The best email marketing software in 2025: Expert tested

AI has completely changed the way email marketing works. The best tools in 2025 don't just send or host emails anymore. They help you write them, pick the right audience, choose when to send, and even tweak things in real time based on how people react. They'll come up with subject lines, personalize each message, and keep improving as they go. Honestly, if you're still just sending the same email to everyone, you're already falling behind.

At ZDNET, we tested many email marketing platforms against real-world use cases, from solo creators and startups to growing teams running complex automations. We focused on AI features, deliverability, ease of use, and privacy compliance.

What is the best email marketing software right now?

Right now, Mailchimp is my go-to pick for most people. That's because it's simple, does the job well, and has enough features without feeling too cluttered. But, if you're looking for something more advanced, like a full CRM alongside email, HubSpot is a great option, especially if you already use it for other parts of your business. I'd also suggest MailerLite if you're big on automation and want to create more personalized, behavior-based flows.

The best email marketing software in 2025

If you're new to email marketing and want a powerful platform that's easy to begin with, Mailchimp has to be at the top of your priority list. You can instantly sign up for its free plan and build your first campaign. With step-by-step buttons on its dashboard, like importing or creating your contact list, connecting an integration, and importing your brand persona, your first round of emails or SMS campaign will be ready in no time. 

Here, you can either start from scratch or use a campaign template. The drag-and-drop editor makes the entire setup process easy, though the free templates are pretty barebones unless you upgrade. The automation builder can trigger emails based on sign-ups, tags, events, or custom criteria you set. I tested both prebuilt and custom journeys, and while it takes a few minutes to learn the flow, it's flexible and powerful once you do. That said, Classic Automations were discontinued in mid-2025 by Mailchimp, so if you're coming back to the platform after a while, expect to rebuild from scratch and pay for something that used to be free.

Moreover, Mailchimp's dashboard actually recommends flows based on common goals like welcoming new contacts, sharing content with Meta leads, or sending birthday discounts. These flows save serious time for basic tasks like recovering abandoned carts or nurturing repeat buyers. The thing is, on the Free plan, you can preview them, but you'll need to upgrade to actually launch them. Still, it's nice to see what's possible before committing. Setting up a flow is visual, i.e., more drag-and-drop than techy, which makes it approachable, even if you've never done automation before. Once you understand how triggers and actions work together, you can build out surprisingly complex sequences.

Plans start free with 500 contacts, then scale based on list size. Paid plans include Essentials (from $13 per month), Standard (from $20 per month), and Premium (from $350 per month for 10,000+ contacts). So, if you're working with a small list, the Free or Essentials plan might be enough. You can also buy credits with a Pay As You Go plan if you send your emails occasionally. Free trials run for 14 days on Standard or Essentials, and nonprofits get a 15% discount. 

Mailchimp features: Email + SMS campaign builder | Prebuilt automation flows | List segmentation and tagging | Signup forms and popups | Landing page builder | 250+ integrations | 14-day free trial on paid plans

• Clean UI
• Insightful campaign reports
• Good deliverability for large audience segments
• Visual journey builder

• No analytics on the free plan
• Cost goes up quickly as contacts grow

If you're new to email marketing and want a powerful platform that's easy to begin with, Mailchimp has to be at the top of your priority list. You can instantly sign up for its free plan and build your first campaign. With step-by-step buttons on its dashboard, like importing or creating your contact list, connecting an integration, and importing your brand persona, your first round of emails or SMS campaign will be ready in no time. 

Here, you can either start from scratch or use a campaign template. The drag-and-drop editor makes the entire setup process easy, though the free templates are pretty barebones unless you upgrade. The automation builder can trigger emails based on sign-ups, tags, events, or custom criteria you set. I tested both prebuilt and custom journeys, and while it takes a few minutes to learn the flow, it's flexible and powerful once you do. That said, Classic Automations were discontinued in mid-2025 by Mailchimp, so if you're coming back to the platform after a while, expect to rebuild from scratch and pay for something that used to be free.

Moreover, Mailchimp's dashboard actually recommends flows based on common goals like welcoming new contacts, sharing content with Meta leads, or sending birthday discounts. These flows save serious time for basic tasks like recovering abandoned carts or nurturing repeat buyers. The thing is, on the Free plan, you can preview them, but you'll need to upgrade to actually launch them. Still, it's nice to see what's possible before committing. Setting up a flow is visual, i.e., more drag-and-drop than techy, which makes it approachable, even if you've never done automation before. Once you understand how triggers and actions work together, you can build out surprisingly complex sequences.

Plans start free with 500 contacts, then scale based on list size. Paid plans include Essentials (from $13 per month), Standard (from $20 per month), and Premium (from $350 per month for 10,000+ contacts). So, if you're working with a small list, the Free or Essentials plan might be enough. You can also buy credits with a Pay As You Go plan if you send your emails occasionally. Free trials run for 14 days on Standard or Essentials, and nonprofits get a 15% discount. 

Mailchimp features: Email + SMS campaign builder | Prebuilt automation flows | List segmentation and tagging | Signup forms and popups | Landing page builder | 250+ integrations | 14-day free trial on paid plans

HubSpot is built for marketers who want their email to work hand-in-hand with CRM data, sales outreach, and long-term customer journeys. That was my biggest advantage during testing, meaning everything was already connected. Creating an email starts with three options: regular, automated, and blog-triggered. I went with a regular campaign. From there, you land inside a clean editor where the modules are laid out clearly. 

Once you draft your email and select your contact list, you can move toward the automation segment. Here, you can build visual workflows with branching logic, lead scoring, and goal tracking. A campaign can start from a form fill, email click, or even a blog visit. From there, HubSpot handles the branching, like what content goes to which segment, who gets a follow-up, and when to pause. All this makes me feel like I'm managing a system instead of drafting emails.

The reporting tools are also better than what I saw in most platforms. The Analyze and Health tabs give you real-time deliverability benchmarks, and you can build custom dashboards that pull metrics from email, sales, and web behavior together. If you're looking to tie campaign results back to business outcomes, this is the feature to look out for.

For further assistance, Copilot is built into the interface on the right-hand side of the editor. You can use it to summarize contact info, research companies, or even rewrite subject lines based on tone. This saved me time during testing, especially when I wanted to clean up the tone of a promo without sounding robotic.

As for limits, the free plan gives you 2,000 sends per month, and that's actually enough for most small lists. But if you're ready to build more complex workflows or remove branding, you'll need to upgrade to the Marketing Hub Pro plan.

Under this, the Paid tiers include Marketing Hub Starter ($9 per month), Marketing Hub Professional ($800 per month, includes 2,000 contacts), and Marketing Hub Enterprise ($3,600 per month, includes 10,000 contacts). Each tier increases your send limit based on contact count and unlocks more features like dynamic personalization, journey automation, and advanced analytics. The Professional plan includes a one-time $3,000 onboarding fee, and Enterprise onboarding starts at $7,000, so it's a serious investment once you scale.

HubSpot features: Visual journey builder | Built-in deliverability health check | AI content assistant (Copilot) | Custom dashboards and analytics | List suppression rules | 2,000 sends per month on free plan

• Generous free plan
• In-depth guides
• Built-in AI CoPilot

• Overwhelming interface

MailerLite can help you run email campaigns, create automations based on receiver behavior, develop forms, landing pages, and more. All this makes it an all-around marketing tool for getting leads and building a community around your product.

Just like Mailchimp, there's a drag-and-drop editor that I used to build a simple campaign on the platform. There are multiple options to choose from here, like regular, A/B, auto-resend, and even RSS. The regular campaign flow comes with a subject line preview pane, email personalization tokens, and sender settings all upfront, before even getting to the design. To get a better idea, the editor shows live previews as you tweak blocks, and there's a good set of content blocks like countdowns, image galleries, and coupon codes. Plus, if you want to reuse a layout you can save any campaign as a custom template.

Forms and landing pages are built from the same visual interface, with identical design logic. You can access pop-ups, embedded forms, or even full landing pages, and you can edit success messages, trigger timings, and confirmation flows without leaving the visual builder. I found this especially useful when testing double opt-in flows, something that helps you see exactly what users will experience.

MailerLite also offers a pretty dynamic automation setup. You pick a trigger, like "subscriber joins a group" or "clicks a link," and then build out your flow visually. Delays, emails, and conditions are simple drag-and-drop blocks. I created a three-email onboarding flow with one condition and a time delay of under 10 minutes. I personally feel MailerLite isn't trying to be hypersmart, but it gives you all the tools in a manageable, human way.

On the analytics side, all paid plans include open rate, CTR, unsubscribes, and heatmaps. The free version doesn't show deep breakdowns or comparative reporting, but it's enough to understand what worked. You can also resend to unopened recipients with a single click or schedule a resend automatically.

Plans start with a free tier (up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails), and then jump to Growing Business ($10 per month) and Advanced ($20 per month). Remember, you'll need the paid version if you want automations, dynamic content, or click maps. It also offers a 30-day trial of all features on sign-up, so you can use the tool well enough before committing to a paid plan.

MailerLite features: Drag-and-drop campaign builder | Popups and embedded forms | Prebuilt and custom automations | Landing page builder | Subscriber segmentation | Smart resend and A/B testing | 30-day premium trial for new users

• Integrates with 140+ tools
• Landing page builder
• Prebuilt automations
• Low-cost A/B testing

• Doesn't work with Gmail accounts
• Free plan lacks automation templates

Brevo handles marketing and various other transactional emails from one unified dashboard. You can start off a campaign by naming your email, choosing recipients from a list, and customizing the subject line. I liked that personalization tokens (like first name) are available right from the subject field, and there's a fallback built in. For branding, I entered a website URL, and Brevo pulled the logo, colors, and fonts automatically. It wasn't perfect, but it got me 80% of the way there.

The email drafter itself is pretty easy to use. You get full control over blocks, sections, and brand styles. I dragged in a banner image, wrote a welcome header, and used Brevo's AI assistant to generate paragraph text. It worked pretty well, especially the "shorten" and "friendly tone" tweaks. I also adjusted padding, centered content, and changed button styles with just a few clicks. And, if you're targeting a niche audience, the mobile previews actually reflect the changes in real time without refreshing the whole editor.

I also tested a saved template and reused custom sections like CTAs and image blocks in another campaign. Everything syncs across the Templates tab and the Content Library, so you don't need to rebuild layouts again.

Scheduling options let you send now, schedule later, or use "best send time" based on engagement. Once live, Brevo shows open, click, bounce, and unsubscribe rates along with heatmaps. Notably, it doesn't go as deep into CRM metrics like HubSpot, but for basic and midtier needs, the data is easy to access and act upon.

Plans start free with a 300-emails-per-day cap, which is fine if you're just getting started or testing out the platform. The Starter plan begins at $9 per month and lifts the daily cap. You'll get up to 5,000 emails per month, 24/7 email support, and access to basic analytics. If you want to remove Brevo's logo from emails, that's offered as an add-on. For workflows, predictive sending, landing pages, or multiuser access, you'll need the Business plan (which starts at $18 per month). This one also includes A/B testing, advanced stats, and phone support.

Brevo features: 150+ integrations | 50+ free email templates | Predictive sending AI | Prebuilt content blocks | Real-time delivery rates

• Beginner friendly
• Smooth list management
• Real-time previews
• Multichannel campaigns

• Limited daily email sends on the free plan
• Custom branding locked behind paid tiers

Brevo handles marketing and various other transactional emails from one unified dashboard. You can start off a campaign by naming your email, choosing recipients from a list, and customizing the subject line. I liked that personalization tokens (like first name) are available right from the subject field, and there's a fallback built in. For branding, I entered a website URL, and Brevo pulled the logo, colors, and fonts automatically. It wasn't perfect, but it got me 80% of the way there.

The email drafter itself is pretty easy to use. You get full control over blocks, sections, and brand styles. I dragged in a banner image, wrote a welcome header, and used Brevo's AI assistant to generate paragraph text. It worked pretty well, especially the "shorten" and "friendly tone" tweaks. I also adjusted padding, centered content, and changed button styles with just a few clicks. And, if you're targeting a niche audience, the mobile previews actually reflect the changes in real time without refreshing the whole editor.

I also tested a saved template and reused custom sections like CTAs and image blocks in another campaign. Everything syncs across the Templates tab and the Content Library, so you don't need to rebuild layouts again.

Scheduling options let you send now, schedule later, or use "best send time" based on engagement. Once live, Brevo shows open, click, bounce, and unsubscribe rates along with heatmaps. Notably, it doesn't go as deep into CRM metrics like HubSpot, but for basic and midtier needs, the data is easy to access and act upon.

Plans start free with a 300-emails-per-day cap, which is fine if you're just getting started or testing out the platform. The Starter plan begins at $9 per month and lifts the daily cap. You'll get up to 5,000 emails per month, 24/7 email support, and access to basic analytics. If you want to remove Brevo's logo from emails, that's offered as an add-on. For workflows, predictive sending, landing pages, or multiuser access, you'll need the Business plan (which starts at $18 per month). This one also includes A/B testing, advanced stats, and phone support.

Brevo features: 150+ integrations | 50+ free email templates | Predictive sending AI | Prebuilt content blocks | Real-time delivery rates

If you're running an e-commerce store, especially on Shopify, Klaviyo is built to handle the exact retention tactics you'll need once ads start to plateau. Be it segmentation, automation, or campaign targeting, it's already wired for online sales.

I started with the basics like branding, domain authentication, and syncing my store, and then moved straight into building core flows. Klaviyo's automation section (called "Flows") stores prebuilt templates for welcome, cart abandonment, and postpurchase flows. It's further focused on revenue recovery. For instance, the abandoned checkout flow triggers based on checkout starts and brings in product details dynamically. Add a follow-up reminder and an urgency-based CTA, and you'll have a high-performing series live in under an hour. If that's not enough, you can layer in browse abandonment, win-back, and review request flows using the same interface.

Even the Campaigns are highly detailed here. You can build an engaged segment based on open/click activity in the last 60 days, select a campaign template, drop in product images, and track ROI per email sent. Klaviyo shows opens, clicks, conversions, and even syncs revenue data from your Shopify or Woo store. 

Signup forms are equally customizable. You can set up a two-step popup with email and SMS fields, target it by device, and delay the trigger to 4 seconds after load. I built one with a "You've got 10% off" headline and a forced click-through for "No thanks, I'll pay full price." That micro-interaction actually increased opt-ins during testing. Each form can be styled separately for mobile and desktop, which helps keep the layout tight for each experience.

In terms of usage, you can start for free with Klaviyo and send up to 500 emails a month to 250 profiles. If you're ready to upgrade, the Email plan starts at $20 per month for 500 profiles and unlocks full reporting dashboards, AI content generation, logo removal, and ongoing support. It still excludes predictive analytics and multichannel features. That means for the full package, including multichannel attribution, and predictive tools, you'll need the Email + SMS plan starting at $35 per month. 

Klaviyo features: Cross-channel flows | Automated smart send time | Shopify and WooCommerce integrations | 160+ customizable email templates | Dynamic product content | 70+ customizable forms templates

• Built for DTC brands
• Email split testing
• Behavioral segmentation
• Helpful AI testing tools

• Not beginner-friendly
• Expensive

If you're running an e-commerce store, especially on Shopify, Klaviyo is built to handle the exact retention tactics you'll need once ads start to plateau. Be it segmentation, automation, or campaign targeting, it's already wired for online sales.

I started with the basics like branding, domain authentication, and syncing my store, and then moved straight into building core flows. Klaviyo's automation section (called "Flows") stores prebuilt templates for welcome, cart abandonment, and postpurchase flows. It's further focused on revenue recovery. For instance, the abandoned checkout flow triggers based on checkout starts and brings in product details dynamically. Add a follow-up reminder and an urgency-based CTA, and you'll have a high-performing series live in under an hour. If that's not enough, you can layer in browse abandonment, win-back, and review request flows using the same interface.

Even the Campaigns are highly detailed here. You can build an engaged segment based on open/click activity in the last 60 days, select a campaign template, drop in product images, and track ROI per email sent. Klaviyo shows opens, clicks, conversions, and even syncs revenue data from your Shopify or Woo store. 

Signup forms are equally customizable. You can set up a two-step popup with email and SMS fields, target it by device, and delay the trigger to 4 seconds after load. I built one with a "You've got 10% off" headline and a forced click-through for "No thanks, I'll pay full price." That micro-interaction actually increased opt-ins during testing. Each form can be styled separately for mobile and desktop, which helps keep the layout tight for each experience.

In terms of usage, you can start for free with Klaviyo and send up to 500 emails a month to 250 profiles. If you're ready to upgrade, the Email plan starts at $20 per month for 500 profiles and unlocks full reporting dashboards, AI content generation, logo removal, and ongoing support. It still excludes predictive analytics and multichannel features. That means for the full package, including multichannel attribution, and predictive tools, you'll need the Email + SMS plan starting at $35 per month. 

Klaviyo features: Cross-channel flows | Automated smart send time | Shopify and WooCommerce integrations | 160+ customizable email templates | Dynamic product content | 70+ customizable forms templates

What is the best email marketing software?

Mailchimp is the best email marketing software for beginners and small businesses, while HubSpot is a great alternative for large-scale businesses who want strong email automations within their CRM platform. Here's how the best email marketing software compares:

Which email marketing software is right for you?

Factors to consider when choosing an email marketing software:

First, I look at how someone's actually planning to use email. Are you sending a monthly newsletter to a few hundred people? Or are you running dozens of automated flows across segments and syncing it with an online store? That baseline makes a huge difference. Mailchimp might be more than enough for a solo creator. But if you're managing multistep automations, real-time syncing with customer activity, or trying to squeeze ROI from every abandoned cart, you'll want something deeper like Klaviyo.

I also pay close attention to how the platform handles contact growth. Every tool looks affordable when you're under 500 contacts. But check what happens when you hit 2,000 or 10,000. That's usually where people get frustrated. Pricing jumps fast if you're not alert enough.

Another important point is deliverability and list hygiene. Ideally, you'd want a platform to help you stay off spam lists, clean inactive subscribers, and ensure you're actually getting opens. Some platforms like HubSpot and Brevo offer better built-in analytics and suppression tools for this.

Then there's AI. In 2025, most platforms will include some kind of AI writer or subject line assistant. But they vary in usefulness. I personally like tools that give suggestions without overdoing it. Brevo and Klaviyo do this well. 

And finally, usability. I test how much time it takes to go from account signup to first email sent. If it takes more than half an hour and four help docs to get through, that's a bad signal for me. MailerLite, for example, is great at this. 

How did I choose these email marketing software tools?

I manually tested each of these apps by running actual email campaigns. I created custom signup forms, welcome flows, promotional blasts, deliverability checks, and more. Plus, I built sequences, set up automations, tweaked templates, and looked at real analytics reports.

What I was mainly paying attention to was how long it took to get a full campaign running, how clean the UI felt, how many guides the tool offered, and what features got unlocked once I upgraded to their paid plans.

FAQs on email marketing

Is there a free email marketing software?

Yes, Mailchimp, Brevo, MailerLite, and Klaviyo all have free plans with basic features like a contact limit, email sends per month, and access to templates or automations. This is a great starting point for beginners or small lists, though most come with limitations such as daily send caps, branded watermarks on emails, or limited automation features.

Is email marketing still effective in 2025?

Yes, email marketing remains one of the highest ROI channels in 2025. With AI-powered personalization, smart automation, and tighter privacy compliance, it continues to outperform many paid media strategies, especially for nurturing leads and retaining customers.

How many emails can I send without getting marked as spam?

There's no fixed number of emails you can send without being flagged as spam, but it depends on sender reputation, engagement rates, and list quality. To avoid spam filters, always use opt-in lists, personalize your content, maintain healthy engagement, and authenticate your domain.

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