Selling Products Online? Building a Mailing List? Here Are the Best Email Marketing Service Providers for You to Use

We’ve discussed at length the benefits and efficacy of email marketing for ecommerce businesses. From managing customer relationships, to the power of personalization—done right, email knocks it out of the park for ecommerce businesses.  

Now that you are keyed in on email’s capabilities, it’s time to find the best email marketing service (also known as an Email Service Provider or ESP) for your business.

This post casts a wide net over the next step of your email marketing journey; we’ve done the heavy lifting for you and found the absolute best email platforms to market your ecommerce business, continue building your subscriber list, send conversion-boosting emails, and nurture your customer base through personalized interactions. 

Let’s get into it! 

Best Email Marketing Services for New Sellers 

You’re new(er) to the game, so welcome! Your business is going to do great things—particularly with an email marketing platform in your back pocket. These services have key features that you’ll need in order to push through the challenges of building a business and establishing a concrete brand.

You need help building a subscriber list. You need help with designing templates, with your brand’s voice and language. You need a platform that can guide you towards success without just taking your money. Read on, and be enlightened! 

Drip

Self proclaimed “ ecommerce revenue engine,” Drip’s service is ideal for new merchants because it offers a lot of the segmentation and automation tools that large stores use, but they’re tailored for smaller and newer shops.

Feature Highlights 

• Drip is a CRM platform that offers email marketing 
• Email builder with templates, forms, and product content blocks 
• Built-in SMS integration for additional touchpoints in campaigns
• Split testing email components like headers, subject lines, content
• Drip campaigns tailored to customers’ behavior and actions 

Drip also has a killer blog with tons of ecommerce sales and marketing tactics. Free content that can help build your business — can’t beat that!

Pricing

There is a free version, which includes up to 100 contacts. They also have a 14-day trial so you can test out the platform before committing. Once you’re ready to sign up, pricing begins at $19 a month per feature.

From a competitor perspective, this price falls in the middle of the board. Not too pricey, but still an additional cost, especially when you’re starting out. 

Ecommerce Feature Highlight 

Drip offers a revenue attribution feature, providing data that paints a clear picture of which campaigns are profitable for your business. That valuable information will allow your business to level up and focus on where the money is. 

Constant Contact 

Dubbed by many as the “beginner friendly email builder,” Constant Contact has made its name by offering a user friendly experience, regardless of industry or experience level. 

From an ecommerce perspective, Constant Contact allows you to run your business fully supported, thanks to hundreds of platform integrations like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. 

Feature Highlights

• Drag and drop email builder, no coding required
• Pre-built, mobile optimized templates 
• Integration with social media campaigns 
• Automated email resend to non-openers
• Add products to emails through ecommerce platform integrations

They do have several product upgrades, including an Ecommerce Pro service that integrates with top ecommerce platforms to get all your data in one place. Their AI tool creates different audience segments (“low engaged customers” and “high value customers”) so you can target the right customers in every email. 

This upgrade is $195 a month with no trial, so it may be a solid service for your business to use once your email marketing strategy is established and the ROI is attainable. It’s important to know what upgrade options each platform offers for the future, so be sure to shop those as well when you’re doing your research!  

Pricing

Constant Contact has a free version as well as a 60-day free trial. Pricing for their Email plan begins at $20 per month, with a max of 500 contacts. 

Ecommerce Feature Highlight 

Automation is a key benefit of Constant Contact. You can trigger welcome messages for new subscribers and set up drip campaigns based on their actions. For new businesses, building your email list should be in your top five priorities, and Constant Contact empowers that task. 

MailerLite

Simple email software for a reasonable price is the name of MailerLite’s game. Their platform focuses on subscriber growth and customer relationship management, while sending powerful, converting emails in each campaign you launch.

Feature Highlights

• Drag and drop email blocks 
• Pre-built blocks support video, social media, dynamic content 
• Dynamically target various audiences within the same email
• Personalization features like name, location, behavior  
• Built-in photo editing

Pricing 

Easily the best pricing in this listicle, MailerLite plans begin at $10 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers. They do offer a 14-day free trial. 

Ecommerce Feature Highlight

MailerLite makes managing your subscribers streamlined, efficient, and scalable. Users can upload their current subscriber lists, and also have access to internal sign-up forms to collect new subscribers. They take it one step further with subscriber filters, where you can add custom fields, edit individual profiles, and create as many segments as you need.   

Best Email Marketing Services for Tech Savvy Sellers

You built a business with technical prowess and straight determination, and you need an email platform to match. With your skill level and expertise, your needs are different from the average ecommerce business. From advanced tools like A/B testing, third party integrations and custom workflows, the sky’s the limit with what you can accomplish.

GetResponse

Like their name suggests, GetResponse helps businesses interact with more people in a more efficient way. Their powerhouse email builder offers users impressive options to send marketing messages to contacts in every phase of the buying experience.

Feature Highlights 

• Event triggered actions to engage your audience and sell 
• Drag and drop email creator, customizable templates 
• Automated email sequences to follow up with contacts and leads
• Analytics and ROI tracking 
• Drip campaigns and dynamic content 
• Gallery of over 5,000 images for email use

Pricing

GetResponse offers a free 30 day trial, and their lowest tier pricing starts at $15 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers and an unlimited amount of emails sent. 

Ecommerce Feature Highlight 

GetResponse has a ‘Perfect timing’ email tool that they describe as “intelligent send time optimization at the subscriber level.”  This tool, implementing email performance statistics they’ve been gathering for years, uses data to determine the perfect time to send marketing emails to users, based on their past behavior. 

For an ecommerce business, having the option to win the #1 spot in a contact’s inbox is a massive opportunity for engagement and sales. 

OmniSend 

Tailor-made for ecommerce businesses, OmniSend packs a big punch on the marketing front. 

Their platform is built as an advanced marketing automation tool for sales-driven ecommerce marketers that have outgrown the basic email marketing platform.

Feature Highlights 

• Full integration with ecommerce platforms 
• Pre-built workflows for cart abandonment, new sign ups, transactional emails 
• Drag and drop email builder and pre-built templates
• Customizable forms and pop-ups to build subscriber lists and opt-ins

Pricing 

They have ample pricing options, all based on tiers. The Standard tier is for 0-500 subscribers, with 15,000 emails a month, for $16 a month. They do offer a free version as well, with features limited to sign up forms, performance reports, and segmentation. 

The Pro tier is $99 a month, and Enterprise has custom pricing based on your usage, needs, and goals. 

Ecommerce Feature Highlight

Shoppable emails done the right way. OmniSend’s Content Editor simplifies the process of creating campaigns with dynamic content blocks, designed specifically for ecommerce. 

Using Content Editor, sellers can import products right from their storefront, include unique coupon codes, and cross-sell products with dynamic suggestions. 

Hubspot

Known across the board as the king of marketing, Hubspot is a popular choice for businesses of all sizes and many industries. For ecommerce, it leads the pack with powerful analytics and the option to personalize everything throughout the shopping experience.

Feature Highlights 

• Drag and drop email builder with pre-designed templates
• A/B testing tool to optimize messaging and design
• Baked in analytics to quickly improve email performance 
• CRM integration included
• Targeted personalization to boost open rates and click through rate (CTR)

Pricing

Because of its massive offering, Hubspot is one of the more expensive services listed. If your company has a higher budget and is in need of various marketing services, like website management, a CRM, customer service software (and more), Hubspot would be an excellent all-in-service option. 

They do have a free option, which includes up to 2,000 email sends per month, use of the email marketing platform, and some analytics. Their next solution starts at $50 per month. 

Ecommerce Feature highlight 

Automated workflows that do the heavy lifting for you. You select the actions and conditions that define an enrollment trigger, and once a contact meets the trigger, an email is automatically sent out to them. 

There’s no manual work done on your side, and the end result is the same. Triggers can include submitting a form on your website, viewing a product page, or interacting with your social media accounts. 

Not only a time saving feature, but an intelligent one. 

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign goes above and beyond a traditional email tool; users get email marketing, marketing automation, CRM, and support tools needed to create and nurture valuable customer experiences for their business. 

Feature Highlights

• Built in Email templates and customization 
• Social media integrations for multi-channel interactions
• Subscriber list management and sign up forms 
• A/B testing and email auto-responders
• Deploy multiple-channel marketing campaigns to any audience 

Pricing

The Lite pricing begins at $9 a month, with email marketing and basic marketing automation tools. Next up is Plus, which is $49 a month and includes the CRM, landing pages, and integrations with Shopify, Facebook, and more. 

Pricing continues with Professional for $129 a month, and Enterprise for $229 a month.

Ecommerce Feature Highlights

With 500+ pre-built automations that provide powerful segmentation and personalization for merchants, ActiveCampaign may be the best of the best when it comes to offering a one stop shop for ecommerce sellers.

The intuitive platform houses powerful data points all throughout the customer lifecycle, allowing businesses to access behaviors and preferences that dictate the best content, send time, and delivery channel for each customer. 

Best Email Marketing Services for a Growing Business

So you’re past the launch phase, your feet are wet, and you’re bringing in a substantial profit. You want to use email for a myriad of things, #1 being continued growth and customer relationship management. This section is for you! 

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a competitive platform in the space because they touch on the features that ecommerce merchants want and need: personalization, list segmentation, email workflows and all the templates your business could ever need.

Feature Highlights

• Drag and drop template builders for emails and forms
• Drill down on targeting audiences and personas with their segmentation tool
• integration options for campaigns like Shopify and Facebook
• Automation tools for targeting campaigns based on buyer behavior, past purchases, and cart abandonment

Pricing

Pricing seems to be the biggest qualm with Klaviyo. Compared to others on the market, it’s just not an affordable option for businesses on the smaller side, or those just getting started. 

They do offer a free version, which includes 250 contacts and 500 emails sent, along with their in-house email support. 

From there, Klaviyo pricing starts at $25 a month (for 500 contacts) and goes all the way up to $1,700 per month for up to 146,000 contacts. 

Ecommerce Feature Highlight 

They understand the importance for an ecommerce shop of collecting and managing contacts. So much so that they have a pre-built Signup form that sellers can easily customize to pop up on various site pages, or simply embed it on their website. 

As you know, collecting email addresses should be a priority for your business at all times, and having a simple way to do so without having to figure out how to install something on your website is *chef’s kiss*. 

ConvertKit

The ConvertKit platform functions with the goal of strengthening deliverability to ensure you show up in your audience’s inbox purposefully. They aim to help businesses grow subscribers and in turn, build stronger relationships with their customers. 

Feature Highlights

• Sign up forms and landing page builders to promote your brand 
• Automations to send well-timed emails to your audience
• Email builder with your branded images, clickable CTAs, and responsive templates
• Audience segmentation based on customer journey
• Over 70 integrations with 

Pricing

There is a free account option with limited features, and they also offer a 14-day free trial. 

Pricing starts at $29 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers. Past that, pricing runs at $49 a month for up to 3,000 subscribers, and $79 a month for up to 5,000. 

Ecommerce Feature Highlight

Because ConvertKit focuses primarily on engaging with your audience, their tools help you find your voice and your niche, and they do the rest. 

They offer a powerful automated sales funnel, where sellers can send timed content to subscribers automatically to nurture them to make a purchase, and then pitch a product at the right time.

Campaign Monitor 

Last but certainly not the least, the ecommerce marketer’s dream. Campaign Monitor boasts a straightforward email marketing tool that promotes engagement-based segmentation and helps businesses send targeted content to their growing subscriber lists with ease.

Feature Highlights 

• Custom templates and email builders 
• Use automation to create personalized customer journeys
• Hyper-targeted segments to send relevant, tailored emails
• Link Review tool ensures all hyperlinks in emails are accurate and working
• Connects with hundreds of apps and integrations

Pricing 

They offer a free trial, but it only allows you to send a campaign to five subscribers. 

Pricing starts at $9 a month for up to 500 subscribers and 2,500 emails. From there, the Unlimited plan is $29 a month for unlimited emails, and the Premier plan is $149 a month for unlimited email, and premiere phone & email support. 

Ecommerce Feature Highlight 

One small but mighty bonus to Campaign Monitor email templates—when you sign up and input your company’s URL, they directly import all of your branding elements into a few templates for you. 

Yep, you read that right. Your logos, imagery, and color schemes will be built into templates and ready to use.

Also worth mentioning: their resource page is chock full of incredible content based around email marketing, start ups, design, and more. 

MailChimp

Probably the most well-known and popular platform on this list, MailChimp has kept its name in the game by offering a simple to use interface alongside an outstanding free option of its service

Feature Highlights

• Full marketing capabilities, including email, CRM, 
• AI functionality to assist with audience segmentation 
• Efficient email builder to create branded emails 
• Add personalized product recommendations to email
• Transactional email option to send order confirmations 

Pricing

MailChimp has an impressive free version for new businesses who want to test the platform, or for those who are still growing their list and want all the best marketing metrics and analytics to help them scale. 

The free version accommodates up to 2,000 contacts and gives users an impressive list of features, including the email builder, CRM, forms, landing pages, website builder, and more. 

For paid versions, the Essentials package starts at $9.99 a month for up to 50,000 contacts, and also offers A/B testing. 

The Standard package starts at $14.99 a month for up to 100,000 contacts. The Premium package jumps to $299.99 per month, with intelligent marketing tools like advanced segmentation, multivariate testing, and more. 

Ecommerce Feature Highlight 

What began as an email tool has now transformed to a seller’s paradise - email capabilities aside, MailChimp now caters fully to merchants by providing website and commerce plans, specifically for creating an online store. With this new offering, sellers can rely on MailChimp as their main marketing hub, not just one piece of the puzzle. 

Conclusion

The email marketing services available today run the gamut from beginner-friendly to highly technical. There is definitely an option for your business, regardless of where you fall with subscribers, revenue, and brand awareness.

To recap, the best email marketing services for ecommerce are:

• Drip
• Constant Contact 
• MailerLite
• GetResponse
• Omnisend
• Hubspot
• ActiveCampaign
• Klaviyo
• ConvertKit
• Campaign Monitor
• MailChimp

Which one will you use?