There is no shortage of email tools to help businesses more easily and efficiently communicate, foster sales, and close deals. The good news is that the best email tools not only make your life easier and potentially your sales higher, but most are also available for free.
If you’re looking for a specific type of email tool, jump to that section:
- Email marketing automation
- Sales tools for email
- Lead generation and contact list builders
- Productivity and collaboration tools
- User insights tools
Best Email Marketing Automation Tools & Platforms
1. Mailchimp
Best for: Easily and affordability creating email marketing campaigns
Starting price: Free
Mailchimp email automation platform
Mailchimp is a leading email marketing automation platform that’s best known for its robust email marketing suite that not only makes it easy for anyone to create and design automated email campaigns, but has pricing to suit any business. It stands out from its competitors for its intuitive and user-friendly interface and comprehensive list of features and tools. It’s also available for free for those with under 2,000 contacts and premium plans start at $9.99 per month.
2. Drip
Best for: Automated ecommerce email marketing
Starting price: $49 per month
Drip email marketing for ecommerce businesses
Those in ecommerce know that, quite frankly, ecommerce is a different beast. And with that, it requires different features in order to maximize sales. Drip is a top email marketing automation platform designed to meet the needs of ecommerce businesses with features that help directly drive sales from your online store. It’s not the cheapest email marketing platform, though when used strategically, many find it to be worth the small investment of $49 per month.
3. ActiveCampaign
Best for: Using email campaigns to nurture leads into customers.
Starting price: $9 per month
ActiveCampaign
Much more than an email marketing platform, it’s a customer experience platform that combines email marketing and customer relationship management to create a marketing machine. It also has a Gmail app and unique features like email variables, allowing you to update email elements such as your email signature depending on who you’re sending a campaign to and an email subject line generator to help you increase email open rates.
Sales Email Tools
4. HubSpot
Best for: Complete inbound marketing platform
Starting price: Free
HubSpot email marketing interface
HubSpot is a top sales, marketing, and customer relationship management (CRM) platform that is designed to ignite business growth through inbound marketing. It’s a comprehensive platform with a wide range of features and capabilities. For example, it includes an email marketing platform, sales pipeline management, and pay-per-click (PPC) ad analysis. It also has some cool built-in features, such as email tracking to gain insight into which contacts opened your email, to further inform a contact’s interest levels.
5. Streak
Best for: Managing sales workflows directly from your inbox
Starting price: Free
Streak CRM for Gmail
Streak is a customer relationship management tool that you can use to manage your contacts and workflows directly from your Gmail inbox. It’s ideal for those who want an easy way of managing contacts and sales without having to manage yet another platform. Given that it works through Gmail, it also makes it a good solution for businesses and sales teams that are on the go and frequently work from mobile devices.
6. Boomerang
Best for: Scheduling emails to send at a later date and time
Starting price: Free
Schedule emails to send later with Boomerang
Need to send an email tomorrow morning, but know you’ll be on a flight then? Sure, you would send it early, or later, but sometimes timing is everything, and the email sent too early or during out-of-office hours can be viewed as aggressive, and the late email may be viewed as lazy or forgetful. A better way to create emails is when you’re free and schedule them to send when you want using a tool such as Boomerang. It’s available for free and has low-cost premium plans.
Lead Generation & Contact List Builders
7. Hunter
Best for: Finding email addresses based on a company’s URL
Starting price: Free
Hunter email finder tool
Hunter is an email finder tool that lets you input a business’ URL and get employee email addresses. It’s a helpful tool for those who are looking to increase their cold outreach list and know of certain businesses whose staff fits their target audience. The free plan allows for up to 50 requests per month, and premium plans start at $49 per month for up to 1,000 monthly requests and additional features such as the ability to connect multiple Gmail accounts.
8. Debounce
Best for: Cleaning contact lists
Starting price: $10 for 5,000 contacts
Debounce email verification
Debounce is an email validation tool that cleans contact lists by verifying that contacts still exist. This may not sound like a big deal, but deliverability impacts how your email address is viewed and deemed legit. In other words, if you’re frequently sending emails to bad addresses and getting a high bounce rate, your email won’t appear credible and is more likely to be marked as spam by your recipient’s email providers.
9. GetProspect
Best for: Collecting email addresses from LinkedIn
Starting price: Free
GetProspect
LinkedIn is a great source for finding people who would likely be interested in your product or service, though it does not readily provide users’ email addresses. GetProspect does just that—it gives you a way to get LinkedIn users’ email addresses. It can be a helpful list building tool for cold contacts that fit your target audience, and it’s available for free.
Productivity & Collaboration Email Tools
10. Calendly
Best for: Scheduling appointments and meetings easily via email
Starting price: Free
Calendly
Scheduling meetings and appointments via email can be quite a headache. Rather than going back and forth about availability and dealing with multiple calendars, use Calendly to easily schedule appointments and meetings via email. It enables you to send invites that display your up-to-date availability, regardless of which email provider you use. It has a free plan and premium plans starting at $8 for additional calendars and event types.
11. Inbox When Ready
Best for: Time management and focusing on tasks
Starting price: Free
Inbox When Ready for Gmail
Lack of focus and frequent interruptions (such as incoming emails) are a major cause of decreased productivity. Stay focused by silencing your inbox using the Inbox When Ready tool. It enables you to “lock” your inbox at certain times or for a chosen duration so that you don’t see incoming emails and get distracted. It’s available for free, and there’s a premium plan that costs $4 per month.
12. DocHub
Best for: Sending and signing PDF documents via email
Starting price: Free
DocHub for Gmail
Businesses that send documents that require a signature will find DocHub to be a helpful email tool. It enables you to edit, send, and sign PDF documents over email, eliminating the need to print, sign, and scan documents or manipulate them online. It’s available for free for up to 2,000 documents per account and up to three emails per day. The premium plan costs $4.99 per month for unlimited documents and emails.
User Insights Email Tools
13. Attach
Best for: Tracking interactions with email attachments
Starting price: Free
Attach.io email attachment tracking data
If you’ve ever wondered if your attachments actually get opened and read, then consider using Attach.io. It tracks your attachments and provides user insights, such as who opened your attachment and how long they read and viewed it. This can be extremely helpful for sales teams gauging lead interest, giving businesses a way to determine lead warmth for lead fostering purposes.
14. Mailtrack
Best for: Email open tracking
Starting price: Free
Mailtrack for Gmail
If you simply want to know who even opened your email, there’s Mailtrack. Like the name says, it tracks your emails and tells you when recipients open your emails, and how many times they’ve opened it in general. This information can be very insightful for sales teams and it’s available for free.
15. WiseStamp
Best for: Modern branded email signatures
Starting price: Free
WiseStamp email signature
Make generic email signatures a thing of the past and make your brand stand out with a modern email signature. With WiseStamp, you can easily create professional email signatures that include an image or your business’ logo as well as live links, social links, demos, and announcements. These signatures have proven to get more replies and site visits, making both form and function meet. A free version is available, but the professional version costs $5.80 per month.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are the best email providers for business?
The top business email providers not only enable you to use your own email domain, but also offer email with ample storage and attachment limits over a secure and reliable platform. The top-rated providers include G Suite, Zoho, Bluehost, Microsoft 365, Rackspace, and FastMail. To learn which is best for you, learn more about the best business email providers.
How do I get a business email address?
Business email addresses use your own domain name, so you can start by registering a domain with a domain name registrar, but you can also get one directly from business email providers such as G Suite, which will automatically connect your business email to your domain name in the account creation process. If you already have a domain, you’ll simply need to verify ownership with your email provider of choice. Get the complete steps on getting business email.
What are the best bulk email marketing services?
Pretty much all email marketing platforms include bulk email. Those that are consistently ranked as the overall best email marketing platforms include Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Drip, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, and HubSpot. Which one is best for you will depend on your unique needs, goals, and budget. To find out which best suits you, learn more about the best email marketing software.
Bottom Line
The best email marketing tools are worth investing your time in. Not only can many of the best tools help make your job easier, but some also provide you with a lot of insights and information that can help you better understand and communicate with your audience. In return, you can use your time more efficiently, focus your time and energy on the right places and people, and drive more sales.
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