The best email marketing software: Comparison and reviews

Are you an entrepreneur, running a startup or an online business?

Whether you manage a micro-enterprise or a small or medium-sized enterprise, you are probably looking for email marketing software that can meet your marketing needs.

This article will guide you towards the ideal solution. It's important to remember that email remains a key marketing tool, often the most effective for boosting online sales.

To increase the visibility of your products, grow your website business, and build customer loyalty, an email marketing solution is essential for creating effective campaigns.

How do you compare different email marketing software and make the right choice to maximize your return on investment? Let's find out together.

First, what is email marketing?

Before discussing the comparison of email marketing software , it would be wise to understand the concept itself.

Also called email marketing, emailing is the term used to designate, as a direct marketing , the creation and sending of emails.

This is a system that has long been confused with mass mailing, but nowadays is based on the agreement of the recipient contacts as well as the personalization of content from your site.

Email marketing represents a real support to digital marketing policy and is now considered the most powerful path with a surprising return on investment that is currently estimated at 3800%.

In our opinion, it is becoming increasingly impossible to have an activity on your website or an online business today without resorting to creating emails through some medium.

Your website benefits greatly from this. Whether it's order confirmation emails from the site or your website's news newsletter, email marketing has become an essential tool for the efficient management and growth of your business, and it would be worthwhile to explore its potential.

That is why we offer you, in a comparison, an overview of the software that plays a role in the successful execution of an effective email campaign through your website for excellent promotion of your products.

Comparison of some email marketing software

When you're in e-commerce or any other field, choosing the best email marketing software from the vast array available for your website is a significant undertaking. Yet, creating effective campaigns shouldn't be taken lightly. That's why a comparison tool is ideal.

An email marketing software, or email marketing solution, is a program that also acts as a router for your email campaigns through your website. A wide variety of solutions and software are available on the market, and reviews vary considerably.

It's difficult to assess them without making a comparison. That's why it's becoming increasingly complex to find the ideal medium for bulk mailings, often carried out in online commerce.

Here is a selection of the best email marketing software for you, with a complete comparison to discover in the following lines.

Magileads : a marketing tool with multiple functionalities

Designed by Armand Thiberge and Kapil Sharma in 2012, Sendinblue is an email marketing solution with over 80,000 users and offices in France, India and the United States.

It's among the best software on the market and deserves its place in this comparison. According to most reviews, the marketing solution we're presenting here is high-quality, featuring an intuitive and comprehensive tool, responsive support, and even tips for improving the deliverability of email campaigns sent via the website.

With this software, several services or features, including the principle of automation, are available to the user, who will be able to discover them easily when creating events on their site.

Emailing

Based on reviews and observations, it's clear that Sendinblue's primary service for your website remains email marketing and transactional email marketing.

According to reviews, you shouldn't expect to create cold email marketing campaigns for non-opt-in email addresses with Sendinblue. Once your account is created, it is reviewed and validated by the Sendinblue team, who also have the right to reject it.

Ideally, certain essential criteria should be strictly adhered to in order to avoid account suspension. These are:

A minimum open rate that varies between 10 and 12%;
A maximum unsubscribe rate of between 1 and 2%;
A complaint rate of 0.2%
A hard bounce rate of 2 to 3%.

Sendinblue is a platform that offers several templates which are available to the user, which they can explore as needed.

This software is very easy to use according to most reviews, and includes a drag and drop system that allows you to quickly modify your emails, which is not always the case with other software.

Sending SMS messages

This is the second feature to discover that Sendinblue has offered since its launch in 2012 for the effective creation of email campaigns. As you might guess, SMS is undoubtedly the ideal complementary service to support email marketing. Sendinblue therefore offers transactional and promotional SMS messaging, and it's worth noting that sending SMS messages from the software is as easy as sending an email, according to user reviews.

The cat

Here's a feature worth discovering, which we believe is just as essential to complement the software, but which is rather overlooked by industry veterans. It's also a very easy-to-discover and use feature with this support, offering you the ability to configure, customize, and administer the chat for ease of use.

The CRM

CRM, on the other hand, is a feature that is still underdeveloped in the software. It's much more akin to a contact manager than a true CRM. This is why Sendinblue is most often associated with website creation software designed for CRM. Nevertheless, it's a feature that users can easily discover and use, as highlighted by most reviews, particularly those from business owners or very small businesses.

Marketing automation

The third major pillar of this software to discover is marketing automation, which is very important given the number of positive reviews it receives in the market. The concept of automation makes the solution very intuitive. It becomes very easy and, above all, very flexible to configure automations with the platform used. Marketing automation is used, among other things, to:

Create a form on your website;
Edit a landing page;
Edit a call to action on your website;
Create and send an email or SMS;
Create email templates, a workflow;
Create a segmentation.

Software price

In terms of pricing, Sendinblue aims to be very competitive. It offers a pricing structure based on the number of emails sent per month, with several price tiers available. The software offers 9,000 free email creations, but charges €19 per month for each email sent beyond 10,000.

Configured languages

The languages configured in the software are French, English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and German.

The Sarbacane software

The solution featured in this comparison is a product of Sarbacane, a company based in Hem, in northern France. They developed their software in 2001 and have refined it over the years, making it one of the best programs available on the market and receiving top reviews. Like the previous one, it offers several features.

First and foremost, email marketing is at the heart of the services offered by Sarbacane, which focuses on marketing and transactional emails. It relies primarily on email creation, available templates, and routing support for improved deliverability. This alone is enough to garner a large number of positive reviews.

Next, we'll need to explore the SMS sending function, which perfectly complements these emails in marketing. Improving this module allows Sarbacane to make a significant technological leap forward.

Chat is another feature worth discovering, and one that cannot be overlooked among the many functionalities offered by this campaign creation software for your website. As with the previous software, the chat function, while very useful in our opinion, lags behind the leading solutions already available on the market. This service provides access to chatbots, marketing notifications, satisfaction surveys, and more.

CRM, on the other hand, is one of the features that you can discover in the least sophisticated software to date, and it is much more like a contact manager than a true CRM.

The marketing automation module also comes with Sarbacane email creation software, allowing you to configure email sending automation to improve efficiency. In our opinion, and according to many others, automation offers significant time savings. This software, featured in our comparison, has several features to explore, such as workflow, triggers, segmentation, reporting, landing pages, and tag addition. Its real value lies in automatically personalizing messages based on the prospect's interests or opinions, or even the customer's behavior on your website.

Regarding pricing, Sarbacane, the software included in this comparison, is a campaign creation tool that operates on a subscription basis. You'll receive a certain number of email credits each month, which will roll over to the following month if unused. Sarbacane offers several pricing plans, including a trial period for those who wish to test it out—a very advantageous option in our opinion. Note that the minimum price is €59 per month.

The languages available in this software are French, English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Dutch.

The MailJet software

MailJet is another essential software that any website will need, and it's included in this comparison. It's quite unique because it focuses exclusively on email marketing. The reason for this is that it only offers features directly related to email. In other words, unlike the other software in this comparison, MailJet doesn't offer web chat, a landing page builder, or CRM functionality—some limitations considering current demand. It's well-known for sending newsletters and is used by many large companies for mass email campaigns.

To find out more, know that MailJet offers services such as drag and drop email editing, a wide range of templates, the ability to personalize emails, to work with several people on the same email, the design of registration forms on your website, the organization of your site, the segmentation and sorting of lists, not to mention A/B testing and reporting, enough to get a lot of positive feedback.

In addition to email marketing, MailJet offers a service for creating and sending transactional or promotional SMS messages. Marketing automation is also among the services this software provides for your website. It includes all the features of a standard automation software, such as segmentation, workflow, tagging, and list management. It's worth noting that MailJet has mastered this functionality, allowing users to save considerable time and optimize the quality of their communications.

Regarding pricing, MailJet offers several monthly subscription plans. However, it provides 6,000 emails per month for free, with a limit of 200 emails per day. The plan costs €7.95 per month once you exceed the 6,000 email limit and remain within the maximum limit of 30,000 emails.

Finally, this software from our comparison is available in four languages to discover: French, English, Spanish and German.

Any other solutions besides those proposed above?

The answer to this question is clearly yes. The software programs mentioned in our initial comparison are simply those most commonly used. Therefore, there are not just one, but several other software programs available online that you can explore to get more value from clicks on your website. Here are a few that, in our opinion, deserve your attention.

HubSpot: powerful software, but quite expensive in terms of marketing automation

We now invite you to discover HubSpot. This email marketing platform has garnered numerous positive reviews for its performance and offers a range of features, primarily focused on email marketing and newsletter creation. While less popular in France than Sendinblue, Sarbacane, or MailJet, many customers and reviews agree that HubSpot is an excellent alternative for those seeking a high-quality email marketing tool for their website. The main drawback, according to most reviews, remains its inaccessibility for those on a tight budget, despite the power of its features.

However, reviews are less favorable due to the cost of HubSpot's email marketing solution. It becomes even more expensive when you use its marketing automation features. It also offers a powerful landing page and comprehensive documentation. It's important to note that the web support is primarily available in French; only the mobile app is in English.

The first 2,000 emails of the month are free without advanced features and the basic plan is charged at €46 per month for 1,000 contacts.

Sendgrid: an email marketing software with additional fees

Here's another software in this comparison that has earned its place among the top-performing email marketing tools. However, it's worth noting that SendGrid is limited when it comes to transactional emails. With this tool, you can easily create responsive emails and design simple newsletter campaigns. However, it's important to note that you pay more (API subscription) as soon as you use it to send transactional emails, such as purchase confirmations after an action on your website.

However, the cost of transactional emails sent via SMTP relay is already included in the basic plan. SendGrid offers an intuitive editing platform, a comprehensive resource package, and good deliverability. Note that the platform for this solution is only available in English. Support, both web and mobile, is also only available in English, which is not at all advantageous in our opinion.

Finally, regarding pricing, users can send the first 6,000 emails of the month for free, with a target of 2,000 contacts. Pricing thereafter will depend on the number of emails sent and the number of recipients.

WordPress: an essential tool in the world of email marketing

Many opinions suggest that WordPress is increasingly becoming a highly beneficial tool in the world of email marketing and especially for website management. It's important to clarify that WordPress wasn't originally one of the aforementioned software programs. It's a tool that offers several advantages, some of which are related to email marketing. WordPress is much more prominent in website design.

One in four websites is built using the WordPress CMS, which means it's brimming with resources. This tool includes applications called extensions or plugins, and there are over 50,000 of them in the WordPress database. WordPress, with its many themes, allows you to do a lot, such as creating and sending newsletters, connecting to CRM systems, creating email campaigns using the SMTP server for your website, and much more. In short, a real asset for your site, in our opinion.

What criteria should be used to determine the price of email marketing software?

Based on the information above, it's clear that the price of an email marketing solution depends on several factors. These include the number of emails sent, the number of recipient contacts in the database, additional features, and support. Some providers offer up to 10,000 emails per month. In our opinion, it would be reasonable to budget between €50 and €100 per month if you're looking for a comprehensive software package.

How to make the right choice among these email marketing software programs?

Just like in a supermarket, choosing your software should take into account your needs and the objectives of your digital marketing strategy. It's perfectly understandable that you're wondering how to make the best choice among these email marketing software options . It's advisable to do your research and then prioritize features like automation, considering those you deem less important for your website. If possible, gather information or take advantage of a free trial to examine the software and its benefits for your site.

Is it possible to single out one of these software programs as the best of all?

The answer to this question is entirely relative, as there's no single best email marketing software. Opinions vary. You simply need to choose the one that perfectly suits your needs, your website, and your profile, whether it's for general email marketing, cold emailing, or transactional emailing. Considering factors such as price, the need for website event automation, and chat functionality, the best email marketing software for you will be the one that meets your specific requirements.

Marketing automation according to Magileads

MagiLeads' automation solution allows you to easily create automated scenarios to send personalized messages to your leads.

With automation, you know precisely how prospects interact with your content. You gather information about their behavior. This allows you to better qualify your leads.

Finally, with the lead scoring feature, you can automate the transmission of hot leads to sales teams to initiate initial sales contact at the right time.

Email marketing remains a top channel for sales prospecting. However, to maintain its effectiveness, it's now essential to refine the creation of sequences, message content, and results analysis. Adopting an email automation solution like Magileads will help you optimize your campaigns.

Marketing automation according to Magileads

MagiLeads' automation solution allows you to easily create automated scenarios to send personalized messages to your leads.

With automation, you know precisely how prospects interact with your content. You gather information about their behavior. This allows you to better qualify your leads.

Finally, with the lead scoring feature, you can automate the transmission of hot leads to sales teams to initiate initial sales contact at the right time.

The best email marketing software: Comparison and reviews

The best email marketing software: Comparison and reviews