Explore the best email marketing alternatives to Shopify Email.
Whether you want to sell your products online or want to turn your hobby into a side hustle, chances are you already either have or are thinking of building an online store and most likely with Shopify. The very popular cloud-based service shopping cart solution, Shopify comes with a lot of advantages but has its own limitations too.
Shopify’s native email marketing tool is great for sending simple newsletters and keeping customers in the loop about sales and deals. But it isn’t as robust as some more specialized email marketing apps on the market, and as a result, many merchants find they need an alternative that can better support their marketing strategy.
When you’re looking for an alternative to Shopify Email (or any other built-in feature), you have a few important considerations to keep at top of your mind:
- Does this app offer everything I need?
- Is this app easy to set up and use?
- Will this app integrate with my existing tools?
- Does this app have good customer support if I run into trouble?
Hence, we created a list of email marketing tools that are an alternative to Shopify Email.
15 Email Automation Alternatives to Shopify Email
1. RetainIQ
New and raring to make a difference, with a large number of proven data points around a marked increase in sales for their clients, RetainIQ has a promising appeal to anyone looking for email automation solutions. RetainIQ places a very strong and clear focus on this in their pre-built and pre-tested email flows with over 1000+ email templates. The speed of deployment is also massively better than most of its counterparts (almost 10X faster).
The email workflows are diverse enough to cover almost all stages of a customer in a typical sales cycle. From pre-purchase flows like the welcome flow and browse abandonment flow to post-purchase retention flows like replenishment flow and cross-sell and up-sell flow, you can find them all at RetainIQ.
RetainIQ can eliminate a lot of cost and time squandered on expensive digital marketing agencies and design professionals. Their flows can be deployed directly on your existing email stack, thereby complementing your existing setup at rates as low as $49/month.
Key Highlights for RetainIQ
- 10X faster deployment than other similar service providers
- 1000+ best in class, pre-built templates
- Competitive pricing (starts at $49/month)
RetainIQ also offers free setup and a detailed consultation to help you set up email marketing workflows that convert and that makes it one of the best alternatives to Shopify Email. Schedule a demo here.
2. Klaviyo
Klaviyo is one of the most popular email marketing automation solution platforms. They have powerful segmentation tools that can look at customer behavior on the website and on email. Apart from the various automated workflows that are easily customizable, Klaviyo also enables conducting AB-testing experiments with ultra-ease. It might look slightly more expensive but the range of tools (automation, segmentation, and reporting) make it a great case for investment to grow your Shopify store sales.
All in all, Klaviyo has one of the best sets of tools to personalize emails and conduct experiments to drive a good open rate.
Key Highlights:
- Brilliant data science and ML features
- Transparency and flexible pricing – approx. $100 for 5000 email contacts, offers an open policy where users can check upfront both the pricing (based on the number of email contacts) and the ROI (a standout feature that no other counterpart offers)
- Options for advanced customer segmentation, targeting, and experimentation
- More eCommerce features (coupon codes, back-in-stock automation, etc.) as compared to the likes of Mailchimp
3. Mailchimp
This one is another good alternative to Shopify email. With Mailchimp, you can connect to the other apps and web services that you use every day. This email solution allows you to centralize your marketing strategy and seamlessly connect with more tools to unleash the full power of email marketing.
Mailchimp users might not find the highest-end automation features but their content studio (which allows users to create beautiful and engaging content) and split-testing capabilities along with an easy-to-use interface make them a good bet nonetheless.
Key Highlights:
- Wide range of plans to choose from – the basic plan starts at prices as low as $11 per month and the premium plan goes up to $299 per month
- A generous free plan – good for small businesses who are new to the world of email marketing
- A user-friendly interface
Also read: Best MailChimp alternatives for ecommerce email marketing
4. Bayengage
BayEngage is an easy-to-use email marketing tool by TargetBay. One thing that makes BayEngage stand out from its competitors is that it charges by the number of “active” subscribers in the email list. It allows users to create beautiful-looking emails and tries to capture all customer touchpoints to provide a holistic email automation solution. They have almost 250 pre-designed email templates and for those of you who want to experiment more, they do have a drag and drop email design tool as well.
Key Highlights:
- Allows A/B testing and has a decent analytics tool for deriving insights from an email marketing campaign
- Good customer service
- Pricing starts at $49/month
Also read: Email marketing tool alternatives to BayEngage
5. Omnisend
With more e-commerce friendly features, Omnisend is an email alternative that is hard to overlook. It is mostly compared to Mailchimp, however, both do have their set of pros and cons. Omnisend is great for those who like to deploy an omnichannel marketing automation platform and not just email workflows.
Key Highlights:
- Provides access to all the premium features in the free plan
- Great for e-commerce businesses, allows for Google and Facebook retargeting, customer segmentation, etc
- Competitive pricing – plans start at $59/month
6. ConvertKit
With customers like Etsy.com, ConvertKit is one of the fastest-growing email marketing companies around. ConvertKit is subscriber-centric. That means you only need to keep track of one list that holds all your subscribers. It also offers customizable sign-up forms and landing pages to help bring in more email subscribers.
Key highlights:
- Higher deliverability rates
- Supports easy migration (they offer a concierge migration service – their platform handles the movement of all your forms, marketing automation, and subscribers for free if you have more than 5000 subscribers)
- Supports lead capture and eCommerce integrations
- Pricing starts at $9/month for the most basic plan (apart from the free plan with limited access to premium features)
7. Hubspot
An old name in the ever-growing email automation software list, Hubspot is a great alternative to Shopify email. HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales platform and email automation features are only a part of it. With HubSpot’s Marketing Automation Software, you can automate your email drip campaigns, and select triggers, conditions, and actions so your emails are sent to the right audience members at the right time.
Key highlights:
- Offers more advanced functionality than the likes of Mailchimp
- Has an advanced CRM which helps deliver the most personalized user experience
- Easy integration with WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, other eCommerce platforms, other webinar platforms, various other social media tools
- The basic plan starts at $25/month (depending on your subscriber base)
8. GetResponse
We like GetResponse for their free trials, GDPR fields, live support, free stock photos (~5k), and their autoresponders. While a lot of other email automation platforms may have one or many of these features, GetResponse still claims a spot on our list. They have recently shifted to be more of an ‘all-in-one’ e-commerce and online marketing solution, rather than the ‘traditional’ email marketing tool that they started off as.
Key Highlights:
- Offers some unique eCommerce features – for example, it has pre-made campaign funnels designed to move leads to purchases with targeted content
- Offers a live chat option to speed up customer support
- Approximately 99% deliverability rate for 106 countries
- The basic plan starts from $15 per month
9. CM Commerce
In their own words, “CM Commerce helps time-strapped eCommerce entrepreneurs send the kind of personalized, automated marketing emails you thought were only for “big” brands.” We like them for their all-in-one marketing dashboard that helps you create emails and use widgets to increase customer lifetime value.
Key Highlights:
- Offers a lot of pre-designed themes to create beautiful emails
- Great ratings on Shopify (4.6/5)
- Pricing on the higher side, a basic plan for 5000-10,000 subscribers costs $149/month
10. Sendinblue
With features like advanced analytics, solutions to improve email marketing success metrics, and easy API integration, SendinBlue too deserves a spot on our list. It is an email marketing solution specifically made for SMB (small and medium-sized) businesses that want to send and automate email marketing campaigns, often with a limited budget.
Key Highlights:
- Packed with powerful functionality to create email newsletters, email marketing automation, SMS campaigns, landing pages, Facebook ads, live chat, and more
- Competitive pricing – $66 per month based on the number of emails you send. All plans come with unlimited contacts storage
11. Active Campaign
This email marketing tool is also targeted at SMBs (small and medium businesses) and offers easy-to-use, customizable email automation solutions. You can start a free trial before signing up for the service full-fledged. Once a campaign is set up, users of Active Campaign can make use of their analytics tools and the live chat messaging platform called Conversations for any help on the go.
Key Highlights:
- Offers detailed campaign analytics
- Offers over 600 templates for automation
- Doesn’t offer a free plan but has flexible pricing options. The most basic plan starts at $15/month
12. Moosend
If you’re on a shoestring budget or are new to the world of email automation, try out Moosend’s free email automation for a couple of days with up to 9000 emails free/month. Not just emails, you can also design monthly newsletters on Moosend. The other features are standard and on the same lines as the other alternatives suggested above.
Key Highlights:
- Supports real-time reporting and analytics
- Pricing starts at $9/month (for up to 500 subscribers)
13. Mailerlite
Mailerlite’s automation may not be as elaborate as the other alternatives listed above, but Mailerlite sure has some easy-to-use features for beginners. So if you are new to the world of e-commerce try out some basic automation using Mailerlite and then build your way up.
Key Highlights:
- Offers more advanced features in the free plan
- Simple to understand email marketing report dashboard
- The basic plan starts at $10/month for 1000-2500 subscribers
14. SendX
Targeted especially at B2B companies and bloggers, SendX is a good alternative to Shopify email. It allows you to send unlimited email campaigns, build your email lists, and automate advanced email sequences. You can check out a breakdown of their different plans here.
Key Highlights:
- Offers the most competitive pricing (the basic plan starts at $7.49 for 1000 subscribers)
- Charges only for subscribers (one can send unlimited emails to a subscriber once they are on the mailing list)
- Up to 25% off on annual plans and free migration services
15. AWeber
AWeber is an email marketing tool that was almost the pioneer in the space and was started more than 20 years ago! It lets you create e-newsletters and autoresponder cycles. Their platform is used by over 300,000 creators, side-hustlers, and small business owners. With the standard set of easy deploy email automation features and a simple platform for those who want to quickly experiment, AWeber is a great alternative to Shopify email.
Key Highlights:
- Integrated with Canva for designing email templates
- Supports dynamic segmentation leading to better engagement of readers
- Good customer support for all plans
- Integration with many leading eCommerce platforms (e.g. Paypal, Etsy, ClickBank, CloudCart, etc.)
- Supports email split testing and behavioral automation
- Offers a good to use free plan and the pricing starts at $16/month (for up to 50 subscribers)
Found the best alternative to Shopify Email?
Clearly, there is no dearth of options for anyone willing to go a step beyond the standard Shopify Email to boost their sales. Customized email workflows and automation enable brands to get recurring sales and target and convert customers while you sleep!
From RetainIQ’s cutting-edge new tech, Klaviyo tested, comprehensive features to the simple and effective functionalities of Mailerlite, you have a lot of options to choose from. Try out the free plan first (most of the websites listed above don’t ask you for credit card details) and experiment enough to know what will work best for your business. It’s important to get ahead in the hyper-competitive world of e-commerce where everyone is literally vying for your customers.
Get your headstart today by automating email marketing and watch your business grow like never before!