I’ve tested all the email marketing tools out there to save you time and money.
Some of them were great, some were disappointing, and a few completely surprised me.
After running campaigns and building automations, I’ve narrowed everything down to the tools that actually deliver.
Here are my top picks right now:
👉 1. MailModo — Best for Interactive Emails & AI Automations
👉 2. Mailchimp — Best for Beginners & All-in-One Marketing
👉 3. MailerLite — Best for Simplicity & Budget-Friendly Marketing
👉 4. ActiveCampaign — Best for Advanced Automation & CRM
But that’s just the shortlist.
Below, you’ll find a more detailed review of each tool. I’ll show you how each tool works, the pros, the cons, and everything.
Let’s go!
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1. MailModo
MailModo is right now my favorite email marketing tool out there.
It has the best AI email marketing campaign builder I have used.
It fixes many problems that slow down regular email workflows.
What makes MailModo different is its ability to create interactive emails and fully planned automation sequences in minutes.
It feels like a modern platform built for speed, clarity, and results.
Let me show you how it works, and what kinds of results I got with it.
My Experience
Here’s how I use Mailmodo and what my experience has been with it.
Step 1: Make an account and choose a plan
First, go to the MailModo website and sign up.
You can start with the free plan to try it out.
Then it will ask you a few simple questions about your campaign and the size of your audience.
After that, you’ll land on your dashboard, which looks like this.
One thing I noticed right away is the AI feature. You can ask it to show your campaign performance or help you plan a new campaign, just as a couple of examples.
If you click on it, you’ll see the Mailmodo AI chat view.
Once you send a message, it takes a bit for the AI to come up with your answer.
For example, I asked it to create a nurturing sequence for my SEO students to buy my course.
After about 30 seconds, here’s what it gave me.
I’m amazed that the tool hasn’t cost me anything so far, yet I’ve already created a draft campaign with the help of AI.
If this is your first time using something like this, it gives you a good first look at how to plan customer journeys inside your email list.
And you can edit the journey planner too.
Just drag and drop the parts you want and add more nodes as needed.
You can also keep sending more messages.
For example, now that I said I want them to take my course, the AI added more logic to the sequence.
For someone who has sold products online, this sequence looks really great.
Of course, it’s not finished yet.
You still need to know your audience and your product to build journeys like this.
But on the other hand, a marketing campaign is never “done”.
There are always new trends, new tools, and other things that change what “the best path” looks like.
Still, if you’re new to this and just want to get campaigns running, this is way better than creating everything from scratch.
And honestly, based on how these look already, you can get results that are pretty close to an “optimal funnel”.
I didn’t even know you could do this kind of thing with AI for free.
Once you’ve arranged your journey points, you can set the trigger for it.
This opens up your editor.
This tool lets you build automated email sequences that start based on what a user does.
The editor makes it easy to map out how people move through your flow with emails, delays, and actions based on different conditions.
Let me break it down.
1. Trigger
At the top of the journey is the trigger, which decides when the sequence starts.
In this example, the trigger fires when a contact is added to a list.
Once that happens, Mailmodo starts running the actions you’ve set up below.
You can also use other triggers, like form submissions, campaign activity, or certain events.
2. Actions
Actions are the steps Mailmodo takes after the trigger fires.
In this case, the main action is Send Campaign, which sends an email to the contact.
The first email welcomes the subscriber, gives them the SEO Starter Checklist download, and introduces the course.
The next emails continue from there by talking about the value of SEO, advanced ways to learn, and special offers.
Other actions you can use (shown on the left side) include:
- Send SMS — send a text message to the contact.
- Add or remove a contact from a list — helps you sort leads into segments.
- Update contact property — edit or add info about the contact.
- Webhook — connect Mailmodo to other tools.
- Update subscription status — change whether a contact can get marketing emails.
3. Delays
The Wait for time period blocks adds pauses between emails.
In this flow:
- The system waits 2 days after the first email before sending the second.
- It waits 3 days before the third email.
- Then it waits 1 more day before moving to the next step.
These delays help you space things out so new contacts don’t get hit with too many emails at once.
4. Conditions
The Conditions section (on the left side) lets you add logic based on what your contacts do.
For example, you can send one email if someone opens a previous campaign and a different one if they don’t.
This helps you personalize the journey and get better engagement.
5. Setup Checklist
The Setup Checklist on the right makes sure everything is ready before you publish the journey.
It shows what still needs to be set up.
For example, the trigger has to be linked to the right contact list.
Go through these items and review all the campaigns and delays so you can check the email content, timing, and overall accuracy.
Once I started testing this view, I noticed it takes a bit of time for the journey points to load.
About two minutes in, it’s still generating.
You can drag, drop, or remove elements from your journey whenever you want.
Then click on any of the journey points to customize them.
For example, here’s the second one from the top in my AI-generated setup:
This perspective allows you to personalize the appearance of the email.
You can create everything from the overall look to the titles and subtitles.
Isn’t that handy?
What I like about this tool is that it guides you through everything step by step.
The AI helps you create journeys that fit your needs. It avoids generic templates or basic workflows because every audience is unique.
Pros
- Best AI campaign builder for fast planning and automation
- Very strong at creating interactive emails where recipients can fill out forms or make selections inside the email.
- Easy to use drag-and-drop editor plus good template options.
- Responsive and helpful customer support.
- Good choice if you want higher engagement and more direct actions inside emails.
- Interactive emails that increase engagement
- Easy journey builder that is simple to understand
- Strong personalization features
Cons
- Not all email clients support interactive (AMP) emails, so some recipients may see fallback versions.
- The editor and workflow builder have a learning curve when doing more than basic campaigns.
- Fewer native integrations and less flexibility in design/customisation than more mature platforms.
- Might be more expensive or more complex than needed if you only send simple newsletters.
Key Features
- Drag-and-drop email editor for both AMP and HTML emails
- Interactive email widgets like forms, polls, and product elements
- AI tools for generating templates, subject lines, and automated sequences
- Automation journeys with triggers, delays, and branching logic
- Transactional email API and integrations with major CRM and ecommerce tools
Pricing
- Free: 500 contacts, 4,000 email credits, 1 journey, basic integrations, limited features.
- Lite ($39/mo): 500 contacts, 20,000 email credits, 5 journeys, basic integrations, no branding removal.
- Pro ($79/mo): 500 contacts, 25,000 email credits, 10 journeys, advanced integrations, A/B testing, branding removal.
- Max ($159/mo): 500 contacts, 37,500 email credits, unlimited journeys, all integrations, full feature access.
Notice that the pricing goes up with additional contacts. The above pricing shows you an example of what it costs with 500 users.
Takeaways
I think MailModo is a helpful tool for anyone who wants to send interactive emails instead of static ones.
It lets people complete actions like forms, surveys, or product selections directly inside the email, which can boost engagement.
The editor is easy to use.
The platform has automation, segmentation, and works with popular CRMs and e-commerce tools.
It’s especially good if you want interactive elements without needing to code.
The only limitation is that it mainly focuses on email.
You might need extra tools for landing pages or better website tracking.
2. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is the most recognizable email marketing tool. It is beginner-friendly and offers a wide range of features.
However, competitors now offer better automation and pricing, which makes it feel less unique than in the past.
Let me share my experience with it.
My Experience
To start with MailChimp, just go to their website and pick the free trial.
Notice that the free trial already asks for your credit card!
Once you’ve activated your free trial, you can start creating.
If you hit Create, you can set up a simple, regular email campaign.
But you can build plenty of other things too.
Here are all your options:
These options are:
- Email — Create and send marketing emails to your audience, either one-time campaigns or automated messages based on what someone does.
- Automations — Build workflows that send messages automatically when certain triggers happen, like new signups, purchases, or anniversaries.
- Website — Build and host a simple website inside Mailchimp with your own pages.
- Landing Page — Make standalone pages for promos, launches, or lead gen.
- Creative Assistant — Use Mailchimp’s design tool to auto-create branded templates and visuals from your logo and colors.
- Signup Form — Create and customize forms to collect subscribers from your site or social channels.
- Surveys — Make surveys to get feedback, opinions, or satisfaction data.
- Ad — Run paid ads on Facebook, Instagram, or Google right from Mailchimp.
- Social Post — Create and schedule posts for your social channels to support your email campaigns.
For example, the automations allow you to build AI-based email sequences.
In this part, your options are:
- Welcome new contacts: Automatically send a personalized welcome email to new subscribers to boost engagement and make a strong first impression.
- Share exclusive content with new leads: Send special content just for members to new leads from Meta lead ads after they are approved.
- Celebrate sign-up anniversaries with your contacts: Automatically send anniversary messages or special offers to your contacts. This helps build stronger relationships and keeps them loyal.
Also, notice that you’re not limited to sending emails in MailChimp.
You can even build an AI-powered website.
Or if you already have a site or don’t need a full website, you can create a landing page.
These are great for converting people from your email sequences.
But now, let me show you how to build a customer flow (email sequence):
To create one, you first need to choose the trigger.
That’s what decides when the email sequence starts for one of your contacts.
Here are the options:
- Tag added: Trigger an automation when a contact gets tagged. Good for sending targeted messages, tracking interests, or turning new shoppers into regular ones.
- Sign up for Email: Start an automation when someone joins your list. Great for welcoming new subscribers, introducing your brand, and warming up new leads.
- Birthday: Send automatic birthday emails with a discount, gift, or simple greeting to build loyalty.
- Sent an email: Trigger a follow-up flow after sending a bulk email. Helps boost engagement or run follow-up sequences.
- Buys a specific product: Start an automation when someone buys a certain product. Useful for product tips, upsells, or thank-you emails. Needs a connected store.
- Abandons cart: Send reminders to people who add items to their cart but don’t finish checkout. Also needs a connected ecommerce store.
As you can see, this list covers all the basic use cases you’d expect.
You’ll also see more triggers on the left side.
One of the most common ones is “signs up for email list”.
That means you start a sequence for someone who just showed a strong interest in your product by joining your list.
Let’s pick that option for this example journey.
This opens an editor like this:
In this view, you can design and manage an automated customer journey by mapping out each step in the workflow.
You can add more triggers (like when someone signs up) and set rules to control the logic (such as time delays or conditional paths).
You can include actions like sending emails, tagging contacts, or sending surveys.
This helps you create a personalized, automated path.
It guides contacts from their first sign-up to the follow-up steps until they leave the flow.
Just tap the options on the left to add them to the sequence.
For example, if you click “Send email”, you’ll see a pop-up like this:
Here you can write your email. And once that’s done, you can add it to the sequence.
Can you see how handy this is?
It takes you from a blank email to a full journey where you can send emails, add time delays, and more in one simple flow.
For example, if you want a 2-day delay after the first welcome email, you can add a step like this.
And this is basically how you can design your flows.
But I don’t recommend building these from scratch.
It’s much easier to let the AI help you.
Or you can pick from the popular templates inside MailChimp, which are already proven to work for the most common cases.
Once you’ve built your campaign, you can send test emails.
This way, you can check that all the formatted content, code, and details in your email look correct before sending it to your clients.
And as you can see at the top, there’s a live expert help option. If you get stuck, someone can step in and guide you on what to do next.
I like MailChimp because it’s one of the most trusted platforms out there.
Pros
- Easy-to-use editor with drag-and-drop, good for beginners.
- A free plan is available, which helps you get started without cost.
- Many integrations with other tools and platforms.
- Strong basic automation and campaign tracking for small to mid-sized users.
Cons
- Pricing rises steeply as your list grows, which can become expensive.
- Automation and segmentation are limited unless you pay for higher-tier plans.
- Support is weaker on lower plans; live help is often only for higher tiers.
- Some users find the user interface confusing and contact management less flexible.
Key Features
- Drag-and-drop editor with a large template library
- Basic automations for onboarding and follow-ups
- Audience management and segmentation
- Creative assistant for content and design
- Reports with open, click, and engagement tracking
Pricing
Here’s what the pricing looks like with 500 contacts:
- Free ($0/mo): Basic email tools for simple campaigns with limited sending capacity before pausing.
- Essentials (from $13/mo): Adds testing, scheduling, and more advanced sending features for improving campaign performance.
- Standard (from $20/mo): Includes personalization tools, optimization features, and enhanced automation for growing businesses.
- Premium (from $350/mo): Designed for teams needing unlimited contacts, advanced onboarding, deeper automation, and priority support.
Takeaways
I think Mailchimp is a good tool for small businesses and beginners who want easy email marketing.
It has a simple editor, helpful templates, and basic automation.
Its audience tools make it easy to segment contacts and track results.
The free plan is useful for starting out.
As your needs grow, advanced automation and deeper CRM features may feel limited, but it is very beginner-friendly.
3. MailerLite
MailerLite is known for its simplicity and clean interface.
It is a great starting point if you want to get campaigns up quickly without learning a complicated platform.
Compared to other tools, it keeps things more straightforward, which can be refreshing when you want to avoid clutter and heavy features.
Let me share my experience with it.
My Experience
To start using MailerLite, just head over to this page and sign up.
Then answer the questions.
To send emails quickly, select this option in the questionnaire:
This opens up the dashboard that looks like this:
From here, you can start building your email marketing campaigns.
Before you do that, just configure your profile.
Then click “Start building” on the homepage.
You have the following options:
- Regular campaign — Sends a single standard email newsletter to your selected subscribers.
- RSS campaign — Automatically sends emails when new content is published on your website or blog.
- Auto-resend campaign — Sends a follow-up email to subscribers who did not open or click the original message.
- Multivariate campaign — Tests multiple versions of an email to determine which performs best.
Let’s start with a Regular campaign.
In this one, you have a lot of templates to choose from.
Notice the filters on the left.
Let’s pick “Black Friday” just as an example.
This shows you all the Black Friday campaign templates.
I’ll try that Black Friday countdown timer template as the first step.
I’ll name it “Black Friday Sale”.
Right off the bat, you’ll see an email template that looks like this:
Notice that I didn’t do anything to accomplish this.
So this already shows how good the templates are in MailerLite.
Now, you can obviously customize everything here.
For example, you can tweak the layout, font, and colors from the right-hand-side panel.
And you can also drag and drop blocks to the view from the left.
And needless to mention, you can tweak each element in the email individually.
To do this, just hover over any element and it allows you to edit that element.
Once you’ve edited your email and it’s ready, you can send a test email.
This allows you to see what the email will actually look like as it lands in someone’s inbox.
This is a crucial step to take!
Once you’re done editing, it’s time to specify your campaign details.
This helps you find the campaign and understand the meaning over time.
Once that’s done, you can send your email.
You can send it now, send it later, or change the settings. This helps you pick the best time based on time zones.
Heck, you can even use AI to smart-send your emails.
For our test purposes, let’s just click “Send Now”.
This sends the email to all of our subscribers.
Isn’t that awesome?
Notice that this was just a basic email that we sent.
There’s a whole lot more that you can do with MailerLite.
Here are other common options you might want to use.
For example, a common way to nurture leads is to send a series of automated emails. This is better than just sending one welcome email.
To do this with MailerLite, click “Create Automation”.
Once again, you can either choose a template or do it from scratch.
For example, let’s use the Webinar Invitation template.
This opens up a view that looks like this:
This is your webinar invitation funnel.
It shows you all the emails, delays, and joining options from which the emails can be collected.
This is handy.
Instead of manually sending stuff out, you can just do it once with MailerLite at scale.
For example, in this email sequence, there’s a delay that takes place twice:
This helps to keep your subscribers active and not forget the webinar, while not spamming them.
If this template looks good, just select it.
Then you can start to customize the template.
For example, you can delete your nodes.
Or you can add new triggers.
These are your email trigger options.
For example, you can create a case on what happens if your subscriber clicks a specific link in one of your emails or websites.
Oh, and needless to mention, you can add new steps to your automation.
For example, you can add delays, conditional logic, A/B testing to see which email performs better, and more.
Then you have lots of actions, such as:
- Send email — Automatically sends an email to the contact.
- Webhook — Sends data to an external URL to trigger actions in another system.
- Send internal notification — Notifies your team (not the contact) about something important.
- Update custom field — Changes a specific custom field value on the contact’s profile.
- Copy to groups — Adds the contact to additional groups while keeping them in their current ones.
- Move to groups — Transfers the contact to new groups and removes them from the old ones.
- Remove from groups — Takes the contact out of selected groups.
- Unsubscribe — Removes the contact from receiving future emails.
As you can see, we’re talking about a super complete and comprehensive platform in MailerLite.
You can use this tool to create anything from a simple email to a full-on automation.
The templates, the ease of use, and everything make it such a wonderful tool to work with.
Definitely recommend it!
Pros
- Very user-friendly interface that makes it quick to set up and manage campaigns.
- Affordable pricing, including a generous free plan for early users.
- Built-in tools for landing pages, signup forms and basic automation.
- Good deliverability thanks to strong standards and account-approval focus.
- Flexible list management: only unique contacts are counted even if they’re in multiple segments.
Cons
- Advanced automation workflows and triggers are limited unless you upgrade.
- Reporting and analytics are basic; it lacks deep conversion tracking or multi-channel insights.
- Free plan lacks templates and some features that are only in paid tiers.
- Support options are more limited on free and lower plans; no phone support.
- The account approval process can delay the start of your campaigns.
Key Features
- Drag-and-drop email and HTML editor
- Automation workflows with conditional content and RSS capability
- Landing pages, websites, pop-ups, quizzes, and embedded forms
- Dynamic content blocks and A/B testing
- Multiple user access and scalable sending limits
Pricing
- Free ($0): Up to 500 subscribers, 12,000 monthly emails, 1 user seat, basic editor, automation builder, landing pages, and forms.
- Growing Business ($10/mo): Up to 500 subscribers, unlimited emails, 3 user seats, email support, plus digital products, unlimited templates, dynamic emails, auto-resend, and multivariate testing.
- Advanced ($20/mo): Up to 500 subscribers, unlimited emails and seats, 24/7 live chat support, plus smart sending, custom HTML, enhanced automations, AI writing assistant, and partner discounts.
The pricing goes up with additional contacts. The above pricing shows you an example of what it costs with 500 users.
Takeaways
To me, MailerLite looks like a great tool for anyone who wants simple email marketing without a steep learning curve.
It has a simple drag-and-drop editor.
You can create landing pages, signup forms, and a basic website.
This helps you manage most of your marketing in one place.
The free plan is great for beginners and small businesses.
You can start sending campaigns and use basic automations right away.
If you need more advanced automation or deeper analytics, you might outgrow it.
However, for most users, it is simple and practical.
4. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is one of the strongest automation platforms in the industry.
It is built for advanced sequences and deeper customer logic.
Unlike many competitors, it combines CRM features and email marketing in a single environment.
Let me show you around!
My Experience
To start using ActiveCampaign, just head over to this page and sign up.
You don’t need to use your credit card to get the free trial.
Just set up your account.
Remember to choose the “Email Marketing” option when they ask which platform you want to use.
Once you’re done, this tool creates a unique URL.
Take your credentials somewhere safe, and then sign in to your company URL in ActiveCampaign.
That’s what the dashboard looks like.
Now you can start creating.
For example, you can choose Email from the left to start writing an email to your contacts.
Then just set up your campaign.
I’ll create a standard one.
You can even use AI to create your campaign.
Then specify the message details for the AI to create your email.
For example, I’m telling the AI to create a Black Friday email.
Here’s the result I get back.
It even has my company logo and everything!
Now, you can easily quick-edit the email by just clicking the email header.
Or you can open up the campaign designer.
Here’s the editor.
From the right, you can add any blocks, structures, and elements to your email that you might need.
Let’s look at the AI-generated email a bit closer.
I mean… Yes, it’s an email.
But not a good one.
This looks just like it was created—a boring “just another AI email”.
Nobody will click through that.
So maybe ActiveCampaign just wanted to capitalize on the AI hype by adding this feature to the list.
But to be honest, I think the AI email just isn’t that good.
But that’s not a problem. It might still help you with the blank page syndrome.
Also, you can easily edit the email by hand.
Whenever you’re ready, just hit “Next” to start sending the emails.
Before you send, make sure the subject line, preheader, and all the other email settings are correct.
This ensures the email looks right.
Also, you can always preview your email by test-sending it to yourself.
Also, choose the audience(s) who you want to receive this email.
Once you’re all set, just hit “Send now” on the top right.
Here’s what the email I just created looks like in my inbox.
Isn’t that easy?
Notice that this was just a single basic email.
But ActiveCampaign lets you do a whole bunch more.
For example, you can build entire automations.
This helps you create not just one email, but a sequence of automated emails with time intervals and timezone optimizations.
To build an automation, you don’t need to be a genius or an experienced email marketer.
This is because you can use one of the pre-made recipes (or templates, as I like to call them):
For example, I chose the recipe for delivering an online course in lessons.
This is what the pre-made template looks like.
Each node in that chart is an email or action that will take place in the sequence.
For example, right now, it’s sending the welcome message, then waiting for 24 hours, then sending the day 1 email.
You can easily tweak these, too.
Just click the plus icon to add new emails or actions in between.
You have a lot of options to choose from as your journey points.
There’s waiting, conditional logic, and even some AI-based actions.
And of course, there’s an option to add an email to the sequence.
Once every email and action is complete, just activate your campaign.
You can test-run the journey in one go to your email (so you don’t need to wait weeks just to receive the test emails).
This way, you’ll be sure the campaign and journey look right.
I always recommend doing this, since it’s super awkward and amateur to send emails that look like they’re first-timer emails.
But yeah, as you can see, this tool is amazing.
It’s not just an email builder, but a full-on email marketing tool and a CRM in one place.
The tool is easy to use.
Although the AI features are a bit outdated to my eye, everything else seems to deliver.
I definitely recommend it.
Pros
- Very powerful automation builder with many triggers and actions.
- Strong integrations with lots of other tools and platforms.
- Built-in CRM and marketing tools in one system.
- High deliverability and good segmentation options.
- Scalable for growing businesses with more complex needs.
Cons
- Cost rises quickly as your contact list grows or you unlock features.
- Has a steeper learning curve, especially if you’re new to automation.
- Some core features (like advanced reporting or full CRM) need higher tiers.
- The email editor and interface can feel complex and less intuitive than simpler tools.
- Best suited for users who need more than basic newsletters; it may be overkill for simple email use.
Key Features
- Multi-step automation workflows with triggers and actions
- Email templates, drag-and-drop builder, and content personalization
- CRM with lead scoring and activity tracking
- SMS and WhatsApp messaging options
- Advanced segmentation, conditional content, and predictive sending
Pricing
- Starter ($15/mo): Entry-level plan for personalized email marketing campaigns.
- Plus ($49/mo): Adds automation features and deeper customer insights.
- Pro ($79/mo): Includes enhanced orchestration for more advanced email operations.
- Enterprise ($145/mo): Built for large-scale email marketing with enterprise-grade support.
Takeaways
ActiveCampaign is a strong tool for businesses.
It helps them do more than just send basic emails. It allows them to create complete marketing automation systems.
It offers email campaigns, advanced automation workflows, CRM capabilities, and even multi-channel messaging like SMS and WhatsApp.
This means you can manage both marketing and sales processes in one platform.
The drag-and-drop editor and many automation templates make it easy to use.
However, there is a learning curve if you want to fully use its customization and segmentation features.
If you need clever automation and personalization at scale, it’s a strong fit.
But if you just want to send simple newsletters, it may feel like overkill and cost more than simpler tools.
Takeaways
That’s it for my breakdown of the best email marketing tools of 2025.
By the way, there’s a lot of writing, and I’ll be updating more tools on this list soon!
But these are my top picks and recommendations right now.
- MailModo — Best for Interactive Emails & AI Automations
- Mailchimp — Best for Beginners & All-in-One Marketing
- MailerLite — Best for Simplicity & Budget-Friendly Marketing
- ActiveCampaign — Best for Advanced Automation & CRM
I tried them all, ran real campaigns, and cut out everything that wasn’t worth your time.
Choose the one that fits your workflow, start testing, and adjust as you go.
Email marketing only works when you actually use the tools.
So pick one, hit send, and keep improving from there.
Happy emailing! Thanks for reading! 🙂