So here you are, scratching your head. Why are my emails going to spam?

Well, that’s what I’m here to answer. I know your pain. I’ve fixed more than my fair share of spam issues in my 5+ years in email marketing. So I want to share with you what I’ve learned about spam filters and how they work. What causes them to mark your emails as junk. And, most importantly, how you can fix it.

What are Spam Filters?

Spam filters are the security guards of the email world. Their job is to protect your inbox from phishing and spam emails. They do that by looking out for anything that looks dodgy. And then either blocking that email entirely. Or sending it to the spam folder.

Spam filters come in different types and work in different ways. The most common are those built into email clients like Gmail or Outlook. These are known as server-side or hosted spam filters. They operate on mailbox servers. And the mailbox provider configures and controls them. This gives you automatic and often free protection. But you get limited control over what to filter. And what to do with rejected emails.

If you want more control over your inbox security, there are two options. You can install your own client-side spam software on devices. Or you can install a physical gateway spam filter on your servers. Both do the same broad job. They check emails as they come into your premises or devices. And give you lots of room to customize spam monitoring. But they cost extra. And require setting up and updating. 

So how does filtering work? Spam filters look at three key areas when assessing whether or not an email is spam:

• Sender reputation and behavior: Spam filters gather and assess data about a sender’s IP address and domain. They look at factors like the history of spam complaints against that IP or domain. Whether they’re listed on any spam blacklists. How many emails are sent and how often (spam filters are suspicious of very frequent high-volume sending). They also consider historical open and click rates. A domain that sends lots of emails no one opens is a likely candidate for sending spam. And they test list hygiene practices by looking for how many emails get sent to spam traps. Spam traps are fake email addresses placed by inbox providers. They catch people out for sending to addresses without opt-in, the definition of spam. From all of this data, spam filters give IPs and domains a sender reputation score. A high score/reputation gives you a great chance of being waved through into the inbox. A low score makes it very likely you’ll be blocked.
• Technical configuration: Phishing emails are notorious for using tactics like ‘spoofing’ genuine email accounts. They can look very much like the real thing on the surface. And pose a big problem to unsuspecting recipients. But there are often giveaways that they are fake in the technical setup of the email. Examples include authentication records for a domain being incomplete or incorrect. Or mail exchange (MX) routes not matching the records of an IP address. Information like this is stored in the metadata contained in an email header. So the spam filters that assess these things are called header filters.
• Content: Spam filters look for cues in the content of an email that suggest it is spam. Examples include spam trigger words and phrases often linked to unsolicited selling. Spam filters are also suspicious of large image or attachment files, or too many images. These can be used by phishers to carry or hide malicious code. Other giveaways include poor design and broken HTML code. The latest AI spam filters use data from known examples of spam to ‘learn’ the tactics many spammers use. They rely on increasingly sophisticated algorithms to analyze how spammers send emails.

11 Reasons Why Emails Land in the Spam Folder and How to Fix Each

1. Your email authentication fails

Email authentication helps inbox providers and email marketing platforms validate legitimate senders. There are 3 main types of authentication:

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework): If you own an email domain, you can use SPF to list all IP addresses and sources authorized to send your emails. Spam filters use this list to cross-check IP addresses against domains.
• DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail): This is a cryptographic method of ‘signing’ an email with a digital signature when it’s sent. When DKIM is set up, every email sent from a server is ‘signed’ with a special hash or code. The code contains a private key unique to the sending service. And details about the email’s content. The receiving server then reads the code using a public key contained in the sender’s DNS record. There has to be a match between the two keys for the receiving server to be able to read it. This tells the server if the email comes from where it says it does.
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): DMARC is like a follow-up to SPF and DKIM. It reports on authentication status. And tells mail servers what to do with emails that fail authentication. Reject them. Quarantine them in the spam folder. Or let them through into the inbox anyway.

The main idea behind authentication is to catch spoofed and altered emails. But you can fail by not having SPF or DKIM records set up or managed correctly. You can check this by looking at your DMARC reports. These contain details about why SPF or DKIM authentication fails.

How to fix
There are lots of tools available to check if your emails are properly authenticated. MxToolbox lets you run a long list of authentication checks for free, simply by typing in a domain. Bouncer has an inbox placement testing service that includes regular authentication checks. Or Postmark offers a free DMARC monitoring service. You add a domain, and it returns weekly DMARC reports. This way, you see whether there have been SPF or DKIM failures from emails you sent that week. Once you know authentication is causing spam issues, you can fix it through your email sending service.

2. You don’t keep your email list clean

List hygiene is important to maintaining good email deliverability. And keeping your emails out of spam. 

A ‘clean’ contact list is one where all the email addresses on it are genuine and active. There’s no obvious reason why your emails won’t be delivered to these addresses.

Emails sent to fake, inactive, and invalid addresses will bounce. The more of these addresses you have in your list, the more bounces you get. And spam filters factor in bounce rates when judging overall sender reputation. So the less ‘clean’ your list is, the more bounces you have, the lower your sender reputation will be. And that increases the chances of your emails being flagged as spam. 

How to fix
Keeping a list clean means running regular verification on your lists. Email verification means checking that an address is active and working. And most importantly, that emails you send to it won’t bounce. With email verification tools, like Bouncer, you can run bulk verification checks for your whole email list. It tells you in simple terms whether an email address is ‘deliverable’, ‘risky’, or ‘undeliverable’. And has a 99%+ accuracy rate. It also automatically removes ‘bad’ emails from your list. Google’s Postmaster Tools monitor spam rates, domain reputation, and delivery errors directly from Gmail’s perspective.

Read our full Bouncer review to find out more about how it helps you avoid the spam folder.

3. Your IP has a bad sender reputation

All emails are sent from a server. And every server has an IP address. Many large email service providers (ESPs) use multiple servers for sending. Which means multiple IP addresses. And this server infrastructure gets shared across all of a service’s users. So any one IP address could be linked to emails from hundreds of different senders.

This is good for keeping email cheap. But if the email service provider isn’t careful about who can send from their IPs, it can hurt sender reputation. It only takes one user to start getting flagged for sending spam. Or to have suspicious sending behaviour, or sky-high bounce rates. And it affects the sender reputation of the whole IP address.

If the reputation of an IP address gets really bad, it gets added to a blocklist. This is basically a ‘wanted’ list for spam filters. They look up the IP addresses involved in any email received against these lists. If an address is on there, it’s instant bounce or quarantine. It doesn’t matter if you’re the spam culprit or not. If an IP address is on a blocklist, spam filters don’t take any chances.

How to fix
The best defence against a poor IP reputation or blocklisting is vigilance. Use trustworthy newsletter software and an IP reputation monitoring tool to check the IP addresses used to send your emails. Bouncer includes IP monitoring in its Deliverability Kit. MxToolKit has a blocklist look-up widget in its long list of free tools. Mailgun Optimize provides detailed and developer-friendly IP reputation analysis. But it’s pretty expensive.

Finally, you can avoid the risks posed by shared IP addresses by purchasing a dedicated IP of your own. This puts you in full control of your IP’s sender reputation. But it is expensive and only recommended for high-volume senders.

4. Your domain has a bad reputation

You can’t have full control over IP reputation without buying a dedicated IP address. But you are in full control of your sending domain’s reputation. Your email domain is the part of your email address after the @ symbol. As a business owner, you should have your own custom domain.

It also allows spam filters to monitor your sending behavior. And there’s a list of things that can cause your domain reputation to get marked down. If you have high bounce rates or people flag your emails as spam, that goes against your domain. If you don’t keep up with your list hygiene and send to dud addresses or spam traps, same story. And if you don’t keep on top of domain authentication, that’s another black mark. The lower your domain’s sender reputation goes, the more of your emails will be filtered to spam. And if your domain gets a really bad rep, it could end up on a blocklist.

How to fix
Protecting or improving your domain reputation depends on doing all the right things. So this whole list of tips is your ‘how to fix’ guide! Lots of deliverability monitoring platforms have tools for evaluating your domain reputation. Good examples include Bouncer’s Deliverability Kit, Mailgun Optimize, and GlockApps.

5. Recipients marked your emails as spam

One of the most damaging things for sender reputation is when contacts flag your emails as spam. This is a huge red flag for spam filters. If actual recipients are sending your emails to the spam folder, you must be sending spam. You know where future emails are going to end up!

How to fix it
There are three main ways to stop your emails being flagged as spam: 

1. Send to an engaged audience. That means avoiding half-hearted or forgotten sign-ups. These are the kind of people who decide they have no interest in your emails. Even if they did fill in a form. You can reduce them by using double opt-in on all forms.
2. Keep your emails relevant and engaging. That starts with being transparent about what your emails are for. Subscribers will lose patience if you promise insightful news updates. But actually send lots of product promos. Collect as much data about your contacts as possible. Use it to segment and personalize to keep your emails relevant. And focus on quality.
3. Include a visible unsubscribe link in every email. If people don’t want to receive your emails anymore, let them leave. If you keep sending, you are technically sending them spam. And if they call you out on in… well, we know how that goes for your sender reputation.

6. Your forms are not protected

We’ve talked about why poor list hygiene causes more emails to go to spam. Sending to defunct, broken, or fake email addresses causes bounces. And high bounce rates hurt your sender reputation. But wait a minute… how do fake email addresses end up in your list, anyway?

The same way most email addresses end up in your list. Sign-up forms. Forms are the default way to capture new leads. They’re easy, and they work. But the downside is, you don’t know who’s using them. Anyone can come along and type in a fake email address. A lot of people do this to get the giveaways used to coax people into signing up. Another big problem is bots ‘spamming’ forms with fake or fraudulent email addresses.

How to fix it
You can avoid people adding fake email addresses by using double opt-in or CAPTCHA on forms. Using a fake address means you can’t confirm the subscription via email. Similarly, you can protect your forms against bots by adding a CAPTCHA test. These confirm that users are human by setting a challenge that bots can’t interpret.

To fully secure your forms, consider adding email verification to your sign-up workflow. With Bouncer’s Shield tool, for example, you can validate every new address that gets added. That way, bad emails don’t make it into your list.

7. Your reply-to isn’t a working email address

‘No-reply’ email addresses are popular with businesses for sending transactional and marketing emails. You can add them as an optional reply-to address when setting up an email. They avoid company inboxes from becoming clogged up with unnecessary replies. 

But spam filters don’t like them. There’s a high correlation between no-reply addresses and unsolicited emails. It’s also easy for spam filters to check if a reply-to address is genuine or working. If not, the email goes to the spam folder.

How to fix it
The simplest fix is to always leave the address you send from as the reply address. If you need to use another one, set up a dedicated inbox to receive replies. Regularly empty it and check that it’s working. Full inboxes cause bounces. And that can be picked up by spam filters, too.

8. Your emails don’t include a plain text version

Email marketers know there is a lot of pressure to ‘stand out in the inbox’. To grab attention, you need to look good and tick the right boxes on quality. That’s why HTML designs dominate promotional emails.

Yet not all inboxes accept HTML emails. HTML can be used to hide malicious code. So organizations and individuals might choose to reject HTML emails for security reasons. Other people might prefer plain text emails for accessibility. They are easier to read.

Whatever the reason, HTML emails sent to these inboxes will bounce. That’s not great for your sender reputation or delivery rates. Worse, some spam filters view HTML-only emails as suspicious. Why don’t they want to reach every inbox possible? Why do they need to send HTML only? What’s hidden in the code? 

How to fix it
In a lot of cases, plain text versions of HTML emails are generated and sent automatically. So just don’t switch the plain text version off! But don’t take it for granted. Check your sending settings and make sure plain text is on, too.

9. You use link shorteners

Link shorteners turn long links into shorter, snappier text. They are popular in SMS and social marketing, where character space is at a premium. But you should avoid them at all costs in email marketing. Phishers are notorious for using URL shorteners to hide malicious links. It’s so common that ESPs often blacklist a domain just for sending an email containing a shortened link.

How to fix it
This one’s very simple. Just never use link shorteners in your emails!

10. You send too many attachments

Like link shorteners, spam filters are very suspicious of email attachments. They’re fine on one-to-one emails between regular contacts. But even sending a first email to someone new with an attachment can alert spam filters. Bulk emails with attachments are a huge red flag. Attached files are the easiest way to spread malicious code via email. So most spam filters just automatically block any bulk emails with them.

How to fix it
If you have material you want to share via email, you don’t have to attach it as a file. Upload the file to your site and share a link in your email.

11. You’re not following email HTML best practices

We’ve talked about why HTML is popular for email marketing. But it can be a double-edged sword. Sure, good designs cut through and engage readers. Yet HTML emails are put under more scrutiny by spam filters than plain text emails. Why? Because HTML can be used to hide and distribute malicious code. And phishers rely on HTML to spoof the appearance of branded emails.

Spam filters penalise emails with incomplete, broken, or overly complex HTML code. These are signs that code from a genuine email might have been crudely copied and repurposed. Or that the build job has been automated and poorly tested. Large, complex HTML files are prime candidates for hiding malicious code. Especially if it’s packed with images.

Spam filters look at how an email conforms to professional coding standards. That includes things like setting the appropriate doctype. Correct use of headers and meta tags. Using CSS in-line. And being responsive and accessible. Not following these best practices or shoddy coding could trigger spam filters.

How to fix it
Use a spam test tool to check how spam-compliant your HTML is. Tools like GlockApps and Validity Everest analyze your code the way a spam filter would. They flag up flaws and give you the chance to fix them before sending.

It’s Easy to Avoid the Spam Folder with Good Sending Practices

Deliverability issues are frustrating. Having a lot of emails landing in junk means a lot of wasted effort. But the good news is, it’s easy to fix. Yes, there are lots of reasons why spam filters might jump on your email. But passing the spam filter test isn’t that difficult. It’s mostly a case of following good email sending practices. There’s nothing too technical or challenging about it.

Start with email authentication. Missing or incorrect SPF or DKIM records are a big red flag to spam filters. Authentication is used specifically to weed out fake and spoofed emails. So if you don’t get it right, don’t be surprised that your emails get rejected. 

If your authentication is on point, good email deliverability depends on two things. Sending to an engaged audience that wants to receive your emails. And protecting the reputation of your IP addresses and domain. That’s why good list hygiene is so important. Verifying email addresses reduces bounces and avoids sending to spam traps. You can use a tool like Bouncer to clean lists and check every new subscriber. You should also back this up with double opt-in on your forms. That way, you know you’re sending to genuine people who want your emails. That keeps your open rates and your reputation high.

FAQs About Emails Going to Spam

The post Why Are My Emails Going to Spam? And How to Fix it in 2026 appeared first on Email vendor selection.

Drawing on my experience using CRMs, I tested the new AI features and put together this list of the best AI CRMs. Hopefully, it saves you time finding the right CRM for you.

The Real Impact of AI CRM Tools

You can see how sales, marketing, and customer service teams could get excited about AI. Where CRM platforms are must-have tools to manage sales and marketing, AI now increases your output and reduces workload. Here are the stats that show the impact of AI in CRM:

• 88% of sales leaders expect AI to improve their CRM processes in 2 years.
• Companies that adopt sales AI see revenues increase by 30%. With a similar 30% increase in conversions from marketing AI.
• Sales teams using AI report average sales growth of 83% compared to 66% that don’t use AI.
• Personalizing customer experiences using AI enhances customer satisfaction by 15 to 20%. Increases revenue by 5 to 8%. And reduces the cost to serve by 20 to 30%.
• Predictive AI is 90% accurate in predicting customer churn.
• Adoption of AI in customer service reduces operational costs by 20%.

Those numbers are impressive. Remember that nothing is more important to your business than your customers, employees, and workflows. Some even call it agentic marketing now, with AI agents being the extra teammates. 

10 Best AI CRM Overview

Businesses are switching to AI CRM platforms. But there are multiple types of CRM. Here is the quick overview of the best AI CRMs and their strong points.

How We Selected the Best AI CRM Tools

I know from years of reviewing CRM platforms that tools like to pack out their feature lists. And with all the hype around AI, the temptation to stick an AI label on everything is irresistible for CRM tools. When picking my top 10 AI CRM platforms, I tried to cut through the noise (which isn’t easy). These are the criteria you can use. 

• AI feature integration (including MCP readiness). AI-powered tools deliver full value when they’re integrated, and not just a bolt-on. I looked for purpose-built tools that simplify business operations. I’ve also reviewed if platforms support MCP. With MCP, the CRM connects to third-party AI tools. So ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other AI tools can make changes and get data from your CRM.
• Ease of getting started. AI is advanced technology. That’s the attraction. But it’s no good for your business if the tools are too complicated to use. So CRMs should balance capabilities with user-friendly interfaces. And ideally have a simple, out-of-the-box setup.
• Analytics and measurable ROI. A CRM isn’t just for window dressing. In CRM, that means tangibles like increasing conversion and win-rates, improved customer satisfaction and retention. And, ultimately, increasing revenue. So I looked at the analytics and where the AI tools contribute to revenue.
• AI in automation features. AI is helping to take analytics to new levels. Particularly, analytics with predictions are impressive. At its most powerful, you can use AI in your automations. Where it makes decisions and acts. So I’ve picked CRMs with marketing automation where AI plays a big part in workflows.
• Customer support and documentation. By its very nature, CRM comes with some complexity. Especially with more advanced tools. It’s important that platforms provide the right level of support. Including all necessary technical documentation. MCP servers, for example, usually require some level of technical configuration.
• Pricing. The pricing is always a point. What is the most attractive will depend on your business size, budget, and which CRM AI tools you will end up using. We see a mixed bag, AI features included in all plans versus premium functions in higher tiers or using credits. Some even like different pricing based on outcomes versus seats. You see I’ve judged systems on value-for-money, not just label cost. 

How to Choose the Right AI CRM for Your Business

There’s no single answer to what the best AI CRM is. Platforms vary widely in features, target audience, and price. Choosing the right AI CRM ultimately comes down to knowing your business. And matching that to the platform that fits best across all criteria. Here are five steps to take when making that decision.

1. Understand your goal. There’s a saying in tech buying. Start with the business problem, not the software. Which means, if you haven’t got a problem to solve. Or a goal to aim at. Why are you looking at new tech? You don’t need AI CRM for its own sake. You need it to make a difference to your business. Start by working out what that difference is.
2. Understand how AI can help. Just because you have a goal in mind doesn’t mean AI is the right answer. No, really. Even in this day and age, there are other, sometimes better, options. Better process design. Simple rule-based automation. Improving collaboration between people. So it’s important to know what AI is good at. Analytics. Efficient, accurate, reliable decision-making. Anything to do with using data at speed and scale. In a CRM context, that translates into things like predicting deal outcomes. Prioritizing leads or identifying churn risk and acting on it. And improving the accuracy of sales forecasts. 
3. Work out your budget. Working to a realistic budget rationalizes your choice of AI tools. Many CRMs stack more advanced AI tools in more expensive tiers. You might want AI to orchestrate and optimize complete workflows. But your budget will tell you that’s something to work towards. Different platforms make different capabilities available at different price points, though. So your budget will inform your research. And it will block you from paying for features you don’t need.
4. Assess how AI-ready your team is. It’s important to match any software you adopt to the technical skills of your team. With AI CRM, you need to consider any technical configuration or integration requirements. If you don’t have developer skills in-house, you need simpler, out-of-the-box tools. And consider how much experience your team has with AI prompting. Most AI tools work with a natural language interface. But giving instructions for complex analysis is different from filling out an email.
5. Assess how AI-ready your tech stack is. AI works best when it has lots of data to work with. AI CRM software works best when it’s fed plenty of data from different sources. This has implications for how you integrate a platform into your existing stack. Some CRMs come with their own data platform. With others, you might need extra tools. This all impacts implementation times and cost.

10 Best AI CRM Platforms

1. HubSpot: Best for User-friendly AI across CRM workflows

HubSpot is one of the most popular CRMs around, and for good reason. It’s an all-in-one customer management platform covering sales, marketing, and customer service. Plus dedicated tools for commerce, content management, and data. It breaks all of these out into separate Hubs. But its plan and pricing structure are highly flexible. So businesses of all types and sizes can pick exactly what they need.

HubSpot positions itself as a smart CRM for growing sales and service teams. It has AI tools across the platform, under the collective name Breeze AI. Breeze covers dozens of AI-powered intelligence and automation features. All organized into context-specific tools for each Hub. Plus a growing number of Breeze Agents trained to handle specific tasks independently.

HubSpot AI Feature Overview

• Breeze Assistant on-page chatbot answers questions and triggers actions on demand.
• Generative AI tools for email, blogs, webpages, and other marketing content.
• Predictive lead scoring, conversion analytics, and forecasting for sales.
• Conversation intelligence and sentiment analysis for customer service.
• Agents for customer support, prospecting, and data analysis. With more in beta production.

Breeze AI helps teams predict customer behavior. Analyze customer sentiment. And drive timely and relevant communication. What really stands out is Breeze’s intuitive interface, even for the most advanced tools. The Breeze Assistant and Agents use a simple chatbot format. You can control even the most sophisticated actions with prompts.

HubSpot smart CRM supports third-party AI integration with two MCP servers. Both require technical configuration. With one designed specifically for developer use.

HubSpot prices its various ‘Hubs’ and platform bundles separately. And it measures AI use using a credit system. Prices for its all-in-one Customer Platform start at $9/month if you pay annually. This includes 500 credits. It costs 10 credits for every Breeze AI action. And every Data and Prospecting Agent outputs. And 100 credits for every AI-managed conversation. Credit top-ups start at $45 per month for an extra 5,000 credits.

HubSpot has a free plan with basic CRM tools. But it doesn’t include any AI credits. Check out our detailed guide to HubSpot pricing to get the full picture. 

Get started with HubSpot for free or read our review

2. Pipedrive: Best for Simple, Efficient AI Sales Automation

Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM known for being easy to use and affordable. But it packs in all the core tools a sales team could need. Visual pipeline builders. Automated deals management. Real-time analytics and activity tracking. Its features extend into lead generation and email marketing, too. It’s a great fit for SMB sales teams that want smarter pipeline management. But without enterprise-level complexity and prices.

Pipedrive uses AI in carefully targeted ways to support decision-making. And automate routine tasks.

Pipedrive AI Features Overview

• AI-generated reports.
• AI Sales Assistant with next-best-action recommendations.
• Predictive deal and lead scoring.
• AI email drafting and summarising.
• Third-party integration recommendations from Pipedrive’s marketplace.

Pipedrive separates its AI features by plan. On cheaper plans, you get custom AI reports. This means you can build any report you like from a simple text prompt. Or you can use Pipedrive’s pre-made prompts. You also get Pipedrive’s AI marketplace search and app recommendations. This helps you get the best picks from Pipedrive’s 400+ integrations.

You don’t unlock the best of Pipedrive’s AI until the Premium plan. Here, the AI Sales Assistant continuously monitors pipelines. And provides action reminders and suggestions in real time. This can be flagging at-risk deals or follow-up reminders. Giving you instant performance insights or advising on metrics to track. Or making next-best-action recommendations with clear data rationale. You can ask the assistant to build or alter sales pipelines, too. 

Pipedrive’s pricing starts at $14 a month billed annually. This includes AI custom reporting and integration recommendations. For the Sales Assistant and other advanced tools, the Professional plan starts at $79 a month. Pipedrive doesn’t have a free plan, but does offer a 14-day free trial.

Try Pipedrive for free

3. EngageBay: Best Low-Cost AI CRM

EngageBay is a low-cost CRM platform popular with SMBs. It covers marketing, sales, and customer support. With a choice of separate products for each. Or an all-in-one bundle. EngageBay is simpler and easier to get started with than similar modular CRMs. It sticks to essential features and prioritizes ease of use.

That’s the story with EngageBay’s AI features, too. It uses AI across the platform to support marketing, sales, and service. It’s not a place to find advanced workflow orchestration and predictive intelligence. What you get are AI tools that help ease workloads and improve performance.

EngageBay AI features overview

• AI-powered email generation, subject line optimization, and send-time prediction.
• Automated engagement insights and performance analysis.
• AI sales recommendations, win probability scoring, and lead prioritisation.
• Trainable AI chatbot.
• OpenAI Node low-code GPT connector.

What’s great about EngageBay’s AI is how it answers practical challenges directly. Want to get more from your email marketing? EngageBay will generate multiple versions of the same email for A/B testing. Make personalization suggestions based on a customer’s purchase history. Optimize send times and track engagement patterns. Not getting enough leads converting? The sales AI identifies the best prospects, calculates win probabilities, and makes follow-up recommendations.

A big USP for EngageBay’s AI is its OpenAI Node. This isn’t quite the same as an MCP connector. It only links to OpenAI’s GPT infrastructure, rather than AI tools in general. But it does let you use OpenAI’s immensely powerful LLMs within your CRM. And build contextual prompts using your own data to answer queries. 

EngageBay prices for the all-in-one CRM start at around $12.74 per user per month if you pay for two years up front. Or $13.79 if you pay annually. Individual sales, marketing, and service products are slightly cheaper. Starter plans include basic AI writing tools and suggestion tools. But for advanced automation, you need the Growth plan starting at $55.24/user/month. There’s a free plan with core email, pipeline, contact management, and help desk features. 

Sign up to EngageBay for free or read our full review

4. Brevo: Best Marketing-First CRM for Small Businesses

Brevo is a popular customer relationship platform for small businesses. It specializes in multichannel marketing campaigns and automation. And it’s popular for its user-friendly tools and affordable pricing. Beyond marketing, it also offers a sales CRM. Transactional messaging. And, for larger businesses, an integrated data platform. So you can manage the full customer lifecycle from a single platform.

Aura is Brevo’s platform-wide AI assistant. It’s both a GPT-style chat tool that answers questions and performs tasks. And a set of more targeted AI agents for marketing, sales, conversations, and data. Brevo embeds these agents within various workflows to perform specific tasks. Such as generating email or message content. Automating customer conversations and capturing lead data. Enriching contact data and creating segments. Optimizing email send times and creating deals.

Brevo AI feature overview:

• On-page AI assistant and embedded agents for marketing, sales, conversations, and data
• Generative AI for email and SMS writing
• Automated segmentation and campaign optimization
• AI sales assistant for deal creation, contact enrichment, and messaging
• MCP server for connecting Brevo data to third-party AI tools

Brevo is great at making advanced tools accessible to smaller businesses. It pulls off the trick with AI, too. Its AI tools feel accessible and relevant to day-to-day needs. You don’t have to go looking for them or learn how they work. They sit naturally in the interface. And they lean towards action rather than analytics. Some AI CRMs are all about deep customer insight. Aura is about helping execute marketing and sales campaigns. 

Another strength is that Brevo has an MCP server. This makes it easy to expand your AI capabilities with third-party apps.

Pricing for the Starter plan starts at $9 per user per month billed annually. This includes AI writing tools. More AI features become available as you go up through the tiers. Brevo is well known for its excellent free plan. This includes campaign building and marketing automation tools with 300 emails a day. But it doesn’t include any AI features.

Get started with Brevo for free or read our full review 

5. Monday.com: Best for AI Embedded in Visual Workflows

Monday.com is a workflow management platform. Teams use its Kanban-style visual boards to plan projects. Automate tasks. Track performance. And collaborate efficiently. It has hundreds of customizable boards organized into 5 products. One of these is Monday CRM. This includes dozens of industry-specific pipelines and customer engagement trackers. 

AI tools are part of the fabric of every board. The AI Blocks engine lets you easily add AI functions to columns or whole boards with a simple prompt. Options include data analysis, organization, task allocation, and automation. In CRM boards, this translates into automating deal updates and progress. Prioritizing deals by criteria like value or risk. And allocating and managing follow-ups. 

Monday CRM AI feature overview:

• On-demand summaries and insights for deals, accounts, and activity timelines.
• Custom pipeline automation. Use pre-built AI blocks for deal management, or prompt your own.
• Generative tools for analytics formulae and enrichment.
• Intelligent prioritization of tasks, deals, and workflow routing.
• Prompt-based board and app creation via Vibe AI (beta).

As an AI-driven CRM, Monday works best for teams already invested in visual workflows. It’s a natural way to embed AI into how you manage workflows. You also get a lot of control over how AI works for you. Vibe AI, a board and app generator, is in beta release. Monday plans to launch a similar AI agent builder soon. And it has a user-friendly MCP connector app. This lets you easily connect third-party AI platform without complex configuration. 

You need Monday.com’s Standard plan to start with AI tools. This starts at $17 per month per user when billed annually. There is a free plan, but it doesn’t include any AI tools. You can test out the AI features on a 14-day free trial.

Try Monday.com for free

6. Zoho CRM: Best for Advanced AI Sales Automation on a Budget

Zoho CRM is a powerful but affordable sales CRM. It’s a great pick for sales teams that don’t want to break the bank on enterprise-level sales software. It specializes in sales automation and has excellent data tools. That makes it a great fit for AI.

Zoho has steadily expanded its AI, Zia. It’s now one of the most extensive AI toolsets of any sales CRM in a similar price bracket. There are 14 different AI features in all, covering all Zoho CRM’s core processes and features. Namely, sales force automation (SFA). Lead management. Process management and customization. And analytics and BI. Generative AI tools create everything from email content and call scripts. To pipeline layouts and performance summaries. And you can build your own agents to focus on the tasks that matter most to you.

Zoho CRM AI feature overview:

• Real-time sales insights and recommended actions.
• AI driven lead scoring, churn prediction, and win-probability and revenue forecasting.
• Customer data enrichment and sentiment analysis.
• AI-generated workflows and automation suggestions.
• AI-powered reporting and BI.

Zia is like having an always-on sales analyst running in the background. Gathering data. Monitoring performance. Analyzing patterns. And highlighting opportunities or flagging concerns. And it doesn’t just run workflows on autopilot. It optimizes how they perform over time. Plus, with custom agents, you can choose exactly what you want to automate and what to keep control of. This is great for helping growing teams prioritize effort and improve efficiency. 

Another attraction is Zoho’s vast business software ecosystem. It includes tools for marketing, ecommerce, customer service, finance, legal, HR, security, CRM, and project management. Other sales tools include sales journey visualization and optimization. And a loyalty program building tool. Zia helps draw data from all of these into Zoho CRM. So you get a sales workflow that reflects the rest of your business. And if you want to connect other AI tools, Zoho has a native MCP connector.

Zoho CRM’s Standard tier starts at $14 per user per month if you pay annually. But for AI tools, you need the Enterprise plan starting at $40/month per user, billed annually. There is a free plan, but this only includes basic features and no AI.

7. Zendesk Sell: Best for B2B Sales Teams

Zendesk is a customer service CRM. It specializes in help desk and ticketing tools. It handles everything from customer contact centers to B2B client accounts. Sell is ZenDesk’s sales CRM. Lightweight and user-friendly, Sell focuses on sales essentials like pipelines and email-based sales engagement. 

Sell is a great add-on for Zendesk’s customer service platform. This works really well for B2B and account-based sales teams. The alignment between sales and support suits long-term customer relationships.

Zendesk’s AI features reflect this. It’s light on content generation tools. But leans instead into analytics and automation. This is perfect for the kind of attention to detail you need to nurture relationships over time. Zendesk’s AI features take two main forms. AI agents that automate and optimize. And ‘copilot’ assistants that help team members as they work.

Zendesk Sell’s AI CRM Features

• Data capture from all customer touchpoints.
• Trainable copilots that provide contextual assistance for tasks.
• AI agent builder.
• Lead and deal scoring.
• Sales forecasting.

Zendesk’s AI is great for helping sales teams understand their customers better. Again, this is most obvious when Sell operates alongside the customer support suite. Zendesk’s AI-powered chatbots provide real-time customer service. But they also analyze interactions for patterns and sentiment. Sales teams can use these insights to prioritize and segment customers. Personalize responses. Or give sales reps cues and recommendations in real time. 

Pricing starts at $19 per user per month if you pay annually. All plans include basic AI agents for email and messaging. Prices for more advanced and customizable agents are available by application only. For Copilot, you need to be on at least the Professional plan. This costs $115/user/month, plus a $50 per user add-on charge. There’s a 14-day free trial.

8. Salesforce: Best for Customizable AI at Enterprise Scale

Salesforce is a popular CRM platform and one of the biggest SaaS companies, full stop. It’s an all-in-one business platform for enterprises. Covering sales, marketing, customer service, commerce, and data. Clients include giant global brands like Amazon, Walmart, Coca-Cola, and Spotify. Although it does attract customers of many different sizes, too.

Salesforce was one of the first CRMs to add AI features. And particularly the intelligent use of customer data to improve engagement. It first introduced Einstein, its native AI system, a decade ago. Einstein is now part of every corner of the platform. It drives predictive analytics and proactive decision-making across sales and marketing. It generates content and automates responses. It powers the conversational interfaces and agents that support and collaborate with users.

Salesforce’s AI CRM Features

• The Unified Data Cloud serves as the foundation for AI across all products.
• Predictive AI and action recommendations at every stage of the customer journey.
• Generative tools for content, segments, and automation workflows.
• Agentforce 360 platform for building custom agents and AI-powered apps

Salesforce’s AI capabilities are hard to beat for scale and flexibility. You don’t just use marketing data for personalization. Or sales data for next best actions and forecasting. It uses all customer data to fuel predictive analytics, generative AI, and intelligent automation.

Another big plus is how specific Salesforce AI’s use cases get. With Agentforce, it now has 200+ pre-built, task-specific agents. Every agent is fully customizable. And, in the Agentforce 360 platform, you can build your own agents in a low-code environment. And if that’s not enough, Salesforce recently added a native MCP client. 

Salesforce CRM has a huge list of pricing tiers. Its Starter Suite CRM for SMBs starts at $25 per user per month. But AI is not available at this price point. It’s used in the background instead to run basic analytics and workflow automation. Predictive AI tools aren’t available until the Enterprise plan. This costs $175/user/month. And Agentforce is a paid-for extra, costing $125/user/month.

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9. Freshsales: Best Value AI CRM for Small Sales Teams

Freshsales is a user-friendly sales CRM for SMBs. You can use it as a standalone sales CRM to build and manage pipelines. Or, through the Freshworks suite, link it to marketing and customer service.

Freshsales’ Freddy AI focuses on insight over complex orchestration tools. AI lead scoring helps sales teams prioritize high-value prospects. Deal analytics accurately predict customer behavior and outcomes. And next best action recommendations aim to help you close more sales.

Freshsales’s AI CRM Features

• Contact scoring for prioritizing your best prospects based on known behavior.
• Deal insights and outcome predictions.
• Next best action suggestions.
• Sales forecasting.
• Chatbots for automated responses and first-touch engagement.

Freshsales doesn’t have AI agents building and managing workflows autonomously. But it’s very good for keeping everything visible across a team. And supporting collaboration and day-to-day execution with timely contextual insights. You can automate processes with standard rules-based workflows and add AI insights. For example, routing prospects to different deal stages based on lead scores. Or triggering follow-up tasks from next-best-action suggestions.

Freshsales pricing starts at $9 per user per month when billed annually. But for most of the AI tools, you need the Pro plan. This starts at $39/user/month. There’s a free plan with basic CRM boards, email templates, live chat, and social media tools.

10. Vtiger One: Best for Customizable AI for an All-in-One CRM

Vtiger One is an AI-powered CRM system combining sales, marketing, and customer service. Unlike many other ‘full’ CRMs, it doesn’t separate these into separate products. Leaving you to decide what you do and don’t need. It’s a single platform with everything bundled in. Nice and simple if you want to cover all bases.

Vtiger One also covers all bases with its AI tools. A benefit of bundling all CRM features together is that it creates a rich customer data resource. Vtiger One uses this to power its Calculus AI engine. Calculus is a GPT-like interface that faces in two directions. As an internal assistant, it helps teams with predictive intelligence. Everything from lead scoring to deal outcome predictions to sales forecasts. And with email and messaging automation. It also runs Vtiger’s customer-facing chatbots. 

VTiger One’s AI CRM Features

• Customizable predictive AI for lead scoring, forecasts, and recommendations.
• Agent builder for customizable AI assistants.
• Customer-facing chatbot with advanced training options.
• AI email generation and automation.
• Prompt builder.

The USP of Vtiger’s AI tools is how customizable they are. Most business software comes with fixed, pre-packaged AI features. You don’t get to configure your own without advanced development know-how. Vtiger is an exception. It’s got a series of no-code editors for customizing AI tools. You can train agents to suit your own business processes. And chatbots so they provide more targeted, on-brand replies. You can specify your own parameters for predictive analytics. And there’s even a prompt builder that helps you create the best instructions to get the best outcomes. This is ideal for growing businesses that want AI flexibility without hiring developers.

Vtiger One paid plans start at $12 per user per month. This includes all AI tools except the chatbot trainer and predictive AI editor. Unlocking these costs $50/user/month. There is a free plan, but it doesn’t include AI tools. 

Which is the Best CRM with AI?

The best AI CRM software for your business is very much your choice. It depends on your size, your budget, and how you use CRM. What I’ve tried to do is guide you with some of the best options around.

But what I do have is my opinion on the best choices in a few different categories. For small businesses, for example, it’s important to look at the detail of the pricing. Many AI-driven CRM solutions offer basic AI, like content generation, at low prices. But then costs rise quickly as they unlock more advanced tools. For the best balance of AI features versus low cost, I think Brevo is hard to beat. Monday.com includes great AI tools on its lowest tiers, too. But it’s a bit of a harder platform to get started with. HubSpot has Breeze AI tools included in the cheapest plans. Its credit system limits usage. But it’s a good introduction to some great AI features.

For sales teams, the choice really comes down to the size of your business. For larger operations right up to enterprise scale, Salesforce is the obvious choice. For smaller sales teams, Pipedrive spreads its AI capabilities across plans well. Pipeline intelligence and recommendations are very affordable. Larger teams can scale up to more advanced sales automation. Zoho CRM is another good pick for quality AI sales automation at reasonable prices.

For marketing teams, Brevo is a standout pick for smaller B2C businesses. Especially for digital businesses, promotional campaigns serve as a sales channel. Brevo’s main strength is building and automating multichannel campaigns. AI helps with content creation, personalization, and optimizing sending. For larger marketing teams, HubSpot’s marketing platform and advanced AI stand out.

Best AI CRM FAQ

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HubSpot is in that rare sweetspot where you can get going quickly, with a powerful platform.. That is, as long as you do it correctly.

Getting started with HubSpot is straightforward. The free plan gives you real tools to work with, and the platform scales as your business grows. But your first few decisions inside HubSpot matter more than most people realise. So, keep reading.

This guide covers what you need to do in your first week, what to prioritise, and what mistakes to avoid. Whether you’re a solo founder or part of a growing team, these steps will help you get value from HubSpot fast.

I’ve also included real case studies and resources that show how other businesses got results. No hype, just practical advice from someone who’s set up HubSpot for clients across multiple industries.

Why HubSpot?

HubSpot has a reputation as a quality platform for good reason. Here’s what makes it stand out from the dozens of CRM and marketing automation platforms I’ve worked with:

• Free tools with real functionality. HubSpot offers a free edition with 1,000 contacts and 2 users. You get contacts, companies, deals, tasks, email inbox connection, forms, tickets, and basic reporting. You can also send 2,000 marketing emails per month. That’s enough to run meaningful campaigns without paying anything.
• A modular, all-in-one platform. HubSpot is built around separate Hubs (Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Data, and Commerce), all connected through the CRM. You can start with one Hub and add others as your needs grow. Every customer interaction lives in a single database, so there’s no more stitching data together from three different tools. For a full breakdown of what each Hub and tier includes, see our HubSpot pricing guide.
• 2,000+ integrations. The HubSpot App Marketplace connects with tools you’re likely already using, such as Slack, Google Workspace, Salesforce, Shopify, Zoom, and thousands more. If you’re switching from another CRM, chances are there’s a native integration available.
• Genuinely easy to get started. The interface is clean. Navigation is logical. Most features work the way you’d expect. Compared to Salesforce or even some mid-range tools, HubSpot has a gentler learning curve for beginners.
• Reporting included from day one. Even the free plan includes reporting dashboards so you can track performance immediately. Dashboard limits vary by plan.

How HubSpot Helps Businesses Grow

Theory is one thing. Results are another. Here are verified HubSpot case studies from companies that put HubSpot to work:

• Motorola Solutions unified 123,000+ customer records using Data Hub and Marketing Hub. One campaign uncovered an 80% adoption gap across their product base, generating millions in revenue.
• DoorDash cut 3 days off their email campaign production process and went from 0% to 80% automated marketing emails. Their team previously spent 5-10 hours a month manually cleaning form data before HubSpot handled it automatically.
• Rakuten Advertising, a HubSpot customer since 2012, achieved 100% adoption across all marketing functions. Their Senior Manager of Marketing Operations freed 50% of the time he previously spent building manual reports.
• Teamwork.com saw their sales team become 50% more effective after implementing Sales Hub, with an 11% higher win rate and an 18% increase in average selling price. Quote-approval workflows nearly paid for the entire HubSpot subscription in the first quarter.
• Tumblr used Marketing Hub and Data Hub to increase user engagement, achieving a 50% increase in first-week return rate for users tracked through HubSpot campaigns.
• VELUX, the Danish skylight manufacturer, used HubSpot’s Breeze AI to create personalised product visualisations in 5 minutes. The same process previously took 2-3 weeks.
• Colnago, the Italian bicycle manufacturer, integrated blockchain records, ecommerce data, and management systems through HubSpot’s CRM to create digital “identity cards” tracking each bicycle’s ownership, spare parts, and race participation history.
• Arduino migrated approximately 8,500 contacts and 4,000+ completed deals into HubSpot with full historical data. Within months, the team entered roughly 200 new deals, all properly linked and configured for their unique market segments spanning industrial, educational, and DIY customers.

If you want to estimate what HubSpot could do for your specific business, try the HubSpot ROI Calculator. You input your industry, traffic, and sales data, and it projects potential improvements based on aggregated data from HubSpot’s customer base. You’re welcome.

Get started with HubSpot for free

Getting Started with HubSpot

Signing up to HubSpot takes about 5 minutes with your email or Google/Microsoft login. No credit card required for the free CRM.

During onboarding, HubSpot asks about your company size, goals, and role. Pay attention here. Your answers shape which features HubSpot highlights first. It also prompts you to connect your email (Gmail, Outlook, or Exchange) and calendar early on. Do this immediately. Email tracking and meeting links are among HubSpot’s most useful day-one features.

If it detects that you’re from a European country, as it did for me, you’re automatically hosted in one of their European data centres to comply with GDPR.

For paid plans, HubSpot provides guided onboarding with dedicated support. Professional and Enterprise plans include onboarding sessions, and full implementation typically takes 45-75 days. But for free and Starter plans, the step-by-step guide they have is pretty easy and straightforward. This guide will save you time in case things get messy along the way.

Get started with HubSpot for free

1. Set Up Your Sender

Before you send a single marketing email, connect your inbox and configure your sender details. Go to Settings → General → Email and connect your Gmail, Outlook, or Exchange account. This lets you log and track emails directly from HubSpot.

Next, set your default marketing email footer. HubSpot requires a company name and physical mailing address in every marketing email. This is a legal requirement under CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and similar regulations. 

Navigate to Settings → Marketing → Email → Configuration → Footer to fill these in. HubSpot adds an unsubscribe link and subscription preferences to the footer by default, so you’re compliant out of the box.

Beyond the basic footer setup, configure your sending domain by adding SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to your DNS. This authenticates your emails and improves deliverability. HubSpot walks you through the DNS setup step by step under Settings → Content → Domains & URLs → Domains → Connect an email sending domain. But this feature is only available for paid plans. 

2. Import Your Contacts

Navigate to Data Management → Data Integration → Import data. HubSpot accepts CSV, XLSX, and XLS files. Each file must have a single sheet with a header row, and each column header should correspond to a HubSpot property.

Free-tool import limits apply. Files must be under 20 MB, you can complete 50 imports per day, and import up to 500,000 rows per day. Paid plans raise these limits significantly (512 MB files, 500 imports/day, 10 million rows/day).

Clean your data with email verification tools before importing. Remove duplicates, delete rows with blank email fields, and use UTF-8 encoding for special characters. Leave cells blank rather than filling them with “N/A” or placeholder text. HubSpot’s field mapping will auto-match column headers to properties, but you should review each match manually.

Remember, the free plan caps you at 1,000 contacts total. If you’re already above that, you’ll need a paid plan.

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3. Create Your Email Templates

Go to Marketing → Create Email → Regular → From scratch. Give it a name, write your subject line, and build your template. Unfortunately, this is only available for paid accounts.

Use personalisation tokens to pull in contact, company, or deal data automatically. Always set a fallback value for blank fields. Nothing kills trust faster than an email that reads “Hi {first_name}.”

Every marketing email must include an unsubscribe link, your physical address, and subscription preference options. HubSpot includes these in the footer by default, so don’t remove or hide them. Beyond legal compliance, making it easy to unsubscribe actually improves your sender reputation over time.

Create templates for your most common touchpoints: introduction, follow-up, meeting confirmation, proposal sent, and check-in. You can always refine later.

4. Set Up Dashboards for Reporting

Navigate to Reporting → Dashboards → Create dashboard. You can start from a pre-made template or build from scratch. Name it clearly (avoid generic names like “Dashboard 1”) and set access permissions. Keep in mind that private dashboards are visible only to you, while shared dashboards can be seen by your team or everyone in the account.

Dashboard limits are plan-based. Check the HubSpot pricing for current limits on your specific plan. Start with three dashboards: one for marketing metrics (email opens, clicks, form submissions), one for sales pipeline (deals by stage, close rate, revenue), and one for overall activity (contacts created, tasks completed).

Add your dashboards as browser bookmarks. If you need to open HubSpot to check a dashboard, you’ll check it. If you need to navigate through three menus to find it, you won’t.

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5. Install HubSpot Tracking Code

The tracking code connects your website activity to your HubSpot CRM. Once installed, HubSpot tracks page views, form submissions, and traffic sources for every visitor. When a visitor converts into a contact, all of that browsing history gets attached to their record,  giving you attribution data that shows which pages and campaigns actually drive results.

Navigate to Settings → Tracking & Analytics → Tracking code, copy the embed code, and paste it before the closing </body> tag on your site.

WordPress users: Install the HubSpot All-in-One Marketing plugin. It handles the tracking code automatically.
Shopify users: Add the code through Online Store → Themes → Edit code → theme.liquid.
Wix users: Go to Settings → Custom Code → Add Custom Code, select “All pages” and “Body – end.”

After installation, verify it works by entering your URL in HubSpot’s “Validate your tracking code” section. HubSpot tests the page and emails you the results.

6. Add Users and Set Permissions

Go to Settings → Users & Teams → Create user. Add team members by email address or CSV file (up to 100 at once). You can also import users from Salesforce, Pipedrive, or other CRMs.

Resist the urge to give everyone Super Admin access. Assign role-based permissions instead. HubSpot lets you control who can access specific Hubs, tools, reports, and dashboards. 

Your marketing team doesn’t need to edit deal pipelines. Your sales team doesn’t need access to website settings. 

Start strict, loosen later if needed. It’s far easier than cleaning up after someone accidentally deletes a workflow.

Note that HubSpot uses a seat-based model. Free plans have two users, while editing access on paid plans requires paid Core Seats.

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HubSpot Resources for Getting Started

One of HubSpot’s genuine strengths is the depth of its learning resources. Most CRM platforms offer a knowledge base and leave it at that. HubSpot goes further. Between the Academy, Glossary, and Community, you have everything you need to go from beginner to competent without paying for outside training.

HubSpot Academy

HubSpot Academy offers hundreds of free courses and certifications covering marketing, sales, service, CRM administration, and AI automation. Courses range from 20-minute lessons to multi-hour certification programmes with exams.

Start with the HubSpot Marketing Hub Software. It’s foundational, free, and teaches you HubSpot’s core methodology. From there, move to Email Marketing, HubSpot Reporting, and CRM based on your role. Certifications look good on LinkedIn and are recognised across the industry.

Content is available in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, German, Japanese, French, and Portuguese. The courses include practical exercises, so you can apply what you learn inside your own HubSpot account as you go.

HubSpot Glossary

The HubSpot Glossary defines essential platform terminology you’ll encounter immediately. Three terms matter most for beginners:

• Marketing Contacts vs Non-Marketing Contacts. On paid plans, marketing contacts are the ones you send promotional emails to. They count towards your subscription tier and directly affect your billing. Non-marketing contacts are stored in your CRM for sales, service, or reference purposes without billing impact. Understanding this distinction prevents billing surprises and helps you choose the right plan. On the free plan, you simply have 1,000 total contacts. Our HubSpot pricing guide breaks down how contact definitions affect each pricing tier.
• Hubs. HubSpot’s platform is divided into Hubs: Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Data, and Commerce. Each Hub has its own feature set and pricing tier. You don’t need all of them. Pick the Hub that matches your primary use case, and add others as your needs grow.
• Lifecycle Stages. These track where a contact sits in your funnel: Subscriber → Lead → Marketing Qualified Lead → Sales Qualified Lead → Opportunity → Customer → Evangelist. Define what each stage means for your business before you import contacts. Align your sales and marketing teams on these definitions. Misaligned lifecycle stages are one of the fastest ways to create CRM chaos.

HubSpot Community

The HubSpot Community is an active peer-to-peer support forum. You’ll find discussion boards covering every Hub, an Ideas Forum monitored by HubSpot’s product team (where you can vote on feature requests), and user-contributed tips and guides.

For beginners, the Community is often more useful than official documentation because real users describe real problems and real solutions. When you hit a wall, search the Community before submitting a support ticket. Chances are someone has already solved your exact issue.

Let’s Get Started with HubSpot

Getting started with HubSpot comes down to three priorities. First, get your data right from day one. Clean your contacts before importing, define your lifecycle stages, and set naming conventions for lists, properties, and workflows. Every HubSpot partner and expert I’ve spoken with names dirty data as the number-one mistake beginners make. Believe me, it’s a struggle, and most of the companies have messy data.

Second, start simple. Don’t try to build complex automation workflows in week one. Set up your pipeline, send your first emails, track your first deals. Learn how the platform works before you automate it. Complex workflows built on a shaky foundation create more problems than they solve.

Third, invest in learning. HubSpot Academy certifications are free and genuinely useful. The Community fills gaps that documentation misses. Take a phased approach: master the basics first, then expand into advanced features as your confidence grows. You have no idea how many people complain that they don’t see any results because they’re doing it on their own without investing in learning the basics.

Get started with HubSpot for free

If you’re evaluating whether HubSpot is the right fit, read our full HubSpot review or explore HubSpot alternatives to compare it with other platforms.

Getting Started with HubSpot FAQ

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For decades, the analyst industry played a central role in how technology gets bought. A CMO, CIO, or Head of Digital trying to navigate a complex martech or data stack, turned to firms like Gartner Group and Forrester. You paid for research. You booked inquiry calls. You waited for Magic Quadrants and Waves. You relied on vendor positioning to help reduce risk.

The old analyst business model worked when information was scarce. It no longer is.

AI has fundamentally changed the economics of research. It can summarize markets, compare platforms, analyze vendor claims, normalize feature matrices, and model TCO in seconds. Large analyst firms built their businesses on that informational advantage. For the most part, that advantage has effectively collapsed.
And the impact of that collapse is going to reverberate far and wide.

This doesn’t mean analysts are going away. It means the old analyst business model is.

The End of the Research Paywall

The core product of large analyst firms has always been information packaging:

• Market overviews
• Vendor comparisons
• Category definitions
• Trend reports
• Frameworks & Best practices

For decades, those lived behind expensive subscription paywalls. Buyers paid. Not because the research was extraordinary, but because there was no alternative.

Now there is.

AI can ingest earnings calls, product documentation, pricing models, security disclosures, roadmap statements, customer reviews, and even architectural diagrams and synthesize them rapidly.

In practice, however, this synthesis is often incomplete, uneven, and occasionally wrong.  It is constrained by information scarcity, selective disclosure, inconsistent terminology, and the lack of primary validation that comes from direct vendor and customer interaction. That said, the implication remains the same.

For many buyers, the perceived sufficiency of AI-generated analysis now outweighs its actual accuracy. Feature matrices, competitive landscapes, and “good enough” comparisons can be produced faster, and often appear to be more current than analyst reports published months later, even if they lack depth, context, or reliability.

In other words, it isn’t that the quality of analyst research has been fully replicated by AI. It’s that the “what” layer of analyst research has been functionally commoditized in the eyes of many buyers who are increasingly comfortable trading precision and validation for speed, clarity, and narrative coherence.

The notion that buyers need to pay $80,000 a year for access to PDFs explaining what a CDP is, how composable architecture works, or what the difference is between batch and real-time marketing is increasingly hard to justify.

That part of the business is going to shrink.

The Structural Problem for Big Analyst Firms

Large analyst firms were built for a pre-AI world:

• When vendor information was fragmented
• When architectures were opaque
• When synthesis was slow and expensive
• When buyers needed guided education

AI reverses all of that. Much of analyst output today is already formulaic:

• Repackaged vendor briefings
• Sanitized market positioning
• Carefully worded commentary that offends no one
• Frameworks designed to preserve vendor relationships
• Research written to support reprint sales

AI is extremely good at that kind of work. Which means the middle of the analyst market “the research factory” is on the nomination list to be automated.

What will remain is brand, enterprise procurement contracts, and boardroom credibility. Gartner and Forrester will still be used as “checkbox” validators. Their logos will still appear in decks. Their quotes will still show up in vendor pitches. But their influence over buying decisions will decline.

Because buyers will no longer confuse access to information with judgment.

Where Boutique Analysts Win

As AI floods the market with information, buyers are realizing something important. Information isn’t what they need.

They need judgment.
They need context.
They need experience.

They need to know what really happens when a platform is implemented at scale. They need to know which vendors oversell. They need to know which roadmaps are fiction. They need to know who is quietly underinvesting in engineering and who is about to get acquired.

“AI can tell you what vendors say. Not who’s overselling.”

That is where boutique analyst firms live. Boutiques don’t sell research, instead  they sell outcomes.

• They provide guidance in vendor selection and design sandboxes.
• They curate deep market intelligence, platform analysis, and practitioner perspectives.
•  They operate as domain experts focused on specific disciplines such as retail, financial services, customer engagement, CDPs, or data platforms.
•  They negotiate contracts.
•  They fix failed implementations.

They live inside real transformations, instead of market categories. And because they aren’t structurally dependent on vendor sponsorships, they can afford to be honest.

For instance, they can say:
“Don’t buy this platform. It will fail.”
“This roadmap will slip.”
“This architecture will not scale.”
“This vendor is being shopped.”

That independence is priceless.

The New Analyst Stack

In this time of AI, the analyst model is being rewritten.

AI becomes the first layer of research:

• Market mapping
• Vendor discovery
• Feature comparisons
• Architecture education

Boutique analysts become the decision layer:

• Platform selection
• Commercial negotiation
• Implementation strategy
• Risk management

Large analyst firms become the procurement layer:

• Brand validation
• Boardroom comfort
• Risk signaling

The hierarchy flips. Instead of analysts being the gatekeepers of knowledge, they become translators of reality.

 The Bottom Line

AI isn’t replacing all analysts. It’s replacing lazy analysis.

If your work is built on generic frameworks, surface-level research, or repackaged information, AI will get there faster and cheaper.

Insight still comes from judgment, context, and experience — not from access to more data.

What survives is real expertise, real experience, and real accountability. The future of the analyst industry belongs to people who have scars, opinions, and receipts. And that, frankly, is how it should be.

The post AI Is Disrupting the Analyst Industry.  And That’s Good News (for Buyers). appeared first on Email vendor selection.

With Mailjet, you get unlimited contacts, a free forever plan, and email validation. So is Mailjet the email marketing platform for you?

Email marketing platforms evolve quickly, so I updated our review of Mailjet to see how it performs today. With the new navigation, automation tools, analytics, and deliverability. I signed up for Mailjet plan for testing. Having reviewed more than 30 email marketing services, we have a clear benchmark for comparison.

? If you want an affordable email marketing tool with strong deliverability, solid analytics, and developer-friendly features, Mailjet could be a great fit.

Mailjet’s Core Features

Here are the main features I focused on:

• Drag and drop email editor: Mailjet’s email builder is simple and has an easy-to-learn interface.
• Templates: There are 70+ email templates to choose from. The designs are mostly simple and easy to customize.
• Automation: Automation tools have improved a lot. You get a visual workflow builder with triggers based on contact activity, conditions, and 12 workflow templates.
• Contact Management: You can create as many contact properties as you like. This carries through into very customizable segmentation. The AI segmentation is the cherry on top.
• Email validation: Mailjet’s email validation is a real USP compared to most email marketing services. 
• Other channels: There are APIs for transactional emails and SMS messages.

Get started with Mailjet for free

Mailjet Pros and Cons

Try Mailjet for free

Is Mailjet for you?

Recommended if:

• You want an affordable way to grow your email marketing. Sinch Mailjet is priced for SMEs. Unlocking all features on its Premium plan only costs $27/mo for 15K emails. Unlimited contacts mean you can keep building your lists without limits.
• You have developer expertise close to your team. Mailjet is targeted at both marketers and developers. It’s an easy, accessible tool for marketing teams. But with its API, you can unlock even more.
• High deliverability is a high priority for you. With a great sending infrastructure behind it, Sinch Mailjet has excellent deliverability credentials. It’s one of the few email marketing platforms that offers email validation. Mailjet also has deliverability experts to help you protect your sender reputation and improve inbox placement.

Not recommended if:

• You’re looking for more advanced automation. Sinch Mailjet improved its automation with a new builder and lots of new features recently. It’s good enough for most SMBs, but if you need advanced workflows, check out ActiveCampaign.

Mailjet Rating at a glance: how does it perform?

Ease of Use	Sinch Mailjet is very easy to use. I like the simple, clear interface. And the consistency across different editors. I think some features could be easier to find.
Email Editor	The email builder is easy to use. However, showing what section you are working in could be clearer.
Email Templates	There are 70+ email templates. They’re simple and of reasonable quality. So you’ll have to bring some magic if you want to send eye-catching designs.
Email Types	Sinch Mailjet has newsletters, automated emails, transactional emails, and RSS emails.
Marketing Automation	Mailjet’s automation tools have improved a lot. You can build automated workflows using triggers, conditions, timers, and templates. The visual workflow builder makes it easy to create workflow based on contact behavior. It’s customizable enough for most marketers, while remaining simple and easy to use.
List Management	You can custom build contact properties to store any data you like about your contacts. That makes for very flexible segmentation. But it all has to be done manually.
Personalisation	Sinch Mailjet supports personalization using contact properties and dynamic content blocks. You can display different content to different audiences within the same email based on contact data or behavior. Combined with flexible custom properties and AI segmentation, this makes targeted messaging easy.
Landing Pages & Forms	Having the same editor for forms, landing pages, and emails makes life easier. All Mailjet sign-up forms are double opt-in. I’d like to see reCAPTCHA, more form and page templates, though.
Reporting & Analytics	Sinch Mailjet digs deep into performance analytics. It tracks 10 email/campaign metrics for every email sent. And breaks the data down in lots of different ways. Bot detection and filtering help keep your data clean and actionable.
Customer Service	Mailjet relies on its user guides and email support tickets for lower-cost plans. A virtual assistant helps you find what you need. It’s a shame phone and live chat support are only available to users sending 50k+ emails.
Deliverability	Sinch Mailjet has excellent deliverability. Built-in email validation, domain authentication, and detailed deliverability analytics help maintain a strong sender reputation. Case studies show strong real-world performance. Outdooractive achieves over 96% deliverability while sending millions of personalized emails weekly. My AskAI relies on Mailjet’s API to deliver real-time AI email replies reliably.
Spam & Design Check	Mailjet includes tools to improve inbox placement and email quality. Email validation identifies invalid addresses before sending. Spam-sensitive elements like authentication and engagement tracking for a healthy sender reputation.
AI Writing	Mailjet is particularly well-suited to privacy-conscious businesses. As a European provider headquartered in France, it operates under strict GDPR requirements. Features like double opt-in forms, exclusion lists, permission controls, and detailed contact data management help businesses maintain compliance and protect user privacy.
Integrations & API	Mailjet offers 29+ direct integrations and 8,000+ through Zapier. Developers can connect Mailjet to any tool with the API. This allows reliable transactional email sending and custom automation triggers.
User Permissions	Mailjet has role-based and custom user permissions. You can assign roles like marketer, developer, designer, or accountant. This works well with Mailjet’s collaborative editing. Teams can work together on campaigns while restricting access to sensitive areas like billing or sending.
GDPR & Legal Compliance	Mailjet is particularly well suited to privacy-conscious businesses. As a European provider headquartered in France, it operates under strict GDPR requirements. Features like double opt-in forms, exclusion lists, permission controls, and detailed contact data management help businesses maintain compliance and protect user privacy.
Interface Languages	Mailjet is available in 9 languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, and Dutch. Combined with localized documentation in 5 languages and live Email Academy training sessions in 4, the platform works well for international teams.
Customer Satisfaction	Customer reviews rate Sinch Mailjet as 4.2 out 5 on Capterra and 4 out 5 on G2.

Overall Score

Sinch Mailjet delivers excellent value for money. Unlimited contacts, strong deliverability, flexible segmentation, and a powerful API make it a compelling email marketing and transactional email platform. Automation is improving but still less advanced than specialist marketing automation platforms. It’s a good choice for businesses focused on reliable, affordable email marketing.

Try Mailjet for free here

Getting Started with Mailjet

Mailjet is an email system that works for marketers and developers. As a marketer, I’d say a key USP is simplicity. I got that impression right from the sign-up process. It’s very quick to get started with Mailjet. You just fill in your details and activate your account via email.

Next you’re taken straight into a Welcome Guide. I’m always a fan of these as they help you get started. And give you a chance to play around with key tools. In Mailjet, the prompts are for creating and sending a test campaign. Importing a contact list is a basic early step.

You’re also asked to add and authenticate your email domain. This is where things get a bit more technical. But email authentication using SPF/DKIM helps to protect your sender reputation and improve deliverability.

If you want to send transactional emails, you have to set up Mailjet’s Send API or SMTP Relay.

Mailjet Review: Email Marketing Platform

I found creating email marketing campaigns in Mailjet easy, and the navigation very straightforward. From the Campaigns menu, you simply click the Create a campaign button. Then it’s picking a contact list, and you’re ready to build.

Email templates in Mailjet

The first step in creating a campaign is picking a template.

Mailjet has 70+ email templates to choose from. That’s about a par number. I know of services that offer a lot more and a lot less. The designs are of a reasonable quality but mostly simple. The simple templates are easy to edit. There’s a good choice of newsletter templates, and the rest of the designs are mostly for promotional emails, split into themes like seasonal, events, and travel.

If you don’t want to use Mailjet’s templates, the AI template builder makes starting from scratch much easier. Just pick your email type: newsletter, promo, event, ecommerce, announcement, or seasonal. Add a quick prompt describing what you want. Then choose the default theme or automatically pull in your fonts, colors, and logo from your site. The AI builds your template in seconds. From there, you can fine-tune everything with the drag-and-drop editor until it looks exactly how you want.

Developers can code and save their own templates in HTML.

Setting up email campaigns

After choosing a template, you’re prompted to finish the campaign setup. The most important part here is adding a subject line. Mailjet helps you out in 2 ways:

1. Ask AI. You tell Mailjet’s generative AI tool what your campaign is about. And it suggests subject lines for you. 
2. Personalize the subject line. Insert variable lets you add contact details linked to an email address. The most common example is adding the recipient’s name.

This is also where you can set up A/B testing. At the top left, you’ll see a box marked Version A. From here, you can create up to 10 versions of the same email. You can change anything you like. Subject lines, images, text content. You can create and test 10 completely different emails if you like. Mailjet is one of the most flexible email marketing platforms for split testing I’ve come across.

Mailjet’s Brand Kit makes staying on-brand refreshingly simple. Instead of manually adjusting colors, fonts, logos, and buttons for every campaign, you define your brand elements once and reuse them across templates. You can even generate a kit automatically from your website URL or build it from scratch. I especially like the smart logo component, button styling controls, and Brand Kit toggle, which keeps new sections consistent as you design. 

One final and critical part of the setup is adding a sender address. To do this, you have to first authenticate your email domain. You get prompted to do this the first time you click on sender address. 

Creating and sending newsletters with Mailjet

Set up complete, it’s time to design your campaign email. I decided to test out creating a simple newsletter. All templates are fully customizable. And once you’ve finished setting up, you go straight into the drag-and-drop editor.

I found Mailjet’s email builder very intuitive to use. It’s got a very simple, uncluttered layout. You can find everything easily.

The editing tools are split into 4 menus on the far left. Elements, Layouts, Languages, and Settings. 

I like how you can customize email layouts. The Standard layout containers are blank boxes divided into columns. But the pre-built blocks take things up a level. They’re like mini-templates you drop into your design. You can choose from logos, hero content boxes, text and image combinations, product listings, and more. You get elements, positioning, and styling all combined and ready to customize.

Once you’ve arranged your layout blocks, it’s time to drop in your Elements. Text, images, buttons, etc. Mailjet doesn’t have a huge choice. But it covers the basics.

As for editing the content, the Mailjet editor has its pros and cons. I turned my template into the above design in just a few minutes. There’s no doubt it’s quick and easy to use. When you click on a content block, a contextual editing menu appears. Above, you can see the text editing menu. Note the Ask AI and Variables. You can get help from the gen AI tool to write your content. You can also personalize in the same way you can the subject lines.

But I also found some of the navigation clunky. It’s not always easy to see which element or container block you are clicking on. Sometimes sections remain highlighted while menus for others are displayed.

I also only stumbled across the dynamic content feature shown above by accident. For this, you have to click outside the main content blocks. It’s a great tool for advanced personalization. It means you can set conditions for when certain sections of content appear. And that means you can change them up for different audiences. I’d love to see dynamic content flagged up a bit better!

Finally, the Settings tools set design styles for the whole template. You can set background colours, default container sizes, and edit pre-set text styles. Page design locking is useful for multi-user collaboration in teams. It lets you set permissions on who can edit a template.

Another feature that stands out is Mailjet’s collaborative editing. Team members can work inside the same template at the same time. You see edits instantly, sections someone’s working on are clearly highlighted, and built-in comments make feedback easy. There’s even a live preview so everyone can spot design or formatting issues as they happen. For marketing teams, this speeds up approvals, reduces version confusion, and makes the entire email production process more efficient.

Create an email campaign in Mailjet for free

Managing contacts in Mailjet

Mailjet packs a lot in the Contacts tab. I’ll come to the Form Builder and Validations later. First, I wanted to explore how you add existing contacts to Mailjet. And then how you manage and use contact data. 

Creating contact lists and adding existing contacts is very easy. You can import .csv or .txt files directly. One slightly strange thing is that Mailjet only data matches email addresses automatically. All other contact field data gets flagged as ‘unmatched’. You have to create fields like First Name, Last Name, Location etc yourself. This is a lot of work for very common data.

The flip side of this is that you get complete control over contact data. On the Contact Properties page, you can create your own custom data fields. This translates into near open-ended freedom to store any contact information you like.

This has huge benefits for how you target your campaigns. The more data you have stored about your contacts, the more precise your segments can be. Mailjet doesn’t just let you segment by an open-ended number of contact properties. You can also filter by activity. So things like whether someone has opened an email from you. Or clicked on a campaign link in a specified timeframe.

You can stack as many and/or conditions as you like. Combined with the custom attributes, Mailjet’s segmentation is as flexible as any I’ve seen.

Mailjet also gives you an AI Assistant for segmentation, which makes building advanced filters much faster. Instead of manually adding conditions in the logic builder, you can simply describe the audience in plain English. For example, “Contacts who click a link an email in the last 60 days and are in Italy.” The AI translates that into structured segmentation rules automatically. You can review and edit everything before saving, and if your request is unclear, it will suggest alternatives or ask for clarification. It’s practical, especially when you’re building more complex segments.

Don’t forget the exclusion list. Contacts added to the exclusion list are automatically blocked from receiving your emails. This is important if they unsubscribe or flag you as spam. You are potentially breaking privacy laws if you keep sending to contacts who unsubscribe.

Some email marketing software automatically adds unsubscribed contacts to an exclusion list. Mailjet only removes unsubscribed contacts from the list. You have to add them to the exclusion list manually.

Save time with Email Automation

Mailjet has upgraded its automation builder since our review. And it’s a big improvement over the older version. Instead of a few predefined sequences, you now get a visual automation builder where you can create custom workflows. You add steps for triggers, emails, conditions, timers, contact list actions, and property updates.

The new triggers and conditions make Mailjet’s automation builder much more customizable. You can trigger or branch workflows based on opens and clicks. Filter by campaign, tags, or even specific sender addresses. And combine filters using AND/OR logic. That gives you much more control than simple time-based sequences.

I really like that each automation step is color-coded and paired with an icon, which makes the workflow easy to scan.

Mailjet has 5 automation triggers. You can start a workflow when someone subscribes to a list, when a contact property updates, or when a contact opens or clicks an email. And you can add a segment to any trigger, which makes it far more precise and customizable.

Conditions make Mailjet’s automation builder much more capable than the older sequence editor. Segments and custom filters let you direct contacts down different workflow paths. For example, you can check whether someone opened an email in the last 30 days. You can add 20 conditions in a single block. Each condition connects directly to Mailjet’s segmentation, so you can use contact properties, activity, or custom data. This lets you build workflows that respond to real engagement instead of just sending emails on a fixed schedule.

The event block pauses the workflow until a specific action happens. Like subscribing to a list, updating a contact property, opening or clicking an email, or triggering an external event from your site or app. You can wait until someone clicks a pricing link before sending a follow-up email. This makes workflows feel more responsive and tied to user behavior.

Mailjet also supports external events via webhooks. So when someone completes a purchase, starts a trial, or renews a subscription on your site or app, you can trigger a workflow automatically.

Timer blocks control when the next step happens. You can delay contacts by minutes, hours, or days using a simple delay timer. You can also use date-based timers, such as sending an email on a specific date or on a contact’s birthday. This makes it easy to schedule time-sensitive campaigns, onboarding sequences, or milestone emails. You can even choose the exact time of day and allowed send days, which adds useful precision.

Mailjet also includes exit blocks, which define where a workflow ends. Each path in your workflow can have its own exit point, depending on how contacts move through. You can also allow contacts to re-enter the workflow later if they meet the trigger criteria again. This works well for recurring campaigns or ongoing engagement sequences.

There are 12 workflow templates for common use cases like welcome series, onboarding sequences, re-engagement campaigns, and lead nurturing. You can start from one of these or build from a blank canvas.

The workflow builder feels modern and capable. You can create workflows based on behavior, timing, and external events, with a clean visual interface. It delivers customization while staying easy to manage.

Setting up transactional emails with Mailjet Email API

Mailjet is the sister platform of Mailgun. There’s some crossover between the two. For example, Mailjet benefits from Mailgun’s outstanding deliverability. Another example is transactional emails.

There are two sides to transactional emails in Mailjet. You could call them the creating and sending sides. Creating a transactional email is much the same as creating a marketing campaign email. Although, once again, the tools are a little hidden. You have to go through Templates > Email Templates before you see the Transactional option.

As with marketing emails, building starts with templates. There are 20 transactional templates to choose from. Again, the designs are mostly simple. But there are templates covering most reasons for sending transactional emails. Confirmations, receipts, account updates, support ticket acknowledgement. 

The rest of the building process is the same as campaign emails. Same editor, same tools. But sending your transactional email is very different.

Transactional emails aren’t sent in bulk like email campaigns. They are sent one at a time, triggered by a particular event. But you can’t use automation workflows to set up transactional sending in Mailjet. Instead, you have to use its Send API or SMTP relay.

These are tools borrowed straight from Mailgun. The Send API is one of the best around. Its big USP is exceptional deliverability rates. You can be confident that nearly all your transactional emails will arrive safely. Mailjet backs this up with some of the most detailed performance analytics I’ve seen. So if an email doesn’t land right, you will see exactly why. 

Check out our full Mailgun review to find out more about its features, pros, cons, and pricing.

But there’s no escaping that Send API is a developer’s tool. Mailjet publishes all the documentation you need for setting up and working with an API. Including libraries for working with different coding languages. But you have to know what you’re doing with code.

Mailjet’s infrastructure also proves itself at scale. Travel platform Outdooractive sends over 3.5 million personalized emails per week using Mailjet. And maintains delivery rates above 96% and a spam rate below 0.01%. The combination of strong segmentation, list hygiene tools, and reliable sending infrastructure helps Outdooractive deliver highly targeted campaigns consistently without damaging sender reputation.

Validating Emails with Mailjet

Mailjet’s Validations tool is in the Contacts menu. Email validation means checking that email addresses in your list work. Inactive accounts and fake addresses cause bounces and hurt your deliverability rates. So being able to weed them out is a big strength of Mailjet. A lot of email marketing platforms don’t offer any sort of email validation.

Mailjet’s email validation is easy to use. You can run checks on existing lists in your account. Or upload new addresses, either individually or in bulk. The results are straightforward. A dashboard shows how many addresses in your list are deliverable, undeliverable, disposable or unknown. Disposable accounts are temporary email addresses that will bounce once they expire. 

There’s no breakdown of why addresses are undeliverable. And you have to download a csv. file to get a breakdown address by address. This adds a step in removing unwanted addresses from your lists.

Try Mailjet for free here

Forms and Landing Pages in Mailjet

Form design starts with choosing a template. Mailjet only has 8 form templates, so again the choice isn’t huge. But there are some nice, tasteful designs. They range from basic newsletter sign-ups to discounts and digital products like ebooks. All 8 templates have popup and embedded versions.

I love that the form builder is identical to the email builder. A lot of email marketing platforms end up with different editor interfaces for emails, forms and landing pages. I find it helpful when they are all the same. You get familiar with how they work so much quicker.

The big strength of the form builder is how easy it is to use. You just drop the elements you want into position. You can choose from 8 different field types in Mailjet. These include pre-formatted fields for phone numbers, dates and web URLs. For every field type, you are prompted to add a contact property. To map the data into your contact list correctly.

Mailjet has a standalone Pages section with all its landing page tools. To be honest, they’re pretty basic. For a start, there are just 3 layout templates to choose from. I’d like to see more fully designed templates to help people along.

I like the familiarity of Mailjet’s landing page builder. Same layout, same drag-and-drop tools as the email and form builders. Even with the basic templates, you can create a decent-looking page very quickly. And although Mailjet chooses not to have landing pages and forms together, you can add a form to a page. You simply pick a form you’ve built previously and drop it in.

Reporting and Analytics in Mailjet

Mailjet’s analytics impressed me. It’s very thorough at tracking all the core email campaign performance metrics. You can break these down into 2 main sections:

• Engagement statistics: Open, click, unsubscribe, and marked as spam. Some email marketing services will only focus on these.
• Deliverability statistics: Mailjet reports whether emails are delivered, blocked, hard and soft bounces. It also records emails that are queued for sending. And re-attempted sending is logged as retrying.

This is a strong range. But what I really like is how Mailjet uses and presents this data in different ways and different places. On the main dashboard, you get an activity overview of the last 24 hours. You can pick and choose which metrics you view. And filter a list to see which addresses have bounced, which contacts have opened etc.

On the Stats page, you can view the same stats by day, week, month or up to a year. 

The My Campaigns page provides a summary of open and click rates for each campaign. Opening a sent campaign gives you a detailed performance breakdown. You can see which links in an email got the most clicks. And how your campaign performs by inbox provider. You can choose 10 campaigns at a time to compare.

Mailjet’s click maps make it easy to see where recipients click in your emails. You get a visual overlay that shows which links people clicked. Hovering over a link shows the percentage of total clicks, and the platform highlights the corresponding link in your email.

You also get a detailed links list that shows click performance for each individual link. If the same link appears multiple times, Mailjet tracks them separately. This helps you understand which positions and CTAs perform best. It’s a useful feature for optimizing layout, improving link placement, and refining future campaigns based on engagement data.

For all of the above to work, you have to activate email tracking in your account. This is done in Account settings > Tracking settings. 

Mailjet has bot activity detection to keep your campaign stats accurate. It automatically filters out automated opens and clicks from security scanners, so your engagement metrics reflect real human interactions. This avoids misleading data from non-human activity.

Since our first review, Mailjet added landing page analytics. You can see total visits, link clicks, and form submissions. A visual chart shows activity over time, which makes it easy to spot trends and measure engagement. This gives you a clear view of how your landing page performs after launching a campaign.

Landing page stats show useful audience insights. Next to unique visitors pageviews, you’ll find a breakdown by device and country. If your landing page connects to an email campaign, Mailjet also shows which recipients visited and when. That makes it easier to connect email with landing page performance.

Get started with Mailjet for free

Mailjet Integrations & API

Mailjet comes with 29+ direct integrations with third-party software. Some highlights are:

• CMS and website builders like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.
• Ecommerce platforms including WooCommerce, Prestashop, and BigCommerce.
• Marketing automation services such as Vero, Ongage, and Leadliason.
• Lead generation tools like ManyContacts, Optimonk, and Poptin.
• Text messaging software like MessageMedia.
• Integration platforms like Zapier, Cloud Elements, and Skyvia.

The WordPress integration lets you connect WordPress form builders to Mailjet. WordPress form builder plug-ins offer enormous choice. And they are the easiest way to add forms to WordPress pages. But you can still sync captured leads into your Mailjet contacts lists. And use them in campaigns.

Developers can also use the API to integrate any platform of their choice. 

Mailjet’s API also delivers strong results for SaaS companies. My AskAI uses Mailjet to send real-time AI-generated email replies, processing thousands of emails per month reliably. Where deliverability is critical for automated support and transactional workflows. This resulted in a new AI email assistant feature that resolved 75% of support tickets automatically.

How Much Does Mailjet Cost? Pricing and Plans

Mailjet is great value for money. The Essential plan starts at $17 a month for 15K emails and unlimited contacts. This gives you basic campaign creation tools, but no automation or landing pages. But you do get 500 email validations a month.

The Premium plan starts at $27 a month for 15K emails. You get all advanced features for this price, including dynamic content, A/B testing, and all analytics. You can also have 20 users on the same account, which makes it a superb value for teams.

You can sign up for a free plan with 1,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month. You can send a maximum of 200 emails per day. You’ll get the drag-and-drop email editor, form builder, and basic statistics.

See full pricing here

Mailjet Customer Support

Mailjet’s standard customer support focuses on guided self-help via an online knowledge base. And email tickets when you need assistance from the support team. 

There are 2 ways to access support on every page. The question mark on the top right opens a drop-down menu. Here you’ll see links to User Guides and the Support Center for creating and managing tickets.

There’s also an AI Customer Assistant Chatbot. The bot will either direct you to relevant resources to answer your query. Or help you send a ticket if you can’t find the answer.

You get phone and live chat support on the Premium plan. But this excellent customer support is only available if you pay for 50,000 emails a month. 

Mailjet also runs live Email Academy training sessions every quarter. These sessions cover practical topics like deliverability, automation, and campaign optimization. They’re available in English, French, Spanish, and German.

Final Conclusion: Is Mailjet the right email tool for you?

Mailjet is a simple, affordable email marketing platform. Some of my highlights are unlimited contacts on all plans and email validation. I also think the quality of its analytics, high deliverability rates, and flexible A/B testing make it great value. With Mailjet, you can get premium email marketing performance at bargain prices.

I’d recommend Mailjet if you’re a small business looking to grow your email marketing. But still want to keep a lid on costs. It’s especially powerful if you have developers on your team who can make use of its API.

Try Mailjet for free here

Mailjet Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Mailjet Alternatives

Mailjet vs. MailerLite

MailerLite is arguably Mailjet’s most direct competitor. Both prioritise affordability and ease of use. MailerLite edges both. Paid plans start at $9 a month versus $15.30 for Mailjet. But with MailerLite, you get unlimited emails compared to Mailjet’s unlimited contacts. So you have to work out what means best value to you. MailerLite’s free plan is also more generous, offering double the number of free emails. Check out our full MailerLite review and pricing guide to compare them.

MailerLite has better email marketing automation and more integrations. With Mailjet, you get built-in email validation for protecting sender reputation and more advanced analytics.

Mailjet vs. GetResponse

Mailjet is great if you want to grow your email marketing affordably. GetResponse is the better choice if you want to grow beyond email marketing. It has 3 pricing plans. The cheapest focuses on the basics of email marketing. The middle tier adds marketing automation. The top tier focuses on advanced ecommerce marketing. And leans heavily into supporting sales and revenue generation.

GetResponse’s cheapest tier is the most similar to Mailjet. Both combine campaign-building with straightforward lead generation and basic automation. GetResponse is cheaper to get started with. But with Mailjet you get unlimited contacts. GetResponse has more integrations and 24/7 live chat support. Mailjet wins on analytics, email validation and transactional emails. The latter isn’t available until GetResponse’s most expensive plan. Find out more in our full GetResponse review and pricing guide.

Mailjet vs. ActiveCampaign

Mailjet improved its automation builder a lot recently but it still doesn’t come close to ActiveCampaign’s automation features. If automating your campaigns matter to you, ActiveCampaign is an obvious alternative. It’s arguably the best marketing automation platform for SMEs out there. Its excellent workflow editor combines intuitive use with sophisticated features. And it comes with 900+ automation templates to get started with. Learn more in our full ActiveCampaign review and pricing guide.

Like Mailjet, ActiveCampaign starts at $15 a month. But you pay more as your contact list grows. You also have to go up through the tiers to unlock the premium automation features. Mailjet is a better value for the basics of creating and sending email campaigns. It also has a free tier, which ActiveCampaign doesn’t. 

Mailjet vs. Brevo

Brevo is one of Mailjet’s strongest competitors, especially for small businesses. Both platforms offer affordable pricing, unlimited contacts, and strong deliverability. Brevo stands out for its built-in CRM and multi-channel marketing, including SMS, WhatsApp, and chat. Check out our Brevo review and pricing guide to compare the platforms.

Mailjet is stronger for transactional emails and developer use cases. Its API, email validation tools, and advanced analytics give you more control over email performance. Brevo has better built-in CRM and multi-channel tools. Mailjet is the better choice if email is your primary focus and deliverability matters most.

Mailjet vs. Moosend

Moosend is a strong alternative if you’re looking for advanced automation without the high price tag. It offers more automation triggers, workflow templates, and behavioral targeting options than Mailjet. Its automation builder is one of the most customizable available at this price point. Read our Moosend review and pricing guide for comparison.

Mailjet has the advantage in deliverability, analytics, and transactional email. It’s also better suited for developers thanks to its API. Moosend is better for marketing automation. Mailjet is better for email infrastructure, deliverability, and scalability.

Mailjet vs. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the most well-known email marketing platforms. It offers marketing tools, including automation, landing pages, and audience management. But Mailchimp becomes expensive quickly as your contact list grows. Many businesses start looking for Mailchimp alternatives because of its pricing and contact-based billing model. Learn more in our full Mailchimp review and pricing guide.

Mailjet is the better choice if you want affordable, scalable email marketing. It offers unlimited contacts on all paid plans, built-in email validation, and excellent deliverability. Mailjet also has strong analytics and a powerful API for transactional emails. Mailchimp offers more marketing features overall, but Mailjet delivers better value, stronger email infrastructure, and lower long-term costs.

The post Mailjet Review 2026: Honest Results from our Hands-On Testing appeared first on Email vendor selection.

They all have their own LMS. As a result, LMSs have evolved to suit different audiences. There are now more learning management systems (LMS) available than ever. With so many platforms to choose from, which one’s right for you?

Just for this article, I’ve spent over 25 hours researching and vetting these platforms, so you don’t have to. From that, we have reviewed the 15 best LMS software platforms currently available.

In this article, I’ll help you pick the best LMS for you. Maybe after all this, I should turn it into a course…

Best LMS Overview

Best LMS Platforms
The best LMS platforms to create and host your online courses. 

• Learnworlds – Best for professional online courses (free trial – $29/month)
• Thinkific – Best all-around LMS (free trial or $74/month)
• Teachable – Best platform for beginners (free trial or $29/month)
• FreshLearn – Best affordable LMS (free or $49/month)

Best All-in-One LMSs
All-in-one LMS platforms for building your course, website, and marketing and selling courses.

• Learnworlds – Best for engaging, professional online courses (free trial or $29/month)
• Thinkific – Best overall LMS (free trial or $74/month)
• Kajabi – A complete high-end LMS with community features ($143/month)

A creator looking to monetize their expertise has different needs than a college. As does a corporate LMS for internal staff training. LMSs have evolved to suit different audiences. In this review, we categorize LMS software into these 4 types:

1. Internal Corporate LMS: Create and run internal training systems for large organizations. Employee onboarding, compliance, upskilling, and performance pathways.
2. External Corporate LMS. For B2B training providers and firms that deliver product training to customers and partners. Blend ecommerce tools, white label branding, and scalable user management.
3. Academic LMS. Platforms for schools, colleges, and universities with course scheduling, assessment, and grading tools.
4. Learning Experience Platform (LXP). LXPs shift focus to the learner UI and UX. They emphasize personalized, self-directed learning journeys.

These are not meant as hard definitions. There’s often plenty of crossover. A lot of corporate LMSs cover both internal and external training. Many commercial platforms now have elements of LXPs to improve learner engagement. But in this guide, I’ll use these to help you quickly identify the best LMS for your needs.

Here’s a summary of my favourite LMS platforms. Jump to my recommendations by industry and use case. 

Platform	Best for	Free plan/trial	Starting price	Score
Thinkific	Selling branded courses	Yes, 30 days	$36
Teachable	First-time course sellers	Yes, 7 days	$29
LearnWorlds	Engaging course design	Yes, 30 days	$24
Kajabi	Monetizing knowledge	Yes, 14 days	$71
FreshLearn	Budget-conscious educators	Yes	$35
TalentLMS	In-house training	Yes	$119
360Learning	Collaborative team learning	Yes, 30 days	$8 per user

How to Choose the Best Learning Management System

There are LMS features every trainer and educator can benefit from. Here are my tips on what to prioritize.

• Gives a great learner experience: Business software should be easy to use. But with an LMS, usability is twice as important. You want a platform that’s easy to build and run courses. For learners, the UI of course pages and student portals should be even better. 
• Interactive learning: Quizzes, discussions, interactive videos, and gamified incentives all encourage learner involvement. That’s good for your cohort numbers and the evaluation. Interactive learning also improves scores and outcomes. 
• Types of courses and training: Maybe you are looking for simple on-demand training. But perhaps there is more to it, with courses, cohorts, and live schooling in the mix. These should fit with what you are looking for and your teaching needs.
• Student pacing and skill level: Go beyond a one-size-fits-all training program to accommodate different learning styles. Learners start from different skill levels and knowledge. Look at how your learning management system lets you customize learning and pacing for each student.
• Mobile app: People like to do everything on their smartphones. Including learning. Native LMS apps let people learn how they want, when they want.
• Reporting and analytics: For education businesses, good reporting helps you see what’s working or not. And make changes to improve business outcomes. But in education, you need to track learner performance, too.
• Integrations: A good LMS performs even better if it connects with other tools you use. Whether it’s a particular CMS like WordPress. An ecommerce store. CRM. Or email marketing platforms. Look for integrations that help you embed learning within your wider business.

15 Best LMS Platforms

Thinkific – Best for Selling Branded Courses

Thinkific is a course-building platform aimed at small businesses. It strips things down to the essentials of creating and selling courses. But still gives you decent control over branding, content, and pricing. 

Setting up Thinkific has a minimal learning curve. It guides you through the course-building process in clear steps. And its drag-and-drop builder is quick and easy to learn. You can pick from pre-made templates for different types of courses. These are customizable. Though for advanced control over branding and style, you’ll need HTML/CSS. Higher tiers come with white labelling. 

For learning content, you can upload videos and PDFs. And create assignments and assessment quizzes. It’s just as easy to build a website to host your course on. It takes just a few hours to publish a live course and site.

Thinkific makes monetizing your courses easy. You can sell one-off courses, bundles, memberships, and digital downloads. There are features for managing cohorts of learners. Such as drip schedules to control the learning pace across a group. And community forum spaces to encourage engagement. 

Overall, Thinkific is ideal for small businesses looking to sell simple branded courses. But it doesn’t have the depth or flexibility to run regulated learning. Or corporate training programs. 

Thinkific Features

Thinkific is one of the most popular LMS platforms for selling online courses. It focuses on simplicity, speed, and reliable course delivery.

• Drag-and-drop course builder with pre-made templates for fast setup.
• Support for video lessons, PDFs, presentations, and downloadable resources.
• Built-in quizzes, assignments, and course completion certificates.
• Drip scheduling and cohort-based course delivery.
• Community spaces for learner discussions and engagement.
• Tools for selling courses, memberships, bundles, and digital downloads.
• Custom domains and white-label on higher plans.
• Integrations with payment gateways, email tools, and popular business software.

Thinkific pricing starts at $36 month. This includes unlimited courses, one community, drip scheduling, and one custom domain. You can test the whole platform with a 30-day free trial.

Try Thinkific for free or read our full review

Teachable – Best for First-Time Course Sellers

Teachable makes creating and selling courses simple. It’s affordable and does what it needs to do. I’d recommend it to any creator or coach looking to get started with online learning.

With course creation, the priority is quick, easy publication over advanced design. Course structure and branding options are fairly basic. But on the plus side, you can build a course in a matter of minutes. AI tools to help with content creation. 

Building a site to host your courses is just as easy. You can even set up learner gateways on iOS and Android apps. Teachable integrates checkout and payment for product pages automatically. 

You can sell individual courses, academy memberships, digital downloads, and coaching sessions. Or product bundles that mix and match all. For marketing, Teachable uses email for sending upsell offers and automated abandoned cart emails. 

Teachable’s biggest limitation is that it caps published courses on all plans. So it’s great for getting started. Or if you don’t plan on having many products ‘live’ at any one time. But not so much if you want to grow an education or coaching business at scale.

Teachable Features

Teachable is designed for creators who want to get a course live quickly, with minimal setup and a low learning curve.

• Beginner-friendly course builder focused on fast publishing.
• AI tools to help generate course outlines and learning content.
• Support for courses, coaching programs, digital downloads, and bundles.
• Automatically generated sales pages and checkout flows.
• Integrated payment processing and tax handling.
• Built-in email tools for upsells and abandoned cart recovery.
• Native iOS and Android learner apps.
• Simple analytics for tracking sales and enrollments.

Teachable plans start at $29 per month for one course, but it has a 7.5% transaction fee on every sale. The Builder plan is much better value at $69 a month with no transaction fees and 5 courses. There’s an exclusive 30-day free trial for EmailVendorSelection readers.

Try Teachable for free or read our full review

LearnWorlds – Best for Engaging Course Design

LearnWorlds is a top LMS and online course builder. It has everything you need to start creating, hosting, and selling courses. From short one-off courses to sophisticated commercial and academic programs. In all cases, I think the slick design and UX are a big plus.

LearnWorld has an impressive choice of learning and assessment features. Best of all, it has an AI assistant for piecing everything together. You set descriptions for courses, modules, or chapters. And the types of content and activities you want to include. The AI will then do everything from suggesting course structure and assessment to create course materials.

LearnWorlds is great for bringing learning to life with interactive content. It automatically adds quizzes to videos and documents. And you can add surveys to gather learner feedback. Access choices include on-demand downloads, drip release, and live sessions. LearnWorlds supports Zoom, Google Meet, WebEx, Calendly, and MS Teams for video calls and webinars. 

LearnWorlds is SCORM-compliant for syncing with other learning resources. There is white labelling available for creating branded course websites and mobile apps. You can sell subscriptions, memberships, and one-off courses.

LearnWorlds Features

LearnWorlds makes the list of best LMS platforms for a reason. It stands out for its focus on learner engagement, interactivity, and polished course design.

• AI-powered course builder that helps structure courses, generate content, and design assessments faster.
• Interactive video with in-video quizzes, pop-ups, navigation, links, and calls to action.
• Interactive eBooks that let learners highlight text, add notes, and engage directly with course material.
• Built-in assessments including quizzes, exams, assignments, and surveys.
• Native community and social learning tools to encourage discussion and peer interaction.
• Drip schedules, live sessions, and downloadable content for flexible course delivery.
• White-label course websites with branding controls.
• Native mobile apps for iOS and Android, helping you reach learners in app stores.
• Built-in sales pages, funnels, and checkout for selling courses, memberships, and subscriptions.

LearnWorlds’ Starter plan costs $24 per month, billed annually. This lets you build as many paid courses as you like. But it only includes basic quiz assessments and no live sessions. Your course website can only have three pages. And there’s a $5 transaction fee for every learner enrollment. LearnWorlds has a 30-day free trial.

LearnWorlds has generously offered EVS readers a coupon code. Use code “JVR30” at checkout for 30% off for the first month on monthly Pro Trainer plans or above.

Try Learnworlds for free

Kajabi – Best All-In-One Platform for Monetizing Knowledge

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform for making, marketing, and selling education products. That covers online courses, coaching programs, podcasts, and newsletter subscriptions. It includes everything you need for building course websites and product landing pages. Plus branded mobile apps, email campaigns, sales funnels, and other CRM tools. 

Kajabi’s wide scope and pricing make it best suited to larger education businesses. Or those where courses form part of a broader content business. Its product builders are slick and professional. It offers a choice of themes that help create a general look and feel. Plus a limited number of more complete templates. There’s also a template marketplace where you can buy from other users. All are fully customizable with advanced editing tools.

One of Kajabi’s biggest strengths is its built-in marketing tools. You don’t need a separate marketing stack. You can build an audience with forms and social integrations. Track interactions and behaviour. Target communications based on that data. And automate the whole sales and marketing journey. That’s very appealing if you like the idea of working on a single platform.

Kajabi Features

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform designed to help creators build, market, and sell knowledge products.

• Course builder for online courses, coaching programs, and memberships.
• Hosted websites with customizable themes and page templates.
• Advanced email marketing with automations, broadcasts, and tagging.
• Built-in sales funnels and pipelines for launches and evergreen offers.
• Community features for discussions and member engagement.
• Integrated checkout and payment processing with no transaction fees.
• Support for podcasts, newsletters, and digital downloads.
• Branded mobile apps for iOS and Android on higher plans.
• CRM-like contact management and analytics for tracking customer behavior.

Paid plans start at $143 per month, billed annually. This Basic plans includes 5 products, 1 website, and 2500 contacts. But there’s no limit on emails, landing pages, and funnels. There’s a 14-day free trial.

Try Kajabi for free

FreshLearn – Best for Budget-Conscious Educators

FreshLearn is a course builder that scores great on usability and value. It covers the full range of tools you need. And it’s particularly strong in monetization and marketing. But it’s also as user-friendly as any other creator-focused LMS.

FreshLearn’s value comes from a combination of low cost and bringing a lot of features into one platform. This reduces the need for multiple subscriptions. It covers course building, web hosting, and email marketing. All paid plans include unlimited courses and charge no sales commission. Plus, there’s a free tier you can use to build and sell your first course.

FreshLearn has excellent support across the platform. Like walk-throughs for creating courses and sales pages. It sets up checkouts and member portals automatically when you build a course. You can also sell live ‘masterclasses’ and digital downloads. Flexible payment and earning features include subscriptions and course/product bundles. Or you can sell memberships to VIP learner forums. 

FreshLearn goes the extra mile with its email marketing tools. It has a great drag-and-drop builder. On higher plans, you can create simple triggered automations. Other cool features include gamified progress tracking for learners. This lets them earn points for various learning milestones. And redeem them for discounts on future purchases. You can also give customers referral codes to recommend your courses to other people.

FreshLearn Features

FreshLearn punches above its weight by offering a lot of functionality at a very affordable price, making it ideal for budget-conscious educators and creators.

• Course builder for on-demand courses, live workshops, and masterclasses.
• Built-in sales pages with integrated checkout and payment processing.
• Support for subscriptions, memberships, bundles, and digital downloads.
• Unlimited courses and enrollments on paid plans.
• Native email marketing with a drag-and-drop email builder.
• Simple automation for emails and learner actions on higher plans.
• Gamified learning with points, progress tracking, and rewards.
• Referral and loyalty programs to encourage repeat purchases.

FreshLearn plans start at $35 per month, billed every 2 years. This includes unlimited courses, unlimited enrollments, and 3,000 emails. The free plan lets you build 1 product and enroll 25 students.

Get started with FreshLearn for free or read our full review

TalentLMS – Best for In-House Training

TalentLMS is a big name in corporate learning management software. It specializes in employee training. Particularly new starter onboarding, compliance, and cybersecurity. Customers include enterprise big-hitters like Google, Oracle, Meta, and Amazon. But it’s also popular with smaller businesses. They appreciate TalentLMS’s user-friendly UI and rapid course launch times.

AI is central to TalentLMS’s speed and simplicity. It uses AI intelligently at every stage. This starts with assessing skill requirements. And structuring training programs around tackling skills gaps and supporting individual development. From there, TalentLMS uses AI tools to create learning materials and assessments. This includes turning existing documentation into snappy, accessible course content. Everything from flashcards to graphics.

It has two excellent user-facing AI tools, too. One that translates course materials into any language. And another that serves as a learning assistant. Answering questions and providing summaries and prompts on demand.

TalentLMS doesn’t have tools for marketing and selling courses. But there is a large list of integrations, including ecommerce platforms Shopify and WooCommerce. And payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe. So you can use it to monetize online training, too. Similarly, TalentLMS course page designs are basic. But you can connect to a WordPress site to build your own pages.

Paid plans start at $119 per month, billed annually. This includes 40 users/learners, unlimited courses, and AI tools promos. A free plan includes 5 users and lets you build 10 courses.

360Learning – Best for Collaborative Team Learning

360Learning positions itself as a collaborative learning platform for internal teams. That covers a couple of things:

1. It supports teams of subject matter experts in contributing to training programs. Not just in building courses, but delivering learning in real time. 
2. It’s big on interactive learning and learner participation. So there’s a strong emphasis on learners collaborating in their own training.

360Learning lets L&D teams build branded academies. These serve as platforms for hosting courses, webinars, and training materials. Beyond that, they are where learning communities come together to collaborate. Academy tools include forums for expert-to-expert, expert-to-learner, and learner-to-learner discussions. Experts can collaborate on materials, course design, and assessments here. But learners can also use these tools to ‘crowdsource’ information. Both from experts and each other.

360Learning’s other big strength is AI. AI tools help to create personalized learning paths for individual learners. They feature in assessing skills needs. Identifying suitable learning resources from across a business. And tracking learner progress. Learners get AI assistants to help with scheduling, assignment choice, and queries.

360Learning charges a flat fee of $8 per user, up to 100 users. This covers both experts/course creators and learners. Above 100 users, pricing is by application. There’s a 30-day free trial.

Sana – Best for AI-Driven Corporate Learning

Most learning platforms use AI in one form or another these days. Sana has a good claim to be furthest down the AI path. It uses AI for: 

1. Creating courses and learning content.
2. Automating learning management.
3. Providing learners with a personal ‘AI tutor’ to guide them.

One of the biggest benefits users report is how much Sana slashes course creation times. Often down to a matter of hours. Sana’s AI tools pull in potential learning resources from across an organization. And then help flip them quickly into attractive content. Complete with quizzes and other forms of assessment. There’s also a feature to build animated instructional videos from text prompts. And AI tools will translate content into multiple languages. 

Sana tracks learner progress in real time. You can use this to automate the release of course content. And learners can always view their own performance via their AI assistant. Sana’s AI learns individual preferences and learning styles over time. It then shapes course delivery accordingly, giving personalized recommendations and prompts.

Sana charges a flat fee of $13 per user license, with a minimum of 300 users. There’s no free plan, but you can book a free demo.

Podia – Best for Simple Digital Products

Podia isn’t strictly a learning platform. Its purpose is to help creators and entrepreneurs sell digital products. Including online courses, webinars, and coaching.

Podia’s USP is simplicity. It’s designed to make building online stores and websites easy. That carries over into creating courses and other products. It’s all about drag-and-drop no-code editors. Customizable section templates. And a clean, user-friendly interface. 

Podia isn’t a platform for creating in-depth courses and learning programs. It’s mainly about speed and convenience. Assessments don’t stretch much beyond simple quizzes. And reporting focuses on sales performance, rather than learner progress. 

But it works well for anyone looking to monetize knowledge in a simple way. It has a good choice of learning materials, pathways, learner communities, live one-to-one, and group sessions. Every product comes with a sales page with payment integration. And Podia also has email marketing tools for promoting your products.

Paid plans start at $33 per month, billed annually. This includes unlimited courses and products. But there is a 5% transaction fee on this cheapest tier. And email marketing costs extra if you have more than 100 subscribers. There’s no transaction fee on higher tiers. But the extra charge for email applies on both plans. There’s a 30-day free trial.

Moodle – Best for Open-Source Flexibility

Moodle is the WordPress of LMS software. Open-source and free to use, Moodle is an alternative to off-the-shelf LMS options. It’s popular with schools, colleges, universities, and training providers around the world. Its biggest draw is complete freedom for shaping your own learning environment. But like WordPress, the trade-off is technical complexity.

Moodle works best for large education establishments with large e-learning requirements. 

Course and learning pathway features are fully customizable. The same applies to content and learner number. You can make courses as big as you need. Offer as many courses as you like. And have as many learners as you like. Moodle is fully SCORM compliant. So you can import courses and learning materials from any other LMS. And export them to other platforms, too. It’s excellent for assessments, grading, and tracking progress. You can build fully integrated academies and learner communities. And custom-brand everything you build.

Although Moodle is technically free, there are usually costs involved. You need to pay for hosting for your online learning environment. You can pay for a site via MoodleCloud. Or choose your own provider. Many users employ certified Moodle specialists to build and manage their platforms. Moodle doesn’t directly support monetizing courses and learning products. But again, like WordPress, almost anything is possible via an enormous plug-in ecosystem. This includes integrations with ecommerce platforms.

Moodle is free to use and has no subscription plans.

LifterLMS – Best for WordPress-Based Courses

LifterLMS is an LMS plug-in for WordPress. It gives you everything you need to build, sell, and manage courses via a WordPress site. Compared to off-the-shelf course builders, Lifter’s biggest USP is design flexibility. That’s always a given when you’re working with WordPress. But it takes some technical know-how.

One thing that really stands out with Lifter is choice of features. This applies across course creation, monetization, and student engagement. You can build everything from short one-off courses to fully certified extended programs. Lifter includes a drag-and-drop course builder and supports multimedia content. Instructional design tools help you shape course structure so learning progress makes sense. And you get full control over progression rules. You can make lessons or assignments prerequisites for final completion. And set rules for when and how new content gets released. And you can sell memberships to your site. With special perks in prices and course access.

All courses get their own sales pages. As a WordPress platform, you get complete freedom over branding these pages. The same applies to course pages, student dashboards, and member portals. You can customize these fully using WordPress themes and page builders. WordPress also gives you access to an enormous ecosystem of plugins. This lets you extend what you can do with Lifter’s own tools. Again, the catch is you have to know how to use these tools. And you are responsible for all the technical side of managing your site.

The LifterLMS plug-in for WordPress is free to use. This lets you build courses in WordPress. But it doesn’t include site hosting or ecommerce tools. Paid plans with these features start at $149.50 per year.

Get LifterLMS for free

Skilljar – Best for Customer Product Training

External LMS systems are not just popular with third-party training providers. They’re also used by companies to provide product training to customers and partners. This is common with B2B tech businesses. Anything where product onboarding is an important part of the service.

Skilljar specializes in this type of training. It helps vendors build customer-facing training academies. Develop the training programs themselves. Manage access for customers. And handle any necessary accreditation.

Learning content types include on-demand video tutorials, documents, and assignments. Skilljar integrates with Zoom and WebEx to deliver live webinar sessions. And it connects with LinkedIn for issuing online certificates to reward learners’ achievements.

Skilljar helps monetize product training. You can connect to a Salesforce account and include training seats as part of a sales contract. You can sell courses and course bundles, too. Skilljar supports payment via Stripe, PayPal, and Salesforce. 

A big strength is Skilljar’s analytics. It monitors learner progress and course performance metrics natively. With integrations to Salesforce and Gainsight, you can turn these into financial KPIs. And track how course enrollments and sales impact your bottom line.

Skilljar doesn’t publish details of its pricing. It does outline three pricing tiers. Starting with an Essentials plan that includes one academy site with unlimited courses. But you have to apply for a quote based on your expected number of users. Reported prices typically start at around $5,000 a year.

Open LMS – Best for Hosted Moodle Deployments

I talked about Moodle, the open-source LMS. Moodle’s open-source nature means businesses can use it to build an LMS of their own. Open LMS is the biggest and best-known example. It boasts 10M active learners across 120 countries worldwide.

Open LMS acts as a middleman between Moodle and education providers. You get all the benefits of the Moodle ecosystem. The big choice of courses, learning pathways, assessments, and community tools. Moodle’s huge integration library. But Open LMS takes care of all the technical management. It provides site hosting, updates, security, and maintenance. Plus ongoing support. It also includes a clean, modern, user-friendly interface for your learning environment. And a learner-facing mobile app.  

Open LMS has two products. A corporate LMS aimed at internal training. And a platform for higher education institutions. The two share very similar feature sets, the main difference being branding. Both include Open LMS’s Personalized Learning Designer (PLD). This uses learner data to customize and automate content delivery, assessments, and feedback.

Open LMS also comes with an impressive choice of AI tools. They include a content generator for TinyMCE, Moodle’s text editor. A separate tool for teachers creates everything from lesson plans to assessment schemes. And plagiarism detection software and grading tools. 

Open LMS operates a custom pricing policy based on the number of active learners you have. There’s no free plan or trial, but you can access a product demo on request.

Academy of Mine – Best for Professional Training Providers

Academy of Mine is an LMS aimed at professional training businesses. It provides white label branding for courses and academy platforms. And ecommerce tools for selling courses online. It specializes in accredited training in areas like compliance and licensing.

This specialist focus shines through in course building and learner tracking. Academy of Mine prioritizes formal learning pathways over creative content. It helps you build courses in line with strict accreditation criteria. And provides tools to link completion to external certification. Delivery options include on-demand course downloads and live training sessions. You can plan and schedule in-person training and host online webinars.

An Academy of Mine account includes a single platform for hosting all your courses. You can create different portals for different customers or categories. Branding features include uploading logos and custom styling. To sell courses, you can build a simple ecommerce store in the platform. This includes sales pages for every course, integrated checkout, course catalogue and about me page. But the design features are basic. Alternatively, you can connect to Shopify or WooCommerce. Or pay extra and get AoM staffers to build a customer-facing website for you.

Academy of Mine pricing starts at $999 per month. You can test it out on a free trial for 30 days.

Try Academy of Mine

Litmos – Best for Enterprise Compliance and Onboarding

Litmos is a corporate LMS aimed at larger organizations. Its main focus is internal training for enterprises. Especially compliance, onboarding and role-based development. But it also supports external customer and sales training. So it’s suitable for large B2B vendors that sell product training packages. 

Litmos’s biggest strength is scale. It supports very large cohorts with advanced learner management tools. You can tailor courses and learning materials to different cohorts and markets. Including setting multiple languages. And running different branding across different training courses. 

Litmos uses AI across many features and functions. For course building, you can generate detailed program structures from simple text prompts. Then generate multimedia course materials. Translate them into different languages. And create relevant, graded assessments. A really cool tool is Litmos’s interactive video assessments. Learners engage with the videos in real time. AI scores the responses, removing bias. You can automate assignment reminders, grading and certification to save time.

AI also plays a big role in learner engagement. Trainees get their own AI assistant that provides real-time, chat-based support. Over time, it understands individual learning styles to recommend training materials. Admins can interact with the AI to create curated ‘playlists’ for each learner. These align easily with personal development or skills-based competency pathways.

Another big strength is Litmos’s reporting tools. Admins get in-depth but easy-to-read dashboards with customizable KPIs. Litmos supports an impressive list of HR and other enterprise software integrations. So it’s easy to make training data available wherever it’s needed in the organization.

Litmos provides pricing by application only. It does advertise two tiers. A Foundation plan with a 250 learner limit. And a Platinum plan with unlimited learners and all AI tools available. There’s no free tier, but there is a 14-day free trial.

4 Free LMS Platforms

FreshLearn

FreshLearn’s free plan is like a free trial without a time limit. It makes course building and selling affordable and accessible. You get course creation, hosting, marketing and sales in one user-friendly platform. On the free plan, you can create a single course or other learning product with 25 students. You can build three sales pages to promote it.

That means FreshLearn’s free plan is a great way to start – but you may grow out of it. If you’re new to making and selling courses, it’s a great starter. The free version doesn’t end  after 30 days. You get as long as you want to play and find your feet.

Create your course with FreshLearn for free

Sakai

Sakai is a 100% free, open-source LMS. Popular with universities and educational institutions, its biggest strength is its user community. Users build their own Sakai-specific tools and plug-ins. And then release them to the rest of the community, all for free. As a result, Sakai has tons of course creation and delivery resources. It also supports learner and faculty networking and communication. 

As with most open-source platforms, Sakai works best if you have some technical skills. You need third-party hosting for your e-learning resources. And it doesn’t include any native sales or marketing tools.

ILIAS

ILIAS is one of the oldest learning management systems still going. It’s an open-source platform which is completely free to use. It supports course creation and management, testing and assessment. And features like digital portfolios, wikis and learner surveys.

All courses and content published in ILIAS are SCORM compliant. So it offers easy compatibility with other LMS’s. Like similar platforms, ILIAS doesn’t include hosting for courses and content. So there are costs incurred outside the platform. And setup and management require technical skills.

Best LMS per Industries and Use Cases

One of the things that makes choosing an LMS hard is not just how many there are. It’s how many different types there are. And all the niches and specialisms for different types of educators. I’ve gone into detail about my favourite LMSs and who they are for. And picked out 4 great free platforms, too. Here’s a run-through of some of the best LMS by business type, industry, and use case.

Best LMS to Create and Sell Your Own Courses

An LMS for course creators has to do more than deliver lessons. The best online course platforms help you build professional learning content quickly. Support flexible pricing and product formats. And make it easy to market and sell courses.

• Thinkific is easy to set up, supports memberships and bundles, and gives you control over course delivery and learner pacing. You also get tools to publish, promote, and sell courses.
• Teachable is ideal for first-time course sellers who want speed and simplicity. It’s quick to publish courses, includes built-in checkout, and supports coaching and digital downloads.
• LearnWorlds is the best choice if you care most about engagement and course design. It brings interactive video and ebooks into your learning experience, with strong assessment tools and options for branded websites and apps.
• FreshLearn is the strongest budget-friendly platform for selling courses. It includes course creation, sales pages, checkout, and built-in email marketing, with extra monetization tools like referrals and loyalty rewards.

Best LMS for Small Business Internal Training

Small businesses need to train their people, too. You also get small, niche training providers. And SMB tech firms that need to provide product onboarding. In short, small businesses benefit from training-focused LMSs, too. But they also need speed, simplicity and affordable pricing. These examples fit that criteria.

• LearnWorlds is a good choice for small businesses that want engaging internal training. Interactive video, assessments, and adjustable delivery work well for onboarding and upskilling.
• FreshLearn is affordable and makes it easy to run internal training programs. Good for teams that need course delivery, tracking, and built-in communication tools.
• 360Learning offers peer-led learning for growing teams. Ideal when internal experts create and share knowledge.
• TalentLMS is good for speedy setup and AI-assisted course creation. A popular choice with SMBs and large enterprises.
• iSpring Learn is great for simple, structured training with strong reporting. Works well for onboarding and compliance without heavy setup.

Best LMS for Corporate Training

Corporate training platforms serve large cohorts. Their most important attributes are supporting consistent, structured programs. Reliable compliance with external accreditation where needed. And accurate performance tracking and reporting across cohorts.

• TalentLMS specializes in skills-based internal training. Works well for onboarding and compliance programs and provides useful automation tools.
• Moodle Workplace is a Moodle product tailored for corporate use. Good for complex organization structures and internal reporting. As well as open-source flexibility.
• Docebo provides advanced AI-driven learning and integrations. Best suited to larger enterprises.
• 360Learning encourages expert-led and social learning across teams.

Best LMS for Schools and Higher Education

Schools, colleges and universities need more advanced course creation tools. They have to follow assessment, grading, and content standards. And usually need to run very large numbers of courses and programs.

• Canvas is widely used in universities. Strong tools for grading, collaboration, and accessibility.
• Open LMS has managed Moodle hosting with enterprise-grade support for institutions.
• Moodle is hugely popular across academia. Provides open-ended scalability and flexibility for course development and learner numbers. Best for larger institutions with technical resources.

Best LMS for Nonprofits

Nonprofits need to balance limited budgets with diverse learning needs. The best learning platforms here support education, fundraising, and community engagement without heavy costs.

• Thinkific ticks boxes for easy course creation, integrated selling tools, and affordable pricing. Useful for public education and donor training.
• Teachable is an easy-to-use LMS for nonprofits creating public education and training programs. Quick setup makes it practical for teams with limited technical resources.
• FreshLearn is a budget-friendly LMS with built-in tools for courses, donations-style sales, and community engagement. With unlimited courses on all plan, it’s a good fit for nonprofits working with tight budgets.
• Open LMS is a reliable platform for structured programs and grant-funded training.
• 360Learning’s collaborative learning approach is ideal for knowledge sharing across teams.

Best Open-Source LMS

Open-source LMS platforms offer maximum control and customization. But they do come with a learning curve. They suit organizations with technical resources. And a need for fully customized learning environments. 

• Moodle is the most widely used open-source LMS. Has a huge plugin ecosystem and strong standards support.
• Open edX is built for large-scale courses and MOOCs. Used by major institutions.
• Canvas is built on an open-source core with commercial hosting. Strong academic focus.

Best LMS for WordPress

WordPress LMS plugins let you build your learning environment on a WordPress site. Ideal if you already run a WordPress site. Or if you want to create a commercial education business with full control over branding, content, and monetization.

• LifterLMS gives you all the tools you need to create, manage, and sell courses on WordPress.
• Teachery is a simple, creator-friendly plug-in. Best for straightforward courses. Read our full Teachery review to find out more about its features, pros, cons, and pricing.
• Masteriyo is a lightweight LMS plugin with a modern UI. Easy to get started.
• LearnDash is feature-rich and widely used. Supports advanced course logic.
• Tutor LMS is a popular and user-friendly WordPress course builder. Includes native ecommerce and payment tools. 

Conclusion: What is the Best LMS for You?

I hope one message comes through loud and clear above all others from this guide. There’s no single best LMS. In such a crowded marketplace, it’s all about understanding your needs, the different types of LMS and what they offer. Then picking the right type. Before narrowing it down to your business size, budget, and specific use cases.

If you’re a creator or small business selling courses, budget will be a big differentiator. Thinkific, FreshLearn, and Kajabi give you everything you need to build and grow an online knowledge business. LearnWorlds stands out for learner experience and engagement. And it’s very easy to create and sell courses with Teachable. Kajabi and Learnworlds are pricier platforms. 

For internal training and corporate learning, the choice is huge. Drilling down to who you’re training, what you’re training in, and size of cohorts really matters. TalentLMS is one of the most popular LMSs for internal training for businesses big and small. Skilljar has the edge in customer and partner training. Academy of Mine is ideal for commercial training providers. 360Learning takes a unique collaborative approach that suits expert-led teams. Litmos and Sana provide onboarding, compliance and role-based development.

For academia and education, open-source LMS platforms are popular. They provide the scale, flexibility and control to build very large course libraries. Extended but structured pathways. And fully customized learning environments. Moodle is the go-to platform for many educational institutions. But it requires technical expertise. And although Moodle itself is free, you need hosting on top. Managed Moodle platforms like Open LMS handle the technical side for you. 

Best LMS FAQ

The post 15+ Best LMS Software Reviewed: Our Honest Picks for 2026 appeared first on Email vendor selection.

Today, we’re looking at 19 AI writing assistants with email writing functionality and the best practices to get results using them.

19 Best Email Writers Overview

“AI writes the content and paints the picture of whatever may be in your mind.  Writers and designers need to pivot, says Aaron Beatty. Embracing these tools as a starting point for their human intuition to enhance. It should move the entire industry forward.” (emailmonday)

49% of B2B marketers use generative AI to create emails. With AI email writers, you can shorten the email creation process. While the outputs of AI email writing tools are not perfect, they are effective in assisting human writers to save time, overcome writer’s block, and generate ideas.

AI email writing tools come in different shapes and sizes. AI email writers built specifically to help you write emails faster. And marketing platforms with AI email writing features. This article looks at both so you can see what’s out and what’s right for you.

These are the best standalone AI email writers:

And these are the best marketing platforms with AI email writing:

What is an AI Email Writer?

An AI email writer is an email writing tool that uses artificial intelligence to generate email copy.

AI email writers fall under a category of artificial intelligence called Natural Language Processing, or NLP. NLP uses a technology called Large Language Models (LLM). LLMs are algorithms that analyze how language works. The most famous LLM is OpenAI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer or GPT model. It’s the LLM that powers most AI email writers.

14 Best Standalone AI Email Writing Tools in 2026

1. WriteSonic — Best for writing cold emails

Writesonic is an AI writer for SEO-friendly blogs, social media posts, Facebook ads, Google ads, and Shopify. And it has an email writer, too.

It’s one of the most user-friendly AI tools for creating emails. Its email copy tools include a subject line generator, cold email generator, and call to action generator.

WriteSonic has an email V2 page, your working space for generating emails. This V2 page lets you enter details like the recipient’s name, position, email description, language, and email type. You’ll get email copy variations based on these inputs.

The email copy generator can write emails in 25+ languages.

WriteSonic’s pricing starts at $12.67/month for 1 user and 200K words. That’s using GPT-3.5. You can use GPT-4.0 for the same price for 33K words. The Unlimited plan starts at $16 a month with no word limit. There is also a free version with 10,000 words.

Try WriteSonic

2. Rytr — Best value for money

Rytr is an AI writing tool with an email writing assistant that writes sales and marketing emails. 

The first step is to select a language from 30+ languages. Next, you choose the tone of your email from 20+ tones. The third step is to pick a use case, there’s 1 for email. And in the last step, you add the keywords, phrases, or titles and Rytr will generate the email for you.

There are over 40+ use cases in Rytr with different content types that you can pick.

Rytr pricing starts at just $9 a month for 100k characters a month. There’s also a free plan with 10,000 characters a month.

Get started with Rytr for free

3. Scalenut — Best for writing sales email copy

Scalenut is an AI content generator and SEO optimization tool. Sales email generation is part of its AI tools. The Scalenut email writer is for generating sales copy only. It’s simple to use in 4 easy steps:

Input your brand name and a description to explain your value proposition. Next, you add context to include in your email. 

Finally, add the sender’s designation and click generate. Mention the designation of the email’s recipient, and let Scalenut’s AI produce results.

Scalenut pricing starts at $39 a month. For that, you can generate 100,000 words and create 5 SEO articles. There is a 7-day free trial.

Try Scalenut here

4. CopyAI — Best for cold email generation

CopyAI is a popular copywriting platform with over 10 million users worldwide. It has 30+ different email marketing templates.

The AI email writer analyzes your audience, brand voice, and goals to write email subject lines, email content, and CTAs. It has a tool for writing marketing emails to tell your audience about your product.

Copy.ai writes personalized cold emails with its free LinkedIn-powered cold email generator. It’s easy to try, all you need is to fill in your LinkedIn URL and offer a description.

CopyAI pricing starts at $49 a month for 5 users and there are no limits on word count or number of projects. There is a free plan with 2,000 words a month.

Get started with Copy.ai for free

5. AnyWord — Best for email copy analysis

AnyWord is an AI email writing tool for marketers to create engaging email campaigns, cold emails, and subject lines. 

It has 7 templates for emails, an email copy generator, predictive performance scores, and a rewrite tool. 

The predictive performance score in AnyWord predicts how well the email copy will perform. This score is a standout feature of AnyWord. You can also rewrite on AnyWord to improve email content to suit your brand voice and writing style.

Anyword pricing starts at $39 a month for 1 user. There are no limits on how many words or articles you can write or edit. There’s a free 7-day trial.

6. Hypotenuse — Best for ecommerce emails

Hypotenuse is an AI writing software that generates emails, blog articles, ads, and product descriptions. The AI email writer has brand customization to align copy with your brand and target audience.

Hypotenuse’s key features include HypoChat, Subject Line Generator, and Email Generator.

All you need is to type in the title of your email and provide context to generate subject lines. HypoChat is Hypotenuse’s AI chatbot for email responses. The AI responds to your prompt and uses the information to generate email ideas and craft full emails.

One of the standout features of Hypotenuse is the Shopify integration. Once connected, you can import your product data into Hypotenuse’s batch generator. And it will generate hundreds of optimized descriptions in minutes. You can use these descriptions in your email promotions. Find the best email marketing tools for Shopify here to send your ecommerce email campaigns.

Pricing starts at $15 a month for 20,000 words. There is a 7-day free trial.

7. Jasper — Best for email content creation at scale

Jasper is an AI-powered writing assistant that helps businesses create marketing content, such as blog posts, social media posts, sales emails, and website copy. 

It has an email writer that can write email subject lines and email copy. All you need to do is to input your prompt and make suggestions. Your prompt should include the subject line, CTA, and a content summary.

If you want Jasper to suggest email subject lines, enter your company or product’s name, brand voice, and the goal of your email. Jasper will generate a list of email subject lines you can use or tweak to fit your needs.

There are over 50+ templates and you can customize these to maintain your brand tone and style. Jasper has a convenient Chrome extension to add AI writing to any website, Gmail, and Google Docs.

Pros

• 50+ templates, including email marketing templates 
• 25 languages
• Support for Grammarly 

Cons

• The plagiarism checker costs an extra

Jasper’s plans start at $39 per month for 1 user. Team accounts cost $99/month for 3 users. There is a 7-day free trial to test the platform.

Try Jasper here

8. Lavender – Best for AI email writing suggestions

Lavender is an AI sales email writer and assistant for sales email writing. Sales teams use Lavender to write emails and create email responses faster.

The AI email coach analyzes your emails and helps you improve the writing style and tone of your emails. It learns from emails that get positive replies and suggests ways you can improve your campaigns. The email coach gives you a rating between 1-100 and detects tones in your emails.

Lavender has a personalization assistant that can scrape your recipient’s information on LinkedIn and use it to improve the quality of your outreach.

It has a free forever plan, and paid plans start at $29 per month with unlimited emails, unlimited personalization, unlimited features, unlimited AI recommendations, mobile optimization, and chat support.

9. Flowrite – Best for inbox integrations

Flowrite is an AI writing tool designed to help users write emails. It’s best for customer support reps and HR/recruiting specialists.

It’s compatible with popular personal inbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo and has a browser extension. Flowrite has an AI template gallery with 20+ common emails featuring general templates, pre-meeting emails, sales prospecting, and demo invitations.

Flowrite organizes messages by use case or context. There are marketing, customer service, and sales templates. It has built-in prompts to help users generate highly personalized emails with names, greetings, and sign-offs.

One of its standout features is that it works directly in Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn, and other platforms to improve your workflow.

Flowrite has an instant reply feature on Gmail. When responding to an email, Flowrite generates personalized suggestions created to match the received email, your role, and how you typically communicate. Users can tweak emails based on these suggestions.

Flowrite has a 14-day free trial. Paid plans start at $5 per month for 15 messages, $15 per month for 150 messages, and $30 per month for unlimited messages.

10. Grammarly — Best for error-free email writing

Grammarly is an AI writing software with over 30 million daily active users. It’s one of the most popular text correction and writing tools.

GrammarlyGO offers text generation including an AI email writer to help you quickly draft emails. 

With the Grammarly Chrome extension, you can look through suggested edits and make corrections in your email client.

Grammarly is free to use for checking basic correctness and clarity. And you get 100 GrammarlyGO prompts a month for free. The Premium plan costs $12 a month for 1000 prompts and grammatical consistency, engagement, and fluency tools.

11. ChatGPT — Best for AI-powered research

ChatGPT is the most popular AI writer in this article. It’s run by OpenAI, the people behind the GPT family of large language models. GPT models drive many of the services mentioned in this article. ChatGPT is simply OpenAI’s interface.

With its chatbot interface, you can generate written content of any type. Compared to other AI email writers, it doesn’t focus on email composition. You ask it a question or tell it something you want it to write. If you’re looking for more specialized tools, check out our review of the best ChatGPT alternatives.

For example, you can ask ChatGPT to suggest 5-6 email subject lines or CTAs.

ChatGPT is free to use. The Plus plan starts at $20 per month. Responses can be slow when it gets heavy traffic and paid plans have priority access. 

12. CloserCopy — Best for multi-language support

ClosersCopy is an AI email writer to craft business emails and newsletters. It doesn’t use the GPT language models as many other tools in this list. If you’re looking for something different from the mainstream, ClosersCopy is worth a shot. 

It has a drag-and-drop copy builder to write content, like emails, text blocks, and CTAs.

One of the advanced features of CloserCopy is its copy emotion analysis. This helps identify and adjust the emotions in your copy. ClosersCopy has a spam analysis feature to check for words often flagged as spam by email providers.

It supports 128 languages. So, it’s a truly global AI copywriting tool. It also has great in-app support, with handy video tutorials. Plus, an active community of fellow users.

Paid plans start at $49.99 monthly for 2 users and 300 AI generation ‘runs.’ There are no limits on higher plans. There is no free version, just a 14-day money-back guarantee.

13. Yet Another Mail Merge AI email writer — Best for personalization and AI writing for Gmail

Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM) is an email tool to send personalized mass emails with Google Sheets and Gmail.

YAMM also has an AI email writer. Input the topic of your email, choose a tone and a writing style, and click Generate to get your email copy. The recipient field is optional. Here you can select age ranges, business, private, and education recipient types. You can also add 600 characters of additional details to tweak the output.

YAMM works for birthday emails, welcome emails, and discount emails. In total, they have 37+ email examples. You can personalize subject lines, email body, links, images, and attachments to make your emails effective.

The YAMM email writer is free to use. YAMM pricing starts at $25 per month for 400 recipients per day. There’s a free plan with all the basic features and 50 messages per day.

14. Hyperwrite — Best for writing email responses

Hyperwrite is an AI tool that helps you write, rewrite, generate speech, respond to emails, and edit content. Its standout feature for emails is the email responder tool. It takes incoming emails and a shorthand response to generate an email reply. There are AI templates for marketing emails and subject lines.

All you need to do is describe what you want to include in your email and the goals you want to achieve. You can go back and tweak the prompt to get different results.

To use the subject line generator, input the email body and the goal of your email to provide context for the AI. Click the ‘Generate’ button, and the AI will create a subject line based on your input.‍

Hyperwrite pricing starts at $19.99 per month for 200 assistant credits. A credit is 1 assistant message or 10 browser actions. HyperWrite has a limited free plan but they don’t have info about the limits on their site. 

5 Best Marketing Platforms with AI Email Writing

1. HubSpot — Best marketing and sales platform with AI writing

HubSpot is a marketing, sales, and CRM platform with built-in AI email writing for both marketing campaigns and sales outreach. You can use its AI to write marketing emails, sales emails, follow-ups, and subject lines directly inside the email editor or sales tools.

The AI works inside HubSpot’s drag-and-drop email editor. You add a prompt describing your goal, audience, and tone, and the AI generates email copy you can edit or regenerate. 

For sales teams, HubSpot’s AI helps write one-to-one sales emails and sequences, using CRM data like contact properties and deal stage to personalize the message.

HubSpot also includes AI tools beyond email writing. You can use AI to write blog posts, landing page copy, CTAs, and chat replies, and to summarize CRM records and email threads. These features make it easier to keep your email messaging aligned with the rest of your marketing and sales content.

HubSpot has a free plan that includes email marketing, a CRM, basic AI email writing, forms, and contact management, with 1,000 contacts and 2,000 emails per month. HubSpot prices with AI email writing start at $20/month and include higher email send limits, sales email tools, automation, personalization using CRM data, and access to AI for marketing and sales content.

Get started with HubSpot for free or read our full review

2. MailerLite — Best simple email marketing tools with AI

MailerLite is a simple and effective email marketing software with AI email writing. The AI writing assistant and subject line generator use the GPT models.

The email editor is the main playground, with over 20 pre-built content modules. It has AB testing to experiment with variations of AI-generated content. Try different styles and messaging to discover what works the best.

One of the standout features of MailerLite is its integration with Canva. You add your designs from Canva to MailerLite with 3 clicks.

MailerLite has a forever free plan with 500 subscribers, 12,000 monthly emails, 1 user, the AI writing assistant, a drag-and-drop editor, a pop-up editor, and an email automation builder.

MailerLite’s Growing Business plan starts at $10.00/month with AI features, 500 contacts, unlimited monthly emails, 3 users, and 24/7 email support.

Try MailerLite for free or read our full review

3. Brevo — Best for writing subject lines

Brevo is an email marketing and sales software with an AI email assistant that generates email copy and subject lines. 

To use Brevo for subject lines, enter your campaign’s main topic or keywords in the text field to help Brevo’s AI understand your prompt and generate your email content. You can add a maximum of 120 characters.

Brevo will give you subject line suggestions. Click Start to generate suggestions and check through the suggestions to find your best fit.

You can personalize your subject line using one of your contact attributes, such as your recipient’s name. 

In the Brevo drag-and-drop editor, there’s an AI tab in the left sidebar. You can use it to create from scratch or edit existing content.

Brevo has a packed free plan that includes the AI assistant. Brevo pricing starts at $9 per month (billed annually at $8.08/mo).

Get started with Brevo for free or read our full review

4. GetResponse — Best funnel building and AI combo

GetResponse is a marketing automation platform with email marketing at its core. The GetResponse team released the AI subject line and email generator in August 2023. Both use OpenAI’s GPT-3 technology.

The AI subject line generator helps you create subject lines for your email campaigns. It’s a very simple tool. Add keywords about your email, your business type, if you want to include emojis or not, and hit “Generate”. You’ll get 5 subject line variations to choose from or AB test.

Generating emails starts with adding keywords and selecting a business type. You’ll also need to describe the target audience and choose an email type. Then you can pick, a tone, a layout, and a design preset and GetResponse will generate the email. All you need to do is choose the audience and hit send.

GetResponse pricing starts at $19 per month for the Email Marketing plan with 1000 contacts and the AI email generator. GetResponse has a packed free plan with 500 contacts, email marketing, landing pages, and the AI subject line generator.

Try GetResponse for free or read our full review

5. ActiveCampaign — Automation, CRM, and AI together

ActiveCampaign is one of the best email marketing automation platforms. It has AI email writing to assist in content creation.

You can use ActiveCampaign’s AI in a text block in the email editor. The ActiveCampaign AI will generate 3 versions after you enter a prompt.

ActiveCampaign plans with AI content generation start at $79/month for 1000 contacts, 3 users, email marketing, automation, and landing pages. Start with a 14-day trial to test AI content generation.

Try ActiveCampaign or read our full review

Other AI Email Writers To Consider

Here’s a list of additional AI email writing tools that I shortlisted but didn’t make it to the top 19. Definitely worth checking them out:

• Botowski is an AI content generator for copywriters and business owners. It generates email content in 2 clicks. All you need is to enter a short description of what you want to say, choose your tone, and hit generate. It’s free to use.
• Ellie is an AI email writer that learns from your writing style and creates email responses as if they were written by you. It’s available as a Chrome or Firefox Extension. Ellie’s free plan has 3 email replies a day with the GPT-3-turbo model. Paid plan starts at $19/mo with 25 replies and the GPT-4 model.

Best Practices For AI Email

Follow these best practices as you add AI to your email writing process. And create high-quality content that increases open, click, response, and conversion rates.

Run a human check on all AI-generated email content
AI email writers should serve as assistants rather than creators. They help you research, ideate, and draft copy. So, even after you get AI output, provide suggestions as prompts, do spell-checking, add emotion, and edit the content. 

Experiment with different inputs
AI writers rarely get it right the first time. Generate more variations so you can choose the best or AB test different versions. If you want a subject line for an email campaign, you can ask the AI to write 5-10 subject lines choose the best 3-4, and run an AB test.

Write quality and specific prompts
The quality of the output of an AI email generator depends on the quality of your input. For all the AI email writers in this piece, you’d need to write descriptions and input ideas for email generation and if you don’t provide all the necessary details, you’ll get a generic output.

Which is the Best AI Email Writer?

We have looked at the best AI email writers, and you’ll find some are better for sales emails or responses. While others are better for marketing emails and subject lines. 

Here are some of our recommendations based on specific features:

• Best for marketing and sales email copy: WriteSonic, CopyAI, Rytr, Scalenut, Jasper
• Best marketing platforms with AI writing: Hubspot, MailerLite, GetResponse, Brevo, ActiveCampaign 

You’ll need a way to send your campaigns if you choose an AI writer that doesn’t have email sending. Check out our reviews of the best email marketing platforms and newsletter software to find the right tool.

FAQs about AI Email Writing Tools

The post 19 Best AI Email Writers in 2026 (Tested & Reviewed) appeared first on Email vendor selection.

So if you are considering Teachable, what are the strengths of the platform that gets so many to use it? And what makes it stand out from other commercial e-learning platforms?

We’ve already reviewed over 15 online course platforms. And we gave Teachable a hands-on test to see where it stands out. I signed up and tried every feature of Teachable myself. Here I’m sharing my honest Teachable review. So you can decide if it’s the right fit for you. 

Create your course with Teachable for free

Teachable Core Features

Here’s a summary of the Teachable platform’s main features:

• Course Builder: Teachable’s AI tools turn course ideas from a prompt into curriculum outlines at the press of a button. Then it’s just adding learning content. Teachable supports text documents, video, and audio files. Plus live sessions via Zoom.
• Page Builder: Teachable’s AI tools generate web pages for every course. You can customize them with a simple block editor. The options are basic. But speed and ease of creation are major strengths.
• Course Delivery: By default, all products are available on demand once a learner buys them. You can set simple drip schedules to release lessons and materials at fixed times. And schedule live sessions via Zoom. Compliance rules let you set performance conditions for students to progress through courses.
• Promotions & Marketing: Teachable includes tools for offering discount coupons and incentivizing referrals. It has its own email tool, but this is mainly useful for transactional emails. You have to know how to code HTML to edit templates. And there are no tools for creating and automating campaigns.
• Student Engagement & Interactivity: Students can track their progress with auto-marked quizzes. You can set up community forums for students to talk to each other and you. And allow comments on all lessons.
• Monetization & Payments: Another big strength. Teachable automatically sets up sales and checkout pages for every product. It has its own payment platform that accepts various card, mobile, and BNPL transactions. You can set up pricing with one-time purchases, subscriptions, and payment plans. 
• Reporting & Analytics: Teachable keeps detailed logs of all transactions. You can filter lists, but you won’t find much trend analysis or performance metrics.
• Integrations & API: Most of the 23 integrations are email marketing and analytics platforms. You need Zoom to run live tutorials and virtual coaching sessions. Higher plans include Zapier and API access. But all tiers cap the number of integrations you can have.

Get started with Teachable for free

Teachable Pros and Cons

Launch your course with Teachable for free

Is Teachable for you?

Recommended If:

• You’re a creator or coach starting in online education. There’s no doubt that Teachable’s biggest attraction is simplicity. That makes it ideal for new starters. It does all the technical heavy lifting for you. And it’s great value for creators starting to sell products.
• You want to sell in multiple countries. Teachable’s payment gateway handles international sales and sales tax across all territories. It has single-click web page translation in 11 different languages and video transcriptions in 70.
• You want others to promote your course. Built-in affiliate tracking makes it easy to let others promote your course without needing third-party tools.
• You just need an online course platform. Not a full marketing suite, CRM, or funnel builder, just a reliable platform to create, sell, and deliver courses.
• You want a clear and distraction-free learning experience. Teachable’s course player looks professional and works great on mobile. Students get a clean interface and easy navigation that rivals more complex platforms.

Not recommended If:

• You want to sell unlimited courses. Teachable becomes pricey if you want to sell more than 5 courses. So if you have plans to sell more than 25 products, low-priced rivals like FreshLearn become more affordable.
• You want to create elaborate designs and pages. Teachable’s biggest strength might be a drawback to some. You won’t find an easier way to build courses and course websites. You can customize, but you won’t be able to create very elaborate designs and pages using the built-in page builder for your Teachable school.
• You want to import SCORM products. Teachable doesn’t use the SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) format. That means if you want to migrate or are working on multiple platforms, you can’t take advantage of SCROM to import courses, lessons, or learning materials from other LMSs.

Get started with Teachable for free

Teachable Review Rating Details

Ease of Use	Simplicity is Teachable’s superpower. A lot goes into creating and selling courses. Teachable uses AI and automation to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Across the platform, the UI is user-friendly and easy to learn.
Course Content Creation	Turning ideas into working courses couldn’t be easier. Teachable’s course outline AI generates a full curriculum from a simple text prompt. It will create text content and quizzes for you, too. And you can upload video and audio files and add live Zoom sessions. You can choose from 2 design templates for how your courses will look to students. I’d like to see more.
Course Delivery & Formats	All courses are fully available on demand after purchase by default. You can vary this by setting drip schedules to release lessons at certain times. Or set compliance rules for what learners must complete before they progress. We’d like to see features for cohort-based and blended learning formats.
Student Engagement & Interactivity	Teachable’s Community functions are the student message boards. You can enable comment threads on all lesson pages. But it lacks the direct messaging and social features similar platforms have.
Marketing Tools (Landing Pages & Email)	Teachable automatically builds sales pages for every product. But it doesn’t have many built-in marketing features for promoting these pages. Email is mostly transactional rather than promotional. You can set up abandoned cart reminders. But there’s no visual email builder.
Monetization & Payments	Teachable has all the ecommerce features you need to start selling courses. It auto-builds sale and checkout pages for every product. And has its own native payment gateway. This accepts multiple payment methods. And calculates tax on global payments.
Reporting & Analytics	Every account includes full transaction logs with plenty of filtering. But performance analytics are basic. You get trend over time graphs on your account dashboard. But I’d love to see more metrics.
Mobile Accessibility & Responsive Design	All courses and sales pages are automatically mobile responsive. I’d like to see a mobile preview. Teachable also has a student app for iOS and Android.
Custom Branding & White-Labeling	Building courses and pages for you is part of Teachable’s ultra user-friendly deal. You can customize to a certain extent. Growth and Advanced plans unlock white label websites.
Customer Service	The main source of support is a detailed, well-written knowledge base. And an AI chatbot trained on the knowledge base. Raising a support ticket could be easier. You either have to have an issue escalated by the AI bot. Or email Teachable’s support team.
AI Tools & Automation	Teachable uses AI well to automate large chunks of course and site building. It generates course outlines, text content, and quizzes from simple prompts. And automatically creates web pages for your school and products.
Integrations & API	Teachable has 23 integrations. They include Zoom for delivering live sessions. WordPress if you want more control over building your website. And email marketing and analytics tools. Teachable limits integrations on lower plans. Starter only includes 1, Builder has 3, and the Growth and Advanced plans include 5. Zapier and access to the API are available on the Growth plan and above.
User Permissions	Teachable has 5 pre-defined user roles. Primary owner. Owner. Authors. Affiliates. Students. Students and affiliates are customers. Owners have administration rights over customers and authors. Primary owners have full account rights, including over payments. They can also create custom roles.
Security & Legal Compliance (GDPR, Accessibility)	Teachable has SOC 2 Type II Accreditation for data protection. All school owners enter into a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) when they sign up. This is in line with GDPR compliance.
Interface Languages	Teachable lets you translate student-facing pages into 11 languages automatically. And offers video transcriptions in 70 languages. But the Teachable interface is only available in English.
Customer Satisfaction	Teachable gets an average user rating of 3.9/5 on G2. And 4.2 on Capterra. The biggest pros cited by users centre around ease of use. Some customers wish the pricing was lower and there were more design features.

Overall Score

Teachable has some remarkable strengths. It’s easy and fast to master. AI and automation support course creation. Sales and payment tools are taken care of. Support for global selling is excellent. It could offer more marketing and analytics features. But if you need an easy-to-use course platform, Teachable is an excellent choice.

Create your course with Teachable for free

Getting Started with Teachable

Teachable has a reputation for being very user-friendly. I’d add beginner-friendly to that. Setting up a Teachable account takes no time. You just need an email address you can verify. Then you can dive straight into building education products in 3 minutes.

Once you have an account, it’s on to launch a school. This is just a matter of giving a name and filling in a few brief details. Your school is where you build, store, and sell your courses. And also where your customers find products, purchase, enroll, and manage their learning.

My only grumble with Teachable’s setup is that you have to give your payment details for the free trial. If you sign up with our link, you get 30 days instead of 7 to test the platform, and you can always cancel the trial. But I always prefer card-free. 

In Teachable to ‘Get Started’, you can have a look at the interactive product demo. This gives a general overview of the features. 

A better starting point is Teachable’s Blueprint course. This is free when you sign up. Over 27 lessons, it covers every corner of the platform. A little like this review, but in even more detail. Best of all, you can practice with the different tools as you go through the course. So you can use it as a guide to setting up your school. Building your first product and sales sites. Delivering lessons in various ways and more.

Create your course with Teachable for free

Teachable Review: Online Course Platform Walkthrough

Create Your Course with Teachable

When you first open a new school, Teachable takes you straight into course building. The first thing you see is an AI course outline builder. So you go from finalizing your account to course creation in a handful of clicks. You don’t get a faster start than that! 

With the AI outline builder, all you have to do is describe the course you want to create. Teachable’s AI then generates a suggested curriculum for you. It’s a great starting point.  You don’t have to worry about any special prompting. Teachable asks for the course description you want your students to see. And the AI works from that.

The welcome home page also includes a list of ‘other ways to get started’. This lists some other products you can make. The full list is in the left-hand menu. They are:

• Digital downloads: Products customers can download as a digital file. You can make ebooks, newsletters, how-to guides, and podcasts in Teachable. And you can upload most file types.
• Coaching: Delivered through a mix of live online sessions, downloadable content, and assignments.
• Community: A social platform for your learners. You can set up communities for all your enrolled students. Or monetize them as VIP extras.
• Memberships: Sell memberships to your school as an all-in-one course access.
• Bundles: Package multiple products to sell together.

After generating your course outline, you see a Setup guide. This is like a home page for course building. It lists your suggested curriculum and includes customization for your course pages, including templates. And pricing plan and sales page tools. I like the way all course-related features are in one place.

The main task is to fill in your course content. The AI generated outline is just a skeleton. Clicking the Edit curriculum button, takes you to an editable list of all the course sections and lessons.

There are several actions you can take on the curriculum page. Like reordering lessons and sections using drag and drop. Adding new lessons. Bulk uploading ready-made lesson content from elsewhere. Generating section summaries with AI. But the main one is opening individual lessons to create and edit content.

Like all of Teachable’s UI, the lesson editor is very user-friendly. I’m yet to come across an easier tool for creating lessons. Each page comes with a generated lesson summary. You can edit this yourself or get the AI to re-generate it until you’re happy. The Add content button opens a menu of content blocks to the right. This includes images, video, and audio files. PDFs and downloadable resources for students. Quizzes and open-ended questions for assessment and assignments. And a Zoom plug in for live sessions. So you can turn a lesson into a tutorial, for example. Every account has a 1TB video storage cap. And there’s a 20GB size limit on individual file uploads.

The content editor isn’t a simplified version of a drag-and-drop builder. You upload an image, for example, and it gets added in line with the rest of the lesson. What you can do is drag and drop blocks into different positions vertically.

This means you don’t get much room to customize the design of your course. That’s part of the trade-off for simplicity, though. However, I feel Teachable could do more with its Design Templates. There are only two to choose from. Which feels like it’s not really a choice at all. You can customize fonts and colours. But not even in the course templates section. You have to go to Sites > Themes to do that.

One thing to note about Teachable products. They are not SCORM compliant. So you can’t export materials you make in Teachable to other learning management systems.

Create your course with Teachable for free

Delivering Courses with Teachable

Teachable is solid if unspectacular in terms of how learners access learning. By default, courses and all course materials are available on demand after purchase. Learners work through them in their own time. 

The one main variation to this is drip content. On the Curriculum page, you can set rules for releasing different course sections. Either specific dates for each section. Or a fixed number of days after enrollment. Some educators believe controlling the pace of learning like this improves outcomes.

You can control progress with course compliance rules. These are in Information > Course settings. With these, you can set it so students can only progress through lessons in the order you set them. Or set a minimum watch requirement of 90% for videos. Or a learner can’t move on to the next lesson. And you can set pass grades and retake limits on quizzes. Again, if they’re not met, the learner can’t progress. 

In this way, quizzes play an important dual role in Teachable. They’re the main assessment for tracking student progress. You can set short, open-answer test questions, too. But Teachable auto-grades quizzes. This saves you time. And makes tracking performance data easy, too. And then, with completion enforced, quizzes control the learner journey.

Quizzes are a content block for every lesson. As usual with Teachable tools, the big strength is simplicity. The quiz builder is a simple preformatted form. You add your question. You add your multiple-choice answers. You repeat with as many questions as you need. You can get AI to do the work for you. The cool part is that Teachable’s AI will generate quizzes based on video or PDF content. The downside is that it’s not the most sophisticated assessment tool. You’re only testing knowledge recall. Not application or reasoning. 

Students can track their progress via a simple tracker bar on course pages. This shows the percentage of a course they’ve completed. By default, it updates after every lesson. If you set compliance rules, it will only update once a student meets the conditions. Including passing assessments. 

To reward student achievement, you can issue completion Certificates. In truth, this isn’t the most advanced feature. There are three basic templates with limited customization. If you have the know-how, you can code your own certificates in HTML. Or open source templating language Liquid. You can only have one active certificate per course. 

Live sessions with Zoom are a content block you build into lessons. And they play a key role in Teachable’s coaching product. But it does give you an alternative to on-demand or drip-released content. You need a Zoom account and to install Teachable’s Zoom plug-in. Once you do, you can schedule and host sessions in your Teachable school.

Build Your Course Website

I’ve covered how, before you build any courses in Teachable, you need to create a school. Your school is your learning business’s website. You don’t just build courses. You get a site to host them on, too.

Your school site serves 3 purposes. 

1. It’s the hub where you create products and manage your business. 
2. It’s the ecommerce store where would-be students browse your courses. And then make purchases and enroll. 
3. And it’s where enrolled students access and progress through courses or coaching. Every school gets its own Teachable subdomain. Or you can connect your own domain, if you have one.

As for building your site, Teachable does most of the work for you. It creates most pages automatically and leaves you to customize them. There are pros and cons to this. It’s supremely easy. Never made a website before? No problem. Teachable does it all for you. But you get what you’re given. There are white-label web-building tools available on Growth and Advanced plans. But on cheaper tiers, you don’t get much design or branding control.

I’m not sure about Teachable’s navigation and visibility for its website tools, either. The Site section of the main menu is obvious enough. But for me, a page builder should be front and center. You have to scroll through the menu until you get to Pages. It feels hidden to me. 

Pages is where you customize your external-facing landing pages. The main School Pages, like your Home page and About page. Teachable creates a Privacy Policy and Terms of Use by default to ensure you’re covered legally. And then Product Pages.

When you create a product, Teachable generates not one but three product pages. A sales page. A fully configured checkout page. And a post-purchase thank you page. You click Edit to view and customize them. But as I said about navigation, that’s a long path before you can start editing a product sales page.

Above is the sales page Teachable generated for my course. To the left is a list of all 8 content blocks. So it’s a fully functioning, detailed page. And it looks good, too. You can drag blocks already on the page up and down into new positions. Add new blocks. And click on blocks in the main preview window for editing.

The content blocks are basic. There are just 5 content types to add. Images, text, button, video, and a lead capture form. And 5 layout variations. You can’t drop them exactly into position. The builder adds them to the bottom of the page. Then you can drag them up to where you want them. Editing options are equally simple. You can’t edit content inline in the main window. You click on a block. Then type your text or upload a video in the left-hand window. Design customization doesn’t go beyond background colours, text alignment, borders and padding.

If you want enough control to build a full branded website, you’ll find Teachable’s site editor very limited. But it’s undoubtedly easy and quick. You get a functioning, decent-looking course website with minimum effort and know-how.

There are other design tools elsewhere in the site menu. In Themes, you can add a logo and set colour palettes to suit your brand. In Navigation, you add the links you want in your navigation bar. 

The Student experience page is for customizing the student dashboard. You don’t get any design control over the dashboard beyond setting site-wide themes. But you can decide what links learners see beyond their personal course library. Things like Community invitations and login. Or plugs for memberships and referrals. And you can add a hero banner with personalized product recommendations.

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Promote Courses with Marketing Tools

Compared to similar platforms I’ve used, Teachable’s marketing features are pretty light. The most interesting promotional feature is Teachable’s referral program. And it has discount codes, too. But it lacks tools for creating effective nurturing funnels.

You can capture leads on any of your site pages. Forms are one of the content blocks. There’s one form and one form only. A simple one-field email capture form. You can’t add any other fields.  

That’s fine for building a simple mailing list. There are two drawbacks as I see it. One, forms are a great way to capture lead data. Information shared in a form goes straight into your contact database. The more contact data you have, the better you can target. So it makes sense to have a way of adding more form fields.

Email marketing is definitely not one of Teachable’s strengths. You can write and send emails in the platform. But that’s not the same as email marketing. Teachable’s email features are more for transactional communications. All email templates are for account and payment-related updates. Receipts. Subscription reminders. Certificate and completion confirmations. There’s nothing for newsletters or course promotions. You can create your own custom templates. But you have to know how to code HTML to edit any template. There’s no visual builder. 

It’s the same story with automated emails. You can set student notifications to send automatically. Things like access to new drip content. Certificate confirmations. Email verification for new subscribers. But there’s no way to build automated nurture campaigns.

The one genuine email marketing feature Teachable has is abandoned cart emails. These let you automatically reach out to anyone who adds a course to their cart. But then doesn’t check out. You can add coupons to encourage them to complete the purchase. But again, you have to customize the template using HTML code. And you can only send a single email. The best abandoned cart follow-ups work as sequences. A gentle reminder first. Then maybe an offer to sweeten the deal. And a ‘can we help with anything else?’ courtesy follow-up. 

So my overall take with Teachable is, yes, you can capture leads and build lists. But if you want to use your list to really nurture leads, connect to email newsletter software.

Teachable is much better at harnessing word-of-mouth marketing. Its Referral program is one of the features listed under Sites. This is another area where Teachable’s focus on simplicity really works. There’s no complex process specifying coupon details and redemption terms. It’s an easy two-step process. You set the reward the referrer gets as a percentage discount. And then the discount the friend gets. Teachable then generates a coupon link for the referrer to pass on. When it’s used, the referrer’s discount gets automatically applied to their next payment. 

You can set both discounts to apply to specific products only. And you can limit how many rewards one referrer can earn.

Referral codes are one particular application of Teachable’s coupon engine. There are five other types of coupon:

• All product coupons: Discounts apply to everything you sell in your school. Useful for themed and seasonal sales events.
• Product-specific coupons: Apply to just one type of product.
• Pricing plan coupon: Useful if you want to offer a discount to promote a particular subscription tier.
• Single-use coupon: One person, one use coupons. Great for rewarding high achievers or loyal customers.
• Multi-use coupon: Sets a limit on how many times a coupon can be used. Useful for ‘first 50 customer’-type offers.

Selling Courses and Managing Payments

For every product you make, Teachable automatically creates a Checkout Page. Checkout pages link to the buy button on the corresponding product page. And have full payment processing built in. All you have to do is set up a payment gateway for your account.

Teachable has its own payment gateway, Teachable:pay. You set this up on Settings > Payments. Teachable:pay is built on Stripe. So it supports payments by debit or credit card (and is fully PCI-DSS compliant). Google Pay and Apple Pay. And PayPal for payments in US dollars. In the US and UK, you can accept buy now, pay later (BNPL) payments, too. This is via Klarna or AfterPay. 

Teachable:pay is available in more than 80 countries worldwide. If it isn’t available in your country, you can use a separate monthly payment gateway. This also serves as a backstop if you don’t set up Teachable:pay. The main difference is in payment schedules. The monthly gateway transfers earnings from your school to your account once a month. With Teachable:pay, you can choose daily, weekly or monthly transfers.  

On higher plans, you can choose an alternative third-party gateway.

Teachable payments automatically handles taxes in close to 200 countries. This is a major attraction for international course vendors. A great example is Coffee Break Languages. Founded in 2005, this hit language learning podcast has listeners in 196 countries. When founder Mark Pentleton decided to move into selling courses, tax and payment processing were major hurdles. Teachable provided the answer.

Coffee Break Languages also uses Teachable’s BackOffice administration service. You need this paid-for extra to accept PayPal, Klarna, and AfterPay payments. But it automates authors and affiliate payouts, too. Authors have administrative rights to create content for your courses. You can incentivize this by offering a commission cut of every course sale. 

As for what you charge, you create pricing plans for your products via the Setup Guide page. There are 4 options. Make a product free. Sell it via a one-time purchase. Set a payment plan with a fixed number of monthly payments. Or set up a recurring subscription. 

Teachable gives you flexibility in how you price products. You can set more than one plan per product. This allows you to accommodate different payment preferences. You can create product bundles. And do things like add more products as pricing tiers go up. Or offer discounts for multiple course enrollments. And you can sell memberships to a school rather than individual products. Memberships by default give customers access to all products in a school. But you can set limits. So a bronze membership makes all digital downloads available. Silver comes with access to all courses. Gold includes coaching and so on. 

Users compare Teachable’s pricing flexibility favourably with course marketplaces like Udemy. It was a big factor in virtual assistant coach Erin Booth choosing Teachable over Udemy. She uses the membership feature to give learners lifetime access to her courses. So access doesn’t end once a student completes the course. This has allowed Erin to focus on updating and improving her courses over time. This continuous learning aspect has a strong appeal for her students. And it shows how you can be successful with just 4 courses. But she audits content every six to 12 months. And includes her learner community in the improvement process.

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Manage Students in Teachable

When someone buys a course or signs up for a free product, they enroll automatically as a student in your school. This creates a student profile in Users > Students. You can view purchases and enrollments. And progress reports on live courses. Profiles include built-in affiliate tracking if that applies. Things like how much they have earned. How many referrals they’ve made or how much content they’ve authored.

Teachable stores details of anyone who fills in an email form in Users > Leads. These aren’t necessarily customers or students (though they can be). They’re leads that have shown an interest in your school or one of your products. There aren’t many targeting or lead nurturing features. You can add tags to students and leads to create segments. They can be anything you want. And are useful for naming different cohorts. But you have to add and manage tags manually (though there is a bulk tagging tool). And you can’t build detailed segments. Tags are mostly useful for quickly narrowing down who you send emails to.

Teachable features for student engagement include its Community social space. This is mainly a straightforward message board. You can allow comments on lessons, too. It’s a bit of a drag that you have to switch the comments feature on for every lesson individually. 

Tracking Progress & Analytics in Teachable

Like most things, Teachable keeps its reporting simple. Every school dashboard features 8 reports. You get basic analytics of trends in revenue, earnings, and course sales. Then abandoned carts, new signups, and active students. And the number of lesson completions and course completions.

These reports are accessible and easy to understand. But they’re limited in detail. All you get is a graph showing activity over a time period you choose. There’s no way to click through to get details of individual events. 

You do find more detail elsewhere. The Sales section is all about financial reporting. On the Transactions page, you get a log of all sales. It’s good to get a breakdown of individual transactions. And there’s a long list of filters for narrowing down the transactions list. You can also view a breakdown of transactions by day, week, or month. And get monthly financial statements for schools, affiliates, and authors. But it’s all just plain lists of raw data rather than in-depth sales reports. There are no visualization tools to help look at trends. And no metric calculations like conversion rates or average revenue per customer.

I’d say Teachable does a better job with its student progress tracking tools. Every student profile includes a progress report. Here you can view quiz results and details of every lesson completed. But there are some more interesting features. Like the video heatmap that visualizes how much of a video a student has watched. And a similar graphic that shows the progress on every course a student has enrolled in. 

Create courses with Teachable for free

Teachable Integrations and API

Teachable has 23 native plug-ins for third-party apps. That’s not the largest choice I’ve ever seen, but it does have the most used ones. For example, it has integrations for several popular email marketing platforms: MailerLite, ActiveCampaign, Kit, AWeber, and Mailchimp. And analytics tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar. And platform-specific plug-ins for Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. If you want more control over your school website, you can connect to WordPress. 

On the Growth and Advanced plans, you can use Zapier and API to connect any tool you’d like.

There are awesome great success stories around Teachable’s software partnerships. iOS developer and blogger Antoine van der Lee made $40k from his first course launch in 2024. He had a simple tech stack strategy. Teachable for course building, sales and delivery. Kit for lead growth and nurturing.

But he also struck on a savvy approach to using the LinkedIn plug-in. When students complete a course, their certificate uploads to their LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn then prompts them to write a post about their achievement. This serves as a powerful organic plug for Antoine’s course.

The biggest downside to Teachable’s integrations is that it limits the number you can have. On the Starter plan, you can just have one. But if you want to run live sessions, you need to connect to Zoom. So that in effect makes it zero. The maximum number on the Growth plan is still only 5. 

Teachable Pricing and Plans: How Much Does It Cost?

Teachable has 5 payment plans. Prices start at $29 per month for the Starter plan. You can choose between monthly or annual pricing. With a 22% discount if you pay annually.

The main difference between tiers is how many active products you can have. You can create as many products as you like on all Teachable plans. And keep them as drafts in your account. But you can only have so many ‘live’ and available to buy through your school at any one time. On the Starter plan, you can have one active product. On the Builder plan, 5. On Growth, 25, and Advanced, 100.

The Starter plan includes all the main course building and management tools. All product types. A website for your school. Payments, referrals and coupons. There’s a 7.5% commission charge per sale. This gets wiped on all higher tiers. So you keep everything you earn from course sales from the Builder plan up.

The Builder plan unlocks all email features, including templates. On the Starter plan, you can send plain emails and abandoned cart messages. But no other email types. There’s no limit on how many emails you can send. The Builder plan also includes live chat support.

The Growth plan includes white-label site building, 5 integrations, and access to a Zapier integration and Teachable’s API. The Advanced plan includes unlimited integrations. The custom-priced Unlimited plan includes priority support, managed migration from other LMSs, and a dedicated account manager. 

Teachable doesn’t have a free plan. You can test it out with a 30-day free trial with our link. You have to provide payment details to access the trial.

See full pricing

Teachable Customer Support

Every page in Teachable has a Messages button in the bottom right corner. This is your gateway to customer support. The Messages home page gives product updates.

But the main purpose is access to Teachable’s two frontline support options. Its online knowledge base. And an AI chatbot. 

Teachable trains its chatbot, Sunny, on the knowledge base. Responses from Sunny quote from an article with links to check it out yourself. I found it just as easy to search the knowledge base directly. The resources here impressed me. There are 200+ articles. The articles are well-written and easy to understand. A lot of articles have videos and images. Though some standalone videos would be nice.

You can’t contact Teachable’s support team directly through the Messages console. If you have a query the chatbot can’t resolve, it will create a ticket for you. It can be a little frustrating having to go through the chatbot to contact the support team. Alternatively, you can send an email. But it takes longer to create the ticket. At least once the chatbot escalates your query, it’s done quickly.

Final Conclusion: Is Teachable the right course platform for you?

So is Teachable right for you compared to other course platforms? I hope from my review one message is loud and clear. Where Teachable is good, it’s very good.

Teachable is a real winner, I recommend you try it out. 

It keeps simplicity and speed over advanced features. And even if you’re just starting out selling courses, try Teachable.

If you want a fast, simple way to turn your current product into a course. Definitely try Teachable.

It is also strong if you have an international audience and offer your course in multiple languages. It has easy international payment and tax handling.

Teachable won’t suit everyone. You can’t create complex and elaborate web designs. If you want all your marketing tools to grow your audience in one platform, you could consider a full all-in-one platform.

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Teachable Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Teachable Alternatives

Teachable vs. Thinkific

The main difference between Teachable and Thinkific is simplicity versus course features. Thinkific is a similar course-building and selling platform to Teachable. It’s user-friendly and affordable. And gives you everything you need to start and run an education business.

Teachable prioritizes ease of use over all else. Thinkific gives you more features for your courses. You get more control over course structure, assessments, and site customization. It has a larger integration ecosystem and more advanced learning features. It appeals to more established educators and small training businesses. Teachable is ideal for beginners. Or solopreneurs that want speed and simplicity rather than more sophisticated courses.

Check out our Thinkific review to compare the platform.

Teachable vs. FreshLearn

The main difference between Teachable and FreshLearn is how ‘all-in-one’ they are. Both are user- and beginner-friendly course platforms. They combine course creation tools with ecommerce features. Teachable mostly sticks to these core features. It uses AI and automation to make building and selling as easy as possible. Its biggest strengths are that it builds most of your course sites for you. And it has excellent integrated sales and payment tools. That again are all set up for you.

Teachable has a few simple marketing tools. A referral scheme to incentivize word-of-mouth business. Discount coupons. A student message board. FreshLearn leans into these much more. It has a full loyalty program. And links that to gamified student progress tracking and rewards. It also has more advanced email marketing tools. So you can do much more for attracting and nurturing prospects. And Teachable costs $189/month for 25 active courses. FreshLearn gives you unlimited live courses for $39/month.

Overall, Teachable is the simpler platform. It helps you launch a learning business fast. And keeps managing your business as light touch as possible. FreshLearn is more of a ‘full funnel’ platform. It’s the better choice if you want tools to find and nurture customers. And lock in loyalty.

Read our full FreshLearn review to find out more about how these platforms stack up.

Teachable vs. Learnworlds

The main difference between Teachable and LearnWorlds is learner experience. LearnWorlds is a bigger platform with more features. This includes more tools for marketing and sales funnels. And more advanced analytics. But most importantly, it puts a much bigger emphasis on student engagement. This includes the ability to create interactive videos. With AI-generated learning checkpoints, summaries, and live quizzes. And social learning tools that let you embed discussion tasks in any learning resource.

These are great tools. But they’re pricey to unlock. LearnWorlds’ cheapest plans stick to basic features. Its Starter plan charges a fixed $5 commission fee per sale. And limits you to a three-page website. If you’re starting out, Teachable’s simplicity wins the day. LearnWorlds makes sense for larger businesses looking for advanced course and marketing features.

Compare Teachable and Learnworlds in our review of the best online course platforms. 

Teachable vs. Podia

The main difference between Teachable and Podia is what they specialize in. Podia is not a specialist course platform. It’s designed for creating and selling digital products, including courses.

Not many platforms can claim to be easier to use than Teachable. Podia gives it a run for its money. Where it beats Teachable is its course and web page builders. Teachable relies on doing a lot of the building for you. With simple tools to tweak things. Podia has much more flexible no-code editors. Its customizable section templates give you much more freedom with design. Another benefit is that Podia has more email marketing tools.

But because it’s not a specialist online learning platform, Podia falls short in some areas. Its only assessment feature is basic quizzes. And it doesn’t give you much help with tracking student progress. Teachable is a much stronger platform in both these areas.

The post Teachable Review 2026: The Easiest Platform to Sell Courses? appeared first on Email vendor selection.

1. The correct Gmail SMTP server is smtp.gmail.com. Use port 587 (TLS) or port 465 (SSL) for secure connections.
2. Free Gmail accounts are limited to 500 emails per day, while Google Workspace increases this to 2,000 emails per day.
3. If two-factor authentication is enabled, you must use an App Password instead of your regular Gmail password.
4. SMTP is only for sending email. IMAP is required to receive messages and keep your inbox synced across devices.

Email looks simple on the surface, but anyone who has set up Gmail with an app, website, or email client knows a lot is happening behind the scenes. Over the years, we’ve helped businesses deal with sending limits and decide when Gmail is enough and when it’s time to move on.

This step-by-step guide shows you how to send emails with the Gmail SMTP server. We’ll cover Gmail SMTP settings, the benefits, and limitations of using Gmail’s SMTP server.

What is SMTP?

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the system that sends and delivers email across the internet. When you hit “Send” on an email, SMTP is the system that routes your message from your mail server to the recipient’s mail server. All major email inbox providers (like Gmail) use SMTP.

What is the Gmail SMTP server?

The Gmail SMTP server is Google’s outgoing mail server that lets you send emails from your Gmail or Google Workspace account using other email clients or software. The Gmail SMTP service allows third-party apps, websites, or email tools to send emails through your Gmail account. Think of it as Gmail’s mail dispatcher. It takes messages from external sources and routes them through Gmail’s email servers to the recipient’s inbox.

Why use Gmail’s SMTP?

Gmail is one of the most popular, free email inbox providers suitable for small sending volumes. It’s also known for reliability and great deliverability. Outgoing emails from Gmail’s servers are less likely to land in spam folders, thanks to Google’s trusted IPs and email handling policies. Gmail’s SMTP has encryption (TLS/SSL) and spam detection to keep your messages secure.

For more advanced use cases, Google also offers the Gmail API, which is different from SMTP and requires setup through the Google Cloud Console.

You can use Gmail’s SMTP server with both free Gmail accounts and Google Workspace accounts. The setup is essentially the same, but Workspace accounts have much higher sending limits. Free Gmail accounts are limited to sending 500 emails per day. Google Workspace users can send up to 2,000 emails per day. If you need to send more than 500 emails per day, get started with Google Workspace.

What are Gmail SMTP Settings?

The SMTP server for Gmail is smtp.gmail.com. To connect any application or email client to Gmail’s SMTP, you’ll need to enter the correct server settings. Here are the Gmail SMTP settings you should use:

• Gmail SMTP server address: smtp.gmail.com
• Gmail SMTP username: Your Gmail address (example@gmail.com)
• Gmail SMTP password: Your Gmail password or App Password
• Gmail SMTP port: 587 for TLS (Transport Layer Security), or 465 for SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) 
• Gmail SMTP TLS/SSL required: Yes

Important: If your Google account has two-factor authentication, you can’t use your regular Gmail password for SMTP in most apps. Google will block the login for security. You need to generate an app password, a special 16-digit passcode for use with email clients. Create an App Password here. You may need to sign in to your Google Account. Using an App Password also prevents issues after password resets, which can otherwise break SMTP connections.

Google recommends using authenticated SMTP connections with TLS to improve security and deliverability.

While Gmail’s SMTP server is a great way to send emails, some limits are in place to prevent abuse. The limit is 100 recipients per message and 500 messages per day. If you exceed this limit, your account will be blocked by Google. 

These limits shouldn’t be a problem for most users. If you need to send more than 500 messages daily, sign up to Google Workspace or consider using a free SMTP service.

How to Set Up Gmail SMTP in Your Email Client or App

Setting up Gmail’s SMTP server in an email client (like Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird) or a web app is easy. Here are the typical steps to get it working:

1. Turn SMTP on in your Gmail settings (App Password)

Before you can send emails through Gmail’s SMTP server, make sure your Gmail account is properly set up for SMTP access. If you don’t use 2-Step Verification, Google may have already restricted less secure app access. Turn on 2-Step Verification and create an App Password for SMTP. 

This step only needs to be done once per account. (If you skip this and try to use your normal password, Gmail might block the sign-in attempt.)

2. Find the SMTP settings section in your email client/app

Open the email client’s settings where you add or edit email accounts. Look for “Outgoing mail server” or “SMTP server” settings. If you are adding a new account, the setup wizard will ask for SMTP details after you enter your email address.

3. Enter Gmail SMTP server details

To set up your email client or app to send mail with Gmail’s SMTP server, you need to add this:

• Gmail SMTP server address: smtp.gmail.com
• Gmail SMTP username: Your Gmail address (example@gmail.com)
• Gmail SMTP password: Your Gmail password or App Password
• Gmail SMTP port: 587 when using TLS, or 465 when using SSL
• Gmail SMTP TLS/SSL required: Yes

4. Save settings and test the connection

Save this SMTP configuration. Most email clients have a “Test” or will automatically test by sending a dummy email. Send a test email to verify everything is working. The email should go out via Gmail’s SMTP and arrive in the recipient’s inbox. 

For a WordPress site, you’ll usually configure Gmail SMTP using a plugin, like the WP Mail SMTP plugin. The process is similar to connecting an email client to Gmail’s SMTP.

How to Set Up IMAP in Gmail Settings

SMTP is only used for sending emails. To receive incoming emails and keep your own inbox synced across devices, you’ll also need to set up IMAP alongside SMTP.

POP (Post Office Protocol) is an older method for retrieving email that downloads messages from a POP server to a single device. And it doesn’t keep actions (like read/unread status) synced across your devices. Since most people check email on phones, laptops, and tablets, this can quickly get confusing, which is why we focus on IMAP instead.

Here are the steps to set up IMAP in Gmail:

1. Open Gmail, go to Settings (gear icon in the top right), and click on See all settings.

2. Select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. 

3. Scroll to the IMAP access section and select “Enable IMAP.”
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Changes to confirm.
5. Now, log in to your email client and enter these settings in the Incoming mail message server/IMAP section:

• Incoming Mail Server (IMAP server): imap.gmail.com
• Requires SSL: Yes
• Port: 993
• Display Name: Your Name
• Username: Your Gmail address (xxxx@gmail.com)
• Password: Your Gmail password

Benefits of Using Gmail’s SMTP Server

Gmail’s SMTP server is popular for a reason. If you’re a small business or freelancer, it covers a lot of basics really well without much setup.

• Good email deliverability. Emails you send through Gmail’s servers land in inboxes, not spam. Google has a strong sender reputation, so as long as you’re emailing real people and following basic best practices, Gmail will deliver your emails.
• Very reliable. Gmail is built on Google’s infrastructure, which means it’s extremely stable. You don’t have to worry about server downtime or failed sends when you’re emailing.
• Strong security. SMTP connections are encrypted, and Google actively monitors accounts for suspicious activity. Add in two-step verification and App Passwords, and you get strong security without having to think too hard about it.
• Free for light sending. If you’re sending fewer than 500 emails each day, Gmail SMTP is free and often more than enough.
• Easy to set up almost anywhere. Most email clients, apps, websites, and devices already support Gmail SMTP. You plug in the server details, authenticate, and you’re done. 
• Works across all your devices. When paired with IMAP, Gmail keeps everything in sync across your phone, laptop, and desktop. Sent emails are stored in Gmail, easy to search, and accessible anywhere.

All of this makes Gmail SMTP a good starting point, but it has some limitations that can matter as your needs grow.

Limitations of Gmail SMTP and What to Do Instead

Gmail SMTP works well, but it’s not designed for businesses, email marketing, and transactional emails. Here’s where it falls short and what to do when you hit those limits.

• Low daily sending limits. Free Gmail accounts can send 500 emails per day. That’s fine for personal use and one-to-one emailing, but it’s easy to hit the ceiling if you use it for anything else. If you’re hitting limits, sign up to Google Workspace to increase daily sending to 2000 emails. For higher volumes, check out our review of the best free SMTP servers.
• Not built for email marketing. Gmail SMTP wasn’t designed for newsletters, promotions, or large campaigns. There’s no unsubscribe handling or compliance tools. And sending bulk emails through Gmail can quickly lead to problems. For newsletters and marketing emails, check out our review of the best email marketing platforms.
• It’s not designed for teams. Each SMTP connection is tied to a single Google account. Managing limits, passwords, and Google apps across a team can get messy. Google Workspace makes it easier to manage users and email settings.
• Risk of temporary sending blocks. If Gmail detects spammy behavior or repeated limit violations, Gmail may return error messages or temporarily block sending. Check out our review of email outreach tools to find tools designed for safe sending at larger volumes.

Concluding Gmail SMTP Server

Gmail’s SMTP server is reliable for sending everyday emails, especially if you’re working with small volumes or just getting started. It’s easy to set up, trusted by inbox providers, and works well for one-to-one communication.

Gmail SMTP isn’t meant to handle everything. As your sending volume grows or you move into email marketing, outreach, or transactional emails, you’ll need the right tools for the job. 

For professional business email with higher daily sending limits and better team management, try Google Workspace. 

For newsletters, try free and cheap email marketing tools. And for transactional emails, SMTP servers or email API services are a better fit.

The post Gmail SMTP Server 2026: Settings, Setup, Limits, & Alternatives appeared first on Email vendor selection.

As a small business or a start-up, perhaps you’ve tried using a personal email account for business. It’s easy, right? Gmail is the biggest free email service in the world. Most people already have a Gmail address.

But you have to be careful. If people get an email from an organization, they expect to see the business name in the sender’s email address and in your marketing materials. Sending business emails from an @gmail.com account doesn’t look very professional. Even more important, people will question whether your message is legit. Not having your own professional email address will mean more of your emails get flagged as spam.

The answer? Create a custom domain email address. That is, an email address with your business name after the @ sign. You can do this in Google Mail. And I’m going to show you how.

How to Make Your Own Email Addresses in Gmail

So how do you make your own custom email addresses in Gmail? Or, how do you replace @gmail.com with @yourbusiness.com?

A custom email address features your own domain name. An email domain is the part after the @ sign. So, in standard, free, personal Gmail accounts, the domain is always @gmail.com. To change it, you need a custom domain name.

Think of a domain as a ‘space’ you buy on the internet. Or, more accurately, the address of that space so people can find it. We’re all familiar with this idea through websites. A website domain is the address you type into a browser to find that site.

There are 2 main options for replacing a standard Gmail address with a custom domain:

• Set up and buy a domain when you create a Google Workspace account.
• Create a domain elsewhere with a domain registrar and then connect it to a Google Workspace account.

The second option will apply to you if you already have a business website. You will already have a custom domain for your site. But not all web hosting plans include email. If you don’t have business email set up already, check your web hosting account. Bluehost is a good example of a service that offers both web and email hosting with a single domain. For no extra cost.

In this article, I will cover:

• How to set up a custom Gmail address and domain in Google Workspace.
• How to set up a custom Gmail address in Google Workspace using an existing domain.
• How to use an existing custom email address to create a custom Gmail address.
• How to set up a custom email address with your web hosting service.

Is Gmail the right email service for your business? For bulk email sending, read this article on how to send emails with the Gmail SMTP server. And if you want to use Gmail with HTML templates, read our guide on how to send HTML email in Gmail and our review of free email template builders for Gmail.

How To Create a Custom Email Address and Domain Name in Google

You don’t have a website or a domain name yet? No problem. You can do everything you need to set up a custom email address from scratch in Google Workspace. This is a great option for new businesses. Especially if the first thing you want is a business email address.

Google Workspace (formerly G-Suite) is a complete productivity and collaboration platform for businesses. It includes a long list of well-known apps. Google Drive for cloud storage. Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Gemini, Google Meet, and Chat. And, of course, Gmail.

All Workspace business accounts include a custom email domain. Starting at $7 per user, per month, that’s good value. There’s also a 14-day free trial.

Create your own email with Google Workspace

1. Create a Google Workspace account and get your domain

It couldn’t be easier to get started on Google Workspace. You input your business name and some other details about your business. Then you get asked if you have an existing domain or not:

Click “Get a new custom domain”. The next step is find a domain name. Ideally, you want your business name to be your domain. That’s just what people expect when they get an email from a business. Google searches for available domain names for you. Then lists them along with their cost per year.

You may find alternatives to your business name. This is because the domains for that term are already taken.

Try choosing a different top-level domain. The top-level domain is the part after the dot. So .com or .co.uk or .net etc. You’ll find .com domain names are the most popular. If that option isn’t available, choose another.

In some cases, you may find a lot of the most popular top-level domains you’d like to use are taken. This can happen if you have a very generic business name. It’s a good reason to choose a more unique name for your business.

You have a couple of options here. You could choose a less common top-level domain. They’re a little more expensive. And bear in mind that you want a domain that still looks professional. You could also consider tweaking the domain slightly. For example, you could add numbers. Or abbreviate your business name. Just make sure it’s recognisable as your brand. 

Once you choose your domain, Google will use it to set up your Workspace account. This means your Gmail account will also be set up with that domain. So instead of emails being sent out with the gmail.com domain, people will see your business name. 

2. Add a username to your account

The next thing you need to do is set up usernames and inboxes. These could be user accounts with different people’s names. Or generic inboxes like sales@ or office@.

If you’re just setting up email for yourself, keeping it simple usually works best. Using your name, like “paul@emailvendorselection.com,” feels personal and professional.

If you’re creating email addresses for a team, there’s a bit more to consider. Think about:

• how big your organization is, 
• what you’ll use the emails for, 
• and how you want your brand to appear in inboxes.

First-name-only email addresses can get messy fast if you ever hire two people with the same name. And email addresses that are long or complicated can be hard for customers to remember and easy to mistype.

Beyond using just a first name, two widely used usernames are first initial plus last name or a full name format. Both look professional, scale well as your team grows, and make it easy for people to know who they’re emailing. Here are some examples:

Complete the purchase, and you’re ready to start sending professional emails with your own domain.

Create your own email with Google Workspace

How to Create a Custom Gmail Address Using an Existing Domain Name

You already have a website for your business. Or at least a registered domain name. Now you want to set up a Gmail account to send business email. And use your domain name as your professional email address.

Google Workspace makes this very easy. Choose ‘Set up using your existing domain’ on this screen:

Once you enter the domain you want to use, Google will prompt you to confirm. This is because you’ll be creating a new Gmail account using that domain. Which will affect any existing business email account using that domain, if you have one. But there won’t be any changes until your Gmail account is activated. 

Next, you will be prompted to create sign-in details for your new Workspace account. Then it’s a case of setting up your new Gmail account. Google walks you through this and confirms that you own the domain by asking you to add or update the necessary DNS records. 

How To Create a Gmail Account Using an Existing Custom Email Address

If you have an existing domain for your business, you probably already have a business email, too. Few businesses with a functioning website won’t have email. The exception would be if you are just starting. Perhaps you have bought a domain before you launch your website and email. In that case, you would set up your Gmail address ‘from scratch’ as described above.

But what about using an existing, functioning email address? Perhaps one with lots of different inboxes on the same account? How do you switch that over to Gmail?

The initial setup process is just the same as using any custom domain. You create a new Google Workspace account. Choose ‘Set up using your existing domain’, then set up your Gmail account and verify your domain.

The difference is linking your existing email account to your new Gmail account. In short, you want the 2 to sync so you don’t miss any emails and can send properly. 

There are 2 sides to this. First, you need to set up your new Gmail account so it can receive and send emails in sync with your existing account. Then you need to update the DNS records in your web host so it recognises your new Gmail account.

Here’s what you need to do in your Gmail account.

How to Receive Emails in Gmail

1. In your Gmail inbox, click on the settings ‘Gear’ icon at the top left of the page. Then click ‘See all settings’.

2. Select the ‘Accounts and Import’ tab. From the drop-down menu, click on ‘Add a mail account’ in the ‘Check mail from other accounts’ section.

3. Type your business email address into the pop-up box and click ‘Next’.

4. Configure your account settings

Input the username and password of your existing email account. You may need to use the full email address as the username.

To connect the 2 accounts, you will need to have POP enabled on your existing account. How to do this will vary depending on which email service provider you are using. Look it up on their online help pages. Make sure you enable POP for all email. 

Two other things you should do are set the POP Server port to 995. And check the secure connection SSL option. These are important for security reasons. Using port 995 means the connection between Gmail and the mail server is encrypted. Port 995 and SSL both encrypt the connection between the email client and the mail server. This keeps your login details safe. And makes sure mail can’t be intercepted and read by other people.

How to Send Emails in Gmail

Setting up Gmail to send from an existing account carries straight on from the above:

1. Confirm you also want to send email from this new Gmail account.

Google does this as some people want to run 2 email accounts side by side. And perhaps only send from one of them. But if you are transferring a business account into Gmail, you probably want to replace your old account. If so, leave the button checked ‘Yes’.

2. Add email details for sending.

The main purpose of this step is to confirm the sender name that appears on your emails. Leave the ‘Treat this as an alias’ box checked if you are replacing an existing email account with Gmail. The only reason to uncheck it would be if you still want to run multiple accounts. 

It’s unlikely that you will need to specify a different ‘reply-to’ address. One reason might be if you are sending from a generic email address. Like an ‘office@’ address or similar. You might want to give people a named email address to reply to. Just to make it more personal.

3. Verify that you own the existing email address. 

Google sends an email to your existing account for verifying domain ownership.

How to Set Up a Custom Gmail Address with Your Web Host

If you have a web host that also includes email hosting, you can create an email address with your hosting service. And then configure it in Gmail as described above. This setup lets you send and receive messages from a custom address (like yourname@yourdomain.com) using Gmail.

Step 1: Create your email account on your web host

Log in to your hosting control panel and find the menu to manage email accounts. It will be “Email,” “Email Accounts,” or similar. 

Start adding a new email address. Choose the domain you want to use, enter the username before the @ sign, and set a strong password. 

After creating the account, look for a “Manual Settings,” “Connect Devices,” or “Mail Client”. Here you’ll find the POP (incoming) and SMTP (outgoing) server addresses and port numbers. You’ll need these set up sending and receiving in Gmail.

Step 2: Configure Gmail to fetch emails using POP

Open your Gmail inbox and click the Gear icon, then choose See all settings. Navigate to Accounts and, under Check email from other accounts, click Add an email account. Enter the full custom email address, then select Import emails from my other account (POP3). In the next step, fill in:

• Username: usually the full custom email address.
• Password: the password you just created for this mailbox.
• POP server and port: use the values provided in your host’s manual settings.
• Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server: check this if you want to keep messages on your host as well.
• Always use a secure connection (SSL): this encrypts the connection.

Click Add Account. Gmail will connect to your host and start pulling in messages.

POP fetching works, but it can be a little delayed because Gmail syncs emails on a schedule. If your web host supports email forwarding, you can forward incoming messages to your Gmail inbox for faster delivery. Keep your POP setup in place so you can still send and verify through your custom address when needed.

Step 3: Turn sending on through your domain’s SMTP server

To send from your custom address, return to Gmail’s Accounts section. Under Send mail as, click Add another email address. Enter your name and custom email address, and check Treat as an alias. This tells Gmail that both addresses belong to you. On the next screen, choose Send through “yourdomain” SMTP server and enter:

• SMTP server and port from your host’s manual settings.
• Username: usually the full custom email address.
• Password: the password you set for the mailbox.
• Secure connection: select the SSL or TLS option recommended by Gmail.

After you click Add Account, Gmail sends a verification email to your custom inbox. Open the verification message (it will arrive in Gmail if POP fetching is already set up) and follow the instructions to confirm. Once verified, you can choose your custom address in the From field when composing messages. And Gmail will send through your domain’s SMTP server.

Conclusion: How to Make Your Own Email in Gmail

A custom email account that includes your business’s name looks professional. Don’t be tempted to stick with a free Gmail account. Google Workspace is affordable and comes with dozens of features on top of email.

How to make your own email address in your Google account will depend on whether you already use a business email account or not. If you are just getting started, you can buy a custom domain through Google. Or you can use a domain you already own.

If you already have a business email account, you can import it into Gmail. This gives you the benefits of Gmail functionality. If you want to link a custom Gmail address to your web hosting account, you can do this too. Just make sure you use a web host that offers email hosting.

Finally, once you have your custom Gmail account set up, you don’t have to stick to only using Gmail. You can use the account to sign up for bulk email services, CRMs, and free SMTP servers. These are better for bulk and automated sending than Gmail. And with email template builders, you can design high-quality HTML emails. Without needing to code. But all your emails can still be sent with your custom Gmail address.

Frequently Asked Questions About Making Your Own Email with Gmail + Any Domain Name

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