13 Best Email Newsletter Software Tools For 2024 (Includes Free Options)

Best Email Newsletter Software

Looking for the best email newsletter software you can trust? We’ve got you covered.

Email newsletters offer a great way to build an audience, create brand awareness, and drive revenue.

There are tons of tools out there that can help you to design, schedule, and automate these kinds of emails—so many, in fact, that it can be tough to know which one is right for you.

To help you narrow down your options, we’ve compiled this in-depth comparison of the best email newsletter tools on the market.

We’ll be letting you know what kind of users each software tool is best-suited to, highlighting all their key features, outlining their pros and cons, and more!

The top email newsletter software tools – summary

TL;DR: 

  • MailerLite – Best overall. Powerful free email newsletter software + affordable paid plans.
  • Kit – Best for bloggers and content creators.
  • Moosend – Easiest to use but doesn’t skimp on features.
  • ActiveCampaign – All-in-one automation platform with email newsletter builder.

#1 – MailerLite

MailerLite is our overall favorite email newsletter software provider. It is the most affordable platform we’ve seen. It gives you much more bang for your buck compared to its competitors, with a range of low-cost plans for businesses with a limited number of subscribers or less and a very generous free option.

MailerLite Homepage

Despite its affordable price tag, MailerLite hasn’t cut any corners. It still offers a broad range of email marketing and automation tools, including a powerful workflow builder, flexible drag-and-drop newsletter editor, and various segmentation, tagging, and personalization features.

And that’s not all. On top of all the email stuff, MailerLite also comes with a landing page and signup form builder, email verifier, ecommerce features, etc. There’s even an integrated website builder that you can use to build your entire site from the ground up, complete with blogging functionality.

The drag-and-drop newsletter editor UI isn’t quite as easy to use as Moosend’s, but it’s very flexible. You can drag in all the usual content blocks to build your newsletters, as well as special blocks like interactive carousels, event RSVPs, ecommerce blocks, email surveys, and more.

And if you don’t like working in a drag-and-drop interface, you can create HTML email templates for your newsletter by using the rich text editor or HTML editor.

But our favorite thing of all about MailerLite is that it supports paid newsletters. That’s right, you can use MailerLite to sell digital newsletter subscriptions and collect recurring payments from your subscribers.

This works hand-in-hand with MailerLite’s powerful automation tools. For example, you can upsell your paid newsletter subscriptions to the regular subscribers that are most likely to purchase using automated, targeted workflows.

And because MailerLite lets you add unique newsletter blocks like surveys and quizzes, you can create newsletters that are actually worth paying for. No other email newsletter software comes.

Key features

  • Low-cost plans
  • Three newsletter editors
  • Email verifier
  • Page and form builder
  • RSS to email
  • Ecommerce features
  • Website builder
  • Blogging functionality
  • Interactive newsletter blocks
  • Paid newsletter subscriptions
  • Automation workflow builder

Pros and cons

  • Great value for money
  • Ideal for growing businesses
  • Broad feature set
  • Lots of content blocks
  • Customer support limitations on the free plan

Pricing

You can get started with the free plan, which is good for up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails. 

Paid plans start at $10/month for unlimited monthly emails. The more subscribers you have, the more you’ll pay. Annual discounts available.

Read our MailerLite review.


#2 – Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

Kit is our favorite email newsletter tool for content creators. It’s designed specifically for creators like authors, bloggers, online coaches, and podcasters.

kit homepage

The newsletter editor is a little basic, so it’s not ideal for creating flashy HTML-based emails. But if you just want something that’s easy to use and is focused on getting emails into inboxes – it’s a great option.

And that’s one thing that’s particularly great about the platform – email deliverability rates. This is key to an effective email marketing strategy.

The interface is really intuitive. You can build simple automations using rules or a visual automation builder – no need to mess around with complex workflows.

Key features

  • Landing pages
  • Sign-up forms
  • Email automation
  • Ecommerce functionality

Pros and cons

  • Ideal for content creators
  • Easy to use
  • Wide range of third-party integrations
  • Great for getting your emails out of Gmail’s promotions tab
  • Newsletter editor is quite basic
  • Email newsletter templates are difficult to customize

Pricing

You can get started with a free plan. Paid plans start from $9/month.

Read our Kit review.


#3 – Moosend 

Moosend is an all-in-one email marketing platform that comes with all the tools you need to manage your entire email campaign from start to finish.

Moosend Homepage

One of the reasons we like Moosend so much is because of how scalable it is. The price depends on how many email subscribers you have, so if you’re just starting to build your list, you’ll pay as little as $9/month and still get access to all the core features.

Those features include a powerful newsletter editor, CRM (customer relationship management) system, segmentation and personalization tools, landing page designer, automations, and analytics.

Moosend has a simple drag-and-drop editor that helps you to build stunning, rich multimedia email newsletters without any HTML knowledge. You can add in images, videos, and tons of interactive elements.

It works like this: First, you drag and drop ‘layouts’ onto the page to create the structure of your newsletter. You can use layouts to split the email up into rows and columns, which looks a lot prettier than one long block of text.

Then, you drag in items. Items are essentially content blocks (like in WordPress), and there are blocks for images, text, buttons, social media links, timers, videos, and more. There’s even a nifty ‘product’ block that comes in really useful if you’re running an ecommerce store. It adds product recommendations to your emails, alongside buttons that subscribers can click to head to your product pages.

You can also use ‘conditional blocks’ to show unique content based on the subscriber profile and launch more personalized campaigns.

And if you don’t want to build your newsletters from scratch, you can browse Moosend’s catalog of designer-made templates and customize them as needed.

Another feature we really like is Moosend’s AI-powered subject line generator, Refine. It helps you to create subject lines that drive more opens and clicks, estimates how well they’ll perform, and provides suggestions on how to improve.

There’s a lot more we could say about Moosend. We’ve not even scratched the surface yet or looked at any of the other tools like the automation builder and landing page editor. But you can try them all out for yourself with a 30-day free trial.

Key features

  • Drag and drop newsletter editor
  • A/B testing
  • Segmentation
  • Analytics & reporting
  • Automation builder
  • Email, automation, and page templates
  • User and website tracking
  • Landing pages
  • Form builder

Pros and cons

  • All-in-one email marketing tool
  • AI-powered recommendations
  • Flexible email newsletter builder
  • Scalable pricing plans
  • Limited analytics
  • Form and page templates could be better

Pricing

Plans start at $9/month for up to 500 subscribers. The more subscribers you have, the more you’ll pay.

Custom enterprise plans are available, and you can get started with a 30-day free trial.

Read our Moosend review.


#4 – ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is ideal for those who need an email newsletter software with extremely advanced automation functionality.

ActiveCampaign homepage

Like the other tools we’ve looked at so far, you can use ActiveCampaign to design beautiful newsletters in a drag-and-drop email designer.

But what makes this platform special is its advanced automation capabilities. The machine learning-powered automation builder is the most flexible we’ve seen and has some sophisticated features that other tools lack. You can use it to set up really complex workflows and create personalized experiences for your customers at every touchpoint.

Emails can be triggered based on things like purchases, site visits, engagements, etc. You can even pull data from other digital channels like social media and live chat and feed it back into your automations.

And if you don’t want to mess around building automations from scratch, you can take advantage of the platform’s rich catalog of hundreds of pre-built templates. 

There are ready-made automations for things like abandoned cart emails, 7-day welcome series, and more — plus hundreds more in the marketplace. 

ActiveCampaign also stands out when it comes to personalization. You can target all your emails to different audience segments based on any factor you can think of, and personalize them with Conditional Content. 

And that personalization doesn’t end at emails. You can also use ActiveCampaign send out personalized SMS messages and deliver personalized website content to visitors, depending on what plan you sign up for.

All of these features are built on top of ActiveCampaign’s CRM (customer relationship management) system. The CRM lets you see how your subscribers are engaging with your messages. You can use it to track goals, automate contact management, score leads, and keep your entire sales process working smoothly.

Key features

  • Drag and drop newsletter editor
  • Advanced automation builder
  • Pre-built automations
  • Transactional emails
  • Personalized content
  • Landing pages
  • CRM and sales automation

Pros and cons

  • Excellent segmentation and personalization
  • Advanced automation features
  • Superb reporting
  • Great selection of templates
  • High learning curve – may be overkill if you just need newsletter software
  • Price

Pricing

Plans start at $19/month but depend on your number of contacts. A free trial is available.

Read our ActiveCampaign review.


#5 – Omnisend

Omnisend is the best email newsletter software for ecommerce stores. Use it to design newsletters and create targeted, automated messaging campaigns.

Omnisend Homepage

Again, you get all the email features you’d expect with Omnisend: a content editor to design your emails, an expansive template library, an automation builder, etc.

But on top of all that, you also get some powerful SMS and web push notification tools, which help you to send highly-targeted messages to your customers across multiple channels.

Now, their library of email newsletter templates is not as significant as other platforms. But their drag & drop newsletter designer more than makes up for this.

I usually find that most email templates don’t have the elements that I need anyway. So I appreciated the ability to design my own using pre-made blocks.

It’s also worth noting that Omnisend’s interface is designed to be very beginner-friendly. It’s one of the easiest to use that you’ll find. But it’s important to note that this newsletter software is aimed at ecommerce stores specifically.

Key features

  • Marketing automation
  • Email marketing
  • Content editor
  • Template library
  • SMS
  • Web push notifications
  • Popups and forms
  • Segmentation
  • Reporting

Pros and cons

  • Omnichannel campaigns (email, SMS, web push)
  • Rich ecommerce features
  • Deep integration with popular ecommerce platforms (e.g. WooCommerce, Shopify, etc)
  • Excellent UI
  • Pre-built automation sequences make it easy to get started
  • Only for ecommerce stores
  • Limited number of email newsletter templates

Pricing

The free plan lets you reach 250 contacts and send 500 emails/month. Paid plans start at $16/month.

Read our Omnisend review.


#6 – AWeber 

AWeber is one of the longest-standing email newsletter software platforms around. It’s known for its best-in-class newsletter templates and design tools. It’s the only platform we’ve seen that has direct integration with Canva (a popular online graphic design tool).

AWeber Homepage

Like the other platforms we’ve looked at so far, AWeber comes with all the core features email marketers need, such as:

  • A sign-up form and landing page tool to help you collect leads and grow your list
  • A drag-and-drop email builder to help you design professional-looking newsletters
  • Automation tools to help you run your email campaigns on autopilot
  • List management tools to help you segment your subscribers
  • Dynamic content to help you personalize campaigns for different segments
  • Analytics so you can see what’s working and what’s not

But there are a couple of things that make AWeber stand out. First off, their newsletter templates are next-level. There are over 600 customizable, responsive templates to choose from, including industry-specific templates for pretty much every niche, promotional templates, holiday templates, etc.

You can customize all templates by choosing a color scheme, adjusting the layout and design, and adding your own logo, photos, and content

Secondly, there’s the Canva integration. AWeber is the only platform we’ve tried that lets you create images on Canva and use them in your emails without ever leaving that platform.

There are also thousands of free high-quality stock images for you to use in your newsletters if you don’t want to create your own.

Another standout feature is AWebers Auto Newsletters. You can use it to send out automated emails to your subscribers to let them know whenever you publish a new blog post, product, video, podcast, or anything else. 

And there are tons of other pre-built autoresponders for things like welcome sequences, abandoned cart emails, order confirmations, etc. that you can roll out in a few clicks.

We’re also big fans of AWeber’s analytics tools. Reports are easy to read and help you to get a bird’s eye view of all the metrics that matter. There’s also A/B split testing to help you compare different versions of your newsletters and see which performs best.

Key features

  • Sign-up forms
  • Auto newsletters
  • Canva integration
  • Lots of email templates
  • A/B testing
  • Stock image library
  • Analytics
  • List management
  • Landing pages

Pros and cons

  • World-class deliverability
  • Intuitive email editor
  • Superb integrations
  • Powerful analytics and reporting
  • Smart Designer feature designs newsletter templates for you
  • Lacks some advanced features
  • UI could be better

Pricing

AWeber offers a free plan for up to 500 subscribers. Paid plans start from $14.99/month, annual discounts available.

Read our AWeber review.


#7 – Brevo

Brevo is the best email newsletter software for SMBs. It includes all the usual tools email marketing teams need plus some cutting-edge features like automatic send time optimization.

Brevo Homepage

With Brevo you get email marketing platform with a rich email designer, live chat tool, CRM, marketing automation, segmentation, landing pages, and a unified inbox to keep your team organized.

One of our favorite things about the platform is the intelligent sending features. For example, you can use the machine learning-powered send time optimization to make sure your emails are sent out at the perfect time to maximize opens and clicks.

Brevo prices depend on monthly email volume, rather than contact list size. This makes it potentially very expensive if you send lots of emails to your subscribers, but great value if you have a large list and low monthly email volume.

Key features

  • Email marketing tool
  • SMS
  • Live chat
  • Inbox management
  • CRM
  • Marketing automation
  • Forms
  • Landing pages
  • Transactional email
  • Intelligent sending
  • A/B testing

Pros and cons

  • Advanced email marketing features
  • Sophisticated automation builder
  • Unlimited contacts on all plans
  • Supports SMS + transactional emails
  • Expensive for high-volume email marketing

Pricing

There’s a free plan for up to 300 emails per day. Paid plan prices start at $9/month but depend on how many emails you need to send monthly. Annual discounts available.

Read our Brevo review.


#8 – GetResponse

GetResponse offers email newsletter software that also includes a bunch of other marketing features. It has a very broad feature set and can be used to build your entire website and marketing funnels from the ground up.

GetResponse Homepage

The drag-and-drop newsletter builder on GetResponse is great. It’s easy to use and comes with a free image library, from which you can grab graphics and other visuals to use in your newsletters.

But it’s GetResponse’s funnel builder that’s the star of the show. You can use the platform to quickly set up funnels complete with lead magnets, landing pages, and follow-up email sequences that generate leads and nurture them to conversions.

GetResponse started off as simple email marketing software but has since grown into a much more useful platform with

Key features

  • List building tools
  • Funnels
  • Personalization and segmentation
  • Website builder
  • Email, SMS, and web push
  • Webinars
  • Landing pages
  • Forms
  • Free image library
  • Drag-and-drop newsletter creator

Pros and cons

  • Powerful funnel tools
  • Great automation capabilities
  • Broad feature set
  • Might be overkill if you just want email newsletter software

Pricing

There’s a free plan for up to 500 contacts. Paid plans start at $13.30/month.

Read our GetResponse review.


#9 – Drip

Drip is the best email newsletter software for those that need advanced automations without the high learning curve of some other platforms.

It’s marketed as an ‘ecommerce revenue engine’ and comes with a bunch of features specifically designed for online stores. That said, it’s a good fit for other businesses as well.

Drip Homepage

You can use Drip’s list management features to segment your subscribers based on the actions they take on your store, including their purchase history and the products they’ve viewed. Then, you can target these segments separately to drive more sales.

For example, you can send personalized product recommendation emails to contacts based on their purchase history. Or exclusive discounts to your most loyal customers who’ve made multiple purchases.

The email builder itself is great and there are tons of ecommerce-specific templates to choose from. The same goes for automations: there are ready-made workflows for ecommerce stores like post-purchase emails, win-back emails, birthday discounts, abandoned carts, etc.

Drip makes the most sense for ecommerce stores that need a powerful email marketing service that offers the capability to send email newsletters. That said, if you only need to send newsletters, Drip probably has more advanced features that you would actually need.

Key features

  • Workflow builder
  • Ecommerce automations
  • Ecommerce templates
  • Segmentation
  • Visual email designer
  • Forms and popups
  • Analytics

Pros and cons

  • Mainly focused on ecommerce businesses
  • Powerful visual automation builder
  • Less of a learning curve than other platforms
  • Wide range of third-party integrations
  • Starting price more expensive than other tools
  • Email editor could be improved
  • Pricing may not make sense if you only send newsletters

Pricing

Plans start from $39/month for 2,500 contacts. A 14-day free trial is available.


#10 – Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a digital marketing platform that gives you a bunch of tools rolled into one. That includes email marketing software and more.

Constant Contact Homepage

We really like Constant Contact’s list-building features. You can grow your email newsletter subscribers quickly with landing pages, text-to-join, Google Ads, etc.

Then, engage with those subscribers by sending out professionally-designed emails. There are hundreds of newsletter templates to choose from, as well as pre-built automated email sequences for many different scenarios.

And because Constant Contact has an impressive deliverability rate of 97%, you can bet most of those emails will end up in your subscriber’s inbox.

Aside from email, we also like Constant Contact’s SMM and event management features.

If you’re running an event, Constant Contact comes with a ton of tools specifically designed to help you promote and manage it. You can use it to build a customizable registration form, sell event tickets, send out customizable email invitations and social posts, and track registrants in real-time.

Whilst Constant Contact offers a significant number of features, reports of poor customer service does give me pause for thought.

Key features

  • Email marketing
  • Email newsletter templates
  • Sign-up forms
  • Integration with popular marketing tools and platforms
  • List building features
  • SMS
  • Marketing automation
  • A/B testing
  • Landing pages
  • Event marketing
  • SMS marketing
  • Social media marketing
  • Mobile app

Pros and cons

  • All-in-one digital marketing platform
  • Includes email, SMS, and social features
  • Good integrations
  • Poor customer service
  • No free plan (only free trial)
  • Difficult to cancel

Pricing

Plans start at $12/month. Free trial available.


#11 – Keap

Keap is our top recommendation for marketing and sales teams. It’s more expensive than most of the other newsletter software tools on this list. But for large teams, it’s worth every penny.

Keap Homepage

Keap comes with all the tools you need to acquire leads and convert them to paying customers. You get a bunch of really nice curated email templates, list segmentation tools, automations, etc.

There’s also a powerful CRM where you can manage all your customer interactions, a built-in appointment setting feature, SMS marketing features, and much more.

I’d say that Keap would be overkill for just sending email newsletters, so it’s a better fit for entrepreneurs that would use all of their other sales and email marketing features.

Key features

  • CRM
  • Sales and marketing automation
  • Blueprints (templates)
  • Appointment setting
  • Segmentation
  • Keap Business Line

Pros and cons

  • Powerful CRM
  • Ideal for teams
  • Good premade automations
  • Expensive
  • Overkill for just email newsletters

Pricing

Plans start at $249/month if billed annually. Try it out with a free 14-day trial.


#12 – Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a super easy-to-use email newsletter software platform with a generous free plan and some nifty time-saving features.

Mailchimp Homepage

Mailchimp’s creative tools are well designed. There are hundreds of pre-designed email templates to choose from, plus a content studio where you can store and edit all your images, a creative assistant that uses the power of AI to create on-brand designs, a subject line helper to help you refine your subject lines, and more.

It has a good library of pre-built templates for all the email automations (abandoned cart reminders, re-engagement emails, etc). Other cool features include a Customer Journey Builder and predictive list segmentation.

I was a customer with Mailchimp for many years. For the most part it was good, but their free plan became popular with spammers and delivery rates suffered.

Key features

  • Customer Journey Builder
  • Prebuilt newsletter templates
  • Content optimizer
  • Creative assistant
  • Dynamic content personalization
  • Subject line helper
  • Analytics

Pros and cons

  • Very easy to use
  • Rich time-saving features
  • Excellent design tools
  • Poor customer service
  • No vetting process to stop spammers using the platform

Pricing

A free plan is available. Paid plans start from $13/month.


#13 – HubSpot

HubSpot is our top-recommended tool for enterprises. It’s the most comprehensive CRM around, with a suite of enterprise-level features that large businesses will appreciate.

HubSpot Homepage

HubSpot might be overkill if you just want to create simple newsletters. But if you’re looking for an all-in-one marketing automation solution, it’s a great choice.

You can use it to manage all your customer interactions and marketing campaigns, it’s a great choice.

There are various ‘hubs’ to choose from depending on what software you need. For email marketing and newsletters, choose their marketing hub. Higher-tier plans are expensive but their entry-level plan is affordable even for small businesses.

Key features

  • CRM
  • Email automation
  • Different software ‘hubs’
  • Landing pages
  • Live chat

Pros and cons

  • Enterprise-level features
  • Very advanced and sophisticated
  • Flexible software packages
  • Excellent support
  • Higher-tier plans get expensive
  • High learning curve

Pricing

HubSpot offers several free tools. Email marketing and automation are included in their Marketing Hub Starter plan, which costs $15/seat per month.


Final thoughts

There you have it—the top email newsletter tools to help with your email marketing campaigns.

The next step is to figure out what features you need so you can decide which platform is right for your business.

For example, do you just need a basic tool for sending newsletters? Or do you need things like advanced reporting? Or are you looking for free newsletter software?

Remember – most newsletter software is priced based on the number of subscribers you have. Some, like Brevo, are priced based on the number of emails you send instead. And in general, none of them will offer unlimited subscribers. Although, most will support huge numbers of subscribers should you have the need.


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