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Testing email marketing platforms is an essential step for any business. You need to be completely sure that the tool meets your needs, aligns with your technical capabilities, and offers a flexible pricing structure for scaling your business.
The best way to do that is by using a free plan or a free trial. Most email marketing platforms offer those, but the number of features you can use and test varies across platforms.
Let’s take a look at some of the core features you need to look for before deciding to commit to an email solution.
Ease of Use
While this one depends entirely on your preferences and tech-savviness, for most business owners and marketers, ease of use could be one of the defining factors. After all, it’s difficult to drive revenue with a tool you can barely use.
Take a look at how the interface and dashboard feel. Try to navigate to the features you’ll likely be using the most. Some email marketing tools are tailored for ecommerce businesses, others for B2B brands, creators, or more. Trying to navigate the platform will unveil the level of comfort and convenience.
Then, you should check out campaigns, automations, segmentation, pop-up forms, reporting, and more. These are the core features of any email platform, so they should be strong and efficient.
Check if the platform has a library of templates for newsletters, automated workflows, audience segments, etc. These will make your marketing efforts a lot easier since you’ll be able to either launch a workflow immediately or have the base ready upon which you can build more complex paths.
If you require extremely niche functionalities, like granular segmentation or hyper-specific automation capabilities, then ease of use is not the aspect you should be looking at. It would be quite difficult to find an intuitive platform that provides that level of depth. Otherwise, there’s no need to overcomplicate your email setup, and it’s smart to choose a tool that provides balanced power and convenience.
Most businesses don’t need overkill automation workflows, and the templates work just fine. All you need to do is customize them to your brand style, and you’re basically ready to go. It’s one of the cases where 20% of work delivers 80% of results.
AI Features
AI-driven features inside email marketing platforms can save you a lot of time, boost your productivity, and get campaigns live faster. Some of the most useful AI features we found were related to copywriting, segmentation, and form building.
While copywriting with AI is old news, there’s one feature in particular that’s quite exceptional: segment building. We tested quite a few email marketing platforms in our time, but while testing Omnisend, we found an interesting segmentation tool. It’s an AI-driven feature that allows you to create a segment of your audience by writing a prompt.
For example, if you wanted to send a campaign only to your VIP customers who haven’t bought anything in the last 6 months, you could ask for that in the AI tool and have the segment ready in seconds. Normally, you would need to go to the segmentation interface and play with filters to create the audience, which could potentially take around half an hour. What’s even more surprising is that we could test these premium-looking features on the free plan, so you can too.
There’s also an option where you can create a pop-up form via prompting. The AI builds the design, copy, and visuals based on your prompt.
So, while checking out email marketing tools, make sure you try the AI features to see how they work and how they could improve your efficiency. Unfortunately, not all platforms allow you to test AI-driven tools on the free plans, but there are some, like Omnisend, that provide unrestricted access to all of its features.
Customer Support
Learning a new platform without customer support may not only be tiresome, but downright frustrating, especially if the platform is more technical than you’d like. Knowing that you could always ask for help shows that the email marketing platform is serious about its customers and is there to fix any issues that may arise.
First of all, check the channels you can use to get support. Some providers offer email-only support, others add live chat to the pool. While both are great, live chat is the best for quick questions and fixes. Email often takes a day or two to get a response, which could be a deal-breaker for some.
One more thing to keep in mind is phone support. That may sound like a great benefit to those who prefer getting help directly on the phone, but it could also be a hidden trap. For example, Constant Contact is one of the platforms that offer phone support, but they also have a free trial that requires entering credit card details.
What they don’t have is a modern cancellation policy where you could click “Unsubscribe” at any time and avoid charges once the free trial is over. You must call them and talk to them to cancel your subscription, as you cannot do that via email or otherwise. For us, it took a 20-minute phone call to settle that and cancel the free trial. So, if you see a platform that offers phone support as one of the options, we recommend that you Google whether it’s possible to cancel a free trial yourself or via email, as you may be in for an unpleasant surprise.
Pricing
Pricing is arguably the most important factor for most, and it’s easy to get caught in a bad relationship here. Initially, the costs may seem quite similar and fair, but it’s important to check the prices on a larger scale as well. To show you what it means, we’ll add a comparison table of 3 similar email marketing platforms and their pricing changes.
Before we do that, let’s talk about plans. To have the best experience, it’s usually better to choose a platform that has as few plan tiers as possible. If the platform has 5 or 6 tiers, you may need to upgrade your plan every time a new feature shows up, or your needs rise a bit. Needless to say, the lower plans may become restrictive or unsustainable in the long term.
Find a provider that has 2-3 clear plans: free, standard, and pro. If you’re a large business, you may benefit from the custom “enterprise” as well. Anything more than that is bound to become confusing, and you may be putting yourself in a financially risky position if your needs change.
Now, let’s take three popular email marketing platforms, Omnisend, Klaviyo, and Mailchimp, and see how the pricing changes as your contact list grows:
| Contact count | Omnisend | Klaviyo | Mailchimp |
| >500 | $16 | $20 | $20 |
| >2,500 | $44 | $60 | $60 |
| >10,000 | $132 | $150 | $135 |
| >25,000 | $282 | $400 | $310 |
| >50,000 | $413 | $720 | $450 |
| >100,000 | $900 | $1,380 | $800 |
As you can see, what starts out as a $4 difference becomes more than $400 once your store grows significantly. That’s why it’s important to check the price not only of your current contact count, but also your potential subscriber base a few years from now.
Probably the most important thing we’d recommend you keep in mind is this: don’t choose a platform that offers capabilities far beyond your needs. They might share a similar price at first glance, but more often than not, you’ll notice the prices skyrocket as you scale or need more features.
Conclusion
Before you decide on the email marketing platform, make sure you do your research and compare them as best you can. The choice you make today will affect your business for years to come, especially since migration can be risky (potential data loss) and expensive.
Test the dashboard, interface, navigation, template availability, customer support, automation capabilities, campaign-building capabilities, AI features, pricing, and more. Find the one that offers the best balance between ease of use and power.
While it may be tempting to simply go for the tool that has the most features and the best capabilities, it may end up draining your budget significantly for the features you never use. The best way to make an informed choice is to define exactly what your business needs from the email marketing platform, and look for the tool that provides the needed features at the most flexible and affordable price.