5 of the Best Email Marketing Plugins for WordPress

How to navigate among the many email marketing plugins for WordPress

An email marketing plugin will, at its core, let you send out emails through your WordPress website, often with the help of an external sender service. Regardless of the plugin’s approach, however, there are a number of benefits you can leverage:

• You can often work within the familiar WordPress dashboard to send out and manage your mail outs.
• Also, while an email marketing service shouldn’t be cumbersome to use, a plugin can simplify the process.
• You’re able to implement signup form fields on your site that will send email addresses to your contacts list.
• In some cases, you can also host your email newsletters and correspondence on your server.

Because there are a lot of positives to using an email marketing plugin for WordPress, you’ll find many different available examples. However, these won’t always be equal. The good news is that much of the same basic considerations you’ll make with other plugins also apply here.

There are also some specific aspects you’ll want to look into. The main one being whether the plugin only provides integration with a third-party tool or is a full email marketing suite. Neither is worse than the other, but the former could offer a clunky integration. In other cases, you might prefer to use the plugin as a standalone solution. We’ll mention whether this is relevant to our list:

Integrated vs third-party email sending

Throughout the article, you’ll see that we mention whether a plugin is “all-in-one” or requires the need for extra third-party services. You’ll find that there are two approaches a plugin will take:

• It might have to connect to a third-party service in order to provide you with the functionality you need.
• Some plugins give you a self-contained, all-in-one platform that you’ll manage from the WordPress dashboard.

For third-party connections, there will nearly always be a need to set up email sending functionality. This can increase your costs, not to mention your maintenance. You’ll now have multiple solutions to manage, and it makes those with integrated sending more tempting and valuable.

The best email marketing plugins for WordPress in 2023

For the rest of the article, we’ll look at some of the top email marketing plugins for WordPress, and discuss why they should be on your shortlist. After, we’ll talk about how you’ll best use your selection.

1. MC4WP
2. MailPoet
3. FluentCRM
4. Email Subscribers & Newsletters
5. Creative Mail

1. MC4WP

First up is a perennial choice for an email marketing plugin. MC4WP connects Mailchimp to your WordPress website in a no-fuss way:

The plugin offers a few choice features:

• You can create signup forms for your site fast, with a flexible tag system that lets you send whatever information you need to Mailchimp.
• It works with a large array of contact form plugins, such as Contact Form 7, Ninja Forms, Gravity Forms, and even the default WordPress registration and comment forms.
• The knowledge base and developer documentation are excellent. This will help if you need an answer to a query quickly.

This plugin also has some of the best ratings and reviews around [1]. It has an average rating of 96%. However, this plugin is only a “connective” one. This means you don’t get the full functionality of Mailchimp inside your WordPress dashboard.

Pricing 💵

The core MC4WP plugin is free. However, there’s a premium upgrade available that starts from €59 per year. This lets you add in further features and functionality, such as a “top bar” and Google reCAPTCHA support.

2. MailPoet

MailPoet is one of our favorite email marketing plugins for WordPress. This is due to a combination of its reviews, feature set, and pricing.

While you get to carry out basic tasks such as generating signup forms and managing subscribers, there’s plenty more to uncover:

• You have a full newsletter builder within WordPress. In fact, MailPoet offers a complete suite of tools to build and send email, including templates.
• You’re able to create automated email for new subscribers and post notifications.
• There’s lots of segmentation on offer too, for both site behaviors and interest-based actions.
• You can also customize WooCommerce emails – there’s the option to customize transactional emails, abandoned carts, and more.

One of the major plus points of MailPoet is that it’s a complete solution. It includes its own sending service for emails – a near-unique offering. This means you don’t need to connect to a third-party service, and can manage the whole experience through WordPress.

On paid plans, you can also integrate analytics, and gain more detailed analytics than what you’d get with the core plugin.

Pricing 💵

MailPoet has a free tier available, which is fantastic. This gives you the ability to send up to 5,000 emails per month to a maximum of 1,000 subscribers. From there, you can pay either €8, €10, or €30 for an upgraded plan, based on 500 subscribers.

3. FluentCRM

Next up, we have FluentCRM. This is another all-in-one email marketing plugin for WordPress with an impressive feature set, as well as stellar ratings and reviews.

The plugin deals with “marketing automation” – it includes a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) and funnel builder too. However, with regards to its email marketing, FluentCRM is no slouch:

• You’re able to segment your contact list however you need. This lets you send personalized and targeted email, and increase your chance of winning new business.
• The plugin includes its own visual editor to help you create newsletters and other mail outs.
• You’re able to use “dynamic smart codes” to personalize emails further – kind of like mail merge functionality.
• There’s a full scheduling manager, so you can cue up newsletters for a later date.

There’s plenty more on offer with FluentCRM. At times, there’s so much that you could lose your focus. However, with regards to its email marketing, the plugin is top-notch. Despite this, FluentCRM would require you to pair up with a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) solution (such as Mailgun or Amazon SES) to send emails.

Pricing 💵

The core FluentCRM plugin is free. However, a premium plan begins from $129 per year, and rises to $499 per year based on the number of domains you want to connect.

4. Email Subscribers & Newsletters

A plugin with 92% reviews must do something right. The Email Subscribers & Newsletters plugin has a lot to offer under the hood.

The developers, Icegram, want to give MailPoet a run for its money, with a solid set of features and functionality:

• You’re able to store a near-unlimited number of contacts and broadcasts – hosted on your own server for absolute privacy.
• You can check either a single or double opt-in type for your forms.
• Speaking of which, you’ll create those forms within WordPress using a dedicated HTML editor.

You’ll want to look into what else Email Subscribers & Newsletters can give you too. However, we’d likely prefer MailPoet over this, given the features and creative options on offer. In addition, this email marketing plugin for WordPress isn’t an all-in-one solution like MailPoet.

For instance, you’ll need to integrate a sending service to create the same level of experience – another reason why we’d often pick MailPoet over lots of other plugins.

Pricing 💵

Much like MailPoet, there is a free tier available. For either $6.50 or $10.75 per month you can have even more features, better support and updates.

5. Creative Mail

Creative Mail is Constant Contact’s approach to email marketing. The plugin takes a hybrid approach with its integration. For some aspects, you’ll want to use its own dashboard. However, most of the functionality is available within WordPress.

There’s a lot to mention about Creative Mail:

• There’s a logo builder and image editing suite built into the plugin.
• It integrates with Jetpack’s forms, including syncing with your subscriber list.
• The plugin lets you work with and customize WooCommerce emails too.
• Creative Mail automates the addition of new contacts to your lists – through any form on your site.
• You’re able to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to build your campaigns within WordPress.

Also, the service (and plugin) uses Custom Contact’s infrastructure to power everything relating to your email marketing. This includes sending functionality. Overall, Creative Mail is a standout contender for your email marketing plugin.

Pricing 💵

While a free tier exists, we think a premium plan is better value. You’ll pay from $6 per month based on the number of subscribers. This also gives you other goodies, such as advanced multi-step automation options.

Conclusion on the best email marketing plugins for WordPress

Email inboxes represent a fantastic way to reach new and existing customers. We’d suggest that this approach is better even than social media. What’s more, you control the interaction, and can retain the information you receive too. With one of the right email marketing plugins for WordPress on hand, you’ll have a solid way to capture that data – and new leads.

This post offers a few great email marketing plugins for WordPress, and some words of wisdom. You’ll want to ensure that you make a choice based on your needs, budget, and other user reviews.

Do you think we should include any email marketing plugins for WordPress not on this list? Let us know in the comments section below!