The best email newsletter platforms and software in 2026

Changes happening across search algorithms and social media feeds make one thing crystal clear: it's never been more important for businesses to own the channels where they communicate with customers. Email is one such channel—and it's stood the test of time.

Today, email newsletters run the gamut from small-scale personal notes to massive automated campaigns—and so does newsletter software. No matter how complex (or simple) your email marketing operation is, the best email newsletter software makes it quick and easy to send professional-looking emails to hundreds or thousands of subscribers.

The thing is, there are so many email newsletter tools out there. In nearly a decade of working in marketing, I've used my fair share of them, and I know it can feel overwhelming to choose the right one for you. I've been updating this list for a number of years, and this year, I considered 80 different apps and tested nearly 30 of them to help you find the best email newsletter platform.

The best email newsletter platforms

• Audienceful for a full-featured email marketing app

• Kit (formerly ConvertKit) for paid newsletters

• Omnisend for eCommerce newsletters and campaigns

• Campaign Monitor for agencies that handle email marketing for multiple clients

• beehiiv for monetizing your newsletter

• Curated for curated newsletters

• Flodesk for a simple (but capable) newsletter tool

What is an email newsletter?

Email newsletters are bulk emails from brands, and email newsletter platforms are the tools that power them. They're a great way to share news, announce new promotions, show off new product features, promote your new blog posts, and curate content for your subscribers.

As email newsletters have grown in popularity, they've started to intersect with email marketing more broadly—and other areas of marketing, like marketing automation, web push and SMS campaigns, social media, and even web building. With all that overlap, many dynamite email newsletter tools have widened their feature sets to include broader email marketing and email marketing automation capabilities. 

For this list, I focused on the best options for email newsletters: every app on the list, no matter how broad the feature set, delivers on making it quick and easy to build email newsletters, grow your list, and understand performance. But many of the tools below are also more than capable of handling (and scaling) your entire marketing operation, offering additional advanced features like transactional emails, drip marketing campaigns, marketing automation, and A/B testing.

What to look for in an email newsletter platform

The best software for newsletter sending always includes the following key features, which are what I focused on in my testing:

• Segmentation options. If you have a large mailing list, it's useful to be able to divide up how you email people according to their demographic details and their behaviors. All the apps included here have appropriate segmentation options for doing exactly that.

• Affordability. It's possible to spend a lot of money on newsletter email services. I've focused on apps and tools that are affordable, even for smaller businesses with tight budgets.

• Usability. Creating and sending an email newsletter should be a simple process, so I excluded any tools that were so complex that I spent more time searching Google than actually testing and using the tool. (I also only tested software with a full feature set, meaning you can both design and send newsletters in one tool.)

• Analytics and reporting. Whether you're planning to monetize your newsletter or not, it's important a tool can help you understand how your email campaigns perform.

Once I narrowed down my list based on those criteria, I dove into testing. I followed a similar testing protocol for each, so I could compare key features across the board and find uniquely valuable ones, too. Here's what my testing workflow looked like:

• First, I created an account and went through any onboarding provided by the app.

• I tested the core features first, creating a new campaign, choosing from the library of templates (where available), editing the design, and completing the scheduling flow.

• From there, I looked into more advanced features like segmentation and automation.

• After my scheduled newsletter went out, I viewed the email from the recipient side, then checked out any reports and analytics provided.

• Where applicable, I tested out features for creating a digital product or paid subscription to the newsletter—plus any other niche features like those designed for curated newsletters, eCommerce, or marketing agencies.

Throughout this workflow, I rigorously tested for ease of use—because your newsletter software shouldn't come with a steep learning curve or add frustration to your day. I've used email marketing apps extensively over the last decade, so if it was hard or time-consuming for me to figure out, it didn't make the cut.

This year, after spending about a week testing nearly 30 email newsletter tools, I landed on the top seven you see below.

The best email newsletter platforms at a glance

Best full-featured email newsletter software

Audienceful (Web)

Audienceful pros:

• Full email marketing feature set

• Simple, intuitive interface

• Generous free plan

Audienceful cons:

• No pre-made templates

• Less robust analytics than some

A lot of newsletter tools have aggressively expanded their feature sets over the last few years, going from newsletter tools to full-on marketing automation software and customer data platforms. Audienceful fills the gap between these feature behemoths and the more barebones newsletter tools.

With Audienceful, you can get all the features your email marketing needs—from a flexible email editor to segmentation, automation, and analytics. It's all the features you need and none of the stuff you don't—all in a simple, clean, supremely easy-to-use package.

You won't find any highly stylized pre-made templates here, but you can exercise granular control over the color scheme, typography, layout, and more via the Theme tab in the right-hand menu—then save those settings as your own custom template to reuse later.

The editor is largely text-forward, marking Audienceful definitively a newsletter app, but you can add rich elements like media, buttons, columns, and more. The editor even flexes to accommodate your preferred method: Notion-esque slash commands, web-builder style and buttons, or drag-and-drop elements from the right-hand menu.

Once you've started growing your list and sending out newsletters, the Home page's dashboard helps you stay on top of the high-level analytics that matter most: audience growth, engagement, and by-campaign open and click tracking.

Audienceful offers standard built-in automation, but when you use Audienceful with Zapier, you can connect it with thousands of other apps and orchestrate workflows that extend beyond your email newsletter platform. For example, you can use AI to analyze customer behavior in your CRM, then trigger personalized newsletter segments in Audienceful, and notify account managers in Slack when high-value leads interact.

Audienceful price: Free for up to 1,000 contacts, 2 team members, and most features; paid plans start at $29/month for up to 3,000 contacts, whitelabeling, and additional automation allowance.

Best email newsletter platform for paid newsletters

Kit (Web)

Kit pros:

• Designed for creators and paid newsletters

• Intuitive email editor that works like a web builder

• Create digital products, sell to your list, and collect payments with one tool

Kit cons:

• Emphasis on minimal, text-forward newsletters can be limiting

Kit is built for creators. The app goes beyond email to include landing pages and digital products, but newsletters (called "broadcasts") are at the heart of it all.

The email editor in Kit functions a lot like a website builder. Instead of the drag-and-drop you'll find in most email newsletter tools, you click the + button and choose the element you want to add.

The tool largely emphasizes a minimal, text-forward design for broadcasts, but it now offers 15 well-designed visual themes to choose from—they still keep things aesthetically simple, but they'll give your newsletter a little more polished look. Plus, you can create and save your own templates for reuse.

If you're sending a paid newsletter or other digital product, Kit makes it easy to sell to your list, collect payments, and segment paid subscribers. Payments are powered by Stripe, but you can set them up without leaving Kit's app. Once you're set up to collect payments, simply add a product, set the price, and you're in business.

You can start using Kit—and even selling digital products—for free. If you sign up for a paid plan, Kit includes free, done-for-you migration from your current email provider.

Plus, Kit integrates with Zapier, so you can orchestrate workflows that connect your newsletters with the rest of your business systems. For example, when someone registers for a webinar, you could automatically add them to a Kit segment, use AI to draft a personalized follow-up email, and sync their engagement data back to your CRM. That way, Kit becomes a connected part of your broader marketing and sales process. Learn more about how to automate Kit.

Kit price: Free for up to 10,000 subscribers, unlimited sending, and limited features; the Creator package starts at $33/month for up to 1,000 subscribers and additional features like unlimited email sequences, automation, whitelabeling, and free migration from other email tools.

Best email newsletter platform for eCommerce

Omnisend (Web)

Omnisend pros:

• All-in-one transactional emails, newsletters, and automated campaigns for eCommerce

• Robust integrations with eCommerce platforms

• Thoughtful pre-built audience segments

Omnisend cons:

• Limited free plan and pricey to scale subscribers

Omnisend is email marketing built for eCommerce, allowing you to build and manage everything from transactional emails to newsletters and automated email flows.

The app integrates with popular eCommerce platforms, including Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, and Wix. Once you connect your store, Omnisend pulls in key data on your customers and their behavior to help power robust customer segmentation, email automation, and detailed reporting.

You can choose from 18 pre-built segments designed for eCommerce—like "high potential buyers," "clicked on promotional messages," and "frequent store visitors"—to make quick work of powerful segmentation. Or try out the new "generate a custom segment with AI" feature (in beta as of this writing).

Omnisend's email templates are designed to be versatile. The intuitive editor makes it easy to customize your newsletter with pre-built layout blocks for things like product listings, recommendations, and discounts. And if you use SMS campaigns or push notifications in addition to email, you can build and send these with Omnisend, too.

Plus, you can connect Omnisend with Zapier to orchestrate workflows that tie your eCommerce marketing with the rest of your business systems. For example, when someone abandons a cart, you could use AI to generate personalized product recommendations, trigger an Omnisend email with those suggestions, and then sync the response data back to your CRM. That way, your campaigns stay connected to both customer insights and your broader sales strategy. Learn more about how to automate Omnisend.

Omnisend price: Free for up to 250 contacts, 500 monthly sends, and access to most features; the Standard plan starts at $16/month for 500 contacts, 3,000 monthly emails, and upgraded support options.

Best email newsletter software for agencies that handle email marketing for multiple clients

Campaign Monitor (Web, iOS)

Campaign Monitor pros:

• Strong client management features

• Expansive reporting features

• Transactional email and SMS

Campaign Monitor cons:

• Less user-friendly interface

• Costs can jump quickly

If you manage email marketing for multiple clients, Campaign Monitor makes that process simple. You can add as many clients as you want; create custom templates, emails, and automations for each client; allow clients to access their campaigns through a white-label version of the tool; and lock specific sections of emails and templates so they can't be edited.

Then, either have clients pay for their usage themselves by reselling the product to them, or you can pay for all of your clients yourself as part of a single package. You can even pay individually for a specific campaign if you have a client who only wants to send emails occasionally to a large list of contacts. Such flexibility is great if you're on a tight budget and need to plan accordingly.

Campaign Monitor's email editor initially encourages you to create a branded template based on the color scheme of your website. The whole interface isn't quite as user-friendly as some options here, but it's still a fast way to customize your messages with drag-and-drop functionality included. You can even preview what your email will look like in 20 different inboxes with any paid plan, helping you ensure that your emails look great for everyone.

Campaign Monitor connects with Zapier so you can orchestrate end-to-end workflows across your entire tech stack. For example, you can sync subscriber data from your CRM, use AI to enrich it for personalized segmentation, and trigger tailored Campaign Monitor journeys based on purchase activity or event engagement—all while updating dashboards and notifying your team in Slack. Learn more about how to automate Campaign Monitor.

Campaign Monitor price: From $12/month for the Lite plan to send up to 2,500 emails/month to 500 contacts; from $29/month for the Essentials plan that includes 500 contacts, unlimited monthly sends, time zone delivery, and priority support.

Best email newsletter software for monetizing your newsletter

beehiiv (Web)

beehiiv pros:

• Built-in monetization features

• Scalable paid plans

• Useful content calendar view

beehiiv cons:

• Higher starting cost for paid plans

beehiiv is a great option for anyone looking to aggressively grow and monetize an email newsletter. 

The app itself is easy to use with familiar navigation and a clean editing interface. It also includes my favorite of the (admittedly uninspiring) AI features. The generative AI writer feature is built seamlessly into the post and email writing flow, and it also offers an AI image generator, which works just fine if your requirements aren't super specific. But it's important to note: beehiiv is unapologetically text-forward, with fewer than a dozen basic templates available and limited options for customizing the visual design of your emails. Whether that's a benefit or a knock really depends on your newsletter style.

Monetization is the bread and butter of beehiiv. You can grow your email list by bidding to be featured in other beehiiv creators' emails (it works similarly to bidding on a Google Ad) or even setting up an entire referral program. Then, start earning by "boosting" other newsletters in your emails, offering paid newsletter subscriptions, or applying to join beehiiv's native ad network and one-click accepting inbound ads from the app's network of sponsors. You will have to buy a paid plan to access these features, though, as they're no longer offered in even a limited way with the free plan.

You can get a concise view of your performance from the dashboard—or, with a paid plan, head to Analyze in the left-hand navigation to dive into the in-depth subscribers and posts reports.

beehiiv also connects with Zapier, so you can build orchestrated workflows that go far beyond moving subscriber data from one place to another. For example, you can capture new leads from events or gated content, use AI to enrich them for better segmentation, and then add them to targeted beehiiv lists. Learn more about how to automate beehiiv.

beehiiv price: Free plan includes up to 2,500 subscribers, unlimited sending, and basic features; paid plans start at $43/month for up to 1,000 subscribers, monetization features, analytics, and premium support.

Best email newsletter software for curated newsletters

Curated (Web)

Curated pros:

• Super quick newsletter building

• Generous free plan

Curated cons:

• No templates

• No audience segmentation features

Curated is the fastest way to build out a newsletter full of your favorite content, curated from anywhere across the web. Collecting links to feature is a breeze. You can add them manually from the Collected Links tab, email links to a special email address, save from Slack messages, or—my personal favorite—add the Curated bookmarklet to your browser to save any page, with its headline, brief description, and a featured image, in as little as two clicks.

When you're ready to build out your next newsletter issue, all your collected links (that haven't been added to a previous newsletter) appear on the left-hand side. All it takes is one click to add them to the newsletter draft. It's just as easy to remove, rearrange, or edit items, and you can add custom text to introduce the newsletter or add any other context needed. Once you're up and running, the app includes comprehensive reports on click performance and subscriber growth.

All that speed and simplicity does come at the cost of visual customization, though. Curated doesn't include any email templates, and you can't edit the look of your emails beyond selecting the featured image for each curated link.

With Zapier's Curated integration, you can plug Curated into orchestrated workflows that span your organization. For example, you can pull in the latest articles from your company blog, have AI generate short summaries or category tags, and route them into Curated for your next issue.

Curated price: Free for up to 1,500 subscribers with unlimited sending and all features included; paid plans start at $39/month for up to 2,500 subscribers.

Best simple (but capable) email newsletter software

Flodesk (Web)

Flodesk pros:

• Well-organized, easily customizable templates

• Minimalist, easy-to-use editor

• Option to add eCommerce features

Flodesk cons:

• Free plan doesn't include email sending

• Manual segmentation

Flodesk is one of the simplest, easiest-to-use tools I tested—but don't think "simple" means lacking. It's an all-around great email marketing tool, with an intuitive email-building flow, a number of modern templates to choose from, and extensive reporting features. The overall user experience is much cleaner and less busy than most email marketing software, which feels like a breath of fresh air.

With the newly released Checkout features, Flodesk is a strong contender for both eCommerce newsletters and creators of digital products. You can accept payments, build sales pages, deliver digital products, and view detailed eCommerce analytics. Flodesk also offers simple but in-depth analytics on subscriber growth, email and form performance, and workflows.

The automation builder is another strength. Tab on over to Workflows in the top navigation, and choose from 18 flexible workflow templates—including a welcome sequence, sales sequence, nurture sequence, and lead magnet delivery—or build from scratch. 

If Flodesk has one weakness, it's segmentation. You can create segments within the app—filter subscribers by acquisition source, activity, and other data fields, then select all and click Add to segment—but it's a manual process, and the resulting segments are static.

But with Zapier's Flodesk integration, you can orchestrate dynamic workflows that bring in real-time data and apply AI-driven segmentation automatically. For example, you can sync attendee sign-ups from your event platform and use AI to segment by interest or engagement level. Here are even more ways to automate Flodesk.

Flodesk price: To access email, you'll need the Lite plan, which starts at $19/month and includes 1,000 subscribers, unlimited sends, and all email features; upgrade to the Pro plan starting at $25/month to add eCommerce features like sales pages, online payments, and checkout analytics.

Other options for email newsletter software

Email marketing is a broad and well-established category for software, which means there are a ton of platforms out there. If none of the options above seem like a perfect fit, here are a handful of other solid email newsletter apps you may want to consider—they almost made the cut but were ultimately edged out by one of the other apps above.

• Brevo for all-in-one marketing and sales automation. I didn't include Brevo above because it may be too much if all you're looking for is a simple newsletter tool. The platform includes an array of email marketing, sales, and CRM features, with a generous free plan, robust and easy-to-use segmentation, and an available add-on for whitelabeling. If you're looking for a broader sales and marketing tool, it's worth testing it out.

• EmailOctopus for a generous free plan. EmailOctopus is a capable all-around newsletter tool with over 100 pre-made templates, the segmentation options you expect, and standard reporting. What sets this one apart is the free plan: 2,500 subscribers, 10,000 email sends each month, and access to most features in at least some limited way.

• Ghost if you want to turn your blog into a newsletter. Ghost offers a stripped-down, text-forward editor—it's similar to Substack, but with slightly more newsletter-centric features and a focus on paid subscriptions. It didn't make the list above because of limited segmentation options and higher costs than competitors like Kit and beehiiv, but the app is easy to use and makes it super quick to turn blog content into a newsletter.

• Mailchimp for managing email, social, website, and SMS in one app. Originally known for email marketing, Mailchimp has evolved into a one-stop marketing automation tool to manage social media, your website, and SMS, in addition to email. With all that on offer, you can expect to pay more than your average newsletter tool—but if your budget has some wiggle room, it's a user-friendly, scalable option that can grow with your business.

• MailerLite for to-the-point analytics and reporting. MailerLite offers a usable interface with great pre-built content blocks—to make building emails super easy—and extensive reporting features front and center on your dashboard.

• Mailjet if you do a lot of A/B testing. Mailjet's email building interface offers an overall good experience with pre-built content blocks and a simple toggle to switch between HTML and text editing. But the A/B testing feature—built seamlessly into the editing flow—is the real standout feature here.

• Zoho Campaigns for super affordable paid plans. Zoho Campaigns has previously made this list based on how affordable it is to upgrade (with paid plans starting as low as $3/month). The app isn't a standout by any means, but if you're looking for an adequate platform that's ridiculously affordable, it could be a contender.

How to choose the right email newsletter platform

If you send similar emails to groups of people regularly, you need an email newsletter platform. You might not need all the features of advanced email marketing platforms, with automated sending schedules and landing page builders and personalization tools. Not yet, anyhow. But as your lists and marketing ambitions grow, you might.

That's the great thing about the wide variety of online newsletter platforms available. Whether you want to send a curated set of articles weekly to build a following around a topic or need to send thousands of personalized messages for your multinational corporation daily, there are email apps to fit your needs.

You can start simple—even with a free email marketing app—then grow into the advanced email marketing features the top newsletter platforms offer.

Start with the email newsletter software that feels most like it fits your needs today. When you need more features, you can always upgrade your plan, switch to another app, or keep your original, email newsletter platform alongside a more advanced marketing automation tool.

Related reading:

• The best free email marketing services

• How to build an email marketing list

• Get more ROI out of your URL shorteners with these workflows

• 12 newsletter templates for Word

• The best campaign management software

This article was originally published in June 2018 by Jessica Greene and has also had contributions from Jennifer Allen. The most recent update was in February 2026.