Last Updated: January 2025
Email marketing continues to dominate as one of the most effective channels for customer engagement, boasting an average ROI of $42 for every $1 spent. While Campaign Monitor is a popular choice among businesses for managing email campaigns, it’s not the only player in the field.
Whether you’re looking for a more affordable option, advanced features, or better integration capabilities, there are plenty of alternatives that can meet your needs.
In this article, we’ll explore the 10 best Campaign Monitor alternatives to help you make an informed decision and elevate your email marketing game.
What is Campaign Monitor?
Campaign Monitor by Marigold is an all-in-one email marketing solution equipped with powerful features and great tools for both newbies and seasoned marketers. Well-known specifically for its email marketing features including top-notch AI-driven tools and marketing automation, Campaign Monitor makes it easy for companies to execute effective outreach.
Essential Features of Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor comes with lots of features that can be utilized to enhance your e-mail communication and boost customer engagement. Key features include:
- Email Template Builder: Drag and drop to build any type of great-looking email.
- Segmentation: A way to go after specific segments of your audience for more tailored campaigns.
- Personalization: Tailor your emails to speak to specific people.
- Marketing Automation: Save hours by automating repetitive processes.
- Transactional Emails: Send triggered and important emails like order confirmations and password resets.
- AI Capabilities: Use AI power for better suggestions and campaign improvements.
- Analytics: Gain insights into email performance with detailed reports and metrics.
- Integrations: Connect easily to common tools and platforms.
- Signup Forms: Create forms that will help you grow your list of subscribers.
- SMS: Address customers through an SMS capability that extends past email.
- Expert Services: Access professional guidance for tailored marketing strategies.
Campaign Monitor Pricing Plans
- Lite: Starting at $12 per month, this plan includes core features and allows you to send up to 2,500 emails.
- Essential: Starting at $29 per month, this plan offers unlimited email sending, making it ideal for frequent senders.
- Premier: Starting at $159 per month, this plan provides advanced segmentation and access to premier support for more sophisticated marketing needs.
- Free Trial: Under its 30 days free trial Campaign Monitor provides all its features only up to 500 emails.
It’s worth noting that Campaign Monitor’s pricing increases as you add more contacts, so costs can quickly escalate for businesses with growing email lists.
Why Look for Campaign Monitor Alternatives?
Marigold’s Campaign Monitor is a prominent cloud-based email marketing service. It provides a number of critical features and excels in email deliverability. However, it comes with several drawbacks that could lead users to look for alternatives, despite its popularity.
Here are some of the most common reasons you might find yourself needing to move away from Campaign Monitor:
- High pricing
- Complex interface, not beginner-friendly
- Challenges with template editing
- Inflexible customer support
- Restricted feature set
- Lack of specific advanced functionalities
Top Campaign Monitor Alternatives
Email marketing forms the foundation of digital marketing, with 49% of consumers stating they would rather get promotional content via email. Although Campaign Monitor is a great option, it does not necessarily fulfil each individual business requirement. Other platforms have their own unique features that may be better for your goals.
1. Saufter
Ratings: 5/5⭐
Pricing: Free trials and paid plans start at $8/month
Saufter is a customer engagement and email marketing platform that takes your campaigns to the next level by automatically helping you analyze your users, based on their behavior on your site or portal and their stage in the customer journey. It uses this data to provide tailored campaign recommendations.
Both Saufter and Campaign Monitor provide great email marketing tools with different approaches.
Saufter enables automated processes for user segmentation, campaign suggestions, and competitor analysis using AI. It offers recommendation insights and predictive analytics based on behavior. The platform is best suited for companies looking for automation across a range of marketing channels.
Campaign Monitor, on the flip side, dedicates itself entirely to simple email campaign management, including a drag-and-drop builder, advanced segmentation, and marketing automation features.
Although Saufter is great when it comes to automated, behavior-based strategies, Campaign Monitor is ideal for businesses that want to design and optimize email campaigns. It all comes down to whether you want automation or ease of email accessibility.
2. Mailchimp
Ratings: 4.3/5⭐
Pricing: Free up to 500 contacts, paid plans start at $134.10/year
Mailchimp is a popular tool for email marketing and marketing automation, which also includes form and landing page builders to increase signups and build email lists. Yes, Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp are both email marketing software (among all other things), but they take a very different approach.
Mailchimp is known as an all-in-one email marketing suite that gives businesses the tools they need to run successful campaigns.
One of the significant disadvantages of the Mailchimp is its pricing structure. The cost for duplicate contacts is charged, and some add-on services require additional costs.
So, is Mailchimp the best choice for email marketing? If budget isn’t a concern and you’re comfortable with its pricing structure, Mailchimp could be one of the best alternatives to Campaign Monitor.
3. ConvertKit
Ratings:3.2/5⭐
Pricing: Free for Newsletters, paid plans start at $25/month
ConvertKit is an email marketing platform for creators such as content creators, course creators, bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, and musicians. Through its simple yet robust capabilities, ConvertKit enables users to engage with their audience, expand their reach, and sell their products with very little hassle.
Built-in Creator Network is one of the best things that ConvertKit has to offer its users. It enables creator collaboration and exposes you to new audiences.
For content creators or those who do content-related work, ConvertKit is a powerful competitor to Campaign Monitor. Moreover, you might consider looking into some of the best ConvertKit competitors to ensure you find the right match for your requirements.
4. Emma Email Marketing
Ratings:4.0/5⭐
Pricing: Free demo, plans start at $99/month
Emma, from fellow Marigold brand, is a leading platform that empowers marketers to craft and deploy personalized and targeted email and SMS campaigns that produce measurable business outcomes.
If you’re a one-man marketer or working for a global enterprise, Emma’s very simple tools make it a cinch to create data-driven campaigns that convert and engage across platforms.
Emma is especially recognized for its user-friendly segmentation systems, personalized email campaigns, and templates optimized for mobile devices. It’s a robust and flexible marketing solution.
Emma also provides hands-on customer support and is scalable to evolve with your company’s requirements. Sound appealing? If so, Emma is a strong contender to consider as an alternative to Campaign Monitor.
5. Hubspot
Ratings: 4.4/5⭐
Pricing: Free up to 2000 Emails/month, paid plans start at $15/month
HubSpot is another AI-powered customer platform that offers a comprehensive suite of tools, integrations, and resources to connect your marketing, sales, and customer service teams.
It offers email marketing capabilities within its Marketing Hub and has a recommendation for the best lead generation powered by AI. If these features meet your requirements, HubSpot is a viable Campaign Monitor competitor.
6. Constant Contact
Ratings: 4.0/5⭐
Pricing: Free trials and paid plans start at $12/month
Constant Contact is known for its user friendly interface and amazing email marketing services. It excels with its unique online event and advertisement features, in addition to event invitation management functionality.
If your business could use a platform that specializes in online event management in addition to all the core email marketing features, Constant Contact is a great alternative to Campaign Monitor.
7. ActiveCampaign
Ratings: 4.5/5⭐
Pricing: Free trials and paid plans start at $15/month
ActiveCampaign is well known as an email marketing software used primarily by experienced users. Thanks to its very powerful automation features made for small to medium-sized businesses. It has some of the most advanced features and easy automation tools.
On the downside, its relatively higher pricing can be a deciding factor for budget conscious users.
ActiveCampaign is a great alternative to Campaign Monitor for users who need advanced functionalities and can afford the price.
8. AWeber
Ratings: 4.2/5⭐
Pricing: Free up to 500 subscribers, paid plans start at $12.50/month
AWeber is an intuitive email marketing service with great tools that make it a winner for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and content creators. Famed for serving the needs of content creators, AWeber is extraordinary with its personalized email marketing offerings along with an AI writing assistant to write an email seamlessly.
If these options serve your objectives, AWeber may represent a large alternative to Campaign Monitor. However, if you’re exploring more options, you may also want to consider some of the best AWeber alternatives.
9. Ongage
Ratings: 4.7/5⭐
Pricing: Plans start at $399/month per 1million emails
Ongage is a versatile email marketing platform built for advanced needs. It includes all the necessary tools for high-level email marketing, so it can handle large quantities of email.
With Ongage, marketers, CRMs, and other stakeholders can consolidate list segmentation, expand send volume, and improve engagement rates.
Ongage offers support for targeted and advanced strategies and different styles of campaigns, making it a must-have solution for companies with advanced marketing goals.
That said, Ongage’s pricing begins at $399, which can be off-putting for some users. If expense is an issue, you may want to consider less expensive options.
If you’re on the hunt for a Campaign Monitor alternative with more advanced email marketing features, and the bandwidth to run massive blast campaigns, Ongage is a viable option as long as you’re ready to commit to its enterprise-level pricing.
10. GetResponse
Ratings: 4.3/5⭐
Pricing: Free trials and paid plans start at $15.58/month
GetResponse is an all-in-one email marketing tool created for businesses of a wide range of sizes. It helps users create and manage their email lists as well as provides all of the key features required to run successful email marketing campaigns.
GetResponse is especially popular due to its ChatGPT-powered email builder. This powerful solution empowers you to create informative and compelling emails in no time whatsoever. Or you can design your own eye-catching templates with its intuitive drag-and-drop editor to make templates grab attention.
If these features pique your interest, then GetResponse is definitely worth a deeper look as a true Campaign Monitor alternative.
KPIs for Email Marketing
Figuring out the messages that bring in the most returns can be done by trying out things, but tracking the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is crucial for monitoring the success of your email marketing campaigns and finding areas to improve. Here are a few of the crucial KPIs to track:
Open Rate
How many recipients open your email? This metric is used to assess the strength of your subject lines and the timing of your emails.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The percentage of recipients that clicked on a link in your email. A high click-through rate (CTR) means good content and well-placed CTAs.
Conversion Rate
Measures the percentage of recipients who took a desired action, like making a purchase or signing up, after clicking your email.
Bounce Rate
Indicates the percentage of emails that failed to deliver. If your bounce rate is high, it may indicate problems with your email list or server.
Unsubscribe Rate
The number of people who choose not to receive your emails. Keeping tabs on this can clue you into whether or not your stuff is relevant and on par with what viewers want.
Spam Complaint Rate
Records how many people marked your email as spam. Keeping this as low as possible is vital for deliverability and sender reputation.
ROI (Return on Investment)
It helps you calculate the revenue brought by your email campaigns compared to the expenses incurred. By this metric, most campaigns have little to show for it.
By regularly analyzing these KPIs, you can fine-tune your email marketing strategy to achieve better engagement and results.
AI in Email Marketing
With the use of artificial intelligence (AI), businesses can deliver more personalized and effective email campaigns. AI empowers marketers to process large quantities of data to forecast user behavior, segment audiences more precisely and deliver targeted messaging that aligns with individual customer preferences.
In fact, marketers who use AI to personalize emails see a 41% increase in revenue and a 13.44% increase in click-through rates (CTR).
Some AI-powered tools automatically suggest the best times to send emails, recommend content based on what users like most, or even draft email campaigns from scratch with little input.
Shallow-end examples include platforms like Saufter applying AI to analyze user behavior to supply completely ready-made ideas for campaigns built around predictions of churn or discrepancy analytics.
AI not only to improve engagement but to save time, create efficient workflows and through it, increase ROI. With the technology constantly evolving, AI is becoming an essential tool for marketers looking to get ahead in Nеtwork.
Conclusion
Finding the right email marketing platform can significantly impact your business’s success, with studies showing that 81% of small businesses rely on email as their primary customer acquisition channel.
While Campaign Monitor is a popular choice, exploring alternatives like Saufter can offer additional features tailored to your needs, such as behavior-driven campaign recommendations and competitor analysis.
Each alternative on this list provides unique strengths, whether you’re seeking better pricing, advanced automation, or enhanced customer engagement tools. By evaluating these options, you can find a solution that aligns perfectly with your business goals and helps you maximize your marketing ROI.
