If you’re a small business just starting out, you’ve probably learned the hard way that getting your brand out there is a full-time job on its own - and one that you may not have expected at that. Luckily, a fantastic way to market your business is with email marketing.
That said, your campaigns are only as powerful as the tools you have to create them, and if you’re on an extreme budget, you may not have factored in that many email marketing services are paid ones. Well, worry no more, we’re going to show you some of the best email marketing platforms (if you'd like to see email marketing examples, we have that too) that you can use for absolutely free. And don't worry - you can connect your email to your Wix website, too.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is the process of sending emails to promote one’s business. These emails tend to be sent to people who had previously signed up to receive updates from that said business. They’re sometimes referred to as newsletters (we have some great newsletter examples to show this), and can contain business promotions and discounts codes, sale notifications, and other business updates, like a new blog post alert.
Why is email marketing important?
Email itself is becoming more important than ever in our increasingly connected online world, so newsletters, email blasts and welcome emails from businesses are commonplace and expected. Not to mention, your competitors have probably established their presence in your customer’s inbox, from subject line down to signature (where these best email signature examples can help inspire). That’s why it’s totally natural for you to get yourself in the game.
What are the benefits of email marketing?
Now you know why email marketing is important, you should also know the benefits of the practice as well. And there are plenty — almost to the point that it’s hard to deny its usefulness.
It’s one of the most direct and personal ways to connect with your audience
More effective than social media marketing
It’s measurable for future optimization
It’s a cost effective marketing practice compared to other methods
Helps strengthen relationships with your customers
Increase website traffic, and in turn could increase sales
This is a form of marketing that works well, as it’s permission-based. Someone who wants to get updates or know when there’s something new goes out of their way to sign up for newsletters, so they know what they’re getting themselves into.
Best free email marketing services
If you’re starting to look into an email marketing service to promote your business, you have more than a couple to choose from. Luckily for the beginner, many popular paid platforms have free versions with limited functionality so you can get an idea of how it works, but it may be all you need to start.
Here are some of the best free email marketing services you can find:
Wix Email Marketing
Mailchimp
SendInBlue
Benchmark
Mailerlite
SendPulse
Wix is more than a website builder — it’s a one stop shop for all your business marketing needs, and email marketing is one of the many things on offer.
The Wix Email Marketing free plan offers three email campaigns that can be sent across 5,000 emails. You can spread the sending limit across three or just send one large email blast instead. The email quota and sending limit is reset on the first of every month, regardless of when you sent your first newsletter out.
When you’re ready to graduate to bigger sending allotments and features, there are multiple plans that are available so you get exactly what you need.
Free plan includes:
Collective 5,000 individual emails spread across 1-3 email campaigns
Highlights:
No limit on template choices
Quota resets at the first of the month, regardless of when first campaign was sent
Marketing automation to automatically send out certain emails
Inbuilt analytics to track your email marketing KPIs
02. Mailchimp
Easily one of the most notable and popular email marketing platforms comes from Mailchimp. The nearly 20-year old company has been around for quite a while (in internet years), and offers a full suite of features to its customers, whether you’re a paying or free member.
The free membership gives access to a set of basic features for a small business that’s just starting out. This includes basic templates, a marketing CRM, basic campaign reporting, 2,000 contacts and a 10,000 send limit per month.
One nice thing about Mailchimp is that if you’re not ready to move towards a fully paid plan, but need more than the free plan, add-ons and pay-as-you-go options are available.
Free plan includes:
10,000 email sends to up to 2,000 contacts per month
Daily send limit of 2,000
A “few” basic email templates
Basic reporting
Highlight:
Mailchimp is tried, true, and reliable
03. SendInBlue
SendInBlue gets high marks all around thanks to its dead simple tools and that the free plan itself doesn’t cap you on subscribers. If building out your subscriber list is your primary mission, then this is an option that offers no fuss.
Of course, “free” anything tends to come with limitations, and SendInBlue is no exception. While there is a monthly cap of 9,000 emails, which isn’t bad at all, the daily limit of 300 may be too small for some out there. That said, if you’re just beginning, which you very well could be, SendInBlue isn’t to be passed up.
Free plan includes:
Daily send limit of 300 emails/day
Unlimited contacts
Highlight:
Transactional email and SMS sending in free plan
04. Benchmark
Benchmark offers up one of the easier to use newsletter editors compared to the competition, which says a lot. We’d like to say we know a thing or two about drag and drop editors, and it’s definitely up there with the best of them.
The free email marketing plan from Benchmark is pretty impressive, given that it shares a ton with some of it’s paid options. You can send a fairly generous 14,000 emails to up to 2,000 clients per month, which falls in line with a lot of the competition out there.
What is going to be a bit of a pain for some people out there is the storage for images on the free plan. It’s limited to 10MB, which is kind of ridiculous, but you can expand the storage through paid means.
Free plan includes:
2,000 subscribers
14,000 emails a month
Highlight:
Fantastic drag and drop editor
05. Mailerlite
If you’re an absolute beginner and aren’t looking to jump into the complex ins and outs of email marketing just yet, Mailerlite could be a good place for you to start. It’s a very beginner-friendly platform, and the free plan should offer more than enough for a small business just starting out.
On the free plan, Mailerlite allows a user to send unlimited emails to up to 1,000 subscribers per month, which is a pretty decent allotment. You can also expect the free plan to share a lot with the paid plans, but the features that are missing are fairly big ones. For instance, newsletter templates aren’t available for the free plan, which may or may not be a big deal for you, but it’s certainly going to turn some people off.
There’s a lot to like about Mailerlite, and it should be one of the first stops for the complete newbies out there.
Free plan includes:
Free until over 1000 subscribers
Send 12,000 emails per month
Campaign reports
Highlight:
Offers more premium features than other free plans
06. SendPulse
As far as “free” pricing plans go, SendPulse offers one of the best for people testing out email marketing waters. The free plans have more commonalities than differences, but of course, the best of the best features are behind the paywall.
Like some others on this list, SendPulse’s free plan suffers from a paltry allotment of image storage of 20MB. That said, the paid option only will get you to 200MB, which is much more than the free option, but hardly something we’d call uber-spacious. Nonetheless, if you’re planning on sending graphics/media heavy newsletters, this may not be the best option, but that’ll be up to you to decide.
Overall, SendPulse, while not the most heard of option out there, offers a ton of features in its free plan that makes it an easy go to for beginners and marketers on a zero budget.
Free plan includes:
15,000 emails to up to 2,500 subscribers
Easy campaign creation (drag and drop editor)
Campaign statistic reports
Highlight:
Wide selection of template choices
Automation for up to 5 events
