If your store is new and you’ve had only a few customers so far, you might be able to get away with sending them simple marketing emails from a free email provider like Gmail. But as your customer base grows, this approach will quickly prove unworkable:
- Free email providers don’t like it when you mass-send emails from their domains, and your emails may get blocked from reaching your recipients.
- Manually emailing customers individually is also not the best use of your time when you have other store responsibilities to take care of!
The more feasible alternative is to use dedicated email marketing platforms that help ecommerce businesses market to customers and generate more revenue.
Think elegant email forms for building a list of potential customers and stunning newsletters for publicizing upcoming sales. Throw in ecommerce marketing automation for rescuing abandoned carts, or thanking customers for their purchase, on autopilot.
And last but not least, imagine you have reports that tell you exactly how much revenue your emails are bringing in every day!
These are just some perks you can look forward to in some of the best email marketing platforms for ecommerce. Let’s check out 12 of the top options as you hunt down the right email marketing software for implementing your ecommerce email marketing strategy!
Best email marketing for ecommerce: summary
The 12 best options for email marketing for ecommerce are:
- Omnisend
- Klaviyo
- ActiveCampaign
- GetResponse
- Mailchimp
- MailerLite
- Drip
- Brevo (Sendinblue)
- Shopify Email
- SmartrMail
- Constant Contact
- HubSpot
Omnisend, Klaviyo, and ActiveCampaign are among the best email marketing software for ecommerce stores. They have a good range of ecommerce email marketing features, such as abandoned cart reminders and email personalization. These platforms also offer SMS marketing if you want to engage your customers using both email and SMS.
Most popular email marketing platforms
Popularity isn’t everything, but it’s good to know you’re choosing a platform with lots of users and plenty of community support.
If you’re wondering what other businesses are using for their email marketing, Klaviyo currently leads the pack among the brands tracked by our Email Detective Chrome Extension, followed by Mailchimp, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and HubSpot. Brevo and ActiveCampaign also make the top 10:
These figures are based on real-world observations of which email platforms brands are using, rather than customer numbers reported by the companies themselves. (Which we’ve also analyzed here.)
Of course, popularity isn’t everything. Some platforms are designed for huge enterprise businesses, while others specialize in ecommerce.
Ecommerce features to look out for in an email marketing service
Since you’re investing in an email marketing service for your store, the service needs to support your efforts to grow your store traffic and sales.
The best email marketing services offers these ecommerce features:
☑ AI Tools
All email marketing services are embracing AI, but they don’t all use it in the same way. Broadly speaking, there are two approaches. Many platforms now combine both.
Type 1: AI built directly into the email marketing platform
This is what most ecommerce store owners think of when they hear “AI features.” Examples include AI-generated subject lines, email copy or customer segment suggestions.
The AI is built right into the platform.
Type 2: Connecting an AI assistant (like ChatGPT or Shopify Sidekick) to your email marketing platform
In this setup, the assistant becomes the interface. Instead of logging into your email marketing platform and clicking through menus, you interact with it on ChatGPT, for example.
You might ask:
“How many subscribers joined my list last week?”
“Show me my abandoned cart automation.”
“Draft a Father’s Day campaign.”
The AI then communicates with your email marketing platform behind the scenes through an integration, allowing you to manage certain tasks using plain English.
☑ Online store integration
A direct store integration helps your email platform sync product and customer data from your shop and enrich your email marketing activities. For example, you could feature your store products in your emails, or send targeted emails (such as product recommendations or subscription reminders) based on your customers’ order history.
Most good email marketing services will offer direct integrations with leading ecommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. So if you’ve built your store on one of these platforms, you generally don’t have to worry about your store not integrating with them.
Please check out our specific guides for the best email marketing services for Shopify and WooCommerce.
Find out which are the top email marketing apps for Shopify store owners in this video:
☑ Email templates
Your email platform should have a wide selection of attractive email templates you can customize for your emails. These templates should also be mobile-friendly in case your customers are reading your emails from their phone.
☑ Email editor
You’ll use the email editor to design and write your emails, and you’ll be doing that a lot! So it’s important that your email platform’s email editor is user-friendly and offers many customization options for crafting your emails to your exact specifications.
☑ Contact segmentation
Whether your email platform refers to contacts as “contacts,” “subscribers,” or even “people” (which is the case for Drip), it should let you flexibly segment them according to various parameters — for example, geography, age group, or even previous purchases.
From there, you can send emails containing offers targeted to each segment’s unique characteristics — and increase your sales.
☑ Email automation
Your chosen email service should help you automate common ecommerce marketing scenarios, such as post-purchase follow-ups and the sending of winback emails. They should provide cart abandonment solutions too, given how abandoned cart emails reap 3X more conversions than other automated email campaigns!
For the most personalized customer interactions, shortlist email platforms that support a wide range of triggers and actions as you build automations from scratch. (In this respect, our favorite email platform is ActiveCampaign.)
☑ Personalization
Addressing customers personally in your emails is pretty much a standard practice now (take a look at how H&M does it, for example). But for even more tailored emails — and higher sales — check that your email platform can add personalized email content for:
- recommending products based on your customers’ interests, or
- displaying the exact items they have left behind in their cart.
☑ Sales reporting
Your store platform will tell you your latest sales transactions and how much you’ve earned, but not the extent of orders attributable to your emails.
That’s where a good email platform will pick up the slack. It’ll report on the subscribers who converted from certain emails, and how much revenue they contributed to your coffers. The more detailed its sales reports, the better!
☑ Customer relationship management (CRM) features
CRMs help you get a bird’s eye view of your customers and their store behavior. They do so by storing individual profiles on your customers, including details on their geolocation, email address, purchase history, and website activity.
Using such data, you can understand how your customers interact with your store and email campaigns, then optimize your marketing efforts for higher sales.
While most email platforms will store basic info on your customers’ names and email addresses, not many will offer insights into your customers’ website activity and other advanced intel. If a good CRM is something you need, try the HubSpot CRM.
☑ Pricing
Finally, the email platform you go with should fall within your budget! But don’t just look at its pricing — consider the value you’ll get for the price you pay.
Although some platforms may charge similar fees for their email software, the extensiveness of their pricing plans may differ vastly.
Some platforms also offer “forever free” plans where you can use their platform for free so long as you stay within certain sending or subscriber limits.
12 best email marketing tools for ecommerce
1. Omnisend
Omnisend is one of our top picks for ecommerce business owners. It’s got all the features you’ll need for comprehensive ecommerce email marketing, from signup forms and landing pages, to product blocks for your emails, pre-built ecommerce automations (called “workflows”), and discount coupon codes.
Segmentation and conditional content features make it easy to send personalized email campaigns to specific segments of contacts. And if you want to send SMSes and web push notifications to contacts, Omnisend can help with that too!
Just connect your store using Omnisend’s direct integrations with Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and more, and you’ll be on your way.
Pros of Omnisend
- Omnisend offers plenty of ecommerce-focused email marketing features, such as discount coupon codes and product listings, out of the box. This is unlike some other email platforms we’ve tested, where you’ll need to integrate certain ecommerce features separately.
- Apart from sending emails, Omnisend also lets you send SMSes and web push notifications. Not all email platforms we’ve tested offer these even though they’re common marketing channels for ecommerce stores.
- Compared to similarly-featured tools like Klaviyo, Omnisend’s pricing is a lot more affordable.
Cons of Omnisend
- Advanced reports aren’t updated in real time — for example, the detailed campaigns report is updated only once a day. The data you see in your advanced reports may therefore not provide a fully accurate picture of your emails’ performance.
- Omnisend’s free plan is more limited than it used to be, especially if you want to access advanced AI features. Plus, your customers will see the Omnisend logo on your emails unless you upgrade.
Omnisend pricing
- 500 emails to 250 contacts: $0
- 2,000 contacts: $30/mo
- 5,000: $81/mo
- 10,000: $132/mo
- 50,000: $330/mo
Tip: Save 30% for the first 3 months using discount code EMAILTOOLTESTER30. Redeem the offer here.
More information on Omnisend pricing available here.
Who is Omnisend best suited to?
Online stores in need of a comprehensive email marketing tool for ecommerce will find Omnisend a strong option.
2. Klaviyo
Klaviyo fared a little worse than Omnisend in our recent Omnisend vs Klaviyo review, but this ecommerce email marketing platform is still a worthwhile option.
From our tests, Klaviyo is highly user-friendly and this is always a plus when you’re creating advanced email marketing campaigns. The platform also sports gorgeous email forms, for which you can set up Google Analytics goal and conversion tracking.
We were also impressed by Klaviyo’s AI-powered Marketing Agent. It analyzes your ecommerce store and suggests personalized email campaigns.When we tested it on a Shopify store, it automatically used the store’s brand colors, logo, and tone of voice to create signup forms and email drafts.
If you’re planning on sending marketing texts, you’ll be glad to know that Klaviyo supports SMS marketing. In fact, you can build automations that deliver both automated emails and SMSes to contacts in your marketing funnels!
Klaviyo also offers a new Customer Hub that lets shoppers manage orders, rewards, returns, and support from your website. It’s basically a branded customer portal that feeds customer data back into Klaviyo for more personalized marketing.
Our research shows that email platforms generally don’t double as customer data platforms (CDPs). But Klaviyo does! Using its built-in CDP, you can combine customer data from various sources, and get the fullest pictures of your customers when marketing to them.
Klaviyo is one of the best email marketing platforms for Shopify users. Shopify is a major investor, and Klaviyo is Shopify’s preferred email marketing and CRM partner for Shopify Plus merchants. Klaviyo is one of only two email marketing platforms that currently integrates with Shopify’s Sidekick. (The other is Mailchimp)
Pros of Klaviyo
- With Klaviyo, you can A/B test your email subject line and copy — and your email forms too. A/B-testing of email forms isn’t a common feature in the email platforms we’ve tested.
- It’s easy to build emails using Klaviyo’s drag-and-drop editor. I also like how you can add dynamic product recommendations in your emails. This is something that some other platforms, such as ActiveCampaign, don’t offer.
- There are several useful AI tools available, such as predictive analytics, which can forecast when a customer might make a repeat purchase. Additionally, their AI marketing agent can use your branding to help build campaigns, automation flows, and segment customers more intelligently.
- Uniquely, Klaviyo provides industry email benchmark data so you can measure how your campaigns are performing compared to your peers.
Cons of Klaviyo
- Klaviyo’s email automations (called “flows”) are powerful for ecommerce, but are limited to a single entry trigger. If you need the same automation to start in different ways, you’ll have to create multiple flows. Some other platforms we’ve tested let you add multiple triggers with no issues. (Mailchimp allows up to three on paid plans!)
- If you’re on Klaviyo’s free plan, you’ll get email support for only the first 60 days from signup.
- Many of Klaviyo’s pre-built automations (flows) are designed specifically for Shopify stores, so users on other platforms may find better value elsewhere.
These essential email automations are built specifically for Shopify users on Klaviyo.
Klaviyo pricing
Klaviyo allows you to build a customized plan with optional features such as WhatsApp marketing and product reviews. Here is pricing for basic email marketing:
- Free plan for 250 contacts and 500 emails
- 500 emails to 500 contacts: $20/month
- 10,000 emails to 1,000 contacts: $30/month
- 50,000 emails to 5,000 contacts: $100/month
- 105,000 emails/month to 10,000+ contacts: $150/mo
Who is Klaviyo best suited to?
While Klaviyo works with many ecommerce platforms, it’s especially well suited to Shopify stores.
If you intend to build comprehensive profiles of your customers for marketing to via email and possibly also SMS, take advantage of Klaviyo’s CDP and SMS marketing features to do just this.
Read our Klaviyo review
See how it compares to the almighty Mailchimp in this Klaviyo vs Mailchimp comparison or its cheaper alternative, MailerLite.
3. ActiveCampaign
And here, we have our all-time favorite email platform for marketing automation. (No, seriously — we’ve awarded ActiveCampaign our Best Email Marketing Tool badge for 2024!)
This powerful email marketing tool lets you set up sophisticated automations for practically any need, be it sending discount codes to contacts on their birthday, following up with contacts interested in certain products, or something else.
ActiveCampaign’s new interface is heavily AI-focused. Rather than choosing from pre-built automation templates, you’re prompted to describe what you want and let AI create it. The traditional builder is still available, but it may take a little longer to find options like “Start from scratch” beneath the new AI features.
ActiveCampaign successfully drafted an abandoned cart recovery automation with value-based segmentation when I described it in plain English to the AI tool.
Additionally, ActiveCampaign’s flexible contact management features mean you can precisely segment your contact list, before targeting each segment with relevant emails.
ActiveCampaign also lets you send transactional emails such as order confirmations and password resets. These are powered by Postmark, ActiveCampaign’s dedicated transactional email service, and require a separate add-on. Postmark specializes in transactional emails, so you get fast, reliable delivery that’s fully integrated with ActiveCampaign automations. Have I made our love for ActiveCampaign clear yet?
Pros of ActiveCampaign
- Automations! ActiveCampaign’s marketing automations are extremely powerful, with plenty of triggers and actions to choose from. It also includes pre-built automation templates (called “recipies”), or you can let AI build a workflow for you.
- Track the performance of your campaigns, contacts, ecommerce, and more with ActiveCampaign’s reports. All the basic stats are there, such as open rates and click-through rates, but you can also get niche info such as clickmaps and contact geolocations. The platform’s reporting capabilities are among the most comprehensive we’ve seen in the market.
- Landing pages are also available as part of ActiveCampaign’s Marketing Plus plan.
Cons of ActiveCampaign
- There’s no free plan and ActiveCampaign’s prices can be fairly high.
- Given ActiveCampaign’s extensive features, you may face a steep learning curve as you familiarize yourself with the platform. You may not want to go through such hassle if you have simpler email marketing needs.
- Although the new AI tools help make ActiveCampaign easier to use for most people, if you prefer a traditional automation builder you may need to do a bit more clicking to find the manual options.
ActiveCampaign pricing
- 1,000 contacts: $19/mo
- 2,500 contacts: $49/mo
- 5,000 contacts: $99/mo
- 10,000 contacts: $189/mo
- 50,000 contacts: $759/mo
Learn more about ActiveCampaign pricing.
Who is ActiveCampaign best suited to?
Store owners who are passionate automators should make a beeline for ActiveCampaign. Its powerful AI tools make it easier for growing businesses to take their marketing to the next level without needing extensive technical expertise. Get ready to automate your store email marketing to your heart’s content!
4. GetResponse
GetResponse’s interface looks a bit dated, but don’t underestimate this platform. Integrate your store with it and you can send automated emails for recommending products, recovering abandoned carts, follow up with customers post-purchase, and more.
GetResponse’s Conversion Funnel feature makes it easy to build complete sales funnels by combining landing pages, signup forms, emails, and store products in one guided workflow. And if you’re running an omnichannel marketing strategy, you’ll love how GetResponse can help you engage customers via SMS, paid ads, and even host webinars from its platform!
GetResponse’s AI Campaign Generator helps you get started by asking a few questions about your business before creating a campaign with emails and landing pages. In our tests, the AI-generated drafts needed significant editing before they were ready to launch. It’s a useful shortcut, but it works more like a guided setup than a true AI campaign builder, and isn’t as flexible as ActiveCampaign’s plain-English automation builder.
Pros of GetResponse
- GetResponse’s customizable email templates and forms are beautiful and there is a good number of them to choose from.
- The platform has a wide variety of segmentation options for creating groups of contacts.
- You can draft email campaigns with AI, but be sure to check and edit them before sending.
- Unlike most email marketing platforms, GetResponse includes built-in webinar hosting.
Cons of GetResponse
- GetResponse has a free plan, but you might find it impractical. That’s because you can’t integrate your store unless you upgrade. Even then, many ecommerce-related features are locked behind the platform’s (fairly expensive) Ecommerce Marketing plan.
- While I found GetResponse’s email editor easy to use, I wish it would let you add conditional content blocks to emails.
- GetResponse’s AI tools aren’t currently as robust as those offered by some competitors.
GetResponse pricing
Prices shown are for the Starter plan, which includes limited ecommerce features and 1 automation.
- 1,000 contacts: $19/mo
- 2,500 contacts: $29/mo
- 5,000 contacts: $54/mo
- 10,000 contacts: $79/mo
- 50,000 contacts: $299/mo
If you’d like to access unlimited automations, abandoned cart recovery workflows, sales funnels, promo codes, and revenue reports, you’d need to upgrade to the Marketer plan. Learn more about GetResponse pricing.
Who is GetResponse best suited to?
Use GetResponse if you want to manage email marketing, sales funnels, and webinars from a single platform without relying on multiple tools, and you don’t mind shelling out more to get access to ecommerce features.
5. Mailchimp
Mailchimp barely needs an introduction at this point – chances are it’s the first email provider you’ve ever heard of. With Mailchimp’s easy-to-use platform, you can design email forms and landing pages to collect contacts, then convert them using automated email campaigns.
In recent months, Mailchimp has stepped up its ecommerce features considerably, making it one of our favorite email marketing platforms for online stores. They’ve added a host of new ecommerce automations, including browse abandonment, back-in-stock alerts, and review requests. Shopify users can now send customers one-time discount codes that automatically sync with your store. (Something that would be a nightmare to manage manually!)
Mailchimp used to only be an email platform, but it has since expanded its feature set to help users manage marketing channels such as SMS, social media, digital ads, and postcards. And if you’re into data, you can take advantage of the new Mailchimp Pixel. This lets you track customer behavior on your website and use it to power smarter segments and automations.
Pros of Mailchimp
- Excellent ecommerce integrations with platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Wix. Connect your store to pull product data directly into your emails and create more personalized campaigns.
- Mailchimp offers ecommerce-specific automation triggers such as when a customer purchases a product, abandons their cart, or views a certain Shopify store page — and it’s added several more recently, including Abandoned Browse, Back in Stock, and Predicted Purchase Date.
Cons of Mailchimp
- Mailchimp’s free plan includes basic ecommerce reporting for connected stores, although most ecommerce features, like automations and transactional emails, require paid plans or add ons.
- Mailchimp charges for even inactive and unsubscribed contacts on your contact list, which is a downer considering how expensive its plans quickly get. We’ve covered Mailchimp pricing in more detail here.
- The platform stores your contacts in lists and there’s no way of managing contacts across lists. For instance, you can’t mix and match contacts from different lists when creating segments.
- Mailchimp’s AI, Intuit Assist, is currently only available in English on the Standard and Premium plans, although Mailchimp plans to expand its AI capabilities soon. Luckily for Shopify users, Mailchimp can be integrated with Sidekick.
Mailchimp pricing
- 500 contacts: $13/mo
- 2,500 contacts: $45/mo
- 10,000 contacts: $110/mo
- 30,000 contacts: $300/mo
- 50,000 contacts: $385/mo
Heads up! These prices are for the Essentials plan, which doesn’t include Mailchimp’s AI assistant. Considering how common AI features have become, we’d expect this to be included.
Inactive contacts also count towards the subscriber limit.
Learn more about Mailchimp pricing.
Who is Mailchimp best suited to?
Pick Mailchimp if you want to manage your store marketing (not just email, but social posts and digital ads as well) from one user-friendly platform. Its automation suite has genuinely improved lately, particularly for ecommerce triggers, so it’s a more credible pick for store owners than it used to be. Just note that many of its best tools are reserved for more expensive plans.
6. MailerLite
There’s a reason why MailerLite scored our Best Email Marketing Tool For Ease of Use badge — it is just that easy to use. The interface is clean and intuitive, and most features are rarely more than a few clicks away.
On the ecommerce front, MailerLite integrates directly with all the main ecommerce platforms, and you can showcase your store products in your emails. The platform will even keep track of the number of subscribers who bought these products (and how much revenue you’ve earned accordingly)!
MailerLite’s free plan has become much more restrictive. Along with lower subscriber and sending limits, you’ll be limited to just three automations and miss out on the AI writing assistant.
Pros of MailerLite
- MailerLite has one of the cleanest interfaces we’ve tested, making it a great choice for beginners.
- Adding product blocks of varying layouts to your emails is straightforward. I also like how you can set up strikethrough formatting for your product prices to indicate price reductions, which is a great sales tactic.
- Although the free plan is more limited than it used to be, MailerLite still offers excellent value once you upgrade.
Cons of MailerLite
- Compared with competitors like Klaviyo and Mailchimp, MailerLite offers fewer ecommerce automation triggers. You can set up basic automations triggered by store purchases and cart abandonment, but it lacks more advanced options like browse abandonment, back-in-stock notifications, and review requests.
- MailerLite’s reporting has improved considerably with the addition of custom reports, although businesses looking for advanced reporting and data analytics might prefer Hubspot or ActiveCampaign.
MailerLite pricing
- Up to 250: $0/mo
- 500 contacts: $0/mo
- 2,500 contacts: $33/mo
- 5,000 contacts: $49/mo
- 10,000 contacts: $89/mo
- 15,000 contacts: $129/mo
Learn more about MailerLite pricing.
Who is MailerLite best suited to?
MailerLite is perfect for users who want a beginner-friendly platform for their ecommerce email marketing efforts. It’s also a great choice if you want to get started on a budget.
7. Drip
Apart from its bright colors and quirky graphics, customer engagement is one of Drip’s greatest strengths. Other email platforms may limit you to distributing standard ecommerce lead magnets like discounts and free shipping, but Drip’s advanced email forms (called “onsite campaigns”) support mystery offers, quizzes, and even “spin-to-win” gamification.
Once you’ve collected some subscribers (aka “people” in Drip terminology), you’re spoilt for choice as to the filters you can use to segment them. Send your segmented people a targeted one-off single email campaign, or automate the interaction in split-path automations (or “playbooks”), and personalize the customer journey as you please.
Drip started out as an email-only platform, but has recently expanded to include SMS for US customers. It also integrates with Meta Custom Audiences, allowing you to automatically sync your Drip contacts for more effective retargeting. It still lacks features like web push notifications, CRM or CDPs, so businesses that need those should look elsewhere.
Pros of Drip
- This ecommerce email marketing software offers a good range of workflow triggers and actions. They’re also helpfully categorized by platform to make finding the right trigger or action for your workflow easier. For example, selecting BigCommerce triggers will display only triggers that apply to BigCommerce store events.
- Instead of the regular email sign-up forms, Drip lets you create “onsite campaigns” (popups) that come embedded with daily offers, surveys, gamification, and more. The platform even previews your onsite campaign on your website as you’re building it.
- Drip doesn’t lock any of its features behind more expensive plans. You’ll pay more only if you have more people on your email list. (That said, there is no free plan and we find Drip to be generally pricier than other email platforms.)
Cons of Drip
- Although Drip’s interface is fun and colorful, it isn’t the easiest to navigate among the various email platforms we’ve tested.
- SMS marketing is fairly standard across email marketing platforms, but Drip only offers it for US customers as an add-on.
Drip pricing
- 2,500 contacts: $39/mo
- 5,000 contacts: $89/mo
- 10,000 contacts: $154/mo
- 50,000 contacts: $699/mo
Who is Drip best suited to?
If you want to grow your email list using exciting offers, surveys, and games, Drip will help fill out your pipeline with people in no time!
8. Brevo
Brevo has undergone a number of changes in recent years. In 2023, the company changed its name from Sendinblue to Brevo.
Brevo then bought PushOwl and merged it into Brevo PushOwl for Shopify. This is now the Shopify-focused version of Brevo, combining email, SMS, web push, and even WhatsApp in a single app. Ecommerce businesses on other platforms (like WooCommerce, Magento, Prestashop, etc) simply use Brevo.
When we first tested the beta version of Brevo PushOwl, we found ourselves navigating a confusing mix of Brevo and PushOwl branding that made it surprisingly difficult to tell where one platform ended and the other began.
Thankfully, most of that confusion has been resolved. The Shopify app is clearly branded as Brevo PushOwl, and everything stays in sync whether you access it from Shopify or directly through your Brevo account.
Unfortunately, Brevo still doesn’t include a built-in product reviews feature, although you can add one through integrations such as Reviewflowz. With Shopify’s own Reviews app discontinued, many merchants now prefer email marketing platforms that can also collect and manage product reviews.
Pros of Brevo
- Conditional content blocks let you personalize your emails for higher conversions.
- Brevo’s free plan includes SMS marketing, AI content generation, and retargeting ads
- The Brevo e-commerce dashboard provides a clear overview of your order and sales figures, as well as the best-selling products for each specified period. It also tracks in real time which products have been added to baskets and the checkout process.
Cons of Brevo
- While Brevo can automatically display your store products in your emails, it can’t get info on your product variants.
- Brevo’s contact segmentation options aren’t as extensive as those we’ve seen in other email platforms.
- Unlike competitors, Brevo PushOwl doesn’t offer a product reviews feature.
Brevo pricing
- 300 emails/day: $0/mo
- 5,000 emails: $9/mo
- 20,000 emails: $29/mo
- 40,000 emails: $39/mo
- 60,000: $55/mo
Learn more about Brevo pricing.
Who is Brevo best suited to?
Brevo can be a good choice if you are looking for an affordable solution and are satisfied with basic e-commerce features. For some users, the offer might be too limited. The free plan offers a generous send limit.
9. Shopify Email
Using Shopify for your store, or planning to do so? Then tapping into the platform’s native email marketing outreach service might seem like a no-brainer.
Naturally, your email list will comprise customers who have consented to receiving your emails. A nice recent addition is the ability to let customers opt in to email marketing when they sign in to their Shop account, without needing to reach checkout or fill out a popup. You can also use the separate Shopify Forms app to collect email subscribers who haven’t bought from you yet.
After that, set up marketing automations for sending automated emails to subscribers. The usual suspects, such as abandoned cart and customer winback automations, are included as default templates, and you can also build custom automations.
Considering how Shopify lets you send up to 10,000 free emails every month, Shopify Email is definitely an option to explore if you’re a current or prospective Shopify owner.
Pros of Shopify Email
- Managing a Shopify store and your email marketing within the same platform is highly convenient.
- There is a generous limit of 10,000 free emails per month. It costs $1 for every subsequent block of 1,000 emails, which isn’t too expensive either.
- You can add express checkout buttons to your emails to let customers skip the cart page and directly pay for your emails’ featured products. It’s a useful feature for reducing checkout friction that could hurt your conversion rate.
Cons of Shopify Email
- There are only a handful of email templates to choose from and they look quite basic. Customization options in the email builder are also limited.
- Recent Shopify updates have prioritized AI over new email marketing features.
Shopify Email pricing
- 10,000 emails per month: Free
- 20,000 emails: $10/month
- 30,000 emails: $20/month
- 50,000 emails: $40/month
Who is Shopify Email best suited to?
Shopify store owners, of course — but specifically those who value the convenience (and cost savings) of managing their store and email marketing in one place. Shopify Email also works seamlessly with Sidekick, of course!
You can also check out our guide to the best ecommerce email marketing services for Shopify if you’re still undecided.
Try Shopify Email for free with a Shopify store trial
Check out our Shopify Email vs Mailchimp comparison
10. SmartrMail
SmartrMail is designed to integrate with Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Maropost, and offers store email marketing features such as newsletters, ecommerce automations, and email templates.
A Brand Kit feature lets you set up default brand styles for your emails, and the platform also automatically generates email templates to match your store’s design. Using both features, you can rest assured that you keep your email marketing assets on-brand.
Although SmartrMail integrates with WordPress, I’m not sure I’d recommend using it for a WooCommerce store. The SmartrMail WordPress plugin appears to have only 30 active installations at this time.
What’s more concerning is how the SmartrMail WordPress plugin has neither been updated in over two years nor tested with the latest three major WordPress releases. It might still work with your WooCommerce store for now, but such compatibility might break if SmartrMail doesn’t release further plugin updates.
Pros of SmartrMail
- SmartrMail’s recommendation engine can automatically generate product recommendation emails for your customers. All you have to do is review the suggested email content, set your subscriber list, then send the email. (When we first tested SmartrMail, this feature was unique, but now AI-powered product recommendations are quite common.)
- There’s a decent number of email templates designed for use in seasonal holidays, various points of the customer journey, and for stores in certain industries.
- The platform includes a few pre-built smart segments for common customer scenarios, such as customers who have placed an order within the last 30 days. You can also create your own smart segments.
Cons of SmartrMail
- The platform’s automations aren’t the most sophisticated. For example, they can have only one trigger and SmartrMail uses lists, segments, and custom fields to organize subscribers instead of dedicated tags.
- SmartrMail integrates with only Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Maropost. You won’t be able to use it if you’ve built your store on another ecommerce platform, such as Volusion or Shift4Shop. And see what I mentioned above about SmartrMail not being the best choice for WooCommerce stores.
- Prices have recently jumped, but features have lagged behind some competitors.
SmartrMail pricing
- 600 emails to 200 subscribers: Free
- 1,000 subscribers: $22.50/month
- 5,000 subscribers: $72.50/month
- 10,00 subscribers: $135/month
- 50,000 subscribers: $549/month
Who is SmartrMail best suited to?
With SmartrMail’s last WordPress plugin update being sometime back, the platform would be best for Shopify, BigCommerce, or Maropost store owners. Choose SmartrMail if you want a simple ecommerce email marketing platform and don’t need the advanced automation features offered by competitors like Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign.
11. Constant Contact
Constant Contact pitches itself as a digital marketing platform rather than an email one per se, and this shows from its SMS marketing and social media marketing features. But it still offers typical ecommerce email marketing capabilities, such as integrating with your store and sending abandoned cart emails.
One niche area where Constant Contact shines is event management, including virtual events. If your ecommerce business relies on workshops, courses, or community events, it’s one of the few email marketing platforms that can help you market and manage them in one place.
Constant Contact’s pricing doesn’t have the best price-performance ratio. This is unless you’re opting for its cheapest Lite plan, which is $12/month for up to 500 contacts. One positive is that Constant Contact allows users on any plan to video call marketing experts for help with campaigns. In an AI world, this is a nice human touch.
Otherwise, many other platforms I’ve discussed here deliver just as good — if not more powerful — email marketing capabilities at more attractive price points.
Pros of Constant Contact
- Unlike some other email platforms we’ve tested, Constant Contact lets you select product variants when embedding products in your emails.
- If you’ve set up multiple abandoned cart email automations in Constant Contact, the platform will ask you if you want to remove an older one so you don’t accidentally send customers repeated emails for the same abandoned cart. Nice!
Cons of Constant Contact
- It’d be nice if Constant Contact had more powerful automations. Among other limitations, its automations can have only one trigger and they also can’t help you tag contacts.
- Its pricing is higher than that of other more ec0mmerce-focused platforms.
Constant Contact pricing
- 500 contacts: $12/mo
- 2,500: $50/mo
- 5,000: $80/mo
- 10,000: $120/mo
Learn more about Constant Contact pricing.
Who is Constant Contact best suited to?
Use Constant Contact if you have a small email list and are happy to work with simpler (and hence easier-to-manage) email automations.
12. HubSpot
HubSpot seems like a sweet deal at first glance. The platform provides a variety of free marketing tools, which are good for setting up simple forms and sending one automated email per form, among other features. HubSpot can also help add dynamic abandoned product content into your emails if your store runs on Shopify.
HubSpot also goes far beyond email marketing. You can use HubSpot’s CRM features to manage your contacts for free.
You’ve heard of SEO, now there’s AEO. HubSpot has introduced Answer Engine Optimization tools to help businesses improve their visibility in AI-generated answers. We haven’t seen this feature in other email marketing platforms yet, which is probably why HubSpot is charging $50/month for it as an add on. 💸
But HubSpot’s marketing automations pose a major stumbling block. Its free plan restricts you to one action per email automation, and this cap increases to 10 for the platform’s lowest plan (Starter). You’d need a Marketing Professional plan or higher to get unlimited automation actions — and this plan is really expensive at $890/month and up.
Given the role of automations in effective email marketing, this high price point may turn you off HubSpot when other platforms provide similar automation features for much less.
Pros of HubSpot
- HubSpot’s built-in CRM lets you compile detailed customer behavior profiles with information such as your customers’ latest store activity, purchases, and support interactions.
- You can segment your contacts using a variety of filters for targeting purposes.
- The platform’s attribution reports can track exactly which store pages or email campaigns resulted in new store orders. This is great for identifying which marketing efforts are delivering the highest return on investment.
Cons of HubSpot
- While HubSpot can integrate with Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, its feature for displaying dynamic abandoned cart content in emails works only with Shopify stores. Also, you need a paid third-party app to integrate HubSpot with BigCommerce.
- The platform charges an arm and a leg for access to its full marketing automation features. The price jump from Starter to Professional is truly enormous.
HubSpot pricing
- 2,000 emails per month: Free
- 1,000 contacts (5 emails per contact): $20/mo (Marketing Hub Starter plan)
- 2,000 contacts (10 emails per contact): $890/month (Marketing Hub Professional plan)
Read more on HubSpot pricing.
Who is HubSpot best suited to?
HubSpot works best with stores built on Shopify, so I’d recommend it only if you run a large Shopify store and therefore have deep pockets to afford HubSpot’s marketing automation and AEO features.
Which ecommerce email marketing solution is right for your store?
After testing the features of the 12 best email marketing software for ecommerce above, I’m leaning in favor of the platforms specially built to serve online stores. Namely Omnisend, Klaviyo, Drip, and — unless you use WooCommerce — SmartrMail. (And Shopify Email, too, if you operate a Shopify store.)
That’s because they can do what non-ecommerce email marketing platforms can do — plus other things that only store owners will find valuable, such as displaying product listings in emails.
That said, general-purpose email marketing platforms have become much more competitive. ActiveCampaign remains one of our favorite choices for advanced automations, while Mailchimp has made huge strides in ecommerce and is now one of our top recommendations for online stores. GetResponse is also worth considering if you want to manage webinars and multiple marketing channels from one platform.
If you’re on a tighter budget, MailerLite and Brevo offer good value, while HubSpot is the obvious choice if you want your email marketing tightly integrated with a powerful CRM.
These 12 email platforms all offer either a free plan or free trial, so use these to test-drive their features before you commit to any of them!
Are you a Shopify store owner? Find the best email marketing platform for Shopify
Or, if you use WooCommerce, learn about the best email marketing for WooCommerce
Want to know more about the top tools for automation? Check out our guide on the best ecommerce marketing automation software
I’m also happy to take questions on any of the email platforms discussed here — just drop them in the comments below.