It doesn’t matter how small your business may be, or whether you are still working out of your sitting room, one thing is certain – customers and subscribers must be updated about the latest offer.

And your customers don’t really care what it costs you to reach out to them, they just want to get those special discounts and promo emails. And if you are into affiliate marketing, you want to engage your leads and build a relationship with them so you can get those commissions rolling in when you email them your offers.

If you are just starting out or on a shoestring budget, and you cannot afford a paid email marketing tool at the moment, there are a couple email marketing platforms out there that have FREE options you can leverage to get things going, and you can upgrade to the paid version when you have made some money.

9 Best Email Marketing Software With Free Plans At A Glance

ConvertKit

ConvertKit Free Plan: Up to 1000 subscribers and unlimited emails per month.

Although my last on this list, ConvertKit is in no way the least email marketing software with the free plan you can use in getting your business in the eyes of millions of subscribers.

Convertkit packs lots of amazing features that make email marketing a breeze. Top on the list is the seamless visual automation editor, which is a page where you can carry out everything you want to do right within the automation editor page.

The Convertkit free plan does not allow you to set up a full automation sequence – so you cannot create a whole email funnel for free.  You can create landing pages, capture emails and send out out manually crafted emails which they call ‘broadcasts’.  The landing pages are really impressive, considering you can use them for free with unlimited traffic.

These landing pages can easily be edited to suit your need without any coding for web site design experience.

Similarly, the simple segmentation within individual emails using conditional tags makes it pretty easy to add additional offers such as a bonus coupon to some category of subscribers and customer.

These are only but a few of what you can do with ConvertKit email marketing software. Check it out, sure you’ll find lots to explore.

EmailOctopus

EmailOctopus Free plan: Up to 2,500 subscribers and unlimited emails per month

Many people think EmailOctopus is an email marketing software with very few features and simplistic design.

Well, that may be true, but the fact remains that EmailOctopus is an email marketing program with a free plan that gives you the liberty to send tons of email per month.

EmailOctopus provides small businesses and other brand representatives the opportunity to send unlimited email to as many subscribers they wish.
More so, EmailOctopus works perfectly with other third-party apps such as WordPress, Zapier, and even MailOptin so that you have a seamless time exchanging customers’ data from one platform to the other.

We started out using EmailOctopus before converting to convert kit.  We had a few problems with email deliverability -we would only recommend using EmailOctopus is you have email marketing experience and understand about SPK and DKIM.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp Free plan: Up to 2,000 subscribers and 10,000 emails per month

Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms with a solid FREE plan out there. With the free plan option, you can access basic features that can give you a seamless email marketing experience.

Top on the list of such features Mailchimp offers includes email creation and scheduling. You can also stay at the top of your game with the smart recommendations features of Mailchimp, which allow you to have a good insight about your audience as well as helping you optimize your marketing strategies.

Sendinblue

Sendiblue Free Plan: Up to 300 emails per day

Sendinblue is a powerful free email marketing software that gives you access to both email marketing features as well as other functions such as landing page creation and customer relationship management.

Sendinblue has over 70 email design templates that give you a wide array of email templates to choose from and plus the ability to create an awesome-looking email.

In addition, each email design template has a responsive function that gives you the opportunity to have a preview of your designs on different screen formats.

Once you have your email design ready, all you need to do is use features such as segmented recipient list and A/B testing to automatically optimize your campaign as well as target your ideal customers and audiences.

Sendicate

Sendicate Free Plan: Sending up to 2 emails a month to 500 people

Sendicate is another free email marketing software that gives you the chance to customize your email options. With Sendicate, you can pick an email to add headline, column, video block or images whenever you create one.

With the column blocks which seem to be the major sections of an email, you can add body text with regular formatting, title as well as a link that will redirect your audiences to your product page or blog post.

With the Sendicate dashboard, which is designed to show a message draft, you can have a quick preview that reminds you of an outstanding email you are yet to complete and send.

Omnisend

Omnisend Free plan: Up to 15,000 emails per month and 2,000 emails per day

This is yet another top-ranking email marketing program with a free plan that helps you to bring all your communication networks to a single platform.

With Omnisend, you can automate your email delivery with the behaviour triggers, and you can time and monitor your communications with respect to your client’s convenience.

You can design killer newsletters using the time-saving features such as Product Picker, which is a tool to easily select all the products you would like to include in your email.

To further enhance your email performance, you can also add discount coupon code, scratch cards and gift boxes to your emails.

VerticalResponse

VerticalResponse Free for Sending up to 13 emails per month to 300 people

Another email marketing program heavyweight with a free plan is VerticalResponse. This software gives you the opportunity to share your business ideas and services both on your social media as well as through emails.

With a customized landing page, you can build your audience both on social media and email, and with the free plan, you can share your ideas with readers directly on their Twitter and Facebook pages while they also receive the same through email.

With VerticalResponse, you can also schedule social messages and emails to go out at the time you wish for them to be sent.

SendPulse

SendPulse Free plan: Up to 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails per month

SendPulse is very popular as a multi-channel marketing software with email marketing features that are highly versatile. With its array of first-class email templates, you can easily customize each email using a drag-and-drop editor.

Depending on when you want an email to be sent out, you can schedule it for dispatch automatically with variables such as event trigger, user behaviour as well as other variables that may prompt such emails.

SendPulse also gives a subscriber rating feature that gives you a perfect way to spot out your most loyal subscribers, and you can even monitor the click rate as well as the read and unread rate of each of your subscribers.

Benchmark Email

Benchmark Email Free plan: Up to 2,000 subscribers and 14,000 emails per month

Another great option for you when it comes to an email marketing software with the free plan is Benchmark Email.

Why Benchmark Email seems to be very popular is the fact that it helps you create responsive emails that have a great look irrespective of which device they are viewed from.

The most outstanding thing about Benchmark Email is the fact that it gives you an environment to edit images you may want to add to your mail before sending them out.

If you are a ‘code’ and HTML freak, you can use the code editor to design and build your emails from scratch, and with the dual view setting, you can have a preview of your email design while editing it.

This simplifies the entire email design and building process.

Bottom Line

There you are! No more worries about how to reach your subscribers and customers simply because your business is still young and without adequate funding.

With this top 9 email marketing software with a free plan, you can get your business across borders without breaking the bank.