Email Marketing Services in 2024

Compare bulk email marketing service providers features and pricing

G2 email marketing software

There are many niches in the email marketing industry and many providers focus on one, from small businesses (e.g. MailChimp, VerticalResponse), enterprise (InfusionSoft, HubSpot), and bloggers (ConvertKit), to low cost transactional email (SendGrid and MailGun) and platforms that integrate with 3rd party services (BigMailer and Sendy) behind the scenes. We picked a few niches and their leaders for this guide.

Bulk Email Marketing Service Pricing

There are 3 main pricing models used by email marketing service providers:

1. Subscriptions based on number of contacts (aka subscribers) stored on the platform. Typically, these type of plans allow for unlimited emails per month, or the monthly sending limit is based on sending 3+ emails per month to the entire list stored.
2. Pay-as-you go plans with volume discounts where the customer is charged based on number of emails sent through a provider platform.
3. A combination of one of the models above plus overage charges for sending emails above allocated limits. For example, transactional email leader SendGrid has separate pricing for transactional and marketing campaigns.

Subscriptions is the most common pricing model for bulk email marketing service providers, and pay-as-you-go plans are preferred by providers focusing on transactional email sending (e.g. SendGrid and MailGun). For the purposes of comparison we listed pricing on pay-as-you-go plans based on engagement with a list 2 times per month. 

One factor that prospective customers need to be aware of is pricing tiers. If the list is fast growing, which is often the case for blogs or startups then future pricing should be considered as well. Most providers seem to have their pricing tiers defined based on 5000 contact increments and email marketing plans tend to be based on 2-4 emails per month to all contacts.

If you maintain a large contacts list but send infrequent bulk (newsletters, promotions) campaigns then pay-as-you-go pricing may be more favorable. If your marketing plan includes sending a lot of content updates to your entire list then subscriptions based on list size with high or  unlimited sending can offer better ROI.

Bulk Email Marketing Service Providers Comparison

If you send a variety of campaign types from different platforms (e.g. transactional from SendGrid and marketing from MailChimp) consider consolidating all your email in a single platform with a single price point, with unified customer data and real-time engagement tracking across email types. Use our comparison tables below to help you find the best platform for all your email needs.

Updated: Jan 5, 2023

*SendInBlue offers a Lite plan for $25/month, that includes 40,000 emails per month, but on this plan SendInBlue logo isn’t removed and features are very limited so it’s less comparable to other providers.

**Since this post focuses on marketing (aka newsletter or broadcast) email campaigns, we are comparing to SendGrid’s Marketing and not API plans pricing.

***MailGun’s Flex is a pay-as-you-go plan that allows you to send any email frequency, we chose x2 monthly frequency to make comparison more comparable to SendGrid and SendInBlue.

BigMailer also offers an option to send email via Amazon SES for half the price of the plan listed in the table.

Brand Management and White Labeling

Example: Custom Unsubscribe on BigMailer

Some providers, for example MailChimp and SendInBlue, allow connecting the same user to multiple accounts, which offers a convenience of not logging in/out of client accounts. However, when you manage multiple brands this way you can’t share creative assets (e.g. email templates, image library) and you can’t automatically leverage volume discounts based on combined usage, they way you would be able to do with a platform like BigMailer. BigMailer is the only platform we know of that has brand management built-into a main dashboard and workflow. 

Many providers, for example SendGrid and MailGun, refer to custom tracking (links in the email) domain as white labeling because using a custom tracking domain for links in the emails makes the ESP in use less identifiable to the email recipient. Typically, if the custom domain is configured, the unsubscribe page is also hosted on the custom domain as well.

When we searched for white label email marketing, we mostly saw either references to custom link domain (see above) or partner (aka reseller) programs. Providers like BigMailer, ActiveCampaign, and SendInBlue offer the option to white label the platform itself, so agency clients can access it on the agency’s domain and see agency logo. This way, agencies can charge their customer their own fees for use of platform without customer knowing what software is being used.

Email Marketing Trends in 2024

There are some major trends that are either re-shaping the email marketing space in 2024 or continue to influence competitive landscape:

1. Email marketing platforms are becoming omni-channel marketing  platforms offering email, SMS, live chat, web notifications, and social platform integrations.
2. Providers are offering complimentary services like email verification and spam testing, typically at additional cost but sometimes included as limited credits added to account on a monthly basis. Some providers integrate 3rd party services like Litmus, while others develop in-house validation capabilities. However, the definition of email validation and methods vary significantly between providers, so marketers need to pay close attention to what value they are getting.
3. Providers are trying to position themselves as deliverability experts and offer their deliverability expertise as a service, typically for customers on higher tier plans.

We will be updating the chart above with additional providers and features on ongoing basis. Is there a provider you want us to add or feature to cover? Let us know via chat on the pricing page.

Want to become a BigMailer partner and grow with us? We are offering a 2-way email marketing affiliate program with a dual incentive – partners earn commission while referrals get a discount on their 1st month of service.