Top WordPress Plugins for Email Marketing Success
One of the best ways to grow your WordPress website is with an email subscription list. However, building one manually is time-consuming, and effectively marketing a newsletter or other type of email subscription is not without its challenges.
Fortunately, WordPress email subscription and marketing plugins can make this process simple and quick. You can even use a plugin to create professional-looking emails from your WordPress dashboard, which will help you to grow your readership.
In this post, we’ll outline a few of the best WordPress email marketing plugins available. These will include a look at the pros and cons, as well as how to determine which is right for you!
Breaking Down the Best WordPress Email Marketing Plugins
Let’s begin by looking at each of the plugins on our list, beginning with an incredibly popular solution for digital marketers.
HubSpot
HubSpot is an all-in-one growth platform that helps businesses grow better. The platform enables businesses to better attract, engage, and delight customers. It has an abundance of free tools that include CRM, email marketing, live chat and chatbots, ad management, reporting, forms, and more. Because of these tools, HubSpot is considered one of the best SMTP plugins.
Price: The free email marketing tool has a beautiful drag-and-drop builder and is natively integrated with WordPress. You can send up to 2,000 emails per month for free.
There is also a native WordPress plugin that makes it as easy as possible to manage contacts and email marketing inside of your WordPress admin dashboard.
Pros: HubSpot is easy to use and has integrations with over 300 tools. Having all the data of your contact database in one tool makes your email marketing personalized and actionable.
Cons: If you need advanced reporting or marketing automation, it’s not included in the free plan.
HubSpot is most suitable for:
- Businesses trying to grow.
- Agencies
- Services companies.
HubSpot also has another plugin for creating a contact form if you need to get additional contact information from your email subscribers.
MailChimp
MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms, and so is the WordPress email plugin. There are a number of pre-built mobile-friendly and customizable sign-up forms, an extensive knowledge base, and a useful selection of add-on plugins available.
Price: MailChimp offers a few different pricing tiers, starting with its Free plan, which lets you easily create email campaigns and learn more about your customers. However, a more advanced Standard plan provides experienced marketers with access to advanced automation features and more data-powered tools—all for $20 per month (and the first month is free!). The highest tier, Premium MailChimp plan, comes with all the bells and whistles, and is available for $350 per month.
Pros: MailChimp is trusted, streamlined, impeccably supported and makes email design super easy.
Cons: If you are an advanced user looking to adjust any of MailChimp’s default settings, the buried data can complicate the process extensively. Also, adding native subscription forms to pages requires some CSS knowledge to master.
In our opinion, while MailChimp is versatile, it’s more suited to:
- Businesses.
- Consulting practices.
- Creative services.
- Marketing and advertising.
- Non-profit organizations.
With MailChimp, you can also enjoy peace of mind knowing you can easily scale your email requirements as your site grows.
Brevo
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is an all-in-one email marketing plugin that includes various features to make email list building and management simple. It includes email statistics, automation, and a drag-and-drop email campaign builder. However, the feature set may be a bit complex for less advanced users.
Price: The standard version of Brevo is free. More advanced, feature-rich plans range from Starter ($25 per month) to Business ($65 per month). You also have the option of tailoring a “BrevoPlus” plan to meet the needs of your business, with prices varying accordingly.
Pros: Comes with responsive email design templates, and outstanding real time tracking capabilities.
Cons: Not as beginner friendly as other options, and lacks certain third-party integrations.
As with many options on our list, Brevo can be used on almost any website, such as:
- Blogs.
- Service-based businesses.
- eCommerce websites.
- Non-profit organizations.
Best of all, the free version of this WordPress email plugin lets you send 300 emails per day (great for small-to-medium sized businesses and blogs), with additional features and capabilities in the additional pricing tiers.
Sumo List Builder
Sumo is perhaps one of the most popular suite of tools available for WordPress, and offers email marketing, social sharing, and analytics tools. Using the built-in Smart Mode popup technology, you can adapt the list builder’s actions to fit your marketing needs.
There is also a selection of pre-made templates, customizable popup forms, and mobile display capabilities at your disposal – although there’s no ability to send emails using the plugin.
Price: The Free version of Sumo offers up to 10,00 email per month, and access to email opt-in forms, fully customizable design, social media sharing, and visitor targeting. The Pro plan, which is available for $49 per month (and $39 per month when paid annually), adds to that feature set with 50,000 emails per month, as well as additional eCommerce and analytics functionality (and a lot more).
Pros: A super-simple interface, allowing you to tweak your list to meet your specific needs.
Cons: The more advanced plans of Sumo List builder are relatively expensive compared to other email marketing plugin solutions. What’s more, the free version of Sumo contains mandatory visitor-facing branding, and you’ll need to upgrade to remove this.
Sumo List Builder is suitable for any scale business or industry, such as:
- Marketing and advertising.
- Personal development and growth businesses.
- Non-profit organizations.
OptinMonster
Similar to OnePress Opt-In Panda, OptinMonster is not a standalone email newsletter service. Instead, it’s a popup tool that enables you to use practically any newsletter provider on your site alongside its own features. There are advanced analytics to browse, although there’s no ability to send emails using the plugin.
Price: After the free version, the ‘Basic’ OptinMonster plan is available at $9 per month. Also available is the more advanced ‘Plus’ plan ($19 per month) and ‘Pro’ plan ($29 per month).
Pros: Allows you to rapidly test multiple versions of your signup form, which is extremely conducive to site scalability. OptinMonster is also to setup and customize according to your business needs.
Cons: Both the free and ‘Basic’ versions of OptinMonster are fairly limited. You will need to invest more to reap the full benefits of the plugin.
Similar to Sumo List Builder, OptinMonster can be used by operations of any size. For example:
- Personal bloggers.
- Businesses of any size.
- Non-profit organizations.
To use the plugin, you must have an OptinMonster account.
Newsletter
Newsletter is a solution that lets you build your list and send out emails all from your WordPress dashboard. There’s an advanced tracking option, drag-and-drop email composer, and a number of extensions to help enhance the functionality. However, for larger mail-outs, you may have to use the Amazon SES add-on.
Price: In addition to the free version, there are two additional premium plans for the Newsletter plugin suited for more specific applications. These are “Blogger” and “Agency”
Pros: Gorgeous, easy-to-customize email templates and subscription widgets. Newsletter also offers free extensions for archiving, as well as locking premium content.
Cons: The plugin will utilize your web host to send outgoing emails, which can pose potential issues depending of the restrictions of the host provider.
In our opinion, Newsletter may not be suited for larger websites. As such, you may find it most effective for:
- Personal blogs.
- Small-to-medium sized businesses.
- Community event websites.
Finally, the plugin is free, but you can upgrade to one of the premium plans noted above.
Leadpages
As the name suggests, Leadpages is a powerful and flexible plugin that allows you to build lead-generating landing pages, email, automated texts, and more. It offers a gorgeous array of mobile-friendly templates to choose from, which can be further filtered according to your industry and email campaign type. Options for adding lead-capturing pop-ups, as well as simplified built-in payment forms are also available.
Price: There are three paid plans available for Leadpages. These include Standard ($49 per month), Pro ($99 per month), and Advanced (custom pricing). You can unlock additional savings when purchasing an annual plan.
Pros: Makes it incredibly easy to generate gorgeous and impactful landing pages, as well as advanced analytics that can help you better inform your marketing campaign. There is also a broad swath of freedom for creating interactive Call To Action (CTA) buttons.
Cons: No options are available for implementing live chat features.
Due to the array of advanced features included with Leadpages, it is best suited for:
- Large-scale online publications with content limited to subscribers.
- Just about any e-commerce business, or promotional site (photography, e-book publishing, etc).
As yet, there are no free versions of Leadpages available. However, the score of features and capabilities offered by the plugin more than makes up for this.
SendPress Newsletters
SendPress Newsletters is an alternative to some of the more popular email newsletter services, and integrates with your web host or Gmail account. There’s also an Auto Cron feature, statistics tracking, and customizable newsletter templates (although there’s no HTML editor option).
Price: There are four paid plans available for SendPress Newsletters. These range from Personal ($39 per year) to Developer ($399 per year).
Pros: Quality security auditing, unlimited subscriber capabilities, and the ability to effortlessly sync WordPress roles in conjunction with your newsletter.
Cons: As it uses your web host’s mailing service or Gmail, it may not be suited for large volumes.
SendPress is best used for:
- Personal blogs.
- Small businesses.
- Non-profit organizations.
The plugin is free, but limited. You can upgrade to pro starting at $39 per year.
MailPoet 3
MailPoet 3 is the third version in the series, and is one of WordPress’s original email newsletter plugins. It includes a drag-and-drop email editor, integrates with Google Analytics, and also works with WordPress Multisite.
Price: If you want more features than the free version offers, you can choose from either the Business plan ($10 per month) or the Agency plan ($30 per month).
Pros: Gorgeous and responsive email templates, as well as the option to send emails via MailPoet’s own sending service.
Cons: Limited translations are available, and multisite mail services are not officially supported.
You can use MailPoet 3 within any industry, and it can be used to send various types of content including:
- Blog post recaps.
- Case studies.
- Videos and interactive content.
The free plan allows up to 2,000 subscribers, while premium plans start at $10 per month.
Best WordPress Email Marketing Plugins for Your Business
Ultimately, there are six plugins we can recommend, each earning an A grade from us:
This is because they all share one feature—advanced tracking and analytics—that’s crucial for proper lead segmentation.
MailChimp and SendPress Newsletters are next, earning a B grade. The former is one of the more popular plugin options offering Google Analytics integration and a mobile-friendly interface. However, its basic features are not as robust as other options. The latter has a decent free tier, though it’s less flexible as other solutions.
Our C grade choice has more limited email subscription capabilities. Sumo List Builder doesn’t enable you to send emails. This is similar to OptinMonster, but with less features and a limited free subscription plan.
Manage Your Email Marketing Plugins Smarter With WP Engine
While choosing the right email marketing plugin is important for your business, it’s even more critical that you select the right hosting provider. With WP Engine, you gain access to industry-leading WordPress hosting technology and award-winning 24/7 customer support.
If you have multiple plugins installed on your website, or you manage multiple sites with different plugins, you likely know how much time goes into keeping them all well-maintained and up to date.
At WP Engine, we offer a smarter way to keep your plugins and your themes updated, without wasting precious time. Smart Plugin Manager performs automated WordPress plugin updates so you can rest easy knowing your site is up and always secure.
Visit WP Engine learn more about Smart Plugin Manager as well as plans and pricing for all of our fully managed WordPress offerings.
