AI has completely changed the way email marketing works. The best tools in 2026 do not 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 will come up with subject lines, personalize each message, and keep improving as they go. If you are still sending the same email to everyone, you are already falling behind.

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. The result is a list of the best email marketing software for 2026, with a detailed look at pricing, features, and the pros and cons of each platform.

Our picks at a glance

• Mailchimp: Best email marketing software overall
• HubSpot: Best email marketing software with CRM automation
• MailerLite: Best email marketing software for creators and small teams
• Brevo: Best email marketing software for multichannel campaigns
• Klaviyo: Best email marketing software for e-commerce automations

Mailchimp: Best email marketing software overall

If you are new to email marketing and want a powerful platform that is 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.

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. We tested both prebuilt and custom journeys, and while it takes a few minutes to learn the flow, it is flexible and powerful once you do. That said, classic automations were discontinued in mid-2025 by Mailchimp, so if you are coming back to the platform after a while, expect to rebuild from scratch and pay for something that used to be free.

Mailchimp’s dashboard 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. On the free plan, you can preview them, but you will need to upgrade to actually launch them. Still, it is nice to see what is possible before committing. Setting up a flow is visual, meaning more drag-and-drop than technical, which makes it approachable even if you have never done automation before. Once you understand how triggers and actions work together, you can build 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 or more contacts. If you work with a small list, the free or Essentials plan may be enough. You can also buy credits with a pay-as-you-go option if you send emails occasionally. Free trials run for 14 days on Standard or Essentials, and nonprofits get a 15% discount.

Mailchimp features:

• Email and 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: Best email marketing software with CRM automation

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 the biggest advantage during testing, meaning everything was already connected. Creating an email starts with three options: regular, automated, and blog-triggered. A regular campaign sends a one-time email to a selected list, while automated and blog-triggered campaigns depend on workflows. 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. HubSpot handles the branching, like what content goes to which segment, who gets a follow-up, and when to pause. This makes the tool feel like a complete system rather than a simple email editor.

The reporting tools are also better than what we 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 are looking to tie campaign results back to business outcomes, this is the feature to look out for. HubSpot’s built-in AI assistant, Copilot, appears on the right side of the editor. You can use it to summarize contact information, research companies, or rewrite subject lines based on tone. This saved time during testing, especially when trying to clean up the tone of a promo without sounding robotic.

As for limits, the free plan gives you 2,000 sends per month, which is enough for most small lists. If you are ready to build more complex workflows or remove branding, you will need to upgrade. Paid tiers include Marketing Hub Starter at $9 per month, Marketing Hub Professional at $800 per month with 2,000 contacts, and Marketing Hub Enterprise at $3,600 per month with 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 is 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

MailerLite: Best email marketing software for creators and small teams

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. Like Mailchimp, there is a drag-and-drop editor that we used to build a simple campaign. There are multiple options to choose from, including regular, A/B test, auto-resend, and even RSS campaigns. The regular campaign flow comes with a subject line preview pane, email personalization tokens, and sender settings all upfront before you even get to the design. The editor shows live previews as you tweak blocks, and there is a strong set of content blocks like countdowns, image galleries, and coupon codes. 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 popups, embedded forms, or full landing pages, and you can edit success messages, trigger timings, and confirmation flows without leaving the visual builder. We found this especially useful when testing double opt-in flows, because it helps you see exactly what users will experience.

MailerLite also offers a 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. We created a three-email onboarding flow with one condition and a time delay in under 10 minutes. MailerLite is not 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 does not show deep breakdowns or comparative reporting, but it is 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 for up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails, then jump to Growing Business at $10 per month and Advanced at $20 per month. You will need the paid version if you want automations, dynamic content, or click maps. MailerLite 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

Brevo: Best email marketing software for multichannel campaigns

Brevo handles marketing and various 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. Personalization tokens like first name are available right from the subject field, and there is a fallback built in. For branding, you can enter a website URL and Brevo will pull the logo, colors, and fonts automatically. It is not perfect, but it gets you most of the way there.

The email drafter is easy to use. You get full control over blocks, sections, and brand styles. We dragged in a banner image, wrote a welcome header, and used Brevo’s AI assistant to generate paragraph text. It worked well, especially the shorten and friendly tone tweaks. We also adjusted padding, centered content, and changed button styles with just a few clicks. For mobile previews, the changes appear in real time without refreshing the whole editor.

Scheduling options let you send now, schedule later, or use the best send time based on engagement. Once live, Brevo shows open, click, bounce, and unsubscribe rates along with heatmaps. It does not go as deep into CRM metrics as HubSpot, but for basic and mid-tier needs, the data is easy to access and act upon. We 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 do not need to rebuild layouts again.

Plans start free with a 300-emails-per-day cap, which is fine if you are just getting started. The Starter plan begins at $9 per month and lifts the daily cap, with up to 5,000 emails per month, 24/7 email support, and basic analytics. If you want to remove Brevo’s logo from emails, that is offered as an add-on. For workflows, predictive sending, landing pages, or multiuser access, you will need the Business plan starting 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

Klaviyo: Best email marketing software for e-commerce automations

If you are running an e-commerce store, especially on Shopify, Klaviyo is built to handle the exact retention tactics you will need once ads start to plateau. Be it segmentation, automation, or campaign targeting, it is already wired for online sales. We started with the basics like branding, domain authentication, and syncing a store, then moved straight into building core flows. Klaviyo’s automation section, called Flows, stores prebuilt templates for welcome, cart abandonment, and postpurchase flows. It is 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 can have a high-performing series live in under an hour. If that is not enough, you can layer in browse abandonment, win-back, and review request flows using the same interface.

Even the campaigns are highly detailed. You can build an engaged segment based on open and 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 WooCommerce 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 four seconds after load. We 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 are 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. For the full package, including multichannel attribution and predictive tools, you will need the Email plus 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 form templates

Other email marketing software to consider

Constant Contact

If you have a small business, this is a great alternative option that has intuitive UI and a wide range of third-party integrations. It is especially useful for event marketing, with tools for registrations and ticketing.

Zoho Campaigns

Zoho offers not only email marketing, but also social, CRM, a website builder, and more, if you are looking for an entire package. It works especially well for businesses already using Zoho’s suite of products.

Which email marketing software is right for you?

• Mailchimp: Choose it if you want something clean, reliable, and full of all the basics needed to launch fast without much learning curve.
• HubSpot: Choose it if you need deep automation and CRM-level control.
• MailerLite: Choose it if you want a budget option that feels simple but still flexible enough to grow with you.
• Brevo: Choose it if you need more than just email. SMS, WhatsApp, and transactional emails are all kept in one place.
• Klaviyo: Choose it if you run an online store and want revenue-driven flows that sync directly with product data.

Factors to consider when choosing email marketing software

First, we look at how someone is 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 are managing multistep automations, real-time syncing with customer activity, or trying to squeeze ROI from every abandoned cart, you will want something deeper like Klaviyo.

We also pay close attention to how the platform handles contact growth. Every tool looks affordable when you are under 500 contacts. But check what happens when you hit 2,000 or 10,000. That is usually where people get frustrated. Pricing jumps fast if you are not alert enough. Deliverability and list hygiene matter too. You want a platform that helps you stay off spam lists, clean inactive subscribers, and ensure you are actually getting opens. HubSpot and Brevo offer better built-in analytics and suppression tools for this.

Then there is AI. Most platforms now include some kind of AI writer or subject line assistant. But they vary in usefulness. We like tools that give suggestions without overdoing it. Brevo and Klaviyo do this well. Finally, usability matters. We 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 documents to get through, that is a bad signal. MailerLite is great in this area.

How we tested these email marketing tools

We manually tested each of these apps by running actual email campaigns. We created custom signup forms, welcome flows, promotional blasts, deliverability checks, and more. We also built sequences, set up automations, tweaked templates, and looked at real analytics reports. Our key focuses were how long it took to get a full campaign running, how clean the interface felt, how many guides the tool offered, and what features got unlocked once we upgraded to paid plans.

FAQ 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, monthly email sends, 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 is 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.

Source: ZDNET News