7 Best Free Email Marketing Tools in 2024 

Before we get to the list of the best free email marketing tools below, let’s discuss what to look for while choosing one first:

1. Audience size: Understand how many subscribers you will start with and choose a platform that will not restrict your growth.
2. Email sending limits: Consider how many emails you plan to send monthly and ensure the limits align with your marketing strategy.
3. Automation functionality: You might have to automate welcome emails and birthday messages. Look for basic automation features in the free tier.
4. Drag-and-drop builder: A user-friendly builder is necessary for professional-looking emails without the need for design expertise. Choose a platform with easy access to design elements.
5. Landing pages: Check if the platform offers landing pages to help you capture leads and grow your subscriber base.
6. Subscriber segmentation: Not all free plans offer segmentation options. It’s critical to verify if the free tier supports this.
7. Simple interface: Explore the trial version first to get a feel for the platform and its functionality.
8. Branding in the free plan: A few email platforms may include their branding logo in the emails, which could affect professionalism. Consider this if branding is a priority.
9. Check customer support: If you encounter issues, it can be helpful to pick an email service platform with reliable customer support. 
10. Check for transactional emails: Understand if transactional emails are included in the free plan.

Hubspot’s overall key features include:

• Customer relationship management: Hubspot offers a free CRM that helps you track leads, contacts, and deals. This helps users manage their sales pipeline and customer interactions more effectively.
• Marketing hub: The suite of tools helps with tasks like content creation, email marketing, SEO, and website analytics. Its ability to integrate with social media platforms in the free pricing tier is a bonus.

Although Hubspot’s free plan helps you set up quick email campaigns, it does not offer much in terms of email campaign templates. You can choose from the basic newsletter and marketing email templates. It’s also not possible to use your HTML coding to create newer templates.

Hubspot’s branding is present on every email in the free version, which can make emails look unprofessional. Another limitation is that Hubspot’s free plan does not allow proper authentication of email domains through SPF and DKIM. 

Brevo stands out in the following areas:

1. Ease of use: Brevo offers an intuitive interface and user-friendly drag-and-drop editor.
2. Generous limits: The platform offers a free plan with unlimited contacts and up to 300 emails per day with automation capabilities compared to some competitors.
3. All-in-one email marketing platform: Brevo goes beyond email marketing in the free plan. Users can access SMS marketing and basic CRM functions, allowing them to manage different customer interactions in one place.
4. Transactional emails: Users can send transactional updates, such as order confirmations and shipping updates, and access real-time statistics to understand the email open and click-through rates.

While Brevo’s free plan includes a multitude of features, it lacks in the following areas:

1. No geography and device reporting: The free plan limits access to heat maps and details of in-depth reporting, such as openers and clickers.
2. No dedicated IP: While GDPR compliance is maintained, users need to use a dedicated IP as an add-on feature.

Let’s review the key features of Omnisend:

• Unified platform: Omnisend allows users to manage email and SMS marketing from a single platform.
• Facebook custom audience: Helps you expand reach by creating lookalikes on Facebook and Instagram.
• Automation splits: Helps you personalize your messaging across different paths within a single workflow.
• Email A/B testing: Let’s you experiment with different sender names and subject lines.

Here are the prominent Omnisend limitations:

• Limited integrations: Omnisend integrates with leading e-commerce platforms, such as Shopify and Woocommerce. However, it lacks integration with Google Analytics and CRM software.
• Email deliverability: The ability of your emails to reach the recipient’s inbox is a crucial factor when considering an ESP, and Omnisend does not do justice to it. The platform consistently maintained an inbox placement rate of 67.6%, which is lower than the average deliverability rates of many service providers.
• Not multilingual: Omnisend is only available in English, which means people looking for different languages will need to choose other platforms.

Sendpulse offers a free plan that includes the following:

1. Autoresponders,
2. Website builder,
3. A/B testing,
4. CRM features, 
5. Advanced reporting, 
6. Basic segmentation, and
7. Web push notifications.

Here are more of Benchmark Email’s strengths:

1. Strong personalization: The platform offers personalization based on demographics and subscriber behavior.
2. Automation capabilities: It provides automation tools to build email workflows, such as welcome email sequences or abandoned cart reminders.
3. Solid customer support: Benchmark email is known for its responsive and friendly customer support, even on the free plan.

While every other aspect might be abundant on the free plan, Benchmark Email lacks in a few areas, such as:

• Email deliverability: Benchmark Email scored the lowest points (50%) in the email deliverability test, particularly in Outlook and Hotmail inboxes.
• Limited integrations: The platform may have fewer integrations compared to other marketing platforms.
• Stagnant development: There have been concerns that Benchmark Email has not had significant updates or improvements in recent years.

After thorough research, here are in-depth guides on Mailchimp as a platform and a competitor:

1. 12 best Mailchimp alternatives in 2024,
2. Mailchimp review: Pros, cons, and pricing
3. MailerLite vs. Mailchimp: Which one is better for your business?
4. Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp: A side-by-side comparison
5. Convertkit vs. Mailchimp: Which one is right for you?
6. Mailchimp vs. Activecampaign: Which one wins?
7. Campaign Monitor vs. Mailchimp: A guide for frustrated marketers in 2024.

Note these key points about Mailchimp before making a decision:

• Intuitive interface: Mailchimp offers easy to use email marketing tools along with an intuitive interface.
• Extensive integrations: It offers integration with 800+ third-party marketing tools and niche applications.
•  Comprehensive analytics: You will be able to access complete campaign data and compare it against billions of other data to improve future campaigns.
• Customer journey builder: Mailchimp helps you visually represent all paths a contact takes.

Mailchimp’s main drawbacks are:

• Subscribing counting: Mailchimp counts all contacts, regardless of their active status. Plus, the 500 count on the free plan can be limited if you want to grow your subscriber base.
• Sending limits: With only 1000 emails per month, frequent email campaigns may hit this number pretty quickly.
• Lack of advanced features: The free plan lacks access to advanced custom-coded templates, generative AI features, A/B testing, and behavioral targeting.

Want to know more about how MailerLite compares to other platforms? Examine the below guides:

• MailerLite alternatives for your email marketing needs
• MailerLite vs. Mailchimp: Choosing the right tool
• MailerLite vs. Convertkit: A detailed comparison

The platform stands out for its user-friendly approach to the most complicated email marketing aspects.
Here’s a closer look at its key attributes:

1. Generous subscriber limit: Compared to other email marketing platforms, Mailerlite offers unlimited audiences, giving you more room to grow your email list.
2. Drag-and-drop email builder: With the intuitive interface, email marketing novices will be able to create and send email campaigns without trouble.
3. Landing pages: It helps you build basic landing pages (Up to 10) to capture leads alongside email marketing efforts.
4. Good customer support: MailerLite offers email and chat support during the first 30 days after joining the free plan.

Review some of the MailerLite weaknesses on the free plan:

1. Branding restrictions: MailerLite adds its branding to your emails in the free plan, which can affect the overall look and feel of your email campaigns.
2. Limited automation: The free plan lacks multiple automation triggers and offers limited automation templates. 
3. Lack of landing page templates: Users might have to build their own templates on the free plan.
4. Cannot sell digital products: If you’re an e-commerce business or want to sell digital products, you may be forced to consider MailerLite alternatives.

It’s important to remember these tips to succeed with a free email marketing tool:

• Choose the right tool: Evaluate features and ensure the tool meets your basic needs, such as templates, email list management, analytics, and integration with other platforms.
• Build and segment your email list: Ensure your email list is built on opt-ins to avoid being marked as a spam sender. Also, segment your email list to send targeted email campaigns.
• Create compelling content: Utilize the dynamic content fields and other features to personalize and deliver value to your audiences.
• Optimize for mobile: Ensure your emails function well on mobile devices.
• Stay compliant: Always include an unsubscribe option and ensure your emails are compliant with the GDPR and CAN-SPAM Act.