Email has long been one of the most effective marketing channels for businesses of all sizes. But finding an email service provider that can keep up with the number of emails you need to send can be a challenge — especially if you don’t have much of a budget (or no budget at all). Sending bulk emails is important to reach large audiences with your newsletters, promotional emails, and basically just communicating with your list in general. But you don’t just want to send emails without being able to understand how those emails are performing, right? That’s why we’ve put together this list of free bulk email marketing services so you can compare the features and find the right one for your business.
10 Free Bulk Email Marketing Services Rated and Compared (2021):
What Is a Bulk Email Service?
A bulk email service is an email service capable of sending emails to a large number of recipients at once. Bulk emails are generally used for advertising or marketing campaigns as well as to send out updates to your email list. The types of emails you might send include newsletters, promotional emails, transactional emails, shipping notifications, reports, password resets, and more.
You need a reliable bulk email service provider to send emails at this volume because doing it from your own email server is likely to get you flagged as a spammer. Bulk email services are specifically built with large volumes of email in mind and know how to send your emails so your sender reputation remains intact and so you don’t find yourself on the wrong side of the email gods.
What to Look for in a Bulk Email Service
There are a few key features that you’ll want to look for in a bulk email service before committing:
- Security and reliability
- Email tracking
- List management
- Email design
- Price
Security and Reliability
Security and reliability are hands down the most important feature to look for in your bulk email service. When you’re sending out a large volume of emails in a short amount of time, you need to be able to do it without triggering any spam filters. Your bulk email provider should give you the option to choose an SMTP server and use batching (sending emails out in smaller batches) to send out your bulk emails instead of sending them out all at once.
Email Tracking
Most bulk email services will give you at least some basic email tracking tools so you can check open and click rates, deliverability, and other common email marketing benchmarks and metrics. Some of the more powerful tools will offer in-depth analytics.
List Management
The bulk email service you choose should give you the option to add and manage your email marketing list. This includes features that will help you segment your list and keep your list clean and free from duplicates and inactive emails.
Email Design
Typically, a bulk email service isn’t going to include as many design options as the average email marketing service provider, but it should include at least some basic design tools. If there aren’t any design tools available, the platform should at least give you the option to import your own design or paste an HTML email template.
Price
Cost is going to be a factor for some businesses. On our list, we’ve included free bulk email marketing services that include additional features and functionality on their paid plans. No matter your budget, you’ll be able to find a bulk email marketing service for you on this list.
10 Free Bulk Email Marketing Services
As we mentioned, bulk email marketing services are used to send a large volume of emails via SMTP, API, or a web interface. These tools are generally less expensive than marketing email services, but that’s because they tend to have fewer bells and whistles. Here are the 10 free bulk email marketing services we’re loving right now.
1. Elastic Email
Elastic Email is a free bulk email marketing service that’s easy to use. You can manage your recipient list for each marketing campaign and the platform includes autoresponders. The platform also includes web forms that you can add to your emails as well as a WordPress plugin for the WordPress users out there. Since Elastic Email offers API access, you can integrate the platform with the apps you already use. In addition, Elastic Email allows for sub-accounts and includes A/X testing features.
? Features
- Email designer or upload your own HTML email template
- List management
- Sending and scheduling options
- Autoresponders
- Unlimited web forms
- Subscriber form WordPress plugin
- Landing pages
- Tags and custom fields
- Segmentation functionality
- Unlimited sub-accounts
- Email automations and workflows
- A/X testing
- Detailed reporting
- Email verification
- 24/7 support
✔️ Pros and Cons
- ? Web forms and landing pages for lead generation
- ? Less expensive than other options
- ? Tracking and dashboards have lots of info
- ? Great support
- ? Emails might end up in spam
- ? Reputation can drop quickly if you’re not using the platform correctly
- ? Some users reported that their accounts were closed for sending phishing emails
? Pricing
- Free plan allows you to send up to 100 emails per day
- Unlimited: $15/month for up to 5,000 contacts
- Unlimited Pro: $30/month for up to 5,000 contacts
- Email API: $0.10/1000 emails + $0.40/day
- Email API Pro: $0.12/1000/emails + $1/day
2. Mailgun
Mailgun is another bulk email marketing service that has a robust API for sending, receiving, and tracking emails. It also offers SMTP integration for easy sending of bulk transactional emails, email validation in real-time, advanced email analytics, tracking engagement metrics, and more.
? Features
Base features:
- Email APIs, SMTP relay, and webhooks
- Suppression management
- Email tracking and analytics
- 99.99% guaranteed uptime SLA
- 5 days of log retention (15 days with Growth, 30 days with Scale)
- Detailed documentation
- Limited 24/7 ticket support
Higher-level plan features:
- Inbound email routing
- 1 dedicated IP (foundation 100k and up)
- Email address validations
- Inbox placement tests
- 1-day message retention (3-day with Growth, up to 7 days with Scale)
✔️ Pros and Cons
- ? Can set up alias emails without needing to set up new email accounts
- ? Easy to set up and use in WHM
- ? Clean and useful dashboard
- ? Not the easiest interface to customize messages
- ? More expensive compared to other bulk email marketing services
- ? Some users experienced downtime of system servers
? Pricing
- Pay As You Grow: 5,000 free emails/month for three months, then pay only for what you send
- Foundation: $35/month up to 50,000 emails (additional emails charged at $0.80/1000 emails)
- Growth: $80/month up to 100,000 emails (additional emails charged at $0.80/1000 emails)
- Scale: $90/month up to 100,000 emails (additional emails charged at $0.80/1000 emails)
