Email MarketingMarketing

5 Top-Rated Email Marketing Software for Advertisers

Ashish Upadhyay profile picture
By Ashish Upadhyay

Published
8 min read

As a marketing campaign manager, are targeting and segmentation challenges affecting your email marketing campaigns? While your messaging may be correct, maximizing engagement and manually capturing relevant leads through the clutter can be daunting. 

In such cases, an email marketing service platform can ensure that email campaigns reach the most appropriate recipients and increase conversions. An email marketing tool can also automate and personalize campaign creation and target the right target audience. 

To help you make the right decision, this article highlights, in alphabetical order, the five top-rated email marketing software for marketing and advertising teams for email marketing based on user reviews. For each product, we include overall user ratings along with the highest-rated parameter, review excerpts from industry professionals, and product pricing. Read more.

1. EmailOctopus

Analysis accurate as of September 2023

Trial/Free Version

  • Free Trial
  • Free Version

Highest-rated parameter

Customer support - 4.96/5

Commonly used by

Small businesses

Starting price

$8 per month for up to 500 email subscribers (billed annually)

Device compatibility

Here are some review excerpts from marketing and advertising professionals who have used EmailOctopus for email marketing:

"One of the things I appreciate about EmailOctopus email marketing platform is its simplicity. The interface is clean and easy to navigate, making it a breeze to create and send campaigns. Plus, the pricing is very reasonable, especially for the features you get. Another feature I've found helpful is the ability to create and manage multiple mailing lists. This is great for organizing contacts and targeting specific groups of subscribers with tailored content."

"The price point is a great help for those starting out gives them a bit more time to learn and start making some money with their list and to make the payment easier too.Most of the help tutors are easy to understand and if you have trouble the support has been outstanding. Even though it is a chat and I usually don't care for that but theirs has been top-notch. They have good knowledgeable people working the chat and that really a big plus."

"If you want to write a simple and nice e-mail newsletter to stay in contact with your list it is the best email marketing platform I found. They have a Texteditor that is easy to use (like writing an Email), you need little steps to send an email and the software works on a mobile device. The integration of forms to WordPress are super simple as well. The Platform is intuitive and easy to understand, you don't need a master in Marketing to use it."

Read all EmailOctopus reviews here.

2. Klaviyo

Analysis accurate as of September 2023

Trial/Free Version

  • Free Trial
  • Free Version

Highest-rated parameter

Customer support - 4.78/5

Commonly used by

Small businesses

Starting price

$20 per month for up to 500 email subscribers (billed annually)

Device compatibility

Here are some review excerpts from marketing and advertising professionals who have used Klaviyo for email marketing:

"I loved the feature of sending sms to my costumers at my drop shipping store. Its really easy and simple to use. Also I increased my conversions by 23% only by email marketing."

"Overall, using Klaviyo is a breeze if you've used other email marketing campaign platforms. I like the fact that it's versatile, has a clear UI and doesn't use difficult jargon. You get a lot of support from their education and account management team and if you need more info on anything, you can guarantee they have it. If you want to be specific with targeting audiences on social media then this is a must."

"Such a powerful marketing automation platform that can help businesses to streamline  marketing processes, improve customer engagement, and drive sales growth. It has helped us a lot automate our marketing process."

Read all Klaviyo reviews here.

3. MailerLite

Analysis accurate as of September 2023

Trial/Free Version

  • Free Trial
  • Free Version

Highest-rated parameter

Customer support - 4.82/5

Commonly used by

Small businesses

Starting price

$9 per month for up to 500 email subscribers (billed annually)

Device compatibility

Here are some review excerpts from marketing and advertising professionals who have used MailerLite for email marketing:

"I was pleasantly surprised after reading reviews and trying this platform myself for a couple of email campaigns. It's a very solid tool, with great email deliverability and all the features you need to get going. It's easy to use, everything is clear (you don't need tech skills to get started) and the platform keeps getting improved which is important."

"For the amount of features and it's efficient functionality, Mailer Lite is by far the best email provider I have used. I'm not 'techy' at all and the way it works is intuitive and I can do most things! For more complicated tasks, the 'help' video tutorials are really clear but, above all, the live chat function is priceless! It's fast, the people are helpful and polite. I use it to build and monitor my unlimited email lists and also to sign people up using their forms and it does all these things really well."

"Easy to use, beautiful e-mails, perfect for a small business or start-up for email and SMS marketing. Grateful for the support desk, even on a free plan.Mailerlite Academy is a plus as well as their GDPR guidelines!"

Read all MailerLite reviews here.

4. Omnisend

Analysis accurate as of September 2023

Trial/Free Version

  • Free Trial
  • Free Version

Highest-rated parameter

Customer support - 4.89/5

Commonly used by

Small businesses

Starting price

Available on quote

Device compatibility

Here are some review excerpts from marketing and advertising professionals who have used Omnisend for email marketing:

"The customer support is excellent. The product itself is user-friendly and easy to use. The automation and segmentation options are advanced and provide great solutions for effective marketing."

"It's super easy and intuitive, everything can be done within minute. I do particulary enjoy the pre-segmented audience, it gives you idea for new segment and it's automatic. It's a great feature."

"Overall, Omnisend is an excellent choice for e-commerce businesses looking to improve their marketing and sales processes. Its e-commerce focus, automation features, personalization, integration capabilities, and reporting and analytics make it an ideal solution for online retailers."

Read all Omnisend reviews here.

Ready to hire an email marketing agency for your business needs? Browse our list of companies in the following areas:

5. SendPulse

Analysis accurate as of September 2023

Trial/Free Version

  • Free Trial
  • Free Version

Highest-rated parameter

Customer support - 4.68/5

Commonly used by

Small businesses

Starting price

$6.40 per month for up to 500 email subscribers (billed annually)

Device compatibility

Here are some review excerpts from marketing and advertising professionals who have used SendPulse for email marketing:

"We started using the free version and since we are a digital marketing agency started to use it on our own clients first, guess what, we loved it so much that we became partners to offer it to our clients too!"

"Really easy-to-use software. You just do not need to learn tutorials for hours - everything is clear and intuitive."

"Email marketing is one of the successful ways to promote your business, present various offers and reach the people interested in your activity. So creating an attractive and understandable email body for such purposes is much more manageable when we use SendPulse. It has pretty good widgets, blocks, and tools that make the email-creating process enjoyable even for those who don't have time or skills for designing. I have been using this product for informing our clients about the latest offers on flights, last-minute sales and so on. You can track the users that received the email or opened it. It is quite easy to add/remove contacts or make new lists."

Read all SendPulse reviews here.

What features do email marketing tools offer?

Email marketing tools offer core features such as:

Email campaign management:

This helps businesses plan, create, send, and analyze email marketing campaigns at scale through automation. Marketers can define campaign goals, target audience segments, and the type of emails they want to send (for example, newsletters, promotions, and transactional and bulk emails).

List management:

This helps manage email subscriber lists and segments them based on various criteria, such as demographics, behavior, purchase history, or engagement level. This segmentation ensures that emails are sent to the most relevant recipients, increasing the chances of engagement and conversion.

Subscriber management:

This helps import existing lists of subscribers into the software and export lists as needed. The feature also facilitates compliance with email marketing regulations by managing opt-in and opt-out processes for subscribers.

Besides these core features, email marketing tools also commonly tend to offer:

  • CAN-SPAM compliance
  • Campaign analytics

  • Campaign scheduling

  • Contact management 

  • Customer segmentation 

  • Customizable fields 

  • Email templates 

  • Landing pages/web forms

  • Mobile-optimized emails 

  • Reporting/analytics

  • Template management

  • WYSIWYG Editor

How to choose the right email marketing software for your business 

  • Ensure the software has a high email deliverability rate. A reputation for getting emails into the inbox rather than the spam folder is crucial for finding success through email campaigns. It would also help to look for an email marketing feature that helps maintain the sender's reputation, such as an authentication protocol, sender policy framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and feedback loop integration.
  • Check for personalized and dynamic content. Features that enable you to include recipient names and customize content based on subscriber preferences, behavior, or demographic information can benefit your campaigns. Dynamic content blocks also improve engagement since subscribers see content directly related to their interests or needs.

  • Assess the software's A/B testing and optimization functionality. The software should allow you to refine your email marketing strategy and test different elements, such as subject lines, email content, and send times, to optimize open and click-through rates.

Common questions to ask software vendors before purchase

What kind of automation workflows does your software offer?

Automating processes such as sending welcome emails to new subscribers, abandoned cart recovery, birthday/anniversary emails, and re-engagement emails are necessary for email marketing automation and should be available in the solution.

Does your solution comply with email marketing regulations?

Email marketing solutions should comply with regulations such as the CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR to protect subscriber data and not get penalized for sending spam emails.

How does your solution handle email list hygiene and bounce management?

Email list hygiene ensures you save your campaign resources on non-existent or non-responsive email addresses. The email marketing tool should offer email verification to validate email addresses in your list and send real-time notifications when your campaign emails bounce. Your team should also be able to segment email lists and remove inactive email addresses automatically.


Methodology

To be considered for this list, products had to:

  • Have at least 20 unique product reviews from users in the information technology and services industry, published on Capterra between Sep 2021-23. We selected the five products with the highest ratings to feature in this article.

  • Offer the following core email marketing features: email campaign management, list management, and subscriber management.

To determine which size businesses each product is "commonly used by," we check if at least 20% of reviewers come from a particular business size, and only then classify the product as having customers from that business size.

Review excerpts are passages extracted from longer reviews written by verified reviewers. We obtain these excerpts by applying an algorithm that considers factors including, but not limited to, length, sentiment, topic coverage, and thematic relevance. 

Excerpts represent user opinion and do not represent the views of, nor constitute, an endorsement by Capterra or its affiliates. Excerpts are not edited for clarity or grammar.

Read more about our editorial independence.


Was this article helpful?


About the Author

Ashish Upadhyay profile picture

Ashish Upadhyay is a content writer at Capterra, helping small businesses identify the right software for their business needs by analyzing user reviews data for the highest rated products in relevant software categories. Prior to joining Capterra, he worked in insurtech, fintech, and real estate. Specializing in marketing, project, and IT management, Ashish’s works have been featured in MAST magazine and Medium. In his free time, he enjoys working out and playing video games.

visitor tracking pixel