The Best Free Email Deliverability Tools for 2023

Email marketing provides a direct line of communication with your audience. When comparing the top online email deliverability tools, whether you’re looking for a new way to improve your existing workflow or finding an alternative to your existing one, it’s essential to consider a variety of factors, including features, ease of use, pricing, and scalability.

Below is a quick comparison of some of the most popular email deliverability tools to improve your email deliverability, with their key features and pricing information for both free tiers (not including free trials, as most of them have this) and paid monthly plans as of 2023. Some of the below links may contain affiliate links where, if you make a purchase, we will receive a commission.

Free Email Deliverability Tools:

• EmailOctopus:
  • Features: EmailOctopus offers customizable templates, email automation workflows, detailed analytics, list segmentation, A/B testing, integrations with popular tools, and a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor.
  • Pricing: EmailOctopus pricing is tiered based on the number of subscribers. It offers a free plan for up to 500 subscribers, with an easily tailorable range of paid plans starting at $8 per month.
• Mailchimp:
  • Features: Mailchimp features a user-friendly interface, marketing email automation, A/B testing, and analytics. It is suitable for small to medium-sized businesses.
  • Pricing: Mailchimp pricing is tiered based on the number of subscribers. It offers a free plan for up to 500 subscribers, with paid plans starting at $13 per month.
• ConvertKit:
  • Features: ConvertKit features are designed for content creators, offering features like visual automation and easy segmentation. It’s suitable for bloggers and online businesses.
  • Pricing: ConvertKit pricing is based on the number of subscribers. It offers a free plan with limited features for up to 1000 subscribers, with paid plans including improved functionality starting at $15 per month.
• AWeber:
  • Features: AWeber features email automation, analytics, and a variety of templates. It’s user-friendly and suitable for small to medium-sized businesses.
  • Pricing: AWeber pricing is based on the number of subscribers. It offers a free plan for up to 500 subscribers, with paid plans starting at $14.99 per month for unlimited subscribers.
• HubSpot:
  • Features: HubSpot features a complete suite of marketing, sales, and customer service tools. Its email marketing features include marketing automation and personalization.
  • Pricing: HubSpot pricing varies based on the products you choose. It offers a free plan with a limit of up to 2,000 emails sent per month, with HubSpot branding. Their ‘Starter’ Marketing Hub then starts at $20 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers.

Low-cost Email Deliverability Tools:

• Constant Contact:
  • Features: Constant Contact features a complete suite of tools, including email marketing, social media posting, and basic eCommerce tools. It’s user-friendly and offers customizable marketing templates.
  • Pricing: Constant Contact pricing is based on the number of subscribers. Plans start at $12 per month for up to 500 subscribers.
• GetResponse:
  • Features: GetResponse features advanced marketing email automation, landing page creation, and webinar hosting in addition to email marketing. It caters to businesses of all sizes.
  • Pricing: GetResponse pricing is based on the number of subscribers. Plans start at $16.15 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers.

What is an Email Deliverability Tool?

An email deliverability tool is a software or a service designed to help businesses and marketers optimize the successful delivery of their email campaigns to recipients’ inboxes. The primary goal of these tools is to enhance the chances that an email sent by a sender will reach its intended destination without being marked as spam or ending up in the recipient’s junk folder. Email deliverability is a critical aspect of email marketing, as high deliverability rates ensure that messages are seen by the target audience, leading to better engagement and conversion rates.

Why do you need an Email Deliverability Tool?

Implementing an email deliverability tool is crucial for any company engaged in email marketing or communication campaigns. One of the primary reasons is to safeguard the company’s reputation. Internet service providers (ISPs) and email service providers (ESPs) use complex algorithms to evaluate the reputation of senders based on factors such as the sender’s history, engagement rates, and adherence to email authentication protocols. A poor sender reputation can result in emails being flagged as spam, leading to lower deliverability rates and diminished overall email marketing effectiveness. A deliverability tool helps monitor and manage these factors, ensuring that a company’s emails maintain a positive reputation and are more likely to land in recipients’ inboxes.

Moreover, email deliverability tools provide insights into email campaign performance and recipient engagement. They offer analytics and reporting features that allow companies to track key metrics, such as open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates. By analyzing these metrics, businesses can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of their email campaigns, identify areas for improvement, and tailor future campaigns to better resonate with their target audience. Overall, investing in an email deliverability tool is a strategic move for companies looking to maximize the impact of their email marketing efforts, enhance customer communication, and maintain a strong online presence.

Making The Correct Choice For You

When evaluating different email marketing costs and email service prices, the types of email deliverability tools and types of email automation available should factor prominently along with overall email software pricing.

Even free email deliverability tool sample offers have their limitations. While ideal for small-scale needs, free plans often restrict key functions like automation, analytics, deliverability rates, and advanced personalization. Some may also come with their company’s branding and strict email volume limits, which may impact the sender’s reputation.

Paid emailing software plans enable more sophisticated email marketing capabilities, with monthly costs typically ranging from $12-20+ per month for 500-1,000+ subscribers. Enterprise-grade functionality like customer journey mapping, complex segmentation, and embedded e-commerce can raise costs further. Comparing whether free or paid email marketing samples align with both current and future email types and volumes is essential.

The specific types of marketing emails that platforms support should also guide selection, as needs evolve from basic newsletters and promotions to more personalized lifecycle touchpoints and customer re-engagement streams. Opt for scalable solutions that allow advanced, automated, and integrated approaches as subscriber numbers grow. Emails marketing customer engagement, loyalty, and brand affinity may have different functionality requirements than purely promotional types of marketing emails.

Carefully weighing email marketing costs against the types of marketing emails needed now and in the future is key. Seek out free trials or samples to experience capabilities first-hand before committing. Selecting the right platform to send emails provides the messaging versatility to deliver email marketing results as subscribers and strategies scale.

Email Automation Best Practices

Apply these proven tactics to continually improve performance:

• Implement confirmed opt-in, requiring new subscribers to click confirmation emails
• Personalize content using merge tags with names, interests, etc make emails stand out
• Enable mobile-responsive templates so messages render cleanly across devices
• A/B test subject lines to identify which compel most opens from each segment
• Send “re-engagement streams” to reconnect with inactive subscribers
• Find the ideal promotional vs. educational content balance for the audience

Consistently following best practices maximizes the results from email tools.

Ensuring Your Emails Reach Inboxes

Once you’ve picked your email deliverability tool, a critical component of maximizing email marketing results is ensuring your emails consistently land in subscribers’ inboxes. This requires maintaining clean email lists, establishing sender authenticity, providing relevant content, and monitoring engagement.

Start by properly capturing email addresses and gaining explicit consent during opt-in procedures. When cold emailing prospects, confirm addresses are current prior to launching large campaigns. Continually update email lists by detecting invalid accounts using verification tools.

Next, employ authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM and DMARC so emails easily pass spam filters and get marked as important, avoiding junk folders. These measures establish the sender’s validity.

Carefully craft email content to meet subscriber needs and expectations based on past behaviors. Analyze performance in real time by connecting analytics to view open and click-through rates, unsubscribe numbers, and deliverability rates. Identify downward trends.

Finally, run periodic email deliverability tests by sending messages and having tools email testing tools analyze content relevancy, spam triggers, and IP reputation. Diagnose potential deliverability issues early and course correct.

With vigilance across email hygiene, sender protocol, engaging content, and rapid response to blocking trends, your valuable marketing messages will consistently reach inboxes.

Key Metrics & Benchmarks

Understanding industry email benchmarks helps set realistic performance goals:

Open Rates: 30%+ is exceptional, 20-25% performs well. Under 15% may need reevaluation.

Clickthrough Rates: 8%+ is strong. 2-4% is more common. Under 2% indicates low interest.

Bounce Rates: Sub 5% is ideal, under 10% is good, over 15% hurts placement.

Unsubscribe Rates: Under 1% is ideal, 1-3% is average. Over 5% damages your sender reputation.

Benchmark metrics enable properly tracking and analyzing email programs for optimal impact.