Best Email Marketing Service & Software Reviews of 2025

When choosing email marketing software, you should keep some key factors in mind, regardless of the type of business you run. We talked to email marketing experts and business owners who have gone through the process to learn more about the most important criteria to examine before making a purchase.

Determine your needs

Before you begin investigating the email marketing solutions on the market, take some time to consider what your business needs in a platform. Sit down and make a list of the most important things for your purposes. This may include the ability to import an existing email contact list from a spreadsheet, audience segmentation tools for organizing contacts into buckets like “leads” or “repeat customers,” and a low-code drag-and-drop content creation tool

“Our research was directed by the identification of our unique needs in email marketing at the outset of the journey,” said Jake Munday, co-founder and CEO of Custom Neon. “We were able to determine real-world application and satisfaction levels by reading through many customer reviews and case studies.”

Many business owners we spoke with considered aspects like available features and ease of use, balancing advanced functionality with complexity, customization and scalability; ensuring platforms were flexible enough to adapt to their needs and grow with their business over time; customer support responsiveness and quality; and pricing.

Start building a list of email marketing platforms to explore

Take time to research the leading vendors on the market and consider which might have the right offerings for your business. Start putting together a shortlist based on this research — you’ll dig deeper into many of these vendors later on.

For now, consider your most important criteria and add names to the list based on those. For example, if you’re primarily concerned about your budget, add only options that have all the most important features you need at a cost-effective price.

“We initially carried out an exercise to look at as many different options as possible and compare costs for different numbers of subscribers and to check if specific automation functionality we needed was available,” said Laura Grant, marketing manager at Bluesky Solutions. “This then gave us a small shortlist of potential software which we looked at in more detail.”

Examine functionality to determine which platforms suit your needs

To narrow down your list, check out the available features each email marketing software offers. The absence of some tools or functionality may be a dealbreaker, helping you cross some names off your list.

“To support targeted campaigns, we searched for strong analytics, extensive segmentation tools and customization choices,” Munday said. “Ease of integration with our existing CRM and e-commerce platforms was crucial to streamline our workflows.”

These tools were common requirements among the entrepreneurs and professionals we spoke with. However, it’s equally important to balance the slate of features with overall usability. If advanced functionality comes at the expense of user experience, you may find a platform to be more disruptive than it is helpful.

“I needed robust automation, list segmentation capabilities and integration with other tools like my CRM and analytics platform,” said Bassem Mostafa, market analyst and owner of GlobeMonitor Market Research Agency. “Some tools were feature-rich but overly complex, so it was essential to strike the right balance.”

Similar to considering balance between functionality and usability is to consider overall value, not just the total price. The cheapest platform may not provide value if it doesn’t have all the tools you need for example. Finding a solution that combines cost-effective pricing with a strong slate of features is key.

“I personally recommend that while considering tools, think about long-term value, not just the initial price,” said Tom Jauncey, CEO of Nautilus Marketing. “A more expensive option may save you time and ramp up your results in the longer term.”

Schedule product demos and conduct free trials

Once you’ve established a list and refined it with feedback from other professionals and entrepreneurs, begin scheduling live demonstrations and signing up for free trials. We recommend doing both whenever possible; live demonstrations give you a chance to ask questions of sales representatives and see how they use the software, while free trials offer you the freedom to test the software out in real-world situations.

“There is no replacement for a good free trial,” said Brandon Rollins, founder and CEO of Pangea Marketing Agency. “Blog posts, reviews, and even videos are all helpful, but there’s no replacement for using the tool directly and seeing if [it] does exactly what you need it to do.”

Consider onboarding and implementation support

Email marketing software is often fairly easy to set up, but it’s still helpful to have onboarding support. Dedicated account managers and onboarding specialists are especially helpful if it’s your first time setting up email marketing software or if you’re importing an email contact list from a spreadsheet. And, if anything goes wrong, a good onboarding team can help you troubleshoot and resolve your issues quickly.

“For some platforms, the onboarding process was included in the demo, which gave me a good sense of how much support and training was available,” Mostafa said.

Some platforms may not offer an onboarding team but do maintain a library of self-guided resources and how-to video tutorials. Many of these libraries are comprehensive, so if you’re confident they’re sufficient to get you started on the right foot, you may choose to forgo working with onboarding specialists.

Review metrics after setup and implementation

Consider the first month (or however long your contractual obligation is) an extended trial. After getting your email marketing program off the ground with your new tool, review key metrics to determine whether it’s working. You should see improvement in most of them, especially if you’re moving from a manual spreadsheet approach or just beginning email marketing for the first time.

“When it came to user engagement, conversion rates, and deliverability, the platform [we chose] not only met but surpassed our expectations,” Munday said. “Customer satisfaction and retention have significantly improved as a result of the capacity to produce tailored content depending on user behavior and preferences.”

If you see flat or negative trends in your metrics, take a look at how you’re using the tool. Did you segment your audience correctly? Are you using engaging email subject lines? Is your content actually being delivered to user inboxes? If you’re certain you’re abiding by all the best practices and your metrics are still down, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.