Last week we covered some of the jargon you’d need to understand to immerse yourself in the renaissance of email marketing. Today we’ll be following that up by taking you through the pros and cons of three popular email marketing platforms to work out which is right for you.

MailChimp

• There’s a free plan for small businesses and the platform makes it easy for first time users to understand.
• Ready made templates with great customization (including directly messing with the HTML if you’re that way inclined) and an ‘inbox viewer’ to check how your creations will appear across a variety of devices and software.
• The paid plans aren’t the cheapest but the flexibility is a plus. Allowing you to pay for exactly what you need with a Pay As You Go option is certainly a nice touch.
• Unfortunately the analytic tools aren’t available on the free plan so that’s one of the main draws of email marketing you won’t have any access to.
• You also can’t set up a paid option right away due to its anti spamming checks. These are at least relatively simple (if time consuming) to get through though.

Due to the free option it holds a place as an excellent introduction to the world of email marketing platforms or for those operating on a shoestring budget. The analytics will be non-existent however so a paid plan or alternative service will be necessary if you decide to expand your reliance on EDM.

Campaigner

• Free trial available.
• Simple, easy to use interface and email editor (of both visual and HTML varieties)
• Reasonably priced – starting at £15 for up to 1,000 subscribers – and even their lowest tiers come with more high quality kit than you can shake a mailing list at.
• The email workflow and autoresponder features are always a welcome addition – their automation features lets you set up emails to be sent based on your contacts behaviour and engagement (or lack thereof).
• Award winning 24/7 support.
• Somewhat disjointed automation options – the autoresponder templates are limited and selecting subscribers from different segments is more awkward than it should be.
• The Workflows tool is better designed and more powerful than the Autoresponder but is only available at the 100,000 Contacts tier.

It may be helpful and inviting but unlike its simian cousin this service is more for those with a knowledge of EDM analytics and automation. You can really get into the nitty gritty of who and how to target with a variety of great tools but it’s only at the higher subscription tiers that you unlock the more powerful automation tools. A level likely beyond the typical indie business. Don’t forget about the free trial period though. If you’re not sure which email marketing platforms for you, take this for a test spin and see what you think!

SendinBlue

• One of the platform’s unique selling points is its integration of SMS for code verification, order tracking or any other use you can think of.
• It also provides a wider range of transactional (account creation or password reset for instance) and autoresponder emails than the average platform.
• Unlike Campaigner, automation via workflows is both available from the lowest subscription and has a variety of premade designs you can then edit to your heart’s content. The automation also extends to segmentation with emailing lists being updated on the fly as contacts’ circumstances change.
• Lack of A/B Testing and drag-and-drop makes it a poor choice for major enterprises.
• Somewhat basic templates for emails.
• Email uploads can be something of a pain as by default it only recognises names and email addresses – you can’t add birthday dates, gender or other such personal info on manual inputs.

As email marketing platforms go, SendinBlue comes across as a bit of an oddball at first but don’t let that put you off. It may be lacking a little polish but it is highly affordable and great for anyone that needs to use texts and transactional emails for their business. An eCommerce site would be a perfect fit. The lack of certain quality of life features will however limit the size of business it can support.