How To Choose the Best Email Platform For You

How do you know which email platform to choose for your business? Choosing an email provider can feel overwhelming. There are so many out there with different pros and cons. Today I’m going to walk you through how to choose the best email platform for you and your business, and then I’ll be breaking down some of the most popular email platforms so you can make an educated decision.

Do you utilize email marketing in your business? If you’ve been around me for any length of time, then you’ll know how strongly I feel about the importance of email marketing to grow your business. Email marketing allows you to reach your customers and subscribers at any time of the day or night. Many people now run their businesses solely on social media. While this may seem like a great idea at first, you are leaving your business at the mercy of the social media channel you are posting on. By utilizing email marketing, you are able to control who sees your content more easily and you can make money while you sleep! (Check out my ultimate beginners guide to email marketing HERE.)

3 Steps for Choosing an Email Platform:

1. Know Your Needs- What kind of features and services do you need your email platform to provide? Will you be selling anything through your emails or just providing information to your subscribers?
2. Know Your Budget- How much can you afford to spend on email marketing each month? How much are you willing to invest in building your business through email marketing?
3. Know Where You’re Going– Your budget this year will hopefully not be the same as your budget in 5 years, so don’t place too much emphasis on cost at the beginning. It’s more important to have a vision for where you see your business in 5 years. If you aren’t selling products currently, do you plan to in the future? Choosing an email platform that can support direct selling may be a better fit for you than one that doesn’t.

Here are 5 of the most popular email platforms that are available to small and larger businesses. To make it easy on you, I’ve broken the information down. My goal is to help you visualize which system will help your business grow the way you want it to.

My Top 5 Email Platforms:

Mailchimp

Built to help you grow your own way and send better emails.

Pros:

• Highly ranked among email providers
• Integrates with most 3rd party apps and services
• Generous free plan for under 2500 subscribers
• E-commerce support

Cons:

• High cost plans after you reach the limit on the free plan
• Limited email automation
• Mailchimp vocabulary is not industry standard (you need to learn how to speak ‘Mailchimp’)
• Forms are hard to get to work right on your website without knowledge of css

Price:

Mailchimp has a basic free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers. From there, the price goes up significantly, but so do the plan features that you have access to. The top price of Mailchimp’s service plans starts at $299 a month.

How the Pricing Works:

Mailchimp charges based on not only the amount of subscribers you have to your email lists, but also the number of emails you send per month. Their plan prices and features grow with the amount you are willing to spend per month. It should also be noted that the plan prices are not fixed, and can increase based on the number of subscribers. For instance, a standard plan starts at $14.99 a month for 500 subscribers, but rapidly goes up in price if you add more subscribers to your lists.

Mailchimp Features/Functions:

• A/B testing
• Campaign management
• Engagement analytics
• 3rd party and social media integrations

Flodesk

Design emails people love to get.

Pros:

• Beautiful templates
• In depth statistics
• No coding knowledge needed
• 1 plan, 1 price no matter how big your list is

Cons:

• No A/B testing
• Only supports integrations with Shopify and Zapier
• Relatively new platform, so it lacks some of the deeper analytics options of the larger providers
• Emails are so pretty, they can get sent to spam because of the amount of images

Price:

Flodesk is proud of it’s policy of one plan, one price for all. This means that no matter how big your list becomes, you still pay the same flat rate of $38/month. (Want to get 50% off of that price forever? Click HERE!)

How the Pricing Works:

Like I stated above, there is only one plan. All of the features are available to all users, regardless of their subscriber number and how many emails they send per month.

Flodesk Features/Functions:

• Templates
• Email builder
• High converting forms
• Quick workflow setup

AWeber

“AWeber allows 100,000+ small businesses and entrepreneurs to create and send emails people love”

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Large range of templates
• All features available on all plans
• Award winning customer service

Cons:

• Outdated form and email templates
• Limited automation support
• No A/B testing
• No conditional logic support in emails

Price:

AWeber has 5 plans to choose from. It does not offer a free plan, and instead it’s lowest priced plan is $19 a month. Aweber does offer a discount for paying quarterly or annually.

How the Pricing Works:

AWeber plans start at $19 a month for up to 500 subscribers. The 5 plans offered range from $19 a month to up to $149 a month for up to 25, 000 subscribers. If you have more than 25,000 subscribers, you will need to contact AWeber for a quote.

AWeber Features/Functions:

• Autoresponders
• Responsive email designs
• 3rd party integrations
• A/B Testing

Convertkit

“We exist to help creators earn a living online.”

Pros:

• Great customer support
• All plans include unlimited emails
• Effective visual automations builder
• Create dynamic emails with merge tags

Cons:

• Very limited A/B testing functionality
• Few customization options for forms
• Limited reporting data
• No free plan

Price:

Convertkit pricing varies depending on subscriber numbers only. There is no free plan for small subscriber amounts. Every plan does include unlimited emails, automations, and reports.

How the Pricing Works:

The 7 available plans range in price from $29 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers all the way up to $679 a month for up to 100,000 subscribers.

Convertkit Features/Functions:

• Visual automations
• Landing pages
• Integrations
• Newsletter inbox preview & spam testing

Ontraport

“All your tools. All your data. All in one software.”

 Pros:

• Award winning customer service
• Seamless integrations
• E-commerce features
• Great prices for the features you are getting

Cons:

• Dashboard interface not visually appealing
• Basic plan isn’t easily scalable as you grow
• Starting price is high
• Minimalist reporting capabilities

Pricing:

Ontraport has 4 plans to choose from. They do not offer a free plan, but they do offer customized plans for very large businesses with up to 5 million contacts.

How the Pricing Works:

The basic plan is $79 a month and supports up to 1,000 subscribers. The largest plan is the Enterprise plan which runs $497 a month and supports 20,000+ subscribers/contacts.

Ontraport Features/Functions:

• Powerful CRM system
• Membership sites
• One click WP hosting
• Payment processing

In Conclusion:

Now that I’ve reviewed my top 5 email platforms, I hope you can see which one would work best for your business. Email marketing should be a pivotal part of your online presence if you are wanting to grow. By utilizing email marketing, you will be able to create more content that converts. I know you will be amazed at what a difference the right email platform can make in your business.

For your reference, here are links to each email platform:

Mailchimp click HERE

Flodesk click HERE

AWeber click HERE

Ontraport click HERE

Convertkit click HERE

Have you joined my content challenge yet?

Give me 5 days and I will show you how easy it is to create 1 whole year of content that converts! Join HERE