The 5 Best Email Marketing Platforms in 2025 (Inbound and Outbound)

Email marketing should be your most profitable marketing channel. It consistently delivers ROI of 36% and above – higher than any other channel. 

But it can also be the most frustrating if your email marketing platform keeps letting you down.

Trust me, I’ve been there: emails landing in spam folders for no apparent reason, support tickets disappearing into black holes, and drag-and-drop interfaces that make you hold your breath every time you move a block.

The first time I ventured into email marketing, I made the mistake of picking a platform that was quick, cheap, and “good enough”. Safe to say, as soon as my business grew and my needs changed slightly, that platform became a source of daily struggles for me and my team.

Since then, I’m happy to say I have found some great email marketing tools that actually do the job they’re designed for – whether that’s cold outreach, sales funnels, newsletters, or something else.

I’ve included tools to suit every budget and team size here, so take a look and see which one will work best for you.

The Best Email Marketing Software: Quick Overview

Platform	Best For	Price Starts From
Mailmodo	Interactive campaigns with embedded forms and surveys	$39/month
Smartlead	Cold email outreach with advanced deliverability	$39/month
Apollo	Sales teams wanting all-in-one prospecting and CRM	$49/month
AffiliateFinder.ai	Affiliate marketing and partnership development	$99/month
Mailchimp	Beginners and small businesses needing ease of use	$13/month

1. Mailmodo: Best AI-powered email marketing software

I know that practically every tool describes itself as “AI-powered” these days, but Mailmodo actually uses AI to make email marketing easier, more effective, and even fun.

Key Features

• AI Email Assistant: Start your email marketing journey with AI. Get campaign strategies, subject lines, and contextual copy suggestions by simply chatting with Mailmodo’s AI Agents. Plan your emails, journeys, and goals – no manual effort required.
• AI-Powered Email Builder: Design polished, on-brand emails in seconds. Generate complete email layouts or remix existing ones – change fonts, colors, or content instantly using AI commands.
• Drag-and-Drop Editor: Use the drag-and-drop and WYSIWYG editor to customize emails exactly how you want. Preview them live to ensure design consistency and quality before sending.
• AMP & Interactive Emails: Create dynamic, app-like experiences directly inside emails – from forms and polls to surveys and product showcases – driving higher engagement and conversions.
• Audience Segmentation Made Simple: Target the right people effortlessly. Just describe your audience, and Mailmodo’s AI will create accurate segments based on your data, ready for personalization.
• Smart Email Automation: Set up entire customer journeys without the overwhelm. Get AI-suggested workflows, pre-filled templates, and triggers you can edit anytime.

Mailmodo is built for marketers, founders, and growth teams who want to create high-performing campaigns without juggling multiple tools or needing deep technical skills. I used it with an early-stage startup, but it works just as well for enterprises needing to personalize communication at scale. 

The drag-and-drop editor works very smoothly (unlike some others that can’t cope with you changing a font size), and the collaboration features make it easy for multiple team members to share ideas and feedback.

It simplifies the entire email marketing process – from planning strategy and writing copy to designing, automating, and optimizing campaigns – all within one platform. 

I really love how you can send interactive, app-like emails; users can fill forms, book meetings, or make purchases directly inside the inbox. This removes a whole lot of friction from the customer journey.

Mailmodo’s AI Agents act like your personal marketing assistants – generating email ideas, crafting on-brand copy, optimizing subject lines, and even suggesting workflows based on your goals. The AI continuously learns from campaign performance to improve future sends, ensuring every email converts better than the last.

If you want an email marketing platform that uses AI in innovative ways to personalize emails (and thereby improve engagement), give Mailmodo a try. It’s a smart investment for any brand that values performance, efficiency, and innovation in its marketing.

Pricing

• Free: 1 user, 4,000 email sending credits, 1 active journey
• Lite ($39/month): 1 user, 20,000 email sending credits, 5 active journeys
• Pro ($79/month): 3 users, 25,000 email sending credits, 10 active journeys, A/B testing, timezone scheduling, email click maps

All plans come with a 21-day free trial.

2. Smartlead: Best for Cold Email Outreach

If you’re in the B2B space and cold email is part of your lead generation strategy, you need to understand something: many traditional email marketing platforms aren’t built for outreach. They’re designed for people who’ve already opted into your list, not for reaching out to prospects who’ve never heard of you.

Key Features

• Multi-inbox management: Rotate between multiple email addresses to distribute volume and maintain clean sender scores.
• Advanced deliverability optimization: Real-time monitoring and reputation management to keep emails out of spam folders.
• AI-powered personalization: Scale relevant outreach messages using data from LinkedIn, company websites, and other sources.
• Intelligent reply detection: Automatically categorize responses and trigger appropriate follow-up sequences or lead handoffs.
• Built-in spam testing: Test email content and sender reputation before campaigns go live.
• Advanced analytics: Detailed performance tracking with response categorization and campaign optimization insights.

Smartlead is great for managing cold email campaigns with automated follow-ups and plenty of personalization options. 

It also solves one of the unique challenges of cold outreach: sender reputation management. Instead of sending all your emails from one address (which quickly gets flagged as spam), Smartlead lets you rotate between multiple inboxes to distribute volume and maintain clean sender scores.

I started using Smartlead when I was scaling my agency’s outreach efforts for clients, and traditional tools were failing miserably. We were burning through email addresses faster than I could set them up, and our response rates were consistently under 2%. 

With Smartlead’s inbox rotation system, we immediately saw response rates jump to 8-12% while maintaining strong deliverability metrics.

But sending from multiple email addresses doesn’t mean you’re constantly switching between inboxes. All replies appear in Smartlead’s unibox, where you can filter by campaign, lead owner, or other labels to find what you need.

Smartlead’s personalization capabilities go way beyond the basic “Hi {FirstName}” approach. You can pull data from LinkedIn, company websites, and other sources to create genuinely relevant outreach messages. The AI writing assistant helps craft variations that sound natural while maintaining your core message.

The compliance features are particularly important for cold email. Smartlead automatically includes unsubscribe links, tracks opt-outs across all your campaigns, and provides documentation to help you stay compliant with various regulations. Given the increasing scrutiny around unsolicited email, these features aren’t just nice-to-have – they’re essential.

Pricing

• Basic ($39/month): 2,000 active leads, 6,000 emails/month
• Pro ($94/month): 30,000 active leads, 150,000 emails/month
• Custom (from $174/month): Up to 60M emails/month

All plans include unlimited email accounts and warm-ups.

3. Apollo: Best All-in-One Sales Platform

Apollo delivers on its promise of being a comprehensive sales solution for both inbound and outbound campaigns.

Key Features

• Massive prospecting database: Access 275+ million verified contacts with detailed company and personal information
• Email sequences with personalization: Create multi-touch campaigns that adapt based on prospect behavior and engagement
• Built-in CRM with pipeline management: Track deals from initial contact through closing without switching platforms
• Lead scoring and intent data: Identify high-value prospects using behavioral signals and engagement tracking
• Contact enrichment: Automatically fill in missing phone numbers, social profiles, and company details for better targeting
• Chrome extension: Prospect and engage directly from LinkedIn, company websites, and other web pages
• Integration ecosystem: Connect with major sales and marketing tools including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Slack

Apollo is a complete AI sales ecosystem. You can prospect for leads, enrich their contact information, engage them with email sequences, track their behavior, and manage the entire sales process without switching between platforms.

The prospecting database is really impressive, surpassing other tools I’ve used tools like ZoomInfo and Sales Navigator. The search filters let you get incredibly specific about who you want to reach – a level of targeting that makes your outreach exponentially more effective.

The email sequence builder strikes a nice balance between simplicity and power. You can create multi-touch campaigns that automatically adapt based on prospect behavior. Someone opens your first email but doesn’t reply? The sequence automatically sends a softer follow-up. They click on your pricing page? Trigger a demo request sequence. This kind of behavioral triggering is what separates amateur outreach from professional lead generation.

One of the features I use the most is actually Apollo’s browser extension. When I’m browsing LinkedIn, I can use it to find a person’s email address and add them straight into a campaign from there.

The CRM functionality is robust enough for most small to medium businesses. You can track deals through your pipeline, set reminders for follow-ups, and generate reports on your sales performance. The integration between prospecting, outreach, and deal management creates a seamless workflow that eliminates the data silos that plague most sales operations.

Pricing

• Free: 250 daily email sends, 1,200 credits per year, 2 sequences
• Basic ($49/month): Unlimited email sends, 30,000 credits per year, unlimited sequences
• Professional ($79/month): 48,000 credits per year, 5 STMP mailboxes, unlimited Gmail/Microsoft mailboxes
• Professional ($119/month): 72,000 credits per year, 15 STMP mailboxes, unlimited Gmail/Microsoft mailboxes

Apollo credits are used to access emails and phone numbers, enrich data, and run AI research.

4. AffiliateFinder.ai: Best for Partner Outreach

Here’s a platform that solves a problem most email marketing tools completely ignore: finding and reaching out to potential partners and affiliates. 

If you’re running affiliate programs, looking for influencer collaborations, or trying to build strategic partnerships, AffiliateFinder.ai identifies potential partners and finds their email addresses for you.

Key Features

• AI-powered affiliate and partner discovery: See potential partners that are already promoting your competitors and talking about your industry.
• Contact enrichment for potential partners: Discover emails and social profiles almost instantly, with bulk enrichment available.
• Partnership-focused outreach templates: Draft personalized emails designed to cut through the noise and build a connection.

AffiliateFinder.ai approaches email outreach from a completely different angle. Instead of focusing on customers, it’s designed to help you identify and connect with potential business partners and influencers who can amplify your reach.

Input your website, target keywords, and main competitors, and the platform identifies potential affiliates, influencers, and strategic partners who align with your objectives. It’s way more targeted than manually browsing a media database or influencer marketplace.

It goes beyond basic demographic matching – the algorithm analyzes your profile and finds genuinely promising opportunities, automatically filtering out your direct competitors and any irrelevant websites or channels.

Each record displays helpful data like traffic, DR, number of subscribers, and engagement rate.

The contact enrichment is particularly valuable. If you’ve ever tried to extract YouTubers’ email addresses, you know the frustration of having to break CAPTCHAS and deal with daily limits. With AffiliateFinder.ai, you can enrich hundreds of YouTube channels in less than a minute.

Although the platform doesn’t include email sending (you can pick one of the other tools for this), it’s become an essential tool for any affiliate programs I’m trying to scale. I recommend it for anyone just starting an affiliate program, too.

Pricing

• Pro ($99/month): Includes unlimited discovery, 150 email credits monthly, 1 brand analysis, 2 users
• Agency ($249/month): 500 email credits, 5 brands, 5 users 
• Enterprise: Custom pricing and packages (API, custom webhooks)

All plans include a 7-day free trial.

5. Mailchimp: Best for Beginners and Small Businesses

I know Mailchimp gets a lot of flak in marketing circles for being “basic,” but sometimes basic is exactly what you need if you’re just getting started with email marketing. 

Key Features

• Intuitive drag-and-drop builder: Create professional emails without coding using pre-designed templates and easy customization
• Pre-built automation workflows: Set up welcome series, abandoned cart recovery, and re-engagement campaigns with proven templates
• Advanced audience segmentation: Target specific customer groups based on behavior, demographics, and purchase history
• Built-in A/B testing: Test subject lines, content, and send times to optimize campaign performance
• Extensive integration marketplace: Connect with 300+ apps including Shopify, WordPress, and Salesforce through native integrations

Mailchimp has nailed the user experience for non-technical users, which makes it one of the best email marketing platforms for small business owners, new bloggers, and solopreneurs who need to keep things simple.

I’ve watched business owners who can barely navigate Google Sheets build professional-looking email campaigns in under an hour.

Their template library is massive and actually useful. Unlike platforms that give you 200 templates that all look like they were designed in 2015, Mailchimp regularly updates their designs to reflect current trends. 

The drag-and-drop builder lets you add elements, rearrange sections, and customize colors without touching a line of code.

And the automation features, while not as advanced as some enterprise solutions, cover 90% of what most businesses actually need. Welcome series, abandoned cart recovery, birthday campaigns, re-engagement sequences – all set up with pre-built templates that you can customize to match your brand voice.

I’ve also noticed that Mailchimp’s deliverability has improved significantly over the past few years. They’ve invested heavily in reputation management and provide tools to help users maintain good sending practices. Their compliance features are particularly strong for businesses dealing with GDPR and other privacy regulations.

And the other thing that makes Mailchimp a great tool for beginners is their educational resources. Their marketing library is essentially a free course in email marketing, covering everything from list building strategies to advanced segmentation techniques. For entrepreneurs who are wearing ten different hats, having access to that level of guidance is invaluable.

Pricing

• Free: 1,000 monthly email sends, 1 user, 1 audience
• Essentials (from $13/month): from 5,000 monthly email sends, 3 users, 3 audiences, marketing automation
• Standard (from $20/month): from 6,000 monthly email sends, 6 users, 6 audiences, custom templates
• Premium ($350/month): 150,000 monthly email sends, unlimited users, unlimited audiences

The free plan is great when you’re just getting started and the Essentials and Standard plans give you space to grow, although prices increase quite steeply as you build your contact list. If you start out using Mailchimp, be ready to switch over to another tool once your subscription reaches $40-50/month.

Professional Tips for Choosing an Email Marketing Platform

After almost a decade of testing platforms for inbound and outbound campaigns of all shapes and sizes, here’s how I recommend you approach choosing email software for your business:

Start with your primary use case. Are you sending newsletters to existing customers? Running cold outreach campaigns? Building affiliate partnerships? The platform that excels in one area might be mediocre in another. Don’t try to force a cold email tool to handle your newsletter campaigns or expect a beginner-friendly platform to optimize your complex automation workflows. It may even make sense to run two different tools for different types of campaign.

Deliverability trumps features every time. I don’t care how amazing a platform’s automation capabilities are… if your emails land in spam folders, none of it matters. Look for platforms that provide detailed deliverability analytics and take measures to protect your sender reputation.

Consider your team’s technical skills honestly. There’s no shame in choosing a simpler platform if it means your team will actually use it effectively. I’ve seen too many businesses invest in powerful platforms that sit unused because the learning curve was too steep for their team.

Factor in your growth trajectory. If you’re planning to scale rapidly, choose a platform that can grow with you (and make sure you’re ok with how the pricing will scale, too). Switching email platforms can be time-consuming, as you have to set up workflows from scratch. Plus, you lose historical data.

Test before committing to annual plans. Most platforms offer free trials or low-cost monthly plans. Use them. Send real campaigns to real segments of your audience and measure the results. The platform that looks perfect on paper might not deliver the results you need in practice.

Final Verdict

Choosing an email marketing platform is a big decision. There’s a lot at stake if you get it wrong, and a lot to win if you get it right. And since there’s no “best” email platform that will suit everyone, you really need to consider your business needs.

Mailmodo’s interactive capabilities make it a strong contender for businesses that want to engage their audience in new ways and maximize conversion rates within the email itself.

Mailchimp is a solid choice for beginners, while Smartlead is great for advanced outbound campaigns. And if you run an affiliate program, AffiliateFinder.ai is the best place to find potential partners and get their email addresses.

But here’s what I’ve learned after years of building successful email programs: the platform is only as good as the strategy behind it. You can have the most advanced features in the world, but if you’re sending irrelevant content to poorly segmented lists, you’ll still get terrible results.

Focus on understanding your audience, crafting compelling content, and building genuine relationships with your subscribers. Once you have those fundamentals in place, the right platform will amplify your efforts exponentially.

FAQs

What’s the difference between email marketing and email automation?

Email marketing includes all email campaigns, while automation refers to triggered emails based on user behavior or predefined schedules. Automation typically delivers higher ROI because it sends relevant messages at optimal times without manual intervention.

How important is deliverability when choosing an email platform?

Deliverability is crucial – even the best content fails if emails reach spam folders instead of inboxes. Poor deliverability can damage your sender reputation permanently, making it nearly impossible to recover your email performance.

Can I switch email marketing platforms without losing subscribers?

Yes, most platforms support contact imports and list migration, though you may lose some historical data and metrics. Plan your migration carefully during low-activity periods to minimize disruption to ongoing campaigns.

What’s the average ROI for email marketing in 2025?

Email marketing generates an average ROI of $36 for every dollar spent, significantly outperforming most other marketing channels. This exceptional return makes email one of the most cost-effective ways to drive revenue and customer retention.

Do I need different tools for cold email vs. newsletter campaigns?

Yes, cold email requires specialized deliverability features while newsletters focus on engagement and automation. Cold outreach tools manage sender reputation across multiple domains, while newsletter platforms optimize for subscriber engagement and retention.

How do I avoid my emails going to spam folders?

Maintain list hygiene, use authenticated domains, avoid spam trigger words, and monitor sender reputation consistently. Regular engagement tracking and prompt removal of inactive subscribers also help maintain strong deliverability rates.