Email marketing platforms compared: which one should you use?

Quick comparison

• Mailchimp. Best known, easy editor, many integrations. Suits small businesses and newsletters. Pricing rises quickly with list size.
• Klaviyo. Built for ecommerce, deep Shopify and WooCommerce data, strong flows and SMS. Priced by active profiles, so it costs more for large lists.
• MailerLite. Simple, clean and affordable, with landing pages and automation. Good for small businesses and creators.
• Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Priced by emails sent rather than contacts, with email, SMS and WhatsApp in one tool. Good for large lists that are emailed occasionally.
• HubSpot. Email inside a full CRM. Strong for B2B and inbound marketing, expensive at higher tiers.
• Zoho Campaigns. Affordable and well integrated with Zoho CRM and Zoho One.
• ActiveCampaign. Powerful automation and CRM features for small and mid-sized teams.
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Enterprise scale and complexity, for large teams with Salesforce.
• Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark. Sending infrastructure for transactional and high-volume email, usually used by developers.

How pricing works

Platforms charge in one of three ways: by the number of contacts or profiles you store, by the number of emails you send each month, or per user seat in CRM-led tools. Most offer a free plan with limits on contacts, sends and branding. Prices change often and vary by currency, so compare current plans on each provider's own pricing page for your list size and sending frequency.

Rule of thumb: if you email a small list often, contact-based pricing is fine. If you have a large list you email rarely, send-based pricing (such as Brevo) is usually cheaper.

What to compare before choosing

1. Integrations. Your store, website forms, CRM and payment tools.
2. Automation. Welcome series, abandoned cart, post-purchase, birthday and re-engagement flows.
3. Editor and templates. Can your team build an email without code?
4. Deliverability tools. Domain authentication, dedicated sending domains and list hygiene.
5. Reporting. Revenue per email for stores, pipeline for B2B, clicks rather than opens.
6. Data location and compliance. Consent records and unsubscribe handling for the countries you sell in.

Free email marketing platforms

Mailchimp, MailerLite, Brevo, HubSpot and Zoho Campaigns all have free tiers. They suit a list of a few hundred to a couple of thousand contacts. Expect platform branding in emails and limited automation.

Should you buy an email list?

No. Bought or "free" lists contain old, uninterested and trap addresses. Sending to them leads to spam complaints, blocked domains and account suspension on every reputable platform. In many countries it also breaks consent laws. Build your list with website sign-ups, lead magnets, checkout opt-ins and events.

Getting into the inbox

Whichever platform you choose, set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your domain, send from your own domain, warm up new domains gradually, remove bounces and inactive contacts, and make unsubscribing easy. Gmail and Yahoo require this for bulk senders. Read what marketing automation is for more on deliverability.

Need help?

We set up and run any of these platforms under email marketing services, and design templates and newsletters under email template design.