The Best Email Newsletter Software: 10 Email Marketing Services for Your Business in 2019

Something’s happening—you’re having a sale, you’re hosting an event, or you published a new blog post—and you want to tell everyone about it. Years ago, that might have required paying for a newspaper ad, publishing a press release, or printing and mailing a flyer. Today, reaching your customers and contacts is as easy as clicking a button in your email marketing software.

There are dozens of ways to send emails to lists of people, from the BCC field in Gmail to mail merge tools in Word. But your best option is email newsletter software: services designed specifically to send professional-looking emails to hundreds or thousands of subscribers at once.

We tested dozens of tools, and here we’ll present our picks for the 10 best email newsletter services. If you’re looking for an easy way to send emails to all of your contacts, one of these 10 tools should work for you.

What Makes Email Newsletter Software Great?

Email newsletter apps are the tools that power the bulk emails you receive from businesses every day. They’re a great way to share news, announce new promotions, show off new product features, promote your new blog posts, and curate content for your subscribers.

We focused our testing on apps primarily used to send email newsletters. There’s a lot of email marketing software that offers a full suite of marketing automation features in addition to email newsletter functionality. For example, Mailchimp is a popular email newsletter tool, but it also functions as a CRM, social media management tool, and ad manager. These kinds of email marketing services can be intimidating to the average user who just wants a quick way to build an email newsletter and send it to a list.

While some of the apps in this list offer additional features like transactional emails, drip marketing campaigns, and A/B testing, each app’s primary focus is on email newsletters.

All of the apps we’ve selected include the following features:

• Embeddable sign-up forms that make it easy for your website visitors to subscribe to your newsletter
• A way to organize your contacts into lists
• Professional-looking newsletter templates or content blocks
• Performance reports

And when we could find third-party deliverability studies, we considered a tool’s email deliverability rates as well. (Unfortunately, we couldn’t find these for every tool we tested.)

Finally, we tested each app for usability. Creating and sending an email newsletter should be a simple process, so we excluded any tools that were so complex to use that we spent more time searching Google for solutions for how to use the tool than actually testing and using the tool.

The 10 Best Email Newsletter Services

• MailerLite for deliverability and scalability
• Constant Contact for automatically creating a newsletter template
• Mailjet for collaborating on newsletters
• Campaign Monitor for agencies who handle email marketing for multiple clients
• Mad Mimi for simplicity
• EmailOctopus for cheaper high-volume email sending
• Revue for editorial and curated content newsletters
• BombBomb for sending emails that include videos
• Vision6 for detailed subscriber segmenting
• VerticalResponse for nonprofit organizations

Best email newsletter software for deliverability and scalability

MailerLite is an email marketing tool that can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. Creating an email newsletter in the editor is simple: Choose from dozens of pre-designed content blocks for things like buttons, navigation menus, logos, images, videos, and text. When you’re finished, choose a list, hit send, and you’re done.

And while MailerLite makes it easy to build and send email newsletters, it also offers more advanced features like A/B split testing; built-in photo editing; email automation; contact list segmentation by demographics, interests, and/or behaviors; and click-map reports. You can even schedule your emails to be delivered at a specific time to subscribers in every timezone.

If you run an eCommerce site, you can import your product catalog to add products to your emails easily, and if you’re using your newsletter to promote your blog content, you can use its RSS-to-email feature to build and send emails automatically. Plus, you can create both embeddable subscribe forms and pop-up forms that display after a certain amount of time, after a certain scroll depth, or on exit intent.

These more advanced features are available in MailerLite, but they don’t get in the way if you don’t need them.

MailerLite also has a higher deliverability rate than many other email marketing apps. In a recent study by EmailToolTester, MailerLite had the second highest deliverability of all of the tools tested.

MailerLite Price: The Free Plan includes up to 1,000 subscribers, 12,000 emails per month, and limited features; from $10/month for up to 1,000 subscribers, unlimited emails, and all features.

Connect MailerLite to 1,500+ other apps with Zapier’s MailerLite integrations.

Best email newsletter software for automatically creating a newsletter template

If you’re not a designer, creating a template for your newsletter can be a time-consuming process. Constant Contact makes it easier by auto-generating a template for you. You plug in your website’s address, it scans your site for colors and images, and then it plugs those things into various templates. Choose the template you like and use it for all of your newsletters. All in all, it took us about two minutes to set up.

Use the tool’s drag-and-drop editor to add content blocks to your email. In addition to the typical content blocks for things like headings, text, buttons, and images, Constant Contact’s Email Plus plan lets you import products from Shopify, include a coupon, and add blocks that let people RSVP for an event, make a donation, or answer a poll.

In-app tutorials and video explainers pop up whenever you visit a new feature section in the tool, making it easy to learn the ropes. Plus, Constant Contact has above-average deliverability rates in EmailToolTester’s study, so you can feel confident that your subscribers will receive the newsletters you send them.

Constant Contact Price: From $20/month for the Email plan for unlimited emails to 500 subscribers; from $45/month for the Email Plus plan that includes content blocks for RSVP, Shopify, polls, and more.

Connect Constant Contact to 1,500+ other apps with Zapier’s Constant Contact integrations.

Best email newsletter software for collaborating on newsletters

If you need to collaborate with other people to create your email newsletters, Mailjet’s Premium plan is a great option. Invite your team members, set roles or assign specific permissions, and then collaborate in real time (similar to collaborating in Google Docs) to build your newsletters. Leave comments, respond to comments, and create approval workflows so you can work together without overriding each other’s changes.

Then, use Mailjet’s email designer to customize your newsletter and build custom templates. Segment your lists and run A/B tests. And, if needed, you can also use Mailjet to create and send transactional emails for things like purchases and free plan sign-ups, and you can even purchase credits and send SMS messages using the tool.

It’s a handy way to handle all of your company’s emails from one service, letting your developers send messages from your app the way that’s easiest for them, while also letting designers and writers update emails without having to dive into any code.

Mailjet Price: From $20.95/month for the Premium plan that includes 30,000 emails per month and team collaboration features.

Connect Mailjet to 1,500+ other apps with Zapier’s Mailjet integrations.

Best email newsletter software for agencies who handle email marketing for multiple clients

If you manage email marketing for multiple clients, Campaign Monitor makes that process simple. You can add as many clients as you want; create custom templates, emails, and automations for each client; allow clients to access their campaigns through a white-label version of the tool; and lock specific sections of emails and templates so they can’t be edited.

Then, either have clients pay for their usage themselves by reselling the product to them, or you can pay for all of your clients yourself as part of a single package. You can even pay individually for a specific campaign if you have a client who only wants to send emails occasionally to a large list of contacts.

Campaign Monitor’s email editor includes fewer options than many other email design tools, but that makes it a far faster way to customize your messages. Start with pre-made templates and drag in new sections you want, or hand-code your own template using Campaign Monitor’s simple email code snippets. On the Unlimited plan, you can even preview what your email will look like in 20 different inboxes, helping you ensure that your emails look great for everyone.

Campaign Monitor Price: From $9/month for the Basic plan to send up to 2,500 emails per month to 500 contacts; from $29/month for the Unlimited plan that includes inbox previews for 20 inboxes.

Connect Campaign Monitor to 1,500+ other apps with Zapier’s Campaign Monitor integrations.

Best email newsletter software for simplicity

When you log in to Mad Mimi, you’ll see two tabs: Promotions and Audience. Promotions are your emails. That’s the only unintuitive thing you’ll run across in the tool—everything else is simple and straightforward. Create an email, add contacts to your list, and send a newsletter to your subscribers.

But that doesn’t mean Mad Mimi doesn’t offer some more advanced features. Rather, instead of being present by default, you can toggle them on as needed in a separate Add Things section of the tool. For example, turn on the Etsy integration to pull products from your Etsy account directly into your email newsletter. Or add additional users, collect IP addresses, or create drip campaigns—but only if you need to. If you don’t, those features will stay out of your way.

Mad Mimi’s simplicity delivers a lot of value if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the number of features in the other email newsletter tools. The downside is that it doesn’t offer a free trial, so you’ll have to pay a minimum of $10 to create an account to play around with the tool and see if it’s a good fit for you.

Mad Mimi Price: From $10/month for the Basic plan to send unlimited emails to up to 500 subscribers.

Connect Mad Mimi to 1,500+ other apps with Zapier’s Mad Mimi integrations.

Best email newsletter software for cheaper high-volume email sending

You typically don’t have to think about how your email newsletters are sent; you click Send and the magic happens. But with EmailOctopus, it’s worth taking a bit of time to set up both an email newsletter app and a transactional email service for a far cheaper way to send your newsletters, particularly if you have a lot of subscribers.

With EmailOctopus, you’ll connect/create an Amazon SES account first to send your emails through Amazon’s transactional service. Then, design your email newsletters in EmailOctopus’s rich editor, and add contacts to your lists. EmailOctopus sends the email, tracks stats, and helps you grow your list just like any other email tool. Only this time, it’s using another service to send the emails and passing the savings on to you.

For example, say you have 30,000 subscribers and send an average of one email per week. On EmailOctopus, you’ll pay for both a monthly subscription to EmailOctopus and a per-email fee to Amazon SES: The total monthly cost for both would be around $44.80. The cost for the same thing on Campaign Monitor, on the other hand, would be at least $299/month; for MailerLite, at least $140/month.

EmailOctopus Price: Free for 62,000 emails through Amazon SES and up to 2,500 subscribers in EmailOctopus; from $19/month for the Tuna plan (plus the cost of sending messages through Amazon SES) for 10,000 subscribers and custom branding.

Connect EmailOctopus to 1,500+ other apps with Zapier’s EmailOctopus integrations.

Two other lower-cost alternatives include MailUp, which lets you send your emails at a slower rate for lower costs, and Sendy, which lets you purchase a Sendy license for a one-time fee of $59 and then send your emails through Amazon SES for around $0.0001 per email. MailUp doesn’t require a separate transactional email service but costs more than EmailOctopus. Sendy is less expensive than EmailOctopus, but you have to self-host the newsletter software.

Revue (Web, iOS, Chrome, Safari)

Best email newsletter software for editorial and curated content newsletters

Revue is to email newsletters as Medium is to most content management systems. Its simple newsletter builder is content-focused and displays to you in editing form exactly as your subscribers will see it in their inboxes. Unlike other tools, Revue doesn’t offer highly designed templates and content blocks. Instead, it’s all about the text.

That makes it a great option for editorial and curated content newsletters since content is what you’re really looking to share. You don’t have to spend a ton of time finding and creating images to make your newsletter look good in a template that’s designed more for showing off products, food, or travel destinations. Instead, you just write and add pictures if needed—and your newsletter still looks great.

You can compose an email newsletter in the same way you’d write a blog post on your site, with section headers, links, and images. You can even embed a Tweet if you’d like. You can write each newsletter from scratch, or you can connect Twitter, Facebook, an RSS feed, Dribble, Product Hunt, Instagram, and more to import content from another site to Revue.

Revue also simplifies the process of curating content from around the web and adding it to your newsletter. Connect your Pocket account or install its Chrome or Safari extensions to add content to your newsletter in just a few clicks. You can also connect Revue to Stripe to add a paid version of your newsletter or upgrade to the Publisher plan to include and manage ads.

Revue Price: The Free plan lets you send unlimited newsletters to up to 50 subscribers; from $5/month for the Pro plan to send unlimited emails to up to 200 subscribers, customize the design of your newsletter, and use a custom domain and email address.

Connect Revue to 1,500+ other apps with Zapier’s Revue integrations.

BombBomb (Web, iOS, Android)

Best email newsletter software for sending emails that include videos

The vast majority of emails are essentially digital letters. They may have professionally designed templates, but they’re focused on text and images. BombBomb breaks the mold with video-powered emails. You can shoot videos in BombBomb’s app, upload pre-created videos, or pull in YouTube or Animoto videos, then send them out as email newsletters with text and any other details you want.

To help you send professional-looking video email newsletters, BombBomb offers more than 100 pre-designed templates—all of which prominently feature videos. Plus, it provides in-app video tutorials that walk you through how to use just about every feature in the tool.

For recipients, videos appear in your newsletter as a GIF that BombBomb generates for you, including a play icon and video duration overlay. You can include video GIFs with these overlays in other tools, but BombBomb stands out because it automates this process for you. When recipients click the GIF, it takes them to the online version of your email where they can watch the video.

BombBomb Price: From $468/year for the Individual plan that includes unlimited emails to up to 2,500 contacts.

Connect BombBomb to 1,500+ other apps with Zapier’s BombBomb integrations.

Best email newsletter software for detailed subscriber segmenting

One of the easiest ways to manipulate data is by throwing it into a spreadsheet. Almost anyone can then easily sort the data and quickly find similar segments. Vision6 lets you do this with your contacts, with a spreadsheet-like interface for viewing and filtering. Instead of having to set filters and hope they pick the right people, you can see every field in your contact details, sort by the item you want, then select contacts and turn them into a new segment in seconds.

Then, you can use Vision6 to reach those contacts wherever they are. Right along with your email updates, you can create and send bulk SMS messages with Vision6’s Twilio integration. Create your text message, preview it, and choose an opt-out keyword, then send SMS messages to all of your opted-in subscribers to reach people wherever they are.

For your newsletter, Vision6 offers dozens of templates that are simple to edit, or you can build your own with its drag-and-drop content blocks for things like images, text, buttons, headers, and footers. You can even create automatic social updates that post to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to promote your newsletter to your followers once it’s sent and live.

Vision6 Price: From $9/month for the Starter plan to send 2,500 emails per month to 500 subscribers.

Connect Vision6 to 1,500+ other apps with Zapier’s Vision6 integrations.

Best email newsletter software for nonprofit organizations

VerticalResponse has a clean, simple interface that makes it easy to create beautiful emails and send them to your contacts. It’s a great email newsletter app for any business, but it’s particularly noteworthy for nonprofits because they can send up to 10,000 emails per month through VerticalResponse without spending a dime on an email marketing tool.

VerticalResponse offers 18 pre-built templates for newsletters as well as a drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy to create the exact design you want. Grow your list with embeddable and pop-up subscription forms, and segment your subscribers into different groups. You can even create unlimited landing pages for specific promos or offers on any VerticalResponse plan.

Another interesting feature of VerticalResponse is that you can resend your campaigns to people who didn’t open them the first time around. Just adjust the subject line and hit send to get your email viewed by more of your audience without pestering people who already opened it the first time around.

VerticalResponse Price: Free for up to 10,000 emails per month for nonprofit organizations; from $11/month for the Basic plan to send unlimited emails to up to 500 contacts.

Connect VerticalResponse to 1,500+ other apps with Zapier’s VerticalResponse integrations.

Automate Your Email Marketing Activities

Now that you’ve picked an app to send your email newsletter, it’s time to make it a part of your workflow. There’s no reason to copy/paste your contacts into your email lists or export your email lists to your CRM later. Instead, app automation tool Zapier can connect all of your apps, making sure everyone gets added to your email lists and more.

All of the apps in this list integrate with Zapier. Here are some of the best ways to pair your new email newsletter software with Zapier to supercharge your email marketing.

Gather Subscribers from Everywhere

New contacts can come from anywhere: a form, a Facebook ad, a spreadsheet, emails. These integrations are the best way to get all of your contacts onto your list regardless of where those contacts first interacted with you.

Add Customers to Your Email Lists

Someone just bought your product. Add them to your email newsletter with these Zaps, and you can teach them how to use your product and let them know about new features automatically.

Send Subscribers to Your CRM

If you want to inform your sales team about new newsletter subscribers so they can determine if those subscribers qualify as leads, use these Zaps to send new subscribers to your CRM automatically.

Need more automations? Check out Zapier’s email newsletter integrations to find the most popular Zaps for your app—or build your own Zaps to streamline any part of your email marketing workflow.

How to Choose the Right Email Marketing Software

If you send similar emails to groups of people regularly, you need an email newsletter app. You might not need all the features of an advanced email marketing app, with automated sending schedules and landing page builders and personalization tools. Not yet, anyhow. But as your lists and marketing ambitions grow, you might.

That’s the great thing about the wide variety of email newsletter apps available. Whether you want to send a curated set of articles weekly to build a following around a topic or need to send thousands of personalized messages for your multinational corporation daily, there are email apps to fit your needs.

You can start simple—even with a free email marketing app—then grow into the advanced email marketing features the top newsletter apps offer.

Start with the apps that feel most like they fit your needs today. Don’t worry: When you need more features, you can always switch to another app—or keep your original, simple newsletter tool alongside a more advanced marketing automation app if you need.

In the next chapter, we’ll look at tips to help you grow your email lists, along with ways to automate your email lists and ensure your messages don’t get marked as spam.

Go to Chapter 3!

Most recently published in May 2019

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