5 best email marketing platforms (2024 update) | ActiveCampaign vs. ConvertKit vs. Mailerlite

no matter your area of expertise email marketing is one of the most powerful channels you can use to build an audience sell digital products and generate consistent Revenue online but if you're trying to choose an email marketing platform it can often feel overwhelming especially since there are so many options and they all have distinct crucial differences that's why today after nearly 6 months of testing and research I'm excited to share my updated reviews of the best email marketing platforms for online business owners so you can make an decision about which one is right for you hey I'm Melissa and welcome back to wit and wire where we help everyday experts build profitable online businesses for context I currently have over 25,000 email subscribers and I actually used to work in email marketing full-time as the senior launch manager for RIT sa and then the director of marketing engagement at teachable so I've worked with email lists of all sizes from one subscriber up to 1 million and I've probably used a dozen email marketing Platforms in my career and with clients based on that experience I start by looking for platforms that meet these three core criteria first we need the ability to send broadcast emails which go out at a set date and time compon examples include newsletters or sales promotions second we need the ability to segment our audience which means that we can use subscriber data to include or exclude subscribers from certain emails so one example might be excluding buyers from a promotion for a course they already own and third we need to be able to create automated workflows which are triggered by an action like submitting an email address or making a purchase a few examples include delivering a lead Magnet or creating an OnDemand webinar sales series but the opportunities are endless we also need a platform that stays up to- dat with modern compliance regulations which is usually a given but worth mentioning since data protection is so important from there you'll need to decide if you're looking for an all-in-one platform or a specialist I classify an all-in-one as a platform that includes the three primary functions needed to run an online business which include website creation email marketing and product sales and fulfillment which often includes one-on-one Services an all-in-one could be for you if you want to simplify and keep everything in one place and although you might miss out on some customizations or features for the right business owner I think the trade-off would be worth it on the other hand a specialist platform focuses solely on one function and a true email marketing platform will be a better fit for business owners who want more customizations a true email automation Builder and a personalized set of features to suit your needs if curious our number one pick for all-in-one platforms is currently kajabi and you can visit wit and wire. com kajabi if you'd like to claim an extended 30-day free trial through my partner link you'll also find my full kajabi tutorial Linked In the description but for this comparison I'm going to focus on email marketing Specialists so with that in mind here are my top five email marketing platforms for online business owners Loosely arranged in order from simplest to most complex let's start with platform number one beehive beehive markets themselves as the best newsletter platform built for growth without complexity and their focus on Simplicity is one of their biggest advantages for example their email Builder is both intuitive and highly customizable so you can create text based or highly designed emails to suit your brand that preview shows how sleek and userfriendly their platform is so I'd feel comfortable recommending it to users of any technical level including beginners but bey's real competitive Advantage is its focus on list building and monetization through Network effects for example you can build your list with a referral program to incentivize your subscribers or you can cross-promote your newsletter with other beehive creators you can also monetize your following through their native ad Network or by offering premium paid newsletter subscriptions to your audience it's noteworthy that beehive doesn't take a cut of your paid newsletter which makes them a great alternative to substack that said beehive has only the Bare Essentials when it comes to segmentation and Automation and they don't have a true CRM which will be optional for most business owners so for example you can build a basic welcome sequence but other automations or triggers might be impossible as of the time of this recording and that might be a deal breaker if you need intermediate or Advanced options they also lack a few Basics like landing page creation and the option to collect user data Beyond just just email addresses so for example without using a workaround you couldn't collect first names to personalize the start of your emails to say you know hey Melissa in terms of price point they have a free plan which includes up to 200 subscribers and limited features but my hunch is that most business owners will want to use their scale plan which includes automations and most of their superpower features you can visit Whit and wire. com beehive to create a free account and you'll also automatically unlock all scale features for 30 days so you can test beehives full functionality up next is platform number two mailer light mailer light is a great budget email marketing platform and they have one of the strongest free plans with up to 1,000 subscribers and all essential features when you log in mailer lights admin dashboard is streamlined and easy to navigate and although some competitors might have more features those add-ons are just noise and clutter unless you actually use them if I head over to campaigns I find their email Designer easy to use and highly customizable you can choose from either the simple Rich Text Editor or the full featured drag and drop editor and I appreciate that you can use the same block style Editor to create landing pages popups and embeddable forms under automations mailer light offers all of the basic features you'd expect from an email marketing platform including different trigger types emails delays conditional splits and actions they also allow AB automation testing on paid plans which is surprisingly rare but the main feature missing from mailer lights automation Builder is the concept of goals for example imagine a sales sequence of three emails pitching the same online course if someone buys the course after email number one you probably don't want to continue pitching them emails 2 and three and in other email marketing platforms you can create something called a goal or event which would remove buyers from the rest of the Automation and they also give you more data in reports you can create workarounds in mailer light but I think it's a noteworthy feature that separates not only mailer light but most budget email marketing platforms from the next year which we'll talk about shortly they've also historically had some of the strongest deliverability in the industry and deliverability measures the percentage of your sent emails that actually make it to your subscribers inboxes as you can see in this great visual from email tool tester mailer light not only ranks in the green today but they're consistently ranked among the top platforms overall I think mailer light is probably the most well-rounded budget email marketing platform and you can visit Whit and wire.

com / millerite to create your own free account and start testing the third email marketing platform is convertkit convertkit is one of the most popular email marketing platforms for online business owners and since their product is built specifically for digital creators I think they have the best overall usability for many coaches course creators and solopreneurs let's start with a preview of their email Builder which has been updated to include a block based designer for more customization they also have a basic landing page editor embeddable forms B banners and popups and a full featured automation builder in addition to the essential actions like sending an email and conditional splits convertkit also has something called an event which would allow a subscriber to Jump Ahead or exit the automation if a key event happens like a purchase they've also started differentiating themselves by offering more ways to build your list through network connections for example if you join their creator Network you become eligible to cross-promote newsletters with other convertkit creators so you'd help Drve subscribers to each other's audiences you can also get paid to promote relevant newsletters to your audience or you can enable a referral system to incentivize your own subscribers to share your newsletter with their friends a lot of wit nwire community members are happy convert kit customers but the two areas for improvement they often talk about are the landing pages and the analytics when you choose a landing page template you're locked into the block layout set by convertkit but if that feels limiting you can choose to create landing pages on your primary website like Squarespace or WordPress and use convertkit to create embeddable forms instead it's also noteworthy that their analytics are very minimal and you can't see any insights about your automations that said they recently announced a new insights dashboard available on their creator Pro Plan so that might be worth exploring you can visit wit and wire. com convertkit to get started and they do have a free plan with limited features and a set number of subscribers by the way if you're finding this video helpful so far I hope you'll give it a thumb Thumbs Up And subscribe to wit and wire so you don't miss any of our upcoming online business tutorials those signals also tell YouTube that you're enjoying our content which helps me reach more online business owners like you so thank you the fourth email marketing platform on our list is active campaign active campaign has long been considered a top email marketing platform for intermediate and advanced email marketing needs although you don't need to be too technical to be a user they have a great range of features customizations Integrations and detailed reports so let's take a quick look here's a preview of the active campaign email Builder where you can use a drag and drop tool to customize your campaigns I also find their segmentation tool easy to use and I like that I can segment my audience based on their actions like clicks or page views not just taxs I also want to showcase the automation Builder which has an extensive list of possible triggers and actions for your workflows this gives you the freedom and flexibility to build nearly any possible Automation and since it's a drag and drop tool I don't think you need to be especially technical to use active campaigns automation Builder on top of that they also have CRM features which allow you to manage deals through a pipeline so if client workor or sales conversations are a major part of your business strategy then that could be a deciding difference that said active campaign is on the upper end of our price range and although their extra functionality does match the price unless you plan to use those features then it might be overkill for business owners who want to keep things simple I'd also say that some users including me have experienced a bit of lag time on the platform and I'd also say that there's a small learning curve compared to our previous picks but both are symptoms of a big very capable platform with a lot of happy customers and if you're curious to check it out you can visit Whit and wire. com activecampaign to test it out with a free trial up next is platform number five Bento Bento is a newer email marketing platform with powerful automation features that rival if not surpass active campaigns and aside from their straightforward competitive pricing there are two reasons why you might be interested the first is their focus on deliverability which measures your ability to reach subscribers inboxes unlike other platforms Bento includes features like email validation spam validation Blacklist monitoring and batched email sending for bigger lists and since Gmail and Yahoo are enforcing stricter guidelines bento's features and best practices can offer a huge advantage to help you reach the inbox but the second reason you might choose Bento is for their powerful automation Builder here's a preview of a flow in Bento where you can choose from a comprehensive list of triggers actions and other options on the left then within the main area you can easily drag drop and connect your pieces or click a specific action to make edits let's also take a look at their email Builder and whether you're creating a broadcast email or an automated email you can choose between the text editor or the drag and drop editor the text editor is great for simple emails that are mostly text based while the drag and drop editor offers full design customization although the email Builder itself is very userfriendly overall I think Bento is best suited for a techsavvy business owner who is comfortable with a bit of coding and databased logic and even if you are techsavvy I would expect a learning curve when you're first getting started since Bento is fundamentally different than any other platform on this list but that's also why it's so customizable and flexible and once you learn how it works your options will be truly unlimited so if you're comfortable with Tech that I think Bento is a great allaround email marketing platform and you can visit Whit and wire.

com Bento to test it out with a free 30-day trial by the way if you're curious to see a side-by-side comparison of these five platforms including their price points at different subscriber counts you can visit Whit and wire. com toolkit to download our free email marketing toolkit and you'll find other resources Linked In the description also since there are a few popular email marketing platforms that didn't make the cut I thought I would do a lightning round to talk talk about a few additional platforms substack is a popular newsletter platform but they aren't a true email marketing platform because you can't segment your audience nor can you build automations if you are currently using substack especially for a paid newsletter I might recommend beehive instead since they don't take a cut of your payments and they do offer additional email marketing functionality or you could consider another option on our list if you're ready to expand MailChimp is one of the most well-known email marketing platforms and it's largely because they used to have a popular free plan with up to 2,000 contacts but that said their pricing has changed significantly and their free plan is severely limited their paid plans are also both more expensive and less capable than my other picks so that's why they don't make the cut flowes is known for two things their affordable $35 per month price point with unlimited subscribers and their feminine email templates but their automation Builder lacks a goals feature and I think it's too simplistic for most online business owners longterm and I personally think other email Builders are more intuitive and customizable clavio is a popular option for e-commerce businesses who primarily sell physical products I don't have any experience with them personally but my impression is that they're better suited for those physical e-commerce businesses than they are for digital products courses or Services brao formerly sendin blue looked promising in early testing since they have a clean modern interface and comparable price points but after working with a client in brevo we realized that the automation Builder has a massive limitation that makes it challenging to add existing contacts to automations and this happens regularly where contacts might download a freebie sign up for a webinar or even purchase a course or digital product and then you wouldn't be able to enroll them in an automation to deliver follow-up emails so I don't currently recommend them but that could always change in the future get response is unique because they offer a full marketing Suite Beyond just just email marketing including things like webinars landing pages and a slew of other features so for transparency I haven't tested them enough personally to graduate them into my top ranks but I think they're worth checking out at wit and wire. com getresponse and if you have any personal experience I would love to hear what you think in the comments there are also other great platforms that for various reasons don't make my top picks for example aweber Constant Contact drip and several others are all perfectly good but based on my test and the criteria that I believe most online business owners are looking for I had to be decisive about my ranks and that's the only reason why they haven't made the cut but if you currently use any platform that I haven't mentioned and you're happy with it I would strongly recommend that you stick with it I would only switch if you can identify specific limitations that your current email marketing platform can't do and in that case you can make a short list of requirements and use those requirements to choose another platform from our list I know we've covered a lot today but I do want to share this key takeaway there is truly no such thing as a best email marketing platform there are just different options that suit different businesses so to help you make your decision I would start by creating your own needs assessment where you list any mus have features that are important to you and from there you can create maybe one to two free trials in your top platforms to see which one feels best and after that I truly believe that the only detrimental choice you could make is letting the fear of choosing incorrectly prevent you from from taking action at all many of these platforms could work for many of us there's not only one right answer so trust your gut and see if you can make a choice that will work for you for the next 6 to 12 months if not longer if you're interested in more email marketing tips and online business best practices you can subscribe to our free Wht nwire Weekly Newsletter by visiting Whit and wire.

com newsletter every Thursday I share a bit-sized tip or strategy to help you build a profitable online business you love so again that's Whit nwi.