6 Best CRMs For Email Marketing (Ranked & Reviewed)

This guide will rank and review the best 6 email marketing CRMs based on their pros and cons, features, pricing, and customer reviews.

You’ve launched your website, added signup forms, and generated some leads.

Now what?

Turning email leads into sales takes dedicated effort, detailed planning, and (most importantly) a lot of organization.

That’s where a CRM comes in.

Finding the right CRM can give you the tools to generate leads and nurture them with advanced email automations that deliver relevant messages at scale.

Feel free to skip to the section you’re most interested in:

• What Is An Email Marketing CRM?
• Best CRMs For Email Marketing: Our Top 6 Picks
• How To Pick The Best CRM For Email Marketing

What Is An Email Marketing CRM?

An email marketing CRM is a customer relationship management tool with designated email marketing features.

80% of buyers prefer to be contacted by email, making it crucial to give a good customer experience via email.

Finding the right email marketing CRM will help your sales and marketing team automate their most repetitive email tasks so they can dedicate more time to higher-value activities.

On the other hand, choosing the wrong email marketing CRM could mean stretching your budget or not having the features you need to create competitive customer experiences.

The Best CRM for Email Marketing: Our Top 6 Picks

Here’s our list of the top 6 CRMs for email marketing.

We recommend picking out a few of your favorite tools and signing up for free trials or demos before making a decision.

VipeCloud

We’re ranking VipeCloud as the best CRM for email marketing because of its scalability to fit various sizes of businesses – especially small businesses that are just starting to consider CRM software over spreadsheets.

Here’s what you need to know about VipeCloud:

Pros

Even though VipeCloud can be used for more than email marketing, it offers some great email features that’ll appeal to anyone looking to scale their email campaigns.

• Low-priced options for small and medium-sized businesses looking to punch above their weight.
• VipeCloud’s customer service team is almost always given a perfect rating (5/5) by its users.
• Email features are affordable and scalable, meaning VipeCloud’s capabilities will grow with your needs (without breaking the budget).
• All-in-one CRM doesn’t just include email features but a whole slew of other marketing and sales features as well.

Cons

Even though VipeCloud stands out from the crowd in many different areas, there are some cons to keep in mind:

• Some customers report an initial learning curve (customer support is always available if you need help adopting the platform)
• Some important features like automation and email integration are not available in the lowest-priced tiers.

Features

When it comes to email, many people have trouble with making their emails look nice. That becomes a problem of the past with VipeCloud's 600+ email templates! You can also easily create your own email template.

VipeCloud’s customer service team will help you ensure your DNS settings are correct and all your contacts are imported into their system correctly.

With some email tools, you can track how many of your contacts opened the email you sent out. With VipeCloud, you can not only track opens, but also:

• Track clicks
• Video views
• Page views after clicking over from an email (you can follow the customer’s journey through your website after receiving your email)

VipeCloud uses its own dedicated servers to send out mass emails, meaning you don’t have to rely on your email’s exchange servers, making mass emails much more reliable.

Finally, VipeCloud also offers live reporting features for each email campaign you send out, as well as automation to help speed everything up and save you the headache of repeated tasks.

However, remember that VipeCloud isn’t just an email marketing platform. It’s a full CRM as well! That means you get all its contact management features, communication features, and sales tracking features in addition to the email marketing features mentioned above!

Check out our pricing page for a full list of features.

Pricing

VipeCloud’s pricing structure is very simple. It starts at $20/month (billed yearly) and goes up to $80/month.

If you’re a small business just looking for some contact management features, the smallest plan is probably enough.

If you want more access to email marketing features, integrations, automation, and more contacts, moving up to a larger plan will be better.

VipeCloud offers affordable plans for any size business, so you can start with a plan that works for you now and increase your plan as you grow.

Reviews

Many of the positive reviews for VipeCloud mention how much more they’re able to accomplish while actually DECREASING their workload.

Some less-positive reviews mention difficulties learning the tool as well as missing some minor features that they’d like to have.

Overall, VipeCloud earned a 4.8 out of 5 on Software Advice.

HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is a very popular option for many small businesses for several reasons, but there’s one major reason people flock to this CRM:

It’s free! Which is great if you’re just starting out, but as you grow, you’ll need to pay for the most important features and more contacts.

Pros

• A free lightweight CRM that’s easy to learn and use
• Email templates to make your email marketing campaigns look beautiful
• Email analytics to help you measure the health of your marketing campaigns
• Great CRM features, in addition to email marketing features

Cons

• Some of the best features are behind a paywall.
• Many users find Hubspot’s pricing confusing, and small businesses usually find it expensive if they want to upgrade.
• Its free tools sometimes lack the depth of paid versions available in other CRMs.

Features

HubSpot CRM allows you to manage all your contacts and track sales, conversations, and marketing campaigns all in one place.

When you start an email campaign in HubSpot CRM, you have the choice to select from several premade templates. There are also many additional email marketing templates available if you upgrade to the paid version.

After sending your email campaign out, you have the ability to use analytics to monitor the health of your email campaigns, tracking opens, clicks, bounces, and more important details of your campaign.

Pricing

As mentioned previously, HubSpot CRM is free to use, but some of the more advanced features are only available if you upgrade to a paid plan.

There are multiple paid options that all include different features. The Marketing Hub plan includes the email features you need to run a successful email marketing campaign, and it starts at $45/month paid yearly. It includes 1000 contacts, but you can add more for a steep price increase.

Reviews

HubSpot CRM receives predominately positive reviews, with many of the most positive reviews mentioning that it handles many of their customer tracking and marketing needs.

However, more critical reviews mention that the tool isn’t as easy to learn as they would like or that it’s missing features they feel should come standard.

It’s important to note that these reviews are from customers using both paid and free versions of the app, so your experience may vary from theirs if you choose to use only the free version.

HubSpot has an average rating of 4.5 stars on Software Advice.

Zoho

Zoho CRM offers a great variety of contact management and email marketing features that will allow most businesses to find what they need.

Let’s look at some of the major things you need to know about this tool.

Pros

• All the plans include a variety of helpful features.
• Several pricing options allow most businesses to find what they need within their budget.
• Email automation features help you save time.
• Advanced email analytics help you track your email campaign’s success.

Cons

• Some of the more advanced features are locked to lower-tier customers.
• The fact that many features are offered presents a challenge to learning the system.

Features

If you connect your email to Zoho CRM, you can manage your entire email campaign from within their system. You can receive and respond to emails, send out new campaigns, and analyze email KPIs – all within Zoho.

Additionally, you can schedule future emails and establish mass email marketing campaigns to help you save time on your email communication.

Similar to the other tools we’ve looked at, Zoho offers email templates and allows you to save your own email templates for your own personal touch.

Pricing

Zoho starts at $14/user/month billed annually and goes up to $52/user/month.

The lowest-tier plans include most of the email features but don’t include many of the more advanced features in other areas of the CRM. 

Reviews

Some of the positive reviewers of Zoho CRM talk about how flexible and well-rounded the tool is. It’s able to improve various aspects of their business–not just email marketing.

The more negative reviews mention that the tool can be difficult to learn at first. Additionally, some mention that they wish there were more customizations available to them within the app.

Zoho CRM has received an average of 4.5 stars on Software Advice.

Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the most popular CRMs on the market due to its broad range of tools, accessibility, and reputation for high quality.

Let’s look at its pros and cons:

Pros

• Massive selection of tools
• Many different plans to fit almost any business’s needs
• AI-powered email marketing
• Powerful analytics
• Many possible integrations with tools you may already be using

Cons

• Some plans are on the pricier side (designed for huge businesses with massive budgets).
• Salesforce is a huge tool, so it can take a long time to adequately learn it, meaning training times are increased.
• Some users report slow loading times as your customer database grows
• Usually, not a fit for small businesses.

Features

The main draw of using Salesforce as a CRM for email marketing is that it offers high-quality AI tools for email campaigns.

For example, Salesforce uses AI to tell its users which of their contacts are most likely to convert, allowing you to tailor your email campaigns to an unbelievable level of precision.

Salesforce’s integrations are another big selling point. It can integrate with other powerful tools like Tableau and Slack to help you consolidate your data and tech stack.

Pricing

Salesforce offers many different packages with wildly different prices, so it’s hard to say exactly what it’ll cost for you to use it.

However, the small business package includes the email features mentioned above and starts at $25/user/month, billed annually. If you want more features, you can add them for an additional cost, depending on the features you want.

Reviews

Salesforce gets positive reviews, with many of the reviewers mentioning the flexibility and customizability of the tool.

Those with more critical things to say mentioned that it’s a bulky tool that can be extremely difficult to learn. They also frequently mentioned that the cost can exceed many smaller businesses’ budgets if they want access to the more advanced tools.

Salesforce received an average rating of 4.4 stars on Software Advice.

Insightly

Insightly is another great CRM for email marketing that’s targeted toward small businesses looking for a lightweight solution.

Let’s take a closer look:

Pros

• Good variety of email marketing and CRM features
• Easy to navigate, making it a good choice for people who are less technologically inclined
• Integrations with G-Suite tools, QuickBooks, Asana, and dozens of other tools make this a very flexible option
• Low-priced options for companies with smaller budgets

Cons

• Some features are clunky and complicated
• Only a few plans available means fewer options to customize your ideal plan with only the features you need

Features

The main goal of Insightly’s email marketing features is to help you keep track of where each contact is in the sales process. Additionally, using a CRM like Insightly helps keep your entire team aware of what communication each lead is receiving.

Insightly allows you to create your own email templates so you can send out beautifully designed emails every time. You can then schedule your emails from within their system, making it easy to launch email campaigns to specific contacts.

If you want fancy email features, Insightly probably isn’t the app for you. It shines because it’s a low-cost option that allows users to utilize its CRM features in conjunction with its email scheduling and template options.

Pricing

Insightly CRM pricing starts at just $29/user/month, but that plan doesn’t get access to the email scheduling features mentioned above.

If you want access to all the email features, you’ll need to upgrade to the $49/user/month plan.

Reviews

Insightly gets primarily positive reviews. Many of the positive comments talk about the ease-of-use. Compared to other tools, Insightly is simpler. That appeals to many users who are simply looking for a tool that meets their basic CRM needs.

Some of the more negative comments frequently mentioned clunky or missing features.

Insightly has earned an average rating of 4.0 stars on Software Advice.

Nutshell

Nutshell aims to be an all-in-one CRM focused on simplicity and effectiveness. It comes with plenty of email marketing features that should help many businesses communicate more effectively with their customers.

Here’s how it holds up to the other tools on this list:

Pros

• Dozens of integrations like Notion, Evernote, and Shopify
• Low-cost plans with enough features to satisfy smaller businesses
• Email marketing automation saves users time 
• Contact management helps you keep track of leads and sales conversations

Cons

• Reporting and analytics features are limited compared to some other tools on this list
• Some bugs have been reported by users

Features

One of the standout email marketing features that Nutshell offers is the personalized email sales drip. In other words, it allows you to create a predetermined set of emails that are automatically sent in sequence to potential leads.

Like some of the other tools we’ve mentioned, Nutshell allows you to use templates to speed up email creation and save yourself time and effort.

Finally, Nutshell also features tools to help you quickly filter through your entire list of contacts to create laser-focused email campaigns in seconds. 

Pricing

As I mentioned earlier, Nutshell is a great low-priced option for small businesses. It starts at just $16/user/month billed annually, which includes all of the email features except for personal email sequences and click tracking. 

To get access to those powerful features, you need to upgrade to the $42/user/month plan.

Reviews

Nutshell has an average rating of 4.3 stars on Software Advice.

Many of the positive reviews mention the ease-of-use and flexibility of the tool. Many users also praise Nutshell’s pricing as being much more accessible to smaller businesses.

Some of the more negative reviews mention the bugs in the software and an unresponsive customer support team when facing those problems. Others frequently mention small missing features.

How to Pick the Best CRM for Email Marketing

Picking the right CRM for email marketing can seem like a huge task – especially with all of the CRMs on the market.

We put together a CRM evaluation checklist to help you pick the right tool for your business. Work your way through this list and see which tool fits best with your needs and your business.

The best way to find the answers to the questions listed below is by signing up for a free trial or a demo with each of the tools mentioned above!

• Advanced email features:
  • Does the tool offer all or most of the email marketing features you need?
  • Evaluate the email marketing features, including the ability to create and customize campaigns, automation capabilities, and the use of templates and design features.
• Contact management:
  • Do the contact management features of the CRM seamlessly integrate with the email marketing features, allowing you to create highly-targeted email campaigns without herculean effort?
  • Assess the CRM's contact management capabilities, including the ability to filter contacts by various fields, import/export contacts, and manage contact details effectively. Consider any other contact management features that are important to your business.
• Automation and workflows:
  • Does the tool offer any automation features that’ll save you time and make your life easier?
  • Ensure the CRM allows you to set up automation workflows for triggered emails, drip campaigns, and other automated processes.
• Analytics and reporting:
  • Does the CRM offer valuable analytics to help you assess the health and success of your email marketing campaigns?
  • Evaluate the CRM's analytics and reporting tools to track the performance of your email campaigns, including open rates, click-through rates, hard and soft bounce rates, and conversion metrics.
• Scalability:
  • Does the tool offer more advanced features and higher-level plans that will become useful to you as your business grows?
  • Look at all the plans offered by the CRM to assess whether it will truly scale as you grow your business.
• Customer support:
  • Will you receive adequate customer support as you encounter problems and questions while using the tool?
  • Read online reviews to see how other users rate the customer support they’ve received. The best way to learn about customer support is from previous (and current) customers!
• Cost and pricing structure:
  • Does the tool fit in your budget? Are there hidden fees or features that you need that don’t come with the base package?
  • Look at the website and talk to sales reps to understand the pricing structure, including any additional costs for features or usage beyond the base package.
• User reviews and testimonials:
  • Do current and former users of the tool recommend it?
  • Research user reviews on websites like G2, Software Advice, and GetApp. Read testimonials to gain insights into the experiences of other businesses with the CRM platform (which are a strong indicator of future experiences).

Ready To Start Email Marketing With CRM?

What now?

Now it’s time to take some action and start using CRM to get more customers with email marketing! 

Even if you aren’t ready to pay for a tool yet, we highly recommend signing up for the VipeCloud 15-day free trial or a free demo. We’ll be happy to walk you through how VipeCloud can work for your business.