How We Ranked These Email Platforms
We spent four weeks sending the same campaigns through six platforms to lists of 40,000 subscribers. Each tool here covers the basics: drag-and-drop editing, signup forms, segmentation, and automated sequences. The differences that matter show up later, in inbox placement, contact overage fees, and how quickly support answers when a send fails.
We scored each platform on four things: deliverability across major inbox providers, the price at 10,000 and 50,000 contacts, how long the free tier lasts, and whether automation is capped by plan. You can read more buying advice in our internet marketing section. Deliverability was measured by seed-list placement over three send cycles, not vendor claims.
Sendora: Best for Automation at Scale
Sendora charges $39 a month for up to 10,000 contacts and never caps automation steps, which sets it apart from rivals that lock sequences behind higher tiers. Its visual builder handles branch logic without code, so a welcome series can split on purchase history or link clicks. In our test, 98.2 percent of messages reached the inbox.
The trade-off is reporting. Sendora hides revenue attribution behind a $79 plan, so small stores selling physical goods may feel pushed upward. Start with the 14-day trial, export your list if the price bothers you, and watch contact overage charges once you cross a tier boundary. Support replied in under four hours on the $39 plan, faster than two competitors we tried.
MailPine: Best Free Tier for New Senders
MailPine lets you email 2,000 contacts for free, forever, and that tier includes automation, which almost nobody else offers. For a solo creator or a new store, this removes the monthly bill until your list grows. Paid plans begin at $19 a month for 5,000 contacts, and the jump to 10,000 stays under most rivals.
The free plan adds a small footer badge to every message. That is a fair trade at the start, and you can remove it later. Pair it with strong list-building work; the tactics in our guide to keyword research tools help you attract the right signups. Its segmentation is basic, so plan to clean your list manually before each send.
The best platform is not the one with the most features, but the one whose pricing still makes sense when your list triples.
Inbloom: Best for Ecommerce Flows
Inbloom connects to storefronts in one click and syncs product catalogs, abandoned carts, and past orders automatically. Its win-back and browse-abandon flows earned the highest revenue per recipient in our test. Pricing starts at $29 a month for 2,500 contacts, rising faster than average above 20,000.
If you sell physical products and already run a store platform, Inbloom saves hours of setup. If you mainly send a newsletter, you are paying for ecommerce features you will never open, and PostCrate or MailPine will cost less for the same inbox result. The catalog sync also keeps out-of-stock items out of your emails, which reduces complaints.
PostCrate: Best Simple Newsletter Tool
PostCrate strips email down to writing and sending. There is one editor, no template maze, and a send button. That focus makes it the fastest tool to learn, and its 92 percent deliverability held steady across our runs. It starts at $15 a month for 3,000 contacts.
Automation is thin: you get a welcome message and a simple drip, nothing with branches. For a weekly essay or a product update, that is enough. For anything triggered by behavior, look at Sendora instead. You also get a plain-text mode that many larger tools hide behind a paid add-on.
Broadwing and Recurra: Two Worthy Alternatives
Broadwing targets agencies that manage many client lists, with sub-accounts and white-label sending. Recurra focuses on transactional mail and reliability, with a 99.99 percent uptime promise and a generous developer API. Both cost more per contact than the tools above.
Use this quick table to compare their entry prices and best fit before you book a demo. Both offer annual discounts of about 20 percent, though the lock-in is real.
| Platform | Starts at | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Broadwing | $49/mo | Agencies |
| Recurra | $25/mo | Transactional mail |
What to Pay and How to Choose
Expect to pay between $15 and $50 a month early on, and roughly $0.001 to $0.003 per email once your list passes 50,000 contacts. The free tiers matter most in year one; the overage rules matter most in year two. Whatever tool you pick, follow the FTC CAN-SPAM guidance on consent and unsubscribe rules. Move up a tier only when a specific feature, not a subscriber milestone, forces you to.
- Under 2,000 contacts: MailPine free.
- Newsletter only: PostCrate.
- Ecommerce flows: Inbloom.
- Heavy automation: Sendora.
- Agencies: Broadwing.