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7 Top-Rated Free Marketing Automation Software

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Ashish Upadhyay

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Picture this: you're a marketer handling lead management, social media, email marketing, and also taking care of customer segmentation to ensure you get the most out of your marketing efforts. Maybe you're doing it manually or have a bunch of paid tools to keep track of every process.

What if there was a centralized solution that was free of cost and helped you automate all your marketing efforts? Such a marketing automation solution would free you and your team's time from routine activities to focus on improving your marketing strategies. 

This article highlights the seven best free marketing automation software tools (sorted alphabetically) based on user reviews and ratings.

Products mentioned in this article are either dedicated marketing automation tools or email marketing platforms with marketing automation functionality that offer common marketing automation features such as campaign management, conversion tracking, landing page creation, and lead/subscriber segmentation.

Software comparison table graphic for the blog article "7 Top-Rated Free Marketing Automation Software"

What is free software?

Free software refers to software that users can access without incurring any costs. To meet this criterion, a software solution should grant users free access to either all or some of its features. Software requiring payment after a specific time frame does not qualify as free software.

1. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a marketing automation platform that helps you run email marketing campaigns, create landing pages, and perform audience segmentation based on your audience's behavior and interest levels when interacting with your marketing content.

With ConverKit’s free plan, you can set up automated email sequences used in drip campaigns. Such emails help send targeted emails based on users’ behavior, actions, or specific triggers when they visit your website. The free plan also lets you create unlimited email campaigns for up to 1,000 subscribers.

Free features:

  • Landing pages: Access a template library to create unlimited landing pages and sign-up forms for your website, helping you collect audience information and identify potential leads.

  • Broadcasts: Use the broadcasts feature to send one-off, personalized, and non-automated emails to your subscribers. These can be useful to introduce your brand to a new audience.

  • Audience tagging and segmentation: Organize your website visitors and newsletter subscribers into specific segments based on shared characteristics, such as interest levels in your products and services, location, and gender.

Customer support: Knowledge base and community forums

Cost to upgrade: $9 per month (up to two users)

Billing cycle: Annual

Who should consider ConvertKit?

Marketers relying on audience segmentation to provide customized content and optimize their lead engagement can use ConvertKit's segmentation capabilities. You can tag subscribers by entry points, interests, actions, and any other custom trigger to identify your traffic source better and optimize your campaigns accordingly.
Analysis performed January 2024

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an email marketing platform that helps automate your email marketing processes to convert more website visitors and newsletter subscribers into customers. The software lets you create a customer journey builder from their first website visit to purchasing a product or service from your website.

The free plan gives you the ability to send up to 1,000 emails every month.  You can update customers on their purchases or account activity with the help of transactional emails and recapture the attention of people who visited your website with retargeting ads.

Free features:

  • Subject line helper: Improve your email open rates with data-driven feedback on word count, character count, punctuation, and emoji use. Compare two subject lines with a split test to see what resonates with your audience. Mailchimp will automatically send out the one that fares better.
  • Email templates: Use pre-designed email templates that include all the content blocks and design elements you need to launch a professional-looking campaign. These may include product cards and app download and sale promotion pages.

  • Social posting: Promote your business via social media platforms. You can store your design assets in Mailchimp's content studio and use the scheduler to plan posts ahead of time. You can also use your posts and other marketing data to optimize your campaigns.

Customer support: Email support (first 30 days) and knowledge base

Cost to upgrade: $4.58 per month (up to three users)

Billing cycle: Annual

Who should consider Mailchimp?

Marketers primarily running email marketing campaigns and looking for a tool to automate their campaigns can take advantage of Mailchimp. The software also provides a marketing calendar to organize campaigns and have a centralized view of your campaign timelines.

Analysis performed January 2024

/ Pro tip

Assess the reporting automation capabilities of shortlisted software. The best marketing automation software available in the market provides you with detailed reports to track conversion, open rate, bounce rate, click rate, and subscribe rate. An ideal solution should also provide you with live dashboards that help you analyze the performance of your marketing campaigns and track customer engagement in real time.

3. Mailerlite

Mailerlite is another email marketing platform that allows its users to create drip email campaigns and automate workflows. You can also create websites and landing pages to target your audience.

The free version of the software features a drag-and-drop email editor that lets you design email newsletters from scratch. You can create plain text using a rich text editor or the HTML editor to create a specific type of webpage you have in mind, provided you have coding knowledge. The free plan offers up to 10 landing pages and comparative reporting to track campaign performance.

Free features:

  • Campaign monitoring: Monitor your email campaign activity and subscriber engagement. Reports you create include unsubscribe count, spam complaints, bounces, link activity, and other metrics critical to measuring campaign success.

  • Automated email workflows: Set up email marketing automation workflows that instantly react to subscriber behaviors and automatically send emails or perform other actions based on a specific event or multiple triggers, such as clicking a link or completing a form.

  • Drag-and-drop editor: Create engaging and dynamic emails with an intuitive drag-and-drop email editor. You can use a variety of email blocks to customize templates and then save them in the editing dashboard. Once created, you can integrate them with your product pages to direct subscribers to your website.

Customer support: Live chat and email support (for the first 30 days)

Cost to upgrade: $9 per month (up to three users)

Billing cycle: Annual

Who should consider Mailerlite?

Marketers with coding knowledge or teams with in-house developers can take advantage of Mailerlite's HTML editor to create highly customized email templates. You also get access to an image library with more than 1 million images you can use for your email and newsletter campaigns.

Analysis performed January 2024

4. Omnisend

Omnisend is another email and SMS marketing automation platform that helps you drive sales across multiple channels. The software provides your audience with a consistent, personalized experience by reaching them on their preferred messaging channels while improving your reach and conversions.

The free plan supports up to 250 contacts,  60 SMSs, and up to 500 emails every month. You can use pre-built message templates for various scenarios, such as welcome messages, product and cart abandonment, and order confirmation. The software lets you perform split testing and tailor your special offers and incentives by sending multiple personalized messages to your leads within a single workflow.

Free features:

  • A/B split testing: Test to see which channel, incentive, or subject line drives you most conversions–and make data-driven decisions to improve your workflows.

  • Automation reports: Create reports highlighting each workflow's performance to compare different channels and track the customers who converted to see which automation worked the best.

  • List cleaning: Clean your email and SMS campaign list and remove emails and contact numbers that are unresponsive or have low delivery rates.

Customer support: Chat and email support

Cost to upgrade: $16 per month

Billing cycle: Monthly

Who should consider Omnisend?

Marketers wishing to capture relevant audiences through email and SMS marketing can opt for Omnisend. The software provides unlimited web tracking data history for website visitors and lets you build contact profiles of users that engage actively with your email campaigns and SMS push notifications. Once created, you can organize and retarget them with future campaigns.

Analysis performed January 2024

/ Pro tip

Search for a marketing automation tool that allows you to track the number of visitors on your websites, their profile, the time spent by each visitor on your page, and the type of content they engage with. This helps you identify potential leads for the business and understand the type of content that is working best for your organization.

5. Sender

Sender is another email automation and sales platform that lets you create automated workflows for you and your team. The software tracks website visitors, collects their information with pop-up forms, and creates sequences of win-back emails that engage them to become buyers.

Sender can automate your email campaign workflow, from welcome to post-purchase emails. The software offers a no-code drag-and-drop email builder, email templates, and trigger-based automation workflows that aim to bring back customers to your website through personalized marketing.

Free features:

  • Spam check: Use built-in algorithms to analyze the content of your emails. You can check for elements commonly associated with spam, such as specific keywords, excessive use of capital letters, or misleading subject lines.

  • Pre-built workflows: Use pre-built workflows containing sequential emails to help you navigate a visitor's journey on your website and successfully convert them into a customer.

  • Campaign reports: Create custom campaign reports with heatmaps and click ratios in your email and website to understand visitor behavior and optimize your marketing efforts accordingly.

Customer support: Chat and knowledge base

Cost to upgrade: $15.83 per month (up to 3 users)

Billing cycle: Annual

Who should consider Sender?

Sender is ideal for marketers with little-to-no coding experience who wish to build their email marketing and workflow automation templates. The software offers a library of pre-built templates you can customize according to your preferences.

Analysis performed January 2024

/ Pro tip

Select a tool that offers audience segmentation. Segmentation helps you target the right audience for your content and increase the chances of customer conversion. Before you invest in a marketing automation system, make sure that it allows you to divide your customers into groups based on common factors, such as their age, location, buying patterns, and requirements.

6. SendPulse

SendPulse is a multi-channel marketing automation platform that helps design email marketing campaigns and automated chatbots for websites. The software offers a centralized dashboard to monitor and optimize your business's sales and marketing activities.

You can send up to 15,000 emails every month with the free plan. The software also provides chatbots, and templates for subscription forms, and landing pages to capture contact information from website visitors and automatically push new contacts to your CRM database.

Free features:

  • Email verifier: Verify up to 100 email addresses to clean your email lists and ensure you only send marketing and promotional material to authentic email addresses.

  • Chatbot builder: Use pre-made chatbot flow templates to send up to 10,000 monthly messages to website visitors. You can use up to three chatbots to engage website visitors with relevant content and query resolutions.

  • CRM dashboard: Get organized and manage your sales and communication channels in one place. Invite up to five team members to access the account and create sales pipelines to map a user's journey across the sales funnel.

Customer support: Chat, knowledge base, FAQ, and how-to videos

Cost to upgrade: $6.40 per month (up to three users)

Billing cycle: Annual

Who should consider SendPulse?

SendPulse is ideal for small marketing teams that need to automate their sales funnels, email marketing, and lead-capturing processes. With built-in chatbots, SendPulse can handle inquiries from website visitors and nudge them in the right direction when they show interest in your products and services.

Analysis performed January 2024

7. Systeme.io

Systeme.io is a marketing automation suite that offers automated lead capturing, email sequencing, and trigger emails for your business. The software provides an integrated sales funnel builder and customizable templates.

The free plan lets you save up to 2,000 contacts and send unlimited emails to them. Systeme.io gives you the ability to create up to three sales funnels and handle multiple customer journeys  with the free version. You can integrate your email list with the sales funnel and trigger emails once website visitors provide their information via sign-up forms on your website.

Free features:

  • Template library: Access and manage a template library consisting of customizable email, sales funnel, and automation rules for your business.

  • Payment integrations: Integrate third-party payment platforms at no transaction cost for eCommerce stores. The integration comes with a payment management dashboard for your team.

  • Sales funnels: Manage up to three sales funnels to manage leads visiting your website and integrate your email campaigns with the sales funnels to automate sending welcome emails, showcasing products and services via links to a landing page, and sending promotional offers and discounts upon repeated website visits to prospects.

Customer support: Chat, phone support, and knowledge base

Cost to upgrade: $19 per month 

Billing cycle: Annual

Who should consider Systeme.io?

Marketing teams selling online products or services in the form of online courses can opt for Systeme.io as it offers unlimited onboarding of students for online courses. The software  offers third-party payment integrations at no transaction cost, making it an effective option for receiving payments from users.

Analysis performed January 2024

What is the cost to upgrade from free marketing automation software to a paid one?

Marketing automation software costs vary based on the software type, core marketing automation features, user count, business size and type, integrations, and storage. Most marketing automation tools offer a free trial (no-cost trial plans ranging from 14 to 30 days) or a forever free version with limited features. Besides these, typical pricing plans include:

  • Free trial: No-cost trial plans for 7-30 days, giving users access to entry-level and some advanced software features. This is ideal for users wanting to try specific features before investing.

  • Free version: Most free software plans offer basic automation features, such as email automation. Some vendors also offer free credits for SMS marketing starting from 50-100. Ideal for small businesses or individuals on a budget.

  • Entry-level: Plans start from $4.59 per month and offer limited features, including drip campaigns and email automation. Suitable for small marketing teams.

  • Mid-tier: These plans range from $6.86  to $59 per month and offer advanced marketing automation features such as automated scheduling, advanced customer segmentation, and website visitor profiling. Suitable for large marketing teams.

  • High-end: Plans can go up to $137 per month and even higher, offering unlimited access to all entry and mid-level marketing automation features with priority support.

Hidden costs associated with marketing automation software

Besides the software license price, additional costs may include:

  • Implementation and training costs: These may include setup, customization, and staff training expenses.

  • Data migration and integration costs: Moving data and connecting with other systems might require extra funds.

  • Support and maintenance fees: Ongoing charges for updates and technical assistance.

Frequently asked questions when selecting free marketing automation software

Here are some questions to keep in mind when opting for a free marketing automation solution:

Does the software offer a template library?

An efficient marketing automation solution allows you to build campaigns and newsletters from scratch. If you own a small business or a marketing agency, select a tool that offers in-built templates that can be edited and customized per your needs and preferences.

Does the software offer AB testing functionality?

AB or split testing allows you to compare two or more versions of the content or a marketing campaign and determine what works best for your audience. An ideal marketing automation tool should allow you to test and analyze the marketing campaign results and automatically share the better-performing version with the customers.

Does your software integrate automation for various channels?

Free marketing automation software providers often offer limited automation for email and SMS campaigns. Ask if the software includes automation for email, SMS, sales funnel management, and lead generation through website tracking. This information can help you find a platform that offers multi-channel marketing automation functionality.


Looking for Marketing Automation software? Check out Capterra's list of the best Marketing Automation software solutions.

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About the Author

Ashish Upadhyay profile picture

Ashish Upadhyay is a content writer at Capterra, helping small businesses identify the right software for their business needs by analyzing user reviews data for the highest rated products in relevant software categories. Prior to joining Capterra, he worked in insurtech, fintech, and real estate. Specializing in marketing, project, and IT management, Ashish’s works have been featured in MAST magazine and Medium. In his free time, he enjoys working out and playing video games.

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