Small business, 10000 contacts for $10 - $250/mo

2 Email Marketing Tools with Account-level Insights

Marcus Taylor
Data refreshed on: 22nd February 2023
Fact checked by Anna Hamzah

Our algorithm used 113k data points to whittle 678 email marketing tools down to 2 with the best performance among small businesses. We may receive a commission if you sign up with a company below.

Your results (2)

ActiveCampaign

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14-day free trial included
šŸ† Recommended for you
1 of 7
1 of 2

Who uses it and why?

78% of ActiveCampaign's small business users are very satisfied with it.
šŸ˜ƒGreat
Great satisfaction score Ā· all users
74% of Sendinblue's small business users are very satisfied with it.
šŸ˜ƒGreat
Great satisfaction score Ā· all users
šŸ‘

Exceptional range of features, customer support & integrations.

šŸ‘Ž

CRM functionality is okay but not great.

šŸ‘

Great for transactional email.

šŸ‘Ž

Send limits and throttling can be sensitive causing emails being delayed or not sent. 

What people are saying

4 Ā· 588 ratings

SMBs users often highlight ActiveCampaign's high deliverability, quality of reporting & ease of use.

4.4 Ā· 3,016 ratings

Users often highlight SendInBlue's responsive support team, ease of set up and email traceability.

Growth Marketing Manager at Narrative
Taegan Baxter
Growth Marketing Manager at Narrative

In terms of features, I love using ActiveCampaignā€™s powerful automation builder. More generally, I love the sense of momentum I get from ActiveCampaign and their drive to continue to constantly improve their product.

Founder @ Edwart Chocolatier
Edwin YansanƩ
Founder @ Edwart Chocolatier

As a small team, simplifying our workflow is a top priority, so having our contacts, SMS, and email in one place helps us a ton!

Used ActiveCampaign before?

Rate your experience

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Used Sendinblue before?

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Your recommended plan

Lite
$/mo
for up to 10K contacts

14-day free trial

Free migration

No cancellation fees

Premium
$/mo
for up to 10K contacts

Start for free

Free migration

No cancellation fees

Features

A/B Testing

Drag and Drop

Event-based automation

Pre-Designed Templates

Segmentation

Integrations

ClickFunnels

Facebook

Google Ads

Google Analytics

Squarespace

Unbounce

WordPress

Zapier

Features

A/B Testing

Drag and Drop

Event-based automation

Pre-Designed Templates

Segmentation

Integrations

ClickFunnels

Facebook

Google Ads

Google Analytics

Squarespace

Unbounce

WordPress

Zapier

ActiveCampaign has 3 plans starting at $139/mo. This plan is the cheapest based on your list size & requirements.

$139/mo is higher than the average cost of $102/mo for plans that cover 10K contacts. This plan comes with 10000 contacts.

$0$34$69$104$139

Sendinblue has 1 plan starting at $65/mo. This plan is the cheapest based on your list size & requirements.

$65/mo is lower than the average cost of $102/mo for plans that cover 10K contacts. This plan comes with 10000 contacts.

$0$34$69$104$139

Used ActiveCampaign before?

Rate your experience

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Used Sendinblue before?

Rate your experience

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šŸ˜„

How to choose email marketing software with account-level insights

Account-level Insights is an important feature for diagnosing what's working (and what's not) so that you can optimise your email marketing to deliver a better ROI.
But not all email marketing tools offer account-level insights.
Having analysed 678 different tools across 113k data points, weā€™ve found 3 tools that offer Account-level Insights and should meet your needs. In this interactive guide, weā€™ll help you whittle this down to a small handful of tools to consider.
šŸŖ„ This guide is personalised to you based on your contacts, budget and business type. If you havenā€™t already entered these, we recommend doing so to improve this guide.

1. Whatā€™s your budget?

How much you spend on email marketing software is going to depend on the size of your contact list, the features you need and what your organisation can afford to invest in an email marketing platform.
Based on 10000 contacts, the average monthly cost of an email marketing tool with account-level insights is $200/month which is within your current set budget of 250 (if this is inaccurate you can change it above).
While itā€™s true that you get what you pay for with email marketing software, this doesnā€™t necessarily mean that the cheaper platforms are worse.
Firstly, effective email marketing is about communicating the right message to the right person at the right time ā€“ at scale. The more leads you have (and the higher value they are) the higher the potential ROI of your email marketing activity.
As a small business with 10000 contacts, you'll most likely get a better ROI with a mid-level/premium platform that offers functionality beyond basic newsletters.
Secondly, the price you pay today is unlikely to be the price you pay one year from now. As such, itā€™s prudent to consider how much you might pay if your mailing list doubled or tripled. Donā€™t worry, weā€™ve done the maths for you for the top three tools!
10K contacts
$139/mo
10K contacts
$40/mo
20K contacts
$229/mo
20K contacts
$40/mo
30K contacts
$339/mo
30K contacts
$94/mo
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14-day free trial included
Visit website
Start for free
Sendinblue is the most affordable platform today, and will also provide you with affordable list growth longer term.
Lastly, while itā€™s helpful to have a clear budget in mind itā€™s also worth noting that the features (and therefore the results you can produce) with different tools are different. At 10000 contacts, you'll have plenty of scope to improve your results with features like A/B testing and automation sequences, so it makes sense to consider these in your evaluation process.
Which brings us neatly onto our next question.

2. What features do you need?

Besides needing Account-level Insights, itā€™s worth considering what other critical features you might need from your email marketing software.
Most basic features like templates, an easy-to-use visual editor, and segmentation are table stakes and found in virtually all tools. You may, however, want to consider some of the more unique email marketing requirements that your team needs.
As an
you might want to consider ruling out any tools that donā€™t offer advanced marketing automation, as this is essential for creating user journeys that nurture and engage your prospects.
If there are any specific features that you need, you can enter them here to automatically filter out any of the 3 tools that donā€™t have them.

3. Does it integrate with your tech stack?

At a minimum, your email marketing software should communicate with whichever platform you use to collect and store customer or user data. This not only helps you hit your marketing objectives by having up-to-date segment information, but it also makes personalising your emails (and therefore increasing engagement) much easier.
As a Small business youā€™ll also want to consider whether or not itā€™s important for your email marketing software to integrate with:
  • Any reporting tools or dashboards you use
  • Any marketing channels you heavily use (e.g. Google Ads, Instagram Ads)
  • Any internal communication or project management tools you use as a team
While itā€™s ideal to find an email marketing platform with the native integrations that are critical to your business, most tools rely on integrating with a service like Zapier, Make or Automate.io that enables you to connect almost any imaginable combination of tools.
Feel free to enter any integrations you need in the box below to further whittle down your list of 3 email marketing tools.

4. What do other companies like you think?

The email marketing software recommendations on StackUp are made algorithmically ā€“ and most influenced by Satisfaction Score.
This score is based on 100,000ā€™s of ratings weā€™ve collected from real users of these tools. The reason we use this metric is that it highlights the platforms that deliver a good overall experience.
This matters because, letā€™s face it, every email marketing tool says the same thing ā€“ easy to use, a wide range of templates and lots of features.
Yet, much of what separates the wheat from the chaff is revealed through actual usage. From email deliverability rates, to support quality, security and platform stability, these are all things that can make or break an email marketing tool.
Satisfaction Score is a good proxy for this, as the tools with low scores are typically plagued by these issues, whereas those with high scores tend to get these things right.
Based on this, our algorithm has recommended ActiveCampaign as the best-fit for your business with the highest user satisfaction score.

5. Can you try it for free?

All email marketing providers worth considering will offer a free trial. If not, that should probably trigger some alarm bells.
The top three recommendations above all offer free trials, and weā€™d recommend signing up for a trial with at least two of them so you can make a good comparison.
We hope this data-led approach has helped narrow your search and find the right email marketing service for you.
  1. ActiveCampaign (here's the link to start a 14 day free trial- no credit card required)
  2. Sendinblue (hereā€™s the link to start a 14 day free trial - no credit card required)
  3. HubSpot (hereā€™s the link to start a 30-day free trial - credit card required)

About the author

Marcus Taylor

Marcus Taylor is the Founder & CEO of Venture Harbour. Marcus is also an early-stage tech investor & the youngest Patron of The Prince's Trust.