6 Best Email Marketing Services Of 2020 – A Detailed Comparison

Plan on selling products on your blog? Promote affiliate products to your readers? Or create an extra stream of website traffic?

If you answered yes to any of those questions then you must start building an email list right away. Why? Because promoting products through an email list is the most effective online marketing strategy there is.

Contrary to popular belief, email is still one of the main communication methods people use to reach out to other people and stay informed of their favorite blogs and websites. In fact, Gmail alone currently has over 1 Billion users with over 90 million active users per month.

So, how do you take advantage of emails to promote your products and blog posts? It’s simple, really. You use email marketing software!

In this article, we’ll introduce you to some of the best email marketing software you can use to build an email list and also point out the best options for beginners and advanced users.

Let’s get started, shall we?

What Is An Email Marketing Service?

An email marketing service is a platform that allows you to gather emails of your website visitors (also known as subscribers) and create lists of subscribers to send email campaigns for promotions and updates.

These services come with a price. But, in return, you will be able to easily integrate email opt-in forms into your website, collect and manage subscribers, send email campaigns, create automated emails, track email open rates and clicks, and so much more.

The best part is you can do all these tasks and more all by yourself, without the help of an expert or an experienced marketer. The services we’re about to show you are that easy to use.

Who Uses Them?

Today, everyone from bloggers to small businesses, online stores, startups, and many other types of websites use email marketing services to build email lists and create promotional campaigns.

It doesn’t matter if you’re starting a niche blog or running a business blog for a company, having an email list will definitely come in handy no matter what type of website you have.

What Can You Do With An Email Marketing Service?

You can use an email marketing service to do a lot of things like launching products, selling affiliate products, connect with your audience, run polls, surveys, and even experiment with your subscribers.

Here are some of the most important things you can do with an email marketing service:

• Build An Email List
• Collect Emails Of Your Website Visitors
• Design Beautiful Emails
• Start A Newsletter
• Create Autoresponders And Email Courses
• A/B Test Emails For Creating Better Email Campaigns

6 Most Popular Email Marketing Services

There are dozens of email marketing services available today with different features. But, only a few of them managed to build a reputation to be known as the best.

We narrowed it down to these 6 great services:

1. Constant Contact
2. GetResponse
3. ConvertKit
4. Drip
5. Mailchimp
6. AWeber

Each service in this list comes with unique features that make them stand out from the crowd. Obviously, this will make it quite difficult for you to pick one for your own project.

Which is why you should be very careful when choosing an email marketing service because once you start using an email marketing service, it will be difficult for you to switch to a different service.

Going Hands-On

To help you make the right decision, we signed up with each email marketing service in the list and tested the features to see if they work as smoothly as they claim to be. Let’s have a look.

#1 Constant Contact

• Starting Price: $20 per month
• Free Templates: Included
• Money Back Guarantee: Not Available
• Best For: Business and Advanced users

Constant Contact is one of the veterans in the email marketing industry with more than 20 years of experience. The platform comes with many features and options mainly useful for business and eCommerce users.

Constant Contact guarantees a 97% email delivery rate when you send email campaigns using the platform. It also claims to have the industry’s best email editor.

Main Features

Constant Contact is one of the more expensive options on our list. However, it also offers some advanced features that make the tool worth the price.

• Powerful email editor
• Marketing calendar
• 1GB of file storage
• Image library
• List segmentation
• Email scheduling

Other Special Features

One of the best features of Constant Contact is the ability to store images and documents on its own cloud storage. This allows you to easily embed images and files in your emails.

With Constant Contact, you’ll also be able to send an unlimited number of emails every month no matter how big of an email list you have.

Getting Started

Once you signup with the service, you’ll be presented with a few basic survey questions about your business and email marketing process. After answering these questions, Constant Contact will direct you to its main dashboard. From here, you can start importing your email contacts list and create new email campaigns.

When creating a new email, you’ll have the option to either create your own branded email template or select one from the default premade templates list.

The Constant Contact email editor is quite smooth and responsive. It features an innovative drag and drop editor where you can build your email by just dragging and dropping images, text blocks, and call to action buttons onto the canvas.

Creating Automation

You can start creating your automation sequences and email campaigns using the Campaigns tab. From here, you can choose between several options to create different types of campaigns to drive leads to events, product launches, create surveys, email courses, welcome emails, and more.

List segmentation is another useful feature included with Constant Contact. This allows you to easily create list segments to filter and categorize your email subscribers based on their actions and interactions.

For example, you can create a list segment to filter contacts based on whether or not they have opened your recent emails or clicked on links. It will allow you to identify your most active or inactive subscribers.

Analytics and A/B Testing

Constant Contact offers highly detailed tracking and reporting. Using the platform’s analytics, you’ll be able to track your email opens, reads, clicks, forwards, and much more to measure the success of each of your email campaigns.

App Integrations

Since Constant Contact is targeted towards business users it comes with many useful third-party app integrations for business and eCommerce users, including Shopify and Facebook Lead Ads integrations.

Pricing

Constant Contact lets you test drive the service for free for a full month. After the first month, you can decide whether to keep using the service or cancel.

While the platform offers two simple pricing plans for getting started, the actual price you have to pay will depend on the number of subscribers you have.

• $20 Per Month: Up to 500 subscribers, send unlimited emails, 1GB of file storage, and image library.
• $45 Per Month: Up to 2500 subscribers, send unlimited emails, 1GB of file storage, and image library.
• $65 Per Month: Up to 5000 subscribers, send unlimited emails, 1GB of file storage, and image library.
• $95 Per Month: Up to 10,000 subscribers, send unlimited emails, 1GB of file storage, and image library.

Constant Contact is most suitable for businesses that regularly send emails and campaigns. If you have a smaller list and only send weekly emails, you’ll be better off with a different and less expensive service.

Visit Constant Contact

#2 GetResponse

• Starting Price: $15 per month
• Free Templates: Included
• Money Back Guarantee: Not Available
• Best For: Beginners to Advanced users

With over 350,000 customers worldwide, GetResponse has become one of the fastest growing email marketing services today. The way GetResponse offer such advanced features through an easy-to-understand user interface is what makes this platform so special.

Main Features

Like any other email marketing service, GetResponse comes with all the basic features like:

• Automation
• A drag-and-drop email designer
• Analytics
• A/B testing
• and so much more.

But, with more advanced features than others.

Other Special Features

GetResponse has some cool features that set the platform truly apart from the rest. It comes with Landing pages. That’s right! GetResponse allows you to create and publish landing pages from the same platform to generate leads. No need to waste money on third-party landing page plugins.

The platform also offers complete solutions for launching webinar campaigns. Like sending invites, sending reminders to participants, track conversions, collect leads, and much more.

In a way, GetResponse is the complete marketing package any email marketer than dream of.

Getting Started

GetResponse’s getting started process is a simple 3-step process. Add contacts (if you already have a list of emails), create a form to embed on your website, and create a newsletter or an email campaign. It’s as easy as that.

The drag and drop email editor of GetResponse is also quite easy to use. You can edit a template or design an email from scratch. And everything in your email can be edited using the live editor, which shows the changes as you make them.

Creating Automation

The workflow-based automation creator of GetResponse is the most advanced automation builder we’ve seen on an email marketing service. The best part is it’s also quite easy to use for creating incredibly versatile automation with conditions, actions, and filters.

For example, if someone buys a product through a link on one of your emails then you can create a condition to add that person’s email into another email list. Or, if someone forgets to open one of your emails, you can even send them a reminder asking to read the email. The possibilities are endless.

Don’t worry, understanding how it works is easy. The interactive tutorial will guide you through it.

Analytics and A/B Testing

GetResponse also provides you with advanced analytics tools with real-time activity tracking and comparisons for better understanding your subscriber’s behavior.

The A/B testing features of GetResponse will also let you test everything in your emails from subject lines to from fields, time of day, day of week, and much more.

App Integrations

Similar to other platforms, GetResponse supports plenty of third-party app integrations, including CRMs, CMS, and eCommerce services. It also lets you connect Textiful, which allows users to subscribe to your email lists via text messages.

Pricing

GetResponse offers pricing plans for everyone from small bloggers to enterprises.

• $15 Per Month: Up to 1000 subscribers, unlimited emails, automation, and landing pages (basic).
• $25 Per Month: Up to 2500 subscribers, unlimited emails, automation, and landing pages (basic).
• $49 Per Month: Up to 5000 subscribers, unlimited emails, automation, landing pages (advanced), and webinars.

The only downside to using GetResponse is it doesn’t offer refunds. But, you can always test drive the service with a free trial.

Visit GetResponse

#3 ConvertKit

• Starting Price: $29 per month
• Free Templates: Not Available
• Money Back Guarantee: 30-Days
• Best For: Beginners and bloggers

ConvertKit is a new contender in the email marketing game. Although, it’s also the most expensive option in our list as well. But, there’s a special reason behind its price tag. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Main Features

ConvertKit is completely beginner-friendly. Its user interface is designed to offer a smooth and a simple journey to even the non-tech savvy people.

ConvertKit also uses a few different names for some of its features, which might confuse some people who are familiar with email marketing. For example, one-time email campaigns are called Broadcasts on ConvertKit. And email courses are called Sequences.

In addition, you can use it to create:

• Email lists
• Automation
• Landing pages
• And much more

Other Special Features

ConvertKit is an email marketing service specially designed for bloggers. It comes with several great features for growing your blog’s email list. Including the ability to create unlimited email lists.

On other email marketing platforms, the number of emails in your email lists counts toward the total subscriber limit of your plan. For example, when the same subscriber joins multiple email lists (eg: newsletter and email course) it counts as two subscribers instead of one. This is called duplicate subscribers.

But, ConvertKit counts those emails as a single subscriber. Allowing you to create multiple email lists without having to worry about the subscriber caps of your pricing plan.

You can even create email lists for each and every blog post you publish to offer content upgrades like PDFs and free downloads to your readers while collecting their emails.

ConvertKit also features landing pages for capturing leads.

Getting Started

ConvertKit has a more streamlined getting started process than any other platform. It will take you step-by-step through the creation of your first email list to email campaign in a beginner-friendly onboarding process.

Once you’re done with the basics, you’ll be able to start designing your emails. Unfortunately, ConvertKit doesn’t offer email templates with modern designs, it only features basic text-only designs.

Compared to other platforms, ConvertKit email forms are quite beautiful. They can also be customized to fit your branding.

Creating Automation

You can create email courses using ConvertKit’s Sequences, where you can easily create and edit all the emails of your campaign in one place and choose when each email is sent out to your subscribers.

You can also create automation based on triggers. For example, you can create an automation to automatically add subscribers to your newsletter email list whenever someone subscribes to your email course list.

Analytics and A/B Testing

ConvertKit offers very basic reporting and only offers simple analytics like email open rates and click-through rates. And the reports are not as detailed as MailChimp or GetResponse either.

A/B testing is almost non-existent on ConvertKit. It only allows you to test the basic elements of your emails like subject lines. Hopefully, the platform will pick up a few new tricks along the way.

App Integrations

ConvertKit is still a fresh platform. So, it only offers around 35 third-party app integrations, including apps like Gumroad for selling eBooks, Shopify for selling products, OptinMonster, LeadPages, and a few more.

Pricing

ConvertKit’s pricing plans are not as customizable as other platforms. It only offers 3 plans.

• $29 Per Month: Up to 1000 subscribers, unlimited emails, unlimited lists, unlimited forms, and automation.
• $49 Per Month: 1000 to 3000 subscribers, unlimited emails, unlimited lists, unlimited forms, and automation.
• $79 Per Month: 3000 to 5000 subscribers, unlimited emails, unlimited lists, unlimited forms, and automation.

For bigger lists, you can contact ConvertKit for a quote.

Visit ConvertKit

#4 Drip

• Starting Price: Free / $49 per month
• Free Templates: Not Available
• Money Back Guarantee: 30-Days
• Best For: Advanced users

Drip is yet another new email marketing service launched by Leadpages in 2010. Leadpages is a company that has plenty of experience in lead generation and marketing. As a result, they included several advanced features in Drip, targeting advanced marketers and users.

Main Features

Even though its main selling point is the workflows, Drip can be used to create everything from small email courses to newsletters and even one-off email campaigns.

You can also use Drip to create:

• Multiple email lists
• Automation
• Email broadcasts
• Workflow emails
• And much more

Other Special Features

Drip is an email marketing service aimed at the experts and experienced marketers. It comes with extensive features for creating advanced email campaigns for more effective buyer’s journeys and marketing funnels.

Drip has a special tagging function, which automatically adds tags to emails based on user actions. For example, if a user signup for a webinar using your link, that user can be tagged for easier management. So that in the future you can easily reach those people.

The platform also offers a concierge service to its users where you can hire writers from the Drip team to write content for your emails.

Getting Started

Drip has an intelligent getting started process. Instead of dropping you directly onto its dashboard. Drip first asks a few questions from you to understand your goals of using an email list. Whether you’re completely new to email marketing, plan on selling products, etc. So that Drip can be personalized to better fit your needs.

And then you can start by installing the Drip WordPress plugin and connecting your website with the email marketing service.

From the Drip dashboard, you can start by creating a new automation workflow, create an email campaign like an RSS feed newsletter, send one-time broadcasts, and do a whole lot more.

The Drip email editor will certainly disappoint you because it doesn’t have any email templates. Instead, you have to create your own templates. And you’ll need to understand a little bit about HTML and CSS to do design one. Or you can buy templates from a third-party marketplace.

Creating Automation

Drip also features a visual workflow builder for creating advanced automation, similar to the one in GetResponse. Using this builder, you can create automation with conditions, triggers, and filters.

Analytics and A/B Testing

The split testing features of Drip aren’t as sophisticated as GetResponse, but they allow you to test the most important elements of your email campaigns such as subject lines and send times.

The Drip email reports will help you keep track of your subscriber growth, email engagement rates, bounces, clicks, and tags. Ideal for marketers who rely on the metrics.

App Integrations

Drip can be integrated with plenty of popular third-party services for supercharging your email campaigns. Including PayPal, ClickBank, MemberPress, Gravity Forms, WooCommerce, and much more.

Pricing

Drip pricing plans are pretty expensive. Which is why we recommend it only for serious marketers.

• Free: Up to 100 subscribers, unlimited emails, automation, app integrations, opt-in widgets.
• $49 Per Month: Up to 2500 subscribers, unlimited emails, automation, app integrations, opt-in widgets, remove Drip branding.
• $99 Per Month: Up to 5000 subscribers, unlimited emails, automation, app integrations, opt-in widgets, remove Drip branding.

Visit Drip

#5 MailChimp

• Starting Price: Free / $10 per month
• Free Templates: Included
• Money Back Guarantee: Not Available
• Best For: Beginners to Advanced users

With over 15 million users, MailChimp is the most popular email marketing service available today. But, there’s a secret behind MailChimp’s massive success. MailChimp offers a generous free plan for beginners which allows you to collect up to 2,000 subscribers for free. And now you also get automation features for free!

MailChimp has been around since 2001, and it’s continuously growing at a rapid rate. You can’t go wrong with this service.

Main Features

MailChimp features a ton of great features, including:

• An easy-to-use email designer
• Lots of free templates for designing beautiful emails
• A/B testing options
• Easy automation templates
• RSS feed email campaigns
• And much more.

Other Special Features

One of the unique features of MailChimp is its advanced scheduling system, which lets you send emails based on the subscriber’s time zone or you can even let MailChimp decide what time your subscribers are most active to send emails at the perfect time.

This will let you send emails to people around the world at the exact time of the day you want them to read it, no matter what their time zone is.

Getting Started

The registration process of MailChimp is pretty straightforward. But, it doesn’t offer a streamlined Getting Started process for beginners like pointing out what each section on the platform does. MailChimp doesn’t even offer a link to a YouTube video to help users understand the dashboard of the platform.

Even though, you can still start off with a few simple steps by creating an email list. And you can search MailChimp Knowledgebase at any time if you need help with the process. Unfortunately, MailChimp help section doesn’t have any video tutorials. Not a good sign for complete beginners.

MailChimp’s email editor, however, is quite easy to handle. Plus, the platform offers a wide range of email templates to choose from to get started on your email designs right away.

Creating Automation

Automation is the most important part of any email marketing service. This is where you create emails that send automatically to your subscribers when they opt-in to your email list. You can also use automation to create a series of emails, like an email course, that delivers to recipients periodically.

MailChimp’s Automation section is more advanced than any other platform. It allows you to easily get started with templates for specific types of automatic emails, like for sending confirmation emails after a purchase, reminders for abandoned shopping carts, welcome messages, and more.

However, all this can be a little overwhelming to a beginner who’s just looking to create an email course or create an email course for a blog. You can create those types of automation with MailChimp, you’ll just have to play around a little and figure things out by yourself.

Analytics and A/B Testing

When creating email campaigns, you can choose whether to do an A/B testing campaign or a regular campaign. Those campaigns will allow you to understand how to deliver more effective email campaigns.

The Reports section on MailChimp will then show you how each of your email campaigns performs, how many people opened your emails, how many clicks were sent to your websites, etc.

App Integrations

MailChimp also supports integrations with third-party apps, such as Facebook, Twitter, and eCommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce to let you embed and sell your products directly from your email campaigns.

Pricing

MailChimp offers highly flexible pricing plans starting at just $10 per month. You can then gradually switch to different plans as your email list grows.

• Free Forever: Up to 2000 subscribers, 12,000 emails per month, automation.
• $10 Per Month: 0-500 subscribers, automation, tracking, A/B testing, unlimited emails.
• $15 Per Month: 500-1000 subscribers, automation, tracking, A/B testing, unlimited emails.
• $20 Per Month: 1000-1500 subscribers, automation, tracking, A/B testing, unlimited emails.
• $25 Per Month: 1500-2000 subscribers, automation, tracking, A/B testing, unlimited emails.

Visit Mailchimp

#6 AWeber

• Starting Price: $19 per month
• Free Templates: Included
• Money Back Guarantee: 30-Days
• Best For: Beginners

AWeber is a popular email marketing service among bloggers because of its beginner-friendly user interface and easy-to-create automation. AWeber has also been around since 1998 and currently serves over 100,000 email marketers.

Even though AWeber offers basic features than other services, their prices are slightly more expensive. Yet, most bloggers still choose it over other platforms for its user friendliness and responsive customer support.

Main Features

The main reason why many bloggers and marketers choose AWeber, despite their expensive prices, is that the platform offers a beginner-friendly user interface that makes things extremely easy for learning how things work with the platform.

In addition, it also includes:

• Email automation
• Over 700 email templates
• Easier integration with WordPress
• RSS feed newsletters
• And more.

Other Special Features

AWeber also offers customer support via phone, which can be a time-saving feature for people who lack technical knowledge. In addition, it offers plenty of video tutorials and free live webinars for learning how to use the platform.

AWeber guarantees a better email deliverability rate as well, promising that your email campaigns get delivered to each subscriber on your list without them being blocked by spam filters or getting lost.

Getting Started

The first thing you’ll see when you signup with AWeber is a video message welcoming you to the platform and explaining a few things about how to get started. Just what a beginner would need to help feel welcomed.

And then, AWeber will take you through the starting process one step at a time from creating your first email list to setting up a confirmation message to send to your subscribers.

And then you can start exploring the dashboard. Each tab on the dashboard will contain a video, explaining what that tab is about. This will help you understand the functions of the platform easier.

The smooth drag-and-drop editor will also allow you to design beautiful emails. Of course, there are plenty of templates to choose from as well.

Creating Automation

Automation in AWeber can be created via the Legacy Follow Up Series tab, where you can create either a single automated email or a series of follow up emails.

Analytics and A/B Testing

AWeber will also let you read and track reports for each automation and email campaign separately. Although, the analytics aren’t as advanced as other platforms.

Split-testing functions are also limited to the basics, like email subjects lines and simple text formats.

App Integrations

AWeber can be easily integrated with dozens of other apps, like PayPal for selling products, LeadPages for setting up landing pages, WooCommerce, Etsy, and much more.

Pricing

AWeber pricing is a little bit expensive. Probably because they offer highly responsive customer support for their users who need more help with their first time setting up email marketing services.

• $19 Per Month: Up to 500 subscribers, unlimited emails, automation, analytics, 6,000+ free stock photos.
• $29 Per Month: 500-2500 subscribers, unlimited emails, automation, analytics, 6,000+ free stock photos.
• $49 Per Month: 2500-5000 subscribers, unlimited emails, automation, analytics, 6,000+ free stock photos.

Visit AWeber

So, Which One Is The Best?

Picking a single “best” service is tough since each platform targets different types of audiences. However, if you’re a complete beginner who would prefer an easy-to-understand user interface, easy automation, and something that is easy to scale, go for Constant Contact.

For A/B testing, landing pages, ConvertKit and Drip provides great features for advanced users and online marketers. MailChimp’s free plan is also great if you’re starting a small blog on a small budget.

Each platform comes with a free trial (except ConvertKit) so feel free to test them yourself before making a decision.