Top Email Marketing Platforms Comparison

Email Marketing is an integral part of any internet marketing strategy, or more so, now integral part of any marketing strategy, for both B2B and B2C verticals. Though this post is to compare the pricing and features of top email marketing platforms, I would like to first touch upon the most important spec of email marketing that a marketer need to take care of within the whole lot of best practices in executing Email marketing campaign:

CAN SPAM Act Compliance (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act) – email marketers need to adhere to three basic compliance:
• Unsubscribe Compliance – Making sure all the email recipients, your contact list) are opt in or double opt in and an visible and operational Unsubscribe option/mechanism is available for users and such unsubscribe requests are honoured
• Content Compliance – Email marketers need to clearly mention the from space; the subject line to be most relevant to the context/purpose of the body of the email; complete physical address of the marketer/entity.
• Behavioral Compliance – a strict no to content related to political/religious agenda and/or content related to national security; sexually oriented without the lable of “SEXUALLY EXPLICIT”; any offensive material; other digital attacks (trojan/virus attaacks…)

There are whole lot of players in the email marketing game, am going to talk about the top four that I have personally had chance to use at different point of my career: iContact v/s Mailchimp v/s ConstantContact v/s aWeber

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Pricing	– Free for Limited time/Contacts – $14 for upto 500 Contacts – $29 for upto 2,500 Contacts – $47 for upto 5,000 Contacts * Basic plans include sending up to six times the subscriber/contacts limit	– Free for upto 2000 contacts and 12k emailers / month – $10 for upto 500 Contacts/Unlimited emailers – $30 for upto 2,500 Contacts/unlimited emailers – $50 for upto 5,000 Contacts/Unlimited emailers	– Free for 60 days /100 Contacts – $15 for upto 500 Contacts – $30 for upto 2,500 Contacts – $50 for upto 5,000 Contacts	– $19 for upto 500 Contacts with $1 for first month – $10 for upto 2,500 Contacts – $30 for upto 5,000 Contacts – $50 for upto 10,000 Contacts
Features	CREATE EMAILER: – 100’s of Email Templates/industry vertical – MessageBuilder – Drag and Drop Feature – MessageCoder – Use your own HTML Template DELIVERY: – SpamCheck TRACKING/ANALYTICS – Delivery Tracking – Opened/Clicked /Forwarded/Filed Spam/Unsubscribed – Contact level tracking – Target Segmentation based on behavior/ demographics / interests – Social Media Impact OTHERS – Sign-up forms on Blog/website/FB page	CREATE EMAILER: – 100s of Email Templates – Drag and Drop Template Editor – Email Beamer – Multi-User Accounts – Merge Tags MANAGE LIST/CONTACTS: – Subscriber/Contacts Profiling – Custom Forms – Contact Segmentation DELIVERY: – Delivery by Time Zone – Autoresponders – RSS-to-Email – Geolocation – Email Client Testing – Spam Filter Diagnostics TRACKING/ANALYTICS: – Delivery Reports – A/B Testing MOBILE: – MailChimp for iPhone and Android – VIP Subscribers – Mobile Signup Forms – Coupon Codes – SMS for Events SHARE: – Social Sharing – Campaign Archives	CREATE EMAILER: – Choose from hundreds of stunning customizable email templates to fit your brand and industry by easily placing your logo, changing colors, and add/edit/store images and content – Test drive an email template and start your first campaign—free MANAGE LIST/CONTACTS: – Quickly import contacts from Excel, Outlook, Gmail, and more – Keep lists current with automatic duplicate check and unsubscribe removal SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION – Allow subscribers to share your email on their social networks with the Social Share bar – Let subscribers follow you on your social networks with Social Buttons – Post to all your own social networks in one easy step with Simple Share TRACKING: – Track opens, clicks, forwards, social shares, and more – Integrate with Google Analytics to track your email links OTHER: – Sign-up Forms	CREATE EMAILER: – 150+ Email templates DELIVERY: – ANTI-SPAM policy – Content Filter Checking Tools TRACKING/ANALYTICS: – Delivery Tracking – Opened/Clicked /Forwarded/Filed Spam/Unsubscribed – Contact level tracking and segmentation AUTORESPONDERS: – Instantly Engage Subscribers – Tons of Email Templates – Track Performance – Advanced Scheduling BLOG NEWSLETTER: – RSS to Email – Works with All Major Blogs – Send Weekly Digests

I particularly like MailChimp for its user-friendly interface, tracking and analytics + mobile options and for the fact that its free for first 2000 Subscribers/Contacts :). Other than that most of the platforms are similar when it comes to features – like available email templates, spam quotient check, social media integration, auto-response, list management etc. If you are into affiliate marketing aWeber is favorite of all. Let me know your experiences with any of the above or if you have experience with other platforms like Vertical Response, Streamsend, JangoMail, Benchmark, MyEmma, Boomerang, Bronto, Campaigner, mUrgent, Big Hip etc… and how good are they when compared to the top four.