Best Free Email Marketing Software in 2026

Today, businesses are not unaware of the benefits of a good email marketing strategy. This is especially true for smaller ones that mainly use content marketing strategies for their promotions. However, not all businesses can afford the prices of premium email marketing software tools. The good thing is that there are good free email marketing software solutions out there. When used well, they may just help you conduct effective email campaigns. This guide will help you find the best free email marketing software tools to do so.

The best way to find the best free email marketing software solutions is to try them out firsthand. In this way you will be able to better understand what is email marketing software.  But before you do, please note that there are two types of free email marketing tools. There are those that are absolutely free and there are those that are free versions of premium solutions. For absolutely free services, you can just easily sign up and see whether they have the features and capabilities you need. Just create an account and you’re good to go. However, for free versions of premium tools, you may need to sign up for a free trial first. And, it is good to keep in mind that many software providers offer free trials that include premium features. It is only after the trial period is over that they revert your subscription to a free one. Hence, you should take note of which features you will be left with.

To help you find the best free email marketing tools faster, we prepared a shortlist of the best ones out there today. These products have the highest rankings in our SmartScore system and our Customer Satisfaction Rating. They are Freshmarketer, HubSpot Marketing, MailerLite, Omnisend, and Wix ShoutOut.

Email marketing is a good strategy to reach out and engage your audience. It is being used by businesses of all sizes for B2C and B2B marketing. However, free email marketing solutions cannot satisfy enterprise-level email marketing needs. These free solutions are usually designed for smaller operations. And, email marketing is best paired with content marketing. Below are popular types of businesses that can benefit most from using this paired strategy.

• Small Clubs. Free email marketing solutions can help small gyms, fitness rooms, or any other interest-specific club to recruit, engage, and retain members through content-rich newsletters. Of course, this should be tied up with other content marketing efforts like blogs. Moreover, small clubs can also use this type of software to let members know about promos or offer certain perks to select members for their membership anniversary or birthdays.
• Niche Influencers. Here, we use the term influencers broadly. They can be authors, social media influencers, public intellectuals, or creative workers. Email marketing solutions can help them announce events like a new book coming out, a webinar, or an art exhibit. Moreover, they can use free email marketing tools to send surveys and get to know what their audiences like.
• Growing ecommerce businesses. Whether you are in the health, apparel, or food ecommerce business, email marketing can help you engage and retain customers. Of course, this is when paired with other types of promotions but mostly content marketing. Provide helpful information in your blogs and social media channels, and give them a sign-up link for exclusive content and offerings through a newsletter subscription. Then, you can use your free email software to send newsletters and promos. Moreover, they can embed call-to-action links for no-hassle purchases.
• Advocacy groups. Advocacy groups can greatly benefit from a free email marketing platform. Again, combined with great content marketing, they will be able to onboard new members, engage them, announce events, and even use it for online donation drives.

• Freshmarketer: A product by Freshworks, Freshmarketer’s free plan provides automation tools for contact management, email campaigns, and managing marketing activities. It is also fitted with a CRM customization module for easy search and renaming. It supports up to 100 base contacts.
• HubSpot Marketing: The HubSpot Marketing free plan has essential contact management and ad management features. It even has a contact activity capability that keeps users in the loop. Also, it has a useful form feature for small email campaigns and surveys.
•  MailerLite: MailerLite’s free plan has one of the most comprehensive features available in this software category. It has a rich text editor and a built-in photo editor for creating interactive emails and newsletters. It supports 1,000 subscribers and users can send 12,000 emails per month.
• Omnisend: Omnisend’s free plan provides users with pre-built email marketing automation options and workflows. It also includes email templates, sign-up forms, and popups. It supports up to 500 emails and up to 60 international SMS per month.
•  Wix ShoutOut: Wix ShoutOut is an integrated email marketing and content marketing platform. Its free version includes almost all of its paid features. These include mailing list management, and an excellent email campaign editor, and analytics. However, the free plan only supports three email campaigns per month. This makes it a good fit for smaller organizations.

There are different types of free email marketing software solutions. In fact, free legacy email platforms can be used for email marketing. Today, however, most businesses use web-based platforms for their email marketing needs.

• On-premise. These are installed on your company machines and they work even when you are offline. The free ones however are those that come when you purchase a computer. They are simple generic email software. However, these can be used for email marketing. But, they are quite unwieldy as they are designed for personal use.
• Web-based email marketing systems. This is the most popular type of free email marketing software that you can access via the internet. These are highly-developed products that are designed for smaller businesses’ email marketing campaigns. Moreover, they are usually free versions of premium plans with pared-down features or trimmed-down capabilities. Also, as they are free, users don’t get priority support and should mostly rely on the provider’s self-service knowledge-base portal.

While free email marketing software services mostly lack advanced features and capabilities, they should have these essential features in order to be considered as a good option.

• Segregation. As you build your contact base through various sources, you should be able to segregate and categorize them in your free email marketing software. Good free email marketing tools allow you to categorize via a contact’s location, behavior, age, or any other category. Also, you should be able to add your tags and create email marketing target groups to segmentize your audience.
• Email Design. Many free email marketing solutions offer great email design tools. These include a rich text editor and even built-in templates. With this feature, you will be able to set yourself apart from your competition and reinforce branding. Look for a platform that allows you to customize layouts, subject lines, and place call-to-action links.
• Reporting and Analytics. Free email marketing tools usually have some sort of reporting and analytics module. They may not be robust and advanced, but they should include key indicators like open rates, conversion rates, and a general dashboard.
• A/B Testing. This is a feature that helps businesses test what works and what doesn’t in order to optimize their email campaigns. With this, users can test the success of different variables of an email by sending two versions to two groups. If one fared better, then take the added or subtracted variable(s) in them, which is likely to also be successful in the future.
• AutoResponders. If you want to send mass emails, then you should look for a free email marketing platform that provides autoresponders. This is actually a very common feature that every email platform should have. The one that you want to find is the one where you can customize and personalize your response aside from just simply having an automated response informing senders that you have received their emails. You can also use this to inform your community of promotions and discounts. Moreover, you can also use them for follow-ups or send information sheets to new community members.
• CRM and Chat. Whether it is a built-in CRM, free CRM integration, or a chat tool, the best free email marketing software solutions should have them. This is not only to easily reply to emails on your platform but also to provide a seamless experience to your audiences across different channels.

Here is our What Is Email Marketing Software guide that provides a more comprehensive look at what you should expect from email marketing systems in general.

There are many uses for free email marketing systems. They can be used for business communications with individuals and groups. They come in the form of sales, promotions, advertisements, content marketing, and other requests. Most often, it is paired with content and social media marketing to improve customer engagement. Here are some benefits that free email marketing software use provides:

• Targeted communication. Email marketing solutions allow you to target a specific group of people from your contacts that you categorized using relevant criteria. Unlike traditional marketing communications and other social media ad campaigns, email marketing allows you to be more personal with your target audience.
• Visibility and Optimization. Email marketing tools give you visibility of how your campaigns are doing. This is done through real-time reporting dashboards and other analytics. Moreover, features like A/B testing help you optimize the way you write and design emails and when you should send them. These will provide you with real metrics and actionable insights that can help you improve your open rates, delivery, retention, and click-to-deliver rates.
• Cost-Effectiveness. Email marketing is very cheap. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing can convert a $1 investment into $40 revenue. But, with free email marketing software, the cost is virtually nothing that you already can afford. You’ll just have to invest more time in planning and designing optimal campaigns.
• Engaged Customers. For smaller businesses and professional service operations, email marketing can help increase customer engagement through newsletter marketing. Content consumption is an everyday human activity nowadays. And, people consume what they like. So, if you can provide useful and engaging content, you will not only remind your customers of your company but also position your company as an expert in your field or niche.
• Increase Collaboration. Even free email marketing software solutions have team and task management tools. With these, users can work on email campaigns together from content, font selection, design, and audience segmentation, among others.

There are many aspects to consider when choosing the best free email marketing software solution for you. It really depends on what you want to achieve with your email marketing campaign. However, there are two important considerations. These are email customizability and analytics. You will need good features for these in order to create engaging emails and also measure the success of your campaigns.

Also, these platforms or software versions are free, you can always try each of them and even use a few of them for email marketing. However, this can get messy and, a lot of times, using multiple platforms may wear you and your team down by switching from one application to another. Moreover, because every platform has different templates and levels of customization, branding consistency is a potential problem.

This is why it is highly recommended that you find the best free email marketing software solution that fits your needs. The best way to go about this is to have a few of your staff, preferably the end-users, try different solutions out with you. In this way, you will not only outsource some trial and decision-making but also start their training as well. You will likewise have lesser birthing pains that come with adopting new software.