per hour per customer, Bouncer offers unbeatable performance for any use case.

11. Mailjet

Price: Free; $9.65/mo (Basic), $20.95 (Premium), request a quote (Enterprise)

With Mailjet's free plan, you'll have access to unlimited contacts, APIs and webhooks, an advanced email editor, and analytics. However, with the free plan, there are no available features for A/B testing or automation.

Mailjet's interface is easy to use and since the tool gives you full API access, Mailjet is ideal for businesses that require technical adjustments.

12. Benchmark

Price: Free; $13/mo (Pro), request a quote (Enterprise)

Benchmark is designed to cater to enterprise-level businesses, is user-friendly, and easy to implement. It has a drag-and-drop editor, a variety of email templates, sign-up form options, and drip campaign features.

However, there's no option for A/B testing or automation features on the free tool. Furthermore, contacts can't be added via list import in the free plan — you can only email contacts who fill out Benchmark subscriber forms.

13. MailerLite

Price: Free; $10+/ mo for 1,000+ subscribers

MailerLite and MailerLite alternatives are ideal for small businesses that want to send bulk marketing emails. It's well-equipped with preview features so you can review your email on desktop and mobile before sending it.

However, the API and integration capabilities are not as robust as some of the other options in this list.

14. ExpressPigeon

Price: Free; request for custom pricing for paid plans.

ExpressPigeon is a good solutionfor businesses with short email lists that include high-priority subscribers. With ExpressPigeon, you can effortlessly build and personalize emails, automate email responses, and send high-volume emails.

Best of all, you gain access to all of the premium features with the free plan — however, there are low send and subscriber limits. ExpressPigeon is regarded as having some of the best customer satisfaction scores in the industry.

15. Stripo

Price: Free; $125/mo (Business), $400/mo (Agency)

Stripo is drag-and-drop email template software. You can use this service to customize personalized emails without any design experience and ensure that your emails will be beautiful and professional.

There are two different types of editors on Stripo, one specifically for marketers, or anyone with little-to-no design experience. The other editor, the HTML code editor, is made for email developers.

Stripo gives you access to over 300 finished templates, add-ons for embedding, interactivity, and smart features. The tool also integrates with HubSpot and lets you export your emails into the CRM with two clicks. The integration also allows for account sync for both accounts.

16. Kickbox Email Validation

Price: Free; paid plans based on subscribers (e.g. 500 addresses for $5/mo).

Kickbox is an email verification software that ensures your emails are reaching the customers you aim to target. When emails are verified, major email providers are less likely to mark those emails as spam, which means your email has a greater chance of appearing in the main inbox of your customer.

Kickbox combs through your email list and ensures all of the recipients are real accounts that aren't outdated. This saves you money in the long run because your email list will be smaller, more concise, and accurate.

The software integrates with HubSpot as well, and the integration lets you verify email in the HubSpot CRM. Kickbox owns its own validation network, so you can be sure your data will be accurate, while HubSpot validates the data for deliverability.

17. Sender

Price: Free; 2,500 contacts and 15,000 emails/mo

Sender is an omnichannel messaging solution for small businesses. This email marketing platform comes with advanced features like an easy-to-use interface, a drag-and-drop email editor, and built-in, high-converting email newsletter templates. Sender also gives you the ability to manage complex automation workflows that include both emails and SMS.

Sender uses IP addresses and server hardware to ensure rapid delivery to the Primary inbox. It also offers built-in embedded and pop-up forms for lead generation along with other features meant for increasing conversions like email personalization, email tracking, and contact segmentation.

18. GetProspect

Price: Free; $49/mo (Starter), $99/mo (Basic), $199/mo (Plus), $399 (Pro)

GetProspect Email finder is a platform with a set of features that allows you to find email addresses of prospects and other essential data, segment lists, and personalize email marketing campaigns. 

Since the platform has a 12-step email verification process, you will receive data with a 95+ data accuracy guarantee. This saves the reputation of your domain, and be confident that the email campaigns will reach the recipients. 

You can find data through a B2B database search (17+ filters) and a LinkedIn Email finder extension. Besides, soon there will be an available Cold emailing software. GetProspect has a number of native integrations, including integration with Hubspot, so that you can connect your GetProspect with Hubspot in a couple of clicks.

Chose Your Free Email Marketing Software

Now, you have a better sense of the best free email marketing tools at your disposal. Fortunately, you don't need to commit to any service. Since they're free, you can try these tools out depending on your business' needs, then select the one most ideal for you.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.