Top Free Email Service Providers

First I’d like to give you my list of the Top Free Email Service providers. 

Then later in this article, I will explain to you the differences between email service providers (a.k.a. email marketing services) and email delivery services.

This is a topic that continues to confuse many people.

Read my explanation below, and if you are still confused you can sign up for free where I can demonstrate 1-on-1  in my awesome community.

MailChimp’s free plan allows you to send out 12,000 emails per month which will cover up to 2,000 subscribers.

They offer Paid Plans (Premium) for larger campaigns as you scale your business up, but for most small businesses to start 12K emails covering 2K subscribers is more than sufficient.

This free service includes built-in signup forms, automation, report and data insight, and campaign creation. No coding is required.

What I best love about Mailchimp is its great and well-trusted business-enhancing analytical technology. When opening your messages, you can learn who’s opening your messages, where they are opening them from, and how they are interacting with your emails.

This is perfect for understanding the browsing behavior of your target customers and finding out what marketing techniques they respond to the most. In doing so, it is easier to improve on the conversion rates of your campaigns in the future.  

2. SendinBlue Email: 

SendinBlue Email’s free service allows you to send up to 300 emails per day, up to a 9,000 email per month limit.

Their free plan supports unlimited contacts.  This is inclusive of its mobile-friendly email designer, email template library, and email and SMS personalization.

They also offer 3 monthly paid plans as an upgrade, ranging from $19 - $49 per month.

3. Hubspot Marketing:

HubSpot Marketing won the Expert’s Choice Award for 2018.

The Free Plan for HubSpot Marketing includes a contact creation form, lead capture pop-up forms, a database for contact creation, as well as traffic and conversion analytics.  

You can also integrate with your CMS, email, and form tools.

HubSpot Marketing offers 4 levels of Paid (Premium) Plans. They offer Starter ($50/month) , Basic($200/month), Pro ($800/month), and Enterprise ($2400/month).  The vendor also offers add-ons that you can include in your monthly plan for a fee.

Similar to Mailchimp, the free service for Zoho Campaigns offers a forever free plan that supports 12,000 emails/month covering up to 2,000 subscribers.

The free plan allows you to use all of the features that the platform has to offer.

Their Paid (premium) subscription plan is priced according to the number of subscribers you maintain. Prices range from $5/month for 1 to 500 subscribers to $350/month for 50,001 to 100,000 subscribers.

Email Service Providers vs Email delivery Services: What are the Differences? 

Are email service providers (a.k.a. email marketing services) and Email Delivery Services one and the same animal?

The answer is they can be, but they are not always.

There is a difference between Email marketing and Email Delivery Services and their main functions.

I've learned new details about their differences on my journey of setting up opt-in forms. And I would like to share what I have learned with you, folks.

My hope is that this post will be helpful in answering the question of, "What are the difference between Email Service Providers vs. Email Delivery Services?"

E-Book Free Gift

Let's take the simple example that you have created an opt-in form on your website for someone to give you their name and email in exchange for an e-book or a free report.

You might think an email marketing service like Mailchimp can handle everything including delivering your e-book or Free Report to the subscriber after opt-in.

Technically that's not the case. For instance, if you are using a Free Mailchimp account, Mailchimp (as an email marketing service) cannot deliver your e-book or Free Report (called asset delivery) through an Autoresponder.

Mailchimp can only be used as an email marketing service to subscribe users to your lists. And to send out emails to multiple users. 

You would need to pay for a premium service of a minimum $20 per month through their partner company Mandril to deliver your e-book or free report "asset" to your subscribers.

There is a reason for this: any email that involves giving an asset by way of download after a subscriber opts-in is called a Transactional Email.

Transactional Emails

Only email marketing services can be used to subscribe users to your lists, for segmenting, and for bulk email. These are non-transactional emails.

A transactional email is one that is sent from only one sender to one recipient. An email instructing a subscriber to download your e-book or free report is a Transactional email.

Other examples of transactional emails include password reminder emails, purchase confirmation emails, and personalized product notifications.

Transactional emails are triggered by a specific user action, as opposed to marketing emails like newsletters. They are generally handled by email delivery services.

Email Delivery Services don't have lists, tags, or segments, so they can't be used for email marketing just like that.

Yes, there are some companies that provide both Email marketing and Email Delivery Services, but not all.

In general with a few exceptions, transactional email services (email delivery services) are monthly paid services. These can range from $10 per month into the thousands per month depending on the volume of monthly emails you send out.

Example: First I connect my opt-in form to a Free Mailchimp account. As my email marketing service, they will only handle my list of subscribers but not my asset delivery.

To handle the asset delivery for Mailchimp (e.g., e-book or Free report), I would need to open an account and pay a monthly service fee to partner company Mandril, Mailchimp's transactional email delivery service.

For now, I don't want to pay the $20 per month. Maybe I will later, but for at least the first few months I would like to find a free transactional email service.

Hoila!

I signed up for SendGrid, one of the few FREE transactional email services (email delivery service) and they now handle my asset delivery (e.g., e-book, free report) through their Autoresponder. 

Now I use Mailchimp (free account) to subscribe users to my lists, and separately I use SendGrid to deliver my Free Report to them through an Autoresponder.

Summary: Email Marketing Services vs. Email Delivery Services

To recap, here is a Summary of Email Marketing Services vs. Email Delivery Services:

Email Marketing Services:

Email Delivery Services:

I hope this post has helped you to gain a greater understanding by demonstrating the differences between Email Marketing Services vs. Email Delivery Services.

Please feel free to leave comments below so we can continue this discussion. I would love to hear your insights.