As an email marketer, you know how important it is to plan, analyze, and optimize your newsletter campaigns. Sure, there are many expensive tools out there to lend a hand with this. But there are also plenty of free email marketing tools that can really make a difference to your campaigns.
We’ve listed over 30 of our favorite free email marketing tools below. The list is separated into discrete areas for easy reference. Let us know in the comments if we’ve missed any!
Checking Your Sender Reputation
Google Postmaster Tools
Useful for: Monitoring your sender reputation in Gmail.
Keeping informed about how your email campaigns are performing not only helps you become a better sender, but gives you confidence that your emails are landing in the subscriber’s inbox: where they belong.
Google Postmaster Tools offers a range of valuable dashboards which you can use to monitor your sender reputation in Gmail. It’s quick and easy to set up, can be shared with your team, and gives valuable insights into spam rate, domain reputation, feedback loops, and more.
For more information, check out our full guide to Google Postmaster Tools.
SenderScore
Useful for: Monitoring sender reputation across more providers.
For monitoring sender reputation across a wider group of ESP’s, SenderScore is just the ticket.
It offers a simple scoring system from 0 – 100, similar to what you might find in a credit check report, which shows how mailbox providers view your IP address.
This platform takes various metrics into consideration such as complaints, blacklists and spamtraps, and suggests ways to improve or maintain your sender reputation, so your campaigns reach your subscribers’ inbox.
Talos IP
Useful for: sender reputation and threat reports.
Talos IP approaches sender reputation in a unique way by providing detailed insights into sender reputation, alongside threat detection and intelligence reports. You can use it to easily identify global email threats in real-time and view the top offending IPs.
The reputation centre allows you to see an overview of your IP & Domain Reputation, along with the reputation details for your domain and any blacklists you may have fallen foul of. Another useful feature is the daily email volume history tab and breakdown by IP address.
Talos IP makes it easy to check your sender reputation at a glance and identify any threat data that may impact the performance of your campaigns.
Reputation Authority
Useful for: Checking domain and IP scores.
If you don’t mind enabling Flash player on your browser, you’ll find WatchGuard’s Reputation Authority a useful free email marketing tool to check your Domain/IP behavior score.
The platform reveals real-time threats – similar to Talos IP – including the top virus threats and phishing by domain.
Once you enter your domain, you’ll see a domain/IP reputation score with a percentage for good and bad mail originating from your domain. It also shows if the SPF record for the domain is present and gives a separate IP reputation score which includes any other domains originating from this IP address.
Curating Content
Feedly
Useful for: Scouring RSS feeds and trending content.
Content that resonates with your subscribers is the life blood of an email marketer.
Great content can inspire your readers to take action and naturally leads them deeper into your sales funnels.
Feedly is a leading RSS reader that helps you to track all the content published by relevant sources. It also makes it easy to find trending content in your industry. Simply set the filters to scan for the topics that will appeal most to your audience. This makes stressing over content curation a thing of the past.
Google Alerts
Useful for: Regular email alerts about relevant topics.
Google Alerts is an excellent way to keep your ear to the ground and focus on the topics that matter most to your subscribers.
It’s incredibly easy to configure, and you can choose the frequency of the emails you receive. Each alert that lands in your inbox will show you the sources that are talking about topics that will interest your subscribers.
Filter sources by News, Blog, Web, Videos and more and select the quality of the results to match your requirements and you need never be stuck for content ideas again.
Testing Your Content
Free Subject Line Tester
Useful for: Checking your subject line is optimally crafted.
To improve the quality of your hand-crafted headlines, Send Check It‘s subject line tester is just the thing.
Use it to increase your open rates and apply proven copywriting formulas to create snappy headlines that can increase your engagement and conversion stats.
You do need to enter your email address to see your results, but this subject line checker offers a more detailed analysis than most.
Hemingway
Useful for: Ensuring your email copy is concise and to the point.
Writing attention grabbing headlines is an essential part of the email writing process, but it doesn’t stop there. Keeping your readers engaged with your content is crucial if you want them to take action.
Hemingway takes a visual approach to content writing by highlighting words or phrases that can be improved. Use it as a helping hand to make your copy read easier and fix common errors, such as overly complicated sentences, too many adjectives, passive voice etc.
Grammarly
Useful for: Checking for typos and grammatical errors.
Grammarly takes a similar approach to Hemingway by drawing your attention to errors in the text with color coded highlights. It’s essentially a highly enhanced spell-check tool. Grammarly can be added as a browser extension and comes with additional features to keep your writing in tip-top shape.
The AI writing assistant corrects common errors and simplifies your writing so your content remains on-point and error free.
Grammarly’s tone detector is a nice touch, and is useful for creating content which resonates with your intended audience. You can upgrade for additional features.
Designing Your Template
Stripo
Useful for: Quickly creating responsive HTML email templates.
This free, responsive html email builder cuts down the time spent on email creation to a bare minimum. With no coding knowledge required, it’s the perfect tool for anyone who wants to create professional and responsive emails on the fly via a simple drag-and-drop interface..
What’s more, emails created with Stripo are guaranteed to work across multiple email clients, eliminating the need to hunt down pesky HTML errors.
There are premium email template builders if you need more features.
BeeFree
Useful for: Creating responsive HTML email templates
BeeFree is another free drag and drop responsive email builder that can help you create killer emails in seconds.
Each template is fully responsive and downloadable, and the extensive library of well designed templates should suffice for even the most demanding projects.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you can create your own templates from scratch using the drag and drop interface.
Scope
Useful for: Inspecting your email code.
If you need to inspect the code of any email template and share it with your team, Scope (a free email marketing tool from Litmus) should be on your list.
Simply drag the Scope It button toolbar to your browser, or install the app, to view a web-based version of the email content in your browser window.
Scoping an email allows you to view emails you receive as previews or text versions, along with revealing and simplifying the HTML code, so you can see precisely what’s going on under the hood.
HTML to Text Email Converter
Useful for: Converting HTML emails into plain text.
Digging through lines of code to extract the copy can be tedious. HTML to Text Email Converter takes the pain out of writing plain text emails by extracting the content from your HTML code in an instant.
This handy free email marketing tool can be a great time saver, and keeps you from having to save multiple versions of the copy should you change something along the way. It’s also a handy tool for helping you to convert emails into blog posts.
Boing Boing
Useful for: Finding YouTube thumbnail and cover images.
If you’ve ever tried to find a YouTube thumbnail in a hurry, this tool is for you!
Boing Boing makes it easy to download YouTube thumbnails that are otherwise hard to find, giving you eye-catching graphics for your email banners in seconds.
Simply paste the YouTube URL and watch the thumbs magically appear ready for you to download to your hard drive (it goes without saying that you should avoid using images that are copyrighted).
Canva
Useful for: Creating professional designs without a graphic designer.
Canva is a professional design tool that needs little introduction. It’s also a hidden gem for email marketers who want to include on-trend graphics in their email templates.
You’ll find heaps of high-quality designs in just about every format you can think of. You can also create designs in a custom dimension, and access a huge array of free design elements and fonts. Canva really can transform your emails into high-end design masterpieces.
It’s the perfect tool for the design conscious email marketer, and includes full support for GIF and MP4 formats.
PicResize
Useful for: optimizing images for email campaigns.
Horrendously oversized emails can ruin an otherwise successful campaign. Use this tool to guard against excessive file sizes and ensure your images are the right size for your templates.
The general rule of thumb is to not have your images exceed the dimensions of your email template. Bonus points for using image compression to further reduce the file size.
Unsplash
Useful for: Finding free, high quality stock images.
Finding images for just about every topic you can think of is easy with Unsplash. It’s a great resource for high-definition, high-quality images to use with your email templates, many of which require no attribution.
It’s not only ideal for trending images, but also works great for hidden niches where you might be otherwise pushed to find just the right thing.
HTML Formatter
Useful for: Making it easier to check your code.
When coding emails by hand, it can be easy to lose track of your formatting. Use this tool before running through each line of code with a fine tooth comb to properly, and neatly format your code.
You’ll have neat and tidy code in a jiffy!
Button Factory
Useful for: Generating free code for professional CTA buttons.
Save yourself hours of coding, and design your own HTML buttons to add to your templates with Da Button Factory.
It’s a great way to A/B test CTAs by generating various call to action copy and button styles in seconds.
Da Button Factory will lend your emails a more professional look. And yes, you can embed or download the code for free.
Google URL Builder
Useful for: Tracking visitor behaviour sent via your newsletter.
Build URLs with unique tracking parameters so you can track the performance of each of the links you include in your email campaigns. You can then view the results in Google Analytics (or another alternative dashboard))
Your tracking can be as granular as you like, taking into account Campaign Source, Campaign Medium, Marketing medium, Campaign Name, Campaign Term and Campaign Content. This pinpoints where your your clicks are coming from, and even how much revenue each of your campaigns is generating.
Testing Your Email Messages
Send Forensics
Useful for: Estimating your email deliverability rates.
Send Forensics is the gold standard of email deliverability testing. Not only will it give you the percentage score for your email deliverability rates but it will also show comparisons with industry and regional benchmarks.
It’s free for one domain and a single user, and is trusted by email deliverability personnel worldwide.
Mail-Tester
Useful for: Checking the spam score of your emails.
Testing the spam score of your emails is easy with mail-tester. Simply send your email to the address displayed on the page and then click the button to check your score.
You’ll be able to see HTML and text versions of your email, along with any technical issues that need to be resolved.
It will also test for any spam lists you may have fallen foul of, broken links, and whether you included an unsubscribe link.
A/B Test Result Calculator
Useful for: Calculating the results of your A/B tests.
Split testing various elements of your email strategy is a powerful way to increase your open rates and conversions. Use this A/B split test calculator to figure out the precise improvement of one test vs another.
This free email marketing tool will also calculate the “uplift”, and whether the difference in results is statistically significant, or not.
PutsTest
Useful for: Seeing how your email looks in over 50 inboxes.
Sometimes there’s no better way to assess the performance of your campaign than using visual feedback. Poorly coded elements can make or break your design in different email clients. PutsTest helps email marketers to get this right by providing screenshots of your email in over 50+ programs and apps in a matter of minutes.
Sending Your Emails For Free
MailerLite
If your subscriber file has less than 1,000 contacts and you only send up to 12,000 emails per month, you’ll find MailerLite ticks all the boxes.
The free plan includes a 14-day premium trial, but be prepared to lose access to premium features such as auto resend and HTML email compatibility, at the end of this period.
If the premium features don’t matter to you, and you don’t mind including the company branded logo on the footer of your emails, MailerLite remains a good choice for ease of use and high deliverability rates.
The lack of inflated features often seen in alternative mailers is actually a plus for MailerLite, which aims to keep things simple.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an extremely popular email platform which also offers a host of additional features. They have grown from a simple mail delivery service to a comprehensive marketing platform that can manage many areas of your business, from marketing CRM to domains and website builders.
The free plan includes up to 2,000 contacts, one audience list, and a 10,000 email monthly cap. To Mailchimp’s credit the free plan does include many of the features found in the premium plans, but if you intend to use advanced automation or run split testing on your campaigns you will need to upgrade to the Essentials or Standard plan.
For those who simply want the ability to send marketing emails to their subscriber list, and aren’t interested in all the bells and whistles the platform has to offer, Mailchimp ranks highly as a free email tool.
Sender
Sender is a great free email marketing tool for marketers who want a powerful and streamlined service that doesn’t restrict premium features behind a paywall.
The platform is very intuitive and simple to use and allows you to add 2,500 subscribers and send 15,000 emails/mo as part of the free plan.
It’s the perfect service for smaller lists, with all features included, you can reliably assess the performance of your campaigns as you grow your contact list.
There’s also no contracts or setup fees, giving you full control over your list with no nasty surprises.
SendPulse
In contrast to some of the other free email sending tools on the list, Sender opts for quality of service over volume of subscribers. The free plan will net you up to 500 subscribers and 15,000 monthly sends and is geared towards those who want to test the features before committing to the service.
Some free templates are included, but if you want access to advanced automation features, including flow conditions, filters and goals, A/B testing and scheduling, you will need to upgrade to a premium plan.
Email Octopus
Email Octopus is another fully featured email service that offers a free, basic starter plan. You’ll get up to 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails per month, which includes EmailOctopus branding, statistics data for 30 days, and basic support.
This email marketing tool is aimed at those who want to try the platform before committing to a paid plan. The service offers integration with over 500 apps via Zapier, so would ideally suit your requirements if you already use Zapier tools in your marketing.
Mailjet
Mailjet offers API’s, SMTP relay, and Webhooks for free for up to 6,000 emails per month or 200 emails per day. Unlike the other email service providers on this list you can have unlimited contacts, provided that you stick to the daily and monthly allowance.
The advanced email editor and statistics is another selling point that will win over email professionals who don’t need the additional features included in the paid plans.
Zoho
Zoho is a well known ESP and powerful CRM management tool. The forever free plan is the introductory package for people who wish to try Zoho’s email sending service. You can use it to send 12,000 emails per month to up to 2,000 contacts and test the service while you grow your list.
With great deliverability and a host of useful features, Zoho is a great option if you already use any of the apps in the cloud software suite, helping to keep everything under one roof.
MooSend
MooSend will net you unlimited emails, sign-up forms and analytics for up to 1,000 subscribers. This is perfect if you have a small list but like to stay in frequent contact.
While some of the more attractive features of the service, such as landing page design and custom reporting, are not included, as a free user you will get full access to 100+ integrations, reporting, tracking, templates, and marketing automation.
Analyzing Your Messages
All email providers, including those above, offer useful metrics you can use to optimize your campaigns. This includes open rates, click rates, bounce rates, etc.
However, for more in-depth analysis about your subscriber actions, we’ve found the best free email marketing tool here to be Google Analytics. Google Analytics offers a comprehensive suite of tools that can help you to see precisely what actions users are taking once they land on your site, after clicking on a link in your newsletter.
You’ll find some email platforms have Google Analytics integration built-in. If not, you can use Google’s Campaign URL Builder (mentioned above) to track individual links in your campaigns. You can then check Google Analytics to see which links resulted in clicks, multiple page views, conversion, and revenue.
Optimize Your Campaigns With These Free Email Marketing Tools!
We’ve worked hard to bring you what we believe to be the best free email marketing tools you can find online. These tools can improve your deliverability, performance, give you killer ideas for high-value content, and help manage your sender reputation.
Of course, many of these tools also offer paid plans, but you can certainly find heaps of value simply by sticking to the free features that are offered in the services above.
With so much choice on offer, and such a huge variety of tools to choose from, we’re sure that you’ll be able to find at least a few that will support you in your work.
Have some best free email marketing tools to add to the list? Let us know in the comments below!
