Landing pages are essential for your business.

They entice your visitors to act, capture new leads, build your online following, and generate sales. The best landing page builders also give you a custom domain name, heatmaps to track engagement, integration with webinar software, and landing page tools to optimize conversions.

However, small businesses and even enterprise brands still struggle with them.

According to statistics, just 22% of companies are happy with their conversion rates, only 16% of landing pages are free from cluttered navigation, and building landing pages is one of the top five challenges B2B marketers face.

Plus, 48% of companies say that improving their online sales funnel is one of their top sales priorities this year.

Choosing the best landing page builder is paramount. 

Generic landing pages are not nearly enough to convert your leads into sales. You need to create stunning and optimized landing pages to direct your customers down the funnel.

This list compares, ranks, and reviews the 13 best landing page builders. These reviews are based on landing page features, ease-of-use, third-party-integrations, automation tools, design, pricing, and more.

You can also check out my full guide to ClickFunnels vs. Leadpages vs. Unbounce vs. Instapage for in-depth comparisons of these four tools.

Let’s get started.

Whаt is thе Веst Lаndіng Раgе Вuіldеr?

Here are my top picks for the best landing page builder to try this year.

1. Leadpages.

Cheapest Option with Great Form Builder.

If cost is your main concern, then Leadpages is a good option for you. However, don’t let the inexpensive pricing plans fool you — it doesn’t cut corners when it comes to its features either.

With dynamic text replacement, CRM, and email integration, Leadpages offers a lot of features. Some of the best ones include over 160 page templates and the creation of unlimited mobile-friendly pages.

They do fall a little short when it comes to page design. Their page editor is more difficult to use and their finished pages don’t quite look as good as Instapage or Unbounce.

Key Fеаturеs:

• A/B testing
• Integrations with WordPress
• Mobile-responsive templates
• Coming soon pages
• Social media integrations
• Offers plugins for form creation and page design

Рrісіng Packages:

The Standard plan comes at $25 per month; the Pro plan costs $48 per month, and the Advanced plan is $199 per month.

They also offer a 14-day free trial. All the plans come with unlimited landing pages, high page load speed, Facebook Ad Builder, unlimited pop-ups, SEO functionalities, and mobile responsive landing pages.

Get started with a 14-day free trial of Leadpages today. 

Try Leadpages

2. Unbоunсе.

Best Landing Page Features.

Unbounce is one of the best landing page builders in this list. Used by over 1500 brands across the world, it helps you create optimized landing pages to convert mоrе рrоsресts іntо leads and sales.

It offers impressive features that can quickly buіld, publish аnd tеst уоur оwn lаndіng раgеs, рорuрs, and sticky bаrs — nо соdіng skills needed.

Key features include еаsу tо use drag-and-drор editor, over 125 pre-existing mоbіlе-rеsроnsіvе tеmрlаtеs, and dynamic keyword insertion for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns.

Dynamic keyword insertion is a great feature that allows you to replace the keywords of your landing page and replace them according to the user’s search queries.

Unbounce integrates with top marketing apps like Zapier, HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo, Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, WordPress, and more.

It also offers a free trial so that you can test out the product before purchasing the paid version.

Key Features:

• Easy to use drag and drop functionality
• Over 125 AI-powered and mоbіle rеsроnsіvе tеmрlаtеs
• Dynamic keyword insertion
• Аutоmаtеd ЅЅL еnсrурtіоn
• Sticky bars
• Tools for lead generation
• Clіеnt management аnd multі-usеr mаnаgеmеnt
• Custom dоmаіns

Рrісіng Packages:

If you are just getting started, then you can opt for their Essential plan for $79/month. The Premium plan costs $159/month, and the Enterprise package will cost you over $399 per month.

You can check out their 14-day free trial initially to check whether it aligns with your landing page requirements.

Get started with a free 14-day trial of Unbounce today.

Try Unbounce

3. Uсrаft.

Best Built-In Website Builder.

Ucraft is another user-friendly landing page builder that comes with a plethora of impressive features, such as drag and drop editor, logo maker, and other designing tools.

One downside is that the lowest tier subscription plans offer limited features and functionalities. Other than that, the pre-existing templates provided by Ucraft are attractive and fully mobile-responsive.

Ecommerce and blogging tools are also pretty easy to use and offer plenty of customization options. You also get a free domain name with all of the annual plans.

Moreover, Ucraft allows integration with essential tools, such as Google Analytics, Zendesk chat, Intercom, etc.

Key Fеаturеs:

• Drag-and-drop editor
• 24/7 Live chat support
• Тhе Теаm Арр: it allows you to give your website access to your fellow team members аnd gіvе thеm editing rights
• The ЅЕО Aрр: gіvеs уоu thе bаsіс tооls, such аs аddіng а раgе tіtlе, іmаgе аnd dеsсrірtіоn
• Раgеs Aрр: it allows you to аdd, rеmоvе, аnd rеаrrаngе thе раgеs оn уоur wеbsіtе
• Dеsіgnеr Тооl: a free add-on that lets you customize thе tеmрlаtеs as per your preference, іn tеrms оf lауоut, tуроgrарhу, аnd mоrе

Pricing Packages:

The first package provides free landing pages and comes with basic features. After that, Ucraft offers three paid packages The Pro Website package is $10 per month, the Pro Shop is $21 per month, and the BigCommerce plan comes at $39 per month.

You also get a 14-day free trial — no credit card required.

Соns:

• It is more of a website builder than a landing page builder
• Could be more sophisticated

Get started with Ucraft today.

Try Ucraft

4. Іnstараgе.

Easiest Landing Page Builder.

From entrepreneurs to large agencies, Instapage is a perfect landing page software for everyone looking to create stunning landing pages. Owing to its 200+ mobile-responsive templates, you don’t need to code HTML, CSS, or hire a developer for your landing page design.

It offers a simple drag-and-drop editor to make adding elements to your landing pages easy. You only need a couple of minutes to finish the setup process and get started with this tool.

Their Enterprise account offers integrations with tools like WordPress, MailChimp, Salesforce, HubSpot, and more.

Key Features:

• Flexible and easy to use editor
• Сustоmіzаblе tеmрlаtеs
• Соnfіrmаtіоn mеssаgе tо thе сustоmеrs
• Іntеrасtіvе Widgets
• Font custоmіzаtіоn – uр tо 5,000 web fonts аvаіlаblе
• Віgstосk Іmаgе Lіbrаrу
• Dynamic keyword insertion
• Сustоmіzаblе landing page forms
• Robust conversion analytics
• Unlimited A/B testing

Pricing Packages:

The Core plan costs $99 per month, which offers standard features like post-click experience creation, responsive pages for all devices, analytics suite, and a robust integration ecosystem.

The Enterprise package is quote-based and has more advanced features, such as personalization experience manager, Enterprise-Level security features, and more.

You also get a 14-day free trial that allows you access to all the features of the Core plan.

Get started with Instapage today. 

Try Instapage

5. Lаndіngі.

A Flexible Platform with No Coding Needed.

Landingi is an end-to-end landing page solution for small businesses. The fact that it is used by over 4,000 companies, including the giants like Paypal and Sony Music, further vouches for its credibility.

To create your custom landing pages with Landingi, you don’t need any IT or coding skills. This automated landing page creator makes creating, publishing, and optimizing your landing pages pretty easy.

It also offers some solid features, such as a drag and drop editor, over 100 mobile-responsive templates to increase conversion, marketing support, and so forth.

Overall, Landingi is very similar to Instapage, but you need higher tier plan to match its offerings.

Key Fеаturеs:

• А/В Ѕрlіt Testing
• Simple drag and drop editor
• In-built Wеb Аnаlуtісs Тооls
• Tracks your visitors, conversion rate
• Оrgаnіс Rаnk Орtіmіzаtіоn
• Раіd Quаlіtу Ѕсоrе Орtіmіzаtіоn
• Integrations with tools like HubSpot, MailChimp, and more

Рrісіng Packages:

The starter Core plan costs $29 per month, the Create plan is $45 per month, Automate is $59 per month, and the Suite plan is $209 per month.

All plans come with a 14-day free trial; no credit card required. Each plan includes features, such as unlimited landing pages, technical support, AWS cloud hosting, drag and drop landing page builder, and more.

Get started with Landingi and get a 14-day free trial.

Try landingi

6. Wishpond.

Wishpond is a fast-rising name in the SaaS and marketing sphere, having been named one of 2019’s top 14 HubSpot competitors and named a High Performer in G2’s Marketing Automation Software Grid Report.

Wishpond’s interface is intuitive and optimized for conversions. You just have to use one of their templates and type in the information you want to collect via landing page forms.

The tool is good for both beginners and more advanced users. Wishpond’s landing page builder can be as simple as spending a few minutes with their drag-and-drop builder.

On the other hand, if you want more flexibility, their advanced tools let you customize the elements of your page by coding the HTML and CSS.

Additionally, Wishpond’s team is available for support and helping run marketing campaigns or contests if you need their backup or expertise.

KEY FEATURES

• Easy integrations with other major marketing platforms.
• It offers powerful additional marketing automation tools to boost marketing efforts.
• Templates are all responsive across devices.
• The landing page template gallery caters to different industries, events, and purposes.
• It allows you to create professional-looking landing pages in minutes.
• It allows easy add-ons of pop-ups and forms, even for non-developers.
• Extensive resources, with a knowledge base, and a library of webinars, ebooks, and articles on marketing and the platform.
• Live chat support available.

PRICING PACKAGES:

Wishpond has three pricing plans, which you can choose to subscribe monthly or annually. The main difference between each is the number of leads each, as well as access to certain advanced features like API access.

The Starting Out Plan is $49/month, caps at 1500 leads. Everything You Need Plan is $99/month, caps at 2500 leads. Rapid Growth Tier-1 Plan is $199/month, caps at 10,000 leads.

There’s a no-commitment 14-day free trial on annual plans for anyone looking to see if Wishpond is right for you.

Get started with a 14-day free trial of Wishpond today.

Try Wishpond

7. НubЅроt.

НubЅроt is one of the most reputable names in the world of SaaS and B2B marketing, and rightly so. They offer a variety of marketing services, from a CRM tool to a sales tool and a landing page tool; HubSpot is a one-stop-shop.

HubSpot lives up to its reputation by offering feature-rich, easy to use, and substantially powerful landing page creation tools. The software suits every requirement and is sufficient for a single user, large teams, and agencies alike.

HubSpot is a freemium software that has all the free tools you need to run a basic marketing campaign. For free, you get a landing page builder, a form builder, email marketing, an ad management tool, and a CRM. If you’re a small business on a tight budget, these tools will definitely help you get results without breaking the bank.

If you are a beginner, then have access to a complete walk-through process and hundreds of pre-existing mobile-friendly templates. However, for more advanced users, this famous landing page tool offers a wide array of tools and technologies, such as advanced analytics tools, testing software, etc.

Key Features:

• Offers list segmentation
• Pages are fully responsive on all devices
• Offers personalized landing page content for individual visitors
• Solid A/B testing features
• Allows you to create professional-looking landing pages in minutes
• Captures and converts leads using live chat, pop-up forms, conversational bots, etc.

Pricing Packages:

HubSpot’s free plan comes with free landing pages, thirteen industry templates, and basic analytics, along with many other handy business tools. Then, you have three paid tiers: Ѕtаrtеr, Рrоfеssіоnаl, аnd Еntеrрrisе.

Іt’s аmоng thе mоrе ехреnsіvе mаrkеtіng tооls оn thе mаrkеt, раrtісulаrlу fоr thе Еntеrрrіsе vеrsіоn.

• The Ѕtаrtеr plan bеgіns аt $50 per month fоr ассеss tо 1,000 соntасts.
• Тhе Рrоfеssіоnаl рlаn costs $800 per month (bіllеd аnnuаllу).
• Thе Еntеrрrіsе рlаn соsts $2,400 реr mоnth (bіllеd аnnuаllу).

Cons:

• The Professional and Enterprise plans are expensive
• Doesn’t offer AMP mobile pages
• Better suited for larger clients

Get started with HubSpot Landing Pages for free. 

Try Hubspot

8. GetResponse.

GetResponse is an all-in-one platform that allows you to build landing pages and helps you with your email marketing and marketing automation endeavor.

To get started with its landing page builder, you only need to follow through with the four simple steps, including:

• Select a template
• Customize your landing page
• Publish your landing page with a single click
• Once published, test your page and optimize it

Yes, it’s that simple. Another great thing is that you get multiple tools at a single price point. However, the landing page builder is not the primary tool, which might have its downsides.

Key Fеаturеs

• Built-in, easy to use editor
• It places sticky sign-up forms to the bottom to the top edge of your landing page to convert your leads
• Fully mobile-responsive landing page templates with over 5,000 Shutterstock images
• Great Сustоmеr Ѕеrvісе
• Іntеllіgеnt Lіst Аutоmаtіоn
• Robust analytics and testing
• Countdown timer to prompt your leads to take action

Рrісing Packages:

The basic pricing plan starts at $15 per month and ranges up to $1,199/month for the Enterprise plan. GetResponse also offers a 30-day free trial.

Соns:

• Lacks intuition for heavy e-commerce use
• A bit too pricey, especially the Enterprise Plan
• The landing page builder is not their primary product
• Users have to upgrade to a more expensive pricing plan once they transcend 1,000 contacts

Get started with GetResponse Landing Pages.

Try GetResponse

What is a Landing Page Builder?

A landing page is a single webpage with one Call to Action (CTA) that usually consists of a sign-up form, offers, or contests. Your landing page is where a visitor lands via organic traffic or when they click on a Google Ad or any ad campaign on social media platforms like Facebook.

Most commonly, they are used to generate leads for a specific business that has bought the advertisements.

Landing page builders are used to make the landing page intuitive and user-friendly. Moreover, they help marketers create a targeted, customized landing page with attractive templates that nudges the visitors and convert them into leads.

The ultimate aim of a landing page builder is to create optimized landing pages that can focus on driving a customer down the sales funnel towards making a purchase. Unlike a homepage, they are built for quick conversions.

What Are The Benefits Of Using A Landing Page Builder?

Here are some of the many benefits of using landing page builders:

1. Goal-Oriented.

In a nutshell, a landing page builder takes away the distraction of visitors, and make them think about the only thing that you want them to, i.e., your business.

A landing page builder allows you to build a landing page without any technical knowledge, navigation bars, side tools, or any extra information. Furthermore, it helps you drive your visitors’ focus on your product.

Landing page builders help you make a very goal-oriented landing page quite quickly, with no mention of which builder you are using. The best part is that most of them come with pre-designed templates that can be customized to align with your business goals and requirements.

2. A/B Testing.

A/B testing is something that your landing page simply cannot do without, as it is essential to test every parameter of your page before making it online.

A business needs to calculate the increase or decrease in the conversion rate of leads from the landing pages.

Once you find out what feature specifically needs to be updated and tweaked through continuous testing, you can always go back and use the landing page builder to optimize it for the best results.

The benefit of using a landing page builder is that most of them come with an in-built A/B testing tool. It doesn’t cost you extra to buy a specific tool kit to monitor your landing pages.

Here’s an example from Unbounce:

Their A/B testing tool helps you split specific parameters between two variations of the same landing to see which version is performing better.

3. Attractive Templates.

Your landing page must have a visually attractive, creative, and intriguing template to reel in your target audience.

And this is where a high-quality landing page builder comes in handy.

Landing page builders usually come with pre-designed landing page templates for numerous niches and domain areas. The good news is that you can customize those templates to build a landing page that aligns precisely with your business requirements.

Finally, in the end, you get a highly customized, personalized landing pages, that are aimed at appealing to the target audience to positively influence them. These builders help you create a striking page, which also encapsulates your business aspects, just the way you want it.

Here, as you can see, Unbounce provides a lot of great templates for different purposes, including events, products, webinars, etc.

4. Easy To Use.

Like top website builders allow you to rest easy and not worry about building a great website, a landing page builder works the same way when it comes to creating an excellent landing page.

You don’t need to have any technical expertise or prior experience in using a landing page builder. All you have to do is follow the instructions and take advantage of most of the in-built attributes.

For instance, most landing page builders come with drag-and-drop editors where you can simply select and drag widgets and other attributes to add them to your landing page.

On top of that, landing page builders give you multiple template options, testing tools, interface designing, custom social media preview, and much more, directly at the click of a button, or by a drag-and-drop feature.

For example, here are some of the features that make it easier for marketers to build landing pages with Leadpages:

5. Flexible Publishing Options.

Many of the good landing page builders offer you flexible publishing options. On top of that, a majority of them provide subdomains to users who purchase their services.

This gives them a tremendous edge since subdomains allow you to manage your landing pages separately from your root domain while presenting a uniform domain to prospects and customers. This enables your marketing team to control the subdomains to publish pages and run campaigns as per their own schedule without involving IT teams.

Moreover, a subdomain is an additional opportunity for marketers to add further context to their page from the get-go with content in the URL.

It mainly prepares and educates the prospective leads before they even start reading your landing page content.

That’s why flexible publishing options matter.

GetResponse is one of the best landing page builders that offer this feature:

With GetResponse, you can choose any domain to publish your landing pages. Furthermore, you get an SSL certificate to protect the domain you connect to your GetResponse landing page.

6. Integrations With Third-party Software Tools.

Marketers create landing pages with many goals in mind. Usual goals are to generate leads, getting visitors to register to the newsletter, and more.

However, to achieve these goals, marketers require various other software tools, including email marketing tools, webinar platforms, opt-in form builders, SEO tools, etc.

Landing page builders know this and hence provide integrations with almost every prominent software tool out there.

In fact, one of the primary benefits of using a landing page builder is that it pools all the resources your business needs and integrates them to one common platform for maximum ease of use.

Unbounce is one of the leading landing page builders in this regard and addressed the issue of integration quite flawlessly.

These are just some of the integrations that it provides.

And not just Unbounce, most of the players in the landing page building industry offer tons of integrations.

Tips And Strategies to Use Landing Page Builders.

A majority of the businesses online nowadays use landing page builders to build a perfect, optimized, and visually appealing landing page.

However, merely using a landing page builder isn’t nearly enough.

The focus should be on creating value to gain a competitive advantage over your peers and using the builders to your maximum benefit.

Here are some tips that can help you do that:

1. Add a Catchy Headline.

A recent study found out that 80% of people don’t read the content after reading the headline. That means any content you want to sell stands at the potential risk of losing 80% of attention at the very beginning itself.

Most of the time, a headline is all you need to make an impression.

Here’re some of the ways to make your landing page headlines catch the attention of your target audience:

Aside from these five proven conversion boosting techniques, make sure to keep your headline under 20 words.

2. Mobile Workspace.

According to recent mobile statistics, mobile traffic has increased by 222% in the last five years.

It’s becoming a force to be reckoned with, which is why it has become vital to optimize your landing page to make it compatible with mobile phones.

The good news is that many landing page builders like Unbounce offer pre-designed mobile responsive landing page templates.

Mobile responsive landing page templates help your website visitors work seamlessly in smaller mobile screens, provides smooth navigation, and more.

3. Make Your Landing Page Visually Appealing.

‘A picture is worth a thousand words.’

This time-honored adage holds true, especially on the internet.

For example, statistics suggest that on Twitter, tweets with images were retweeted 150% more than those without images.

Viewers online tend to skim down the page rather than reading the entire content.

Therefore, it is necessary to include visually appealing images in any business strategy involving landing pages. After all, the brain processes visuals up to 60,000x faster than text.

Thus, your landing pages should be visually appealing and contain large, bold pictures that are relevant to your content. Moreover, the images you add should be able to talk about and market the business and its product visually and hit the nail on its head.

Such landing pages make it a fun experience for the visitors to learn and get to know more about their product. As a result, the visitors are likely to remember about the product even after they exit the website.

Most landing page builders come with pre-designed, visually appealing landing page templates.

4. Focus on Unique Selling Points (USP).

There’s competition in every industry, and every business has its share of competitors.

That’s why you need to display what makes you unique and separates you from your counterparts.

After all, you need to give your leads a reason why should they do business with you and not any other in the market.

And that’s why you need to highlight and focus on your (Unique Selling Points) USP.

The USP is something specific to you and your business, something that defines you, and can’t be replicated by your competitors.

If you state your USP convincingly, you can even convince your leads to switch brands.

While you design your landing page, make sure that your strategy includes using and highlighting your USP for everyone to see.

Let’s take the example of Moz Pro, a perfect example of how a brand can highlight their USP in their landing page.

They promise quality traffic, higher ranking, and measurable results, and attempts to draw attention to that at the very start.

You can also create your landing page, keeping your primary services in mind. Make sure to impart the perfect message that you want to give out to visitors and potential leads, something that will catch their eye and make them do business with you.

5. Ensure Security.

There’s a lot of chatter around how websites are susceptible to malicious crimes like unauthorized access, data breach, hacking, and more.

And it is not entirely unwarranted.

With the number of increasing instances of cyber-crimes, even regular internet users are becoming suspicious of websites that don’t appear secure. This might result in sales taking a hit, and it may be a long time before you hit the break-even point.

People look for security and continuously crave trust. Thus, your strategy should include providing proper security to the landing pages that you build.

For that, the first step would be to choose a landing page builder that provides security of the highest standard.

For instance, make sure to select the landing page builder that offers automatic SSL encryption to help you protect your landing page.

As security standards improve, the number of visitors on your landing pages will increase, which will subsequently result in increased revenue.

Thankfully, more and more landing page builders are incorporating security measures as part of their strategy.

Landing Page Builder FAQ.

Summary

When it comes to increasing your ROI and scaling up your digital marketing efforts, you can’t afford to create shoddy landing pages.

Landing pages are critical to leading your visitors down the funnel, which is why you need to pick the best one for you.

So choose your landing page creation tool carefully and before you choose, make sure to test them out to find the perfect fit for your business.

Each of the 13 platforms mentioned can help you generate targeted traffic and take your conversion rate to the next level. Now it’s up to you to decide.You can also read a full Instapage review by my friend Mark over at Growth Marketing Pro for more information.

Which is your favorite landing page builder?

The e-learning and online course market are soaring to new heights and estimated to be worth $325 billion by 2025.

With the acceleration of online learning due to social distancing, this industry is experiencing huge growth.

Why not tap into this market and sell online courses? 

If you have experience in a field and want to share your knowledge with the world, all that you need to get started is an online course platform.

These online tools let you:

• Create an online course website (or integrate your course within your existing website).
• Price your course and collect payments (either one-time or in installments).
• Create membership communities and webinars.
• Upload your videos, add assignments and quizzes, creating interactive content, and engage with your students.
• Market your course to build your online presence.

So where do you get started and which platform is best?

After (a lot of) trial and error, I ranked and reviewed the 15 best online course platforms to use this year. I also provide the top ten ways to create and sell online courses.

This ultimate guide ranks and compares software based on reliability, features, marketing tools, profit potential, technical support, pricing, and more.

Let’s get started.

What Are Online Course Platforms?

Online course platforms are types of learning management systems (LMS) that provide users with access to digital classes. These virtual courses are similar to offline classes in a lot of ways: an instructor provides an engaging educational experience through video, image, text, audio, and PDF files.

Students follow along with the LMS software, take notes, perform exercises, and complete exams to test their knowledge.

Tools like Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia, and Ruzuku all feature a robust feature set for course creators.

Their course software includes a dedicated fully-responsive website experience, easy content uploads, the ability to edit the look and feel of the class, marketing features, course completion certificates, a sales funnel, and more.

If you’re an educational institution looking to replace your on-premise classes with online learning, you can check out my other guide to the best learning management systems (LMS).

Course creators choose a platform to use, then charge their students a set fee to access their courses.

What Are the Best Online Course Platforms?

The best online course platforms give the freedom to spend more time teaching your students and automating your sales processes.

In my opinion, the best online eLearning platforms are Thinkific, Learnworlds, Teachable, Kajabi, LearnDash, and Podia.

To be successful, you need to be able to create, organize, and deliver your course content efficiently. You also need a platform that matches your unique needs.

For example, if you’re looking to start a blog and sell online courses, look for the features that coaches would need like paid memberships, WordPress integrations, ecommerce capabilities, etc.

Here are my top picks for the best online course platforms to use this year.

1. Thinkific.

Best Overall Online Course Platform (Free or $49/mo)

Thinkific’s mission is to power your education empire. They are one platform with a robust set of user-friendly features, email marketing tools, membership site integration for your lessons, and excellent 24/7 customer support.

They are my #1 choice because they are indeed the only platform you need to create and sell your online courses.

First, you can sign up and get a One-Month Free Trial for their most popular Pro Plan. If you want more course sales from the start, this plan gives you the ability to create unlimited courses. It also features memberships and bundles, advanced pricing options, landing pages, certificates, and marketing tools.

Next, you create and customize your course with their drag and drop editor, as shown on Thinkific.com:

After you add in your course content, you build your course site with their high-quality, well-designed templates:

Finally, you can market and sell your course with its advanced business tools:

You can easily integrate Thinkific with over 1,500 apps by using Zapier without the need for a WordPress plugin. By hooking up with your email provider, you can send highly targeted campaigns to the right segments of your audience at the right time.

I recommend the Thinkific platform as my #1 choice for course creators and entrepreneurs who are serious about creating, marketing, and selling their online courses.

You can get started today with a One-Month Free Trial of their Pro Plan with my link below.

Try Thinkific

2. Learnworlds.

Best for Premium, Interactive Learning Experiences ($24/month)

Learnworlds is at the future of eLearning and has everything you need to create and sell an online course – and keep your students engaged.

Learnworlds is a great online course builder and my overall #2 choice. It’s best for course creators looking for an interactive course experience and student engagement. If you’re looking for a free option, Learnworlds is not for you.

However, if you’re looking to create an interactive learning experience with questionnaires, tests, and engaging elements, Learnworlds is the best choice.

The first step is creating the look and feel of your online course with their custom landing and sales pages. You can use their library of responsive templates and styles to build your course site and even add additional information pages – About, Pricing, Contact, etc. – all easy to make with Learnworlds.

You can use their theme editor to customize the branding and color scheme of your course with minimal coding knowledge.

Next, when you’re ready to build your course, you leverage their pre-made course catalogs and add in your content. These catalogs include advanced features like interactive video players, online tests, interactive e-books, and downloadable attachments.

Your students also benefit from this customized approach. When taking your course, they can take notes, highlight important points, and get certificates of completion.

When you want to market your course, you can use a full custom domain and white-label your content. For example, Learnworlds will create your custom mobile app for your course and provide coupons and discounts to market to your students.

Finally, they offer social media integrations, a new analytics platform to optimize your sales, the ability to create membership sites, a strong knowledge base, and 24/7 support.

Get a free 30-day trial at my link below and start building your online community.

Try Learnworlds

3. Teachable.

Best Online Course Platform for Beginners ($29 – $299/mo)

Teachable is my #3 choice for e-learning platforms. By creating an account, you’re joining 22,000 other instructors creating excellent teaching platforms for their students.

You can choose to use the online course platform for free (with $1 + $0.10 for all transactions) or select one of their three plans ranging from $29/month to $299/month.

I recommend their most popular Pro Plan with the premium course creations bundle at $119/month as it’s the first plan with zero transaction fees. It also has graded quizzes, custom completion certificates, advanced website theme customizations, and support for up to 5 admin users.

It’s pretty effortless to upload your content, edit the look of your online school, and engage with your students – all without separate web hosting.

Get started with your Teachable plan and get a premium course creation bundle.

Try Teachable

4. Kajabi.

Best High-End Online Course Platform for Professionals ($119/month)

Kajabi is a high-powered course builder for in-depth courses. It features powerful course site themes, robust email marketing automation, upsells and digital products, a customizable checkout, and blogging functionality.

Their plans are a bit expensive, starting at $119/month, including the 20% annual discount. However, they really know what they’re doing as they’re trusted by more than 16,000 businesses and have processed more than $675 million through their platform.

Their $119 basic plan gives you one website, three products, three pipelines, unlimited landing pages, unlimited marketing emails, and up to 1,000 members and 10,000 contacts. Their higher-tier plans increase the number of websites, products, pipelines, and contacts, so you can choose a specific plan based on your needs.

Where Kajabi really excels is its marketing automation tools. You can segment users in your list, send emails at certain times based on advanced triggers, and send professionally-branded messages.

If you’re an established business and want to try one of the more advanced platforms on the market, Kajabi is a solid choice.

Start your free 14-day trial. 

Try Kajabi

5. LearnDash.

Great LMS for WordPress Users ($13.25/month)

LearnDash is an impressive online course platform that integrates with WordPress. Some big websites using LearnDash include Yoast, Infusionsoft, the University of Michigan, and WP Elevation.

One of their first helpful features is their “Focus Mode,” which blocks out all distractions when students run through a course.

LearnDash’s full-featured course builder meshes well with their email drip campaigns. You can build a great online course and match your content with an email drip schedule to send lessons according to a program.

Their Gradebook* technology takes LMS to another level. This technology gives students an overall grade based on quiz and homework scores, creating a weighted average for teachers to review.

In addition to grading, course points award points for actions, and badges and certificates award students for course activities.

If you’re a teacher looking for grading systems that compete with the features of college curriculums, LearnDash is a fantastic choice.

You can get started today with a $40 discount and full 30-day money-back guarantee on their annual plans.

Try Learndash

6. Podia.

Great for Digital Downloads and Webinars ($39/month)

Podia allows over 11,000 users to create, host, and sell their lessons with one easy-to-use platform. There are no transaction fees, and a simple three-step process has your course website up in no time.

Although they don’t charge fees, their payment processors have transaction fees of 2.9% + 30¢.

Other features include the ability to add coupons and memberships, pre-launch courses, add sales pages, and leverage “drip” courses. This feature gives access to individual sections of the course at a time, helping students learn in the correct structure.

Where they excel is with membership options. You can grow your own online community by interacting with members, bundling products for specific groups, offering tiered plans, and connecting with Facebook Groups and Slack.

Podia also lets you host webinars – either live or on-demand. You can sell these webinars or provide them for free to build your customer email list.

Another awesome feature is the ability to run your own affiliate program inside of Podia. You can view all of your affiliates in one place, view helpful reporting, and make payouts based on your own customized commission structure.

Overall, if you’re looking for strong membership functionality and the ability to increase your sales with the help of affiliates, Podia is a unique and worthwhile course builder to try out.

You can sign up and give it a test run with a free 14-day trial.

Try Podia

7. Ruzuku.

The Ridiculously Easy Online Course Platform ($74.75/month)

Ruzuku allows you to create a step-by-step online course with their learning platform, PDFs, and text in minutes.  You can quickly create course outlines, edit and reorder your steps with ease, launch your course, and generate sales in no time.

Ruzuku integrates with tools like MailChimp, Infusionsoft, and payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal to accept payments – and they don’t charge transaction fees.

They’re also known for their desirable community. When you join Ruzuku, you’re not buying a teaching tool; you’re joining a team to help your students learn.

Called “the ridiculously easy course creator,” Ruzuku comes with some excellent features listed below:

Finally, their platform offers unlimited courses to unlimited students on all paid plans.

You can get started with a 14-day free trial and 30-day money-back guarantee.

Try Ruzuku

8. Academy of Mine.

The Enterprise Platform That is Custom-Built to Your Business Needs ($499/month)

Academy of Mine is a high-end eLearning platform founded on personalized customer success and philosophy of customization. A standard feature of any plan is completely free development hours to help set up and launch your course with customized integrations.

One of their goals is not just to set you up and help you launch. They also want to help sell your course with their marketing tools and analytics dashboards.

Personalization is at the heart of its strategy. Are you a healthcare company that wants to create a full curriculum for continuing education credits (CECs)? They can help with that.

Are you an insurance company that requires continued training due to constant changes in a particular legal code at the state level? Are you looking to create online courses to manage your facility?

That’s also no problem with Academy of Mine.

While these enterprise offerings may be overkill for typical users, they are necessary for small to medium-sized businesses needing a robust training system for their employees or clients.

If this sounds like the eLearning solution you’re looking for, you can get started today with their 30-day free trial.

Try Academyofmine

What Are the Best Online Learning Platforms?

Now for the student’s point of view.

With social distancing becoming the norm and many colleges moving to online classes, there are plenty of ways to educate yourself from home.

Often called massive open online courses (MOOCs), they are slightly different than paid platforms. Instead of hosting files yourself, courses are in a marketplace where students pay for them directly, or via a subscription.

The benefit for course creators is that you can leverage these websites to reach a new audience. The downside is you won’t earn as much money per sale, and there is stiffer competition in the market.

Ultimately, I recommend using one of the providers above to sell courses.

If you’re looking to sign up for a platform to learn new things, here are my picks for the best online learning platforms.

1. Shaw Academy.

Shaw Academy is a platform that gives its students access to professional, accredited online courses. Students sign up for Shaw Academy and get access to all of their long-form courses.

They offer courses in three distinct categories: for hobbyists, for professionals, and for entrepreneurs.

For example, in their “For Professionals” category, they offer a globally-recognized Digital Marketing Course. This course includes 32 videos and takes an average of 16 weeks to complete.

What Does Shaw Academy Cost?

Courses are offered for free for the first four weeks. You can then continue learning by paying for a monthly plan.

The cost then ranges from $49.99 to $60 per month.

Shaw Academy Pros

Their courses are all globally-recognized and offer certifications to help you in your career. If you’re a working professional, their classes on digital marketing, project management, web development, Photoshop, and Microsoft Excel are very in-depth.

Entrepreneurs can also access helpful classes on social media marketing, viral marketing, wedding, photography, etc.

Their courses are all flexible and you can complete them on your own time. They also offer helpful support and the ability to download class recordings to watch them offline.

The four-week free plan is also a great bonus too.

Shaw Academy Cons

Although they offer a lot of good courses, you may not find the right one for you depending on your industry. They also don’t have the same volume of hobby classes as platforms like Skillshare.

Shaw Academy Review: Final Verdict.

If you’re a professional looking for flexible, accredited courses that you can start completely free for 4 weeks, this platform is a great choice.

Try Shawacademy

2. Skillshare.

Skillshare is a large marketplace focused on creative education. Topics include anything from graphic design and music production to fine art and cooking.

They also have classes on more technical topics like data science, analytics, and e-commerce. Skillshare has over 24,000 lessons, more than 4 million students, and over $5 million paid to teachers.

Each Skillshare class is 20-60 minutes broken down into shorter lessons, plus projects and a community discussion forum to connect with other students.

The open discussion is very beneficial for their creative topics, as students can share their progress and get feedback from others. Skillshare also can help premium members with production, course planning, and can even help with online course creation at their studio in New York.

What does Skillshare cost?

Skillshare is free for creating a premium course experience. They pay instructors $10 for paid membership referrals and monthly royalties for each minute of content watched.

Skillshare Advantages

They have a large user base of creators and entrepreneurs. If you are offering content that would be suited for a creative audience, Skillshare is a great platform to get noticed.

Lessons on web design, email marketing, photography, painting, personal branding, and creative topics are the most popular.

The quality of the classes is reliable. Skillshare prides itself on professional, high-quality courses. They can help with outlining your course based on the needs of their audience, and can also assist with production.

Skillshare Disadvantages

Earnings run through a royalty system. Each month, between 30 and 50% of Skillshare’s premium subscription revenue goes to a royalty pool for teachers.

The remaining funds go to marketing and promoting classes, supporting the platform, and running day-to-day operations. This royalty system works for well established Skillshare teachers, as the more minutes watched, the more revenue share you receive.

However, this makes it difficult for new instructors to receive much compensation when they’re just starting. Plus, students who watch at 2x speed only count as half the minutes toward the royalty pool.

Another disadvantage is they only offer email support. Although Skillshare has helpful support articles, the only option to contact them is via email.

Skillshare Review: Final Verdict

Skillshare is an up and coming online course marketplace with over 4 million students. With a large user base of creators and entrepreneurs, Skillshare is a great option for instructors in creative fields.

Their classes are all high quality, and they can help make sure that your class will best match the needs of their audience for maximum impact.

However, based on the royalty system for earnings, and no live support, you may be able to make a lot more sales with a marketplace like Udemy. If you’re a creative course creator and want to reach a new audience, their online courses are worth a try.

Sign up with Skillshare and get 2 months of free classes.

Try Skillshare

3. LinkedIn Learning.

LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda) is another online course marketplace tailored to business professionals. With over 1,000 business courses on topics like project management, web development, and digital marketing, they’re an excellent platform for working professionals looking to keep their skills up-to-date.

They also offer certifications that you can add to your LinkedIn profile, showcasing your expertise and improving your online resume.

What does LinkedIn Learning cost?

Monthly fees tie to a premium LinkedIn membership, which is $29.99/month or $24.00/month if you pay annually.

Try LinkedIn Learning today and get one month free.

Try Linkedin Learning

4. Udemy.

Udemy is one of the best online course platform marketplaces with over 24 million students, 35,000 instructors, and unbelievable 80,000+ courses. The first step to creating a course on Udemy is to sign up to be a premium instructor.

Once your account is approved, it’s effortless to get started creating your courses. When creating your video content, keep in mind the material has to be at least 30 minutes long and contain five lectures.

Another benefit to adding your course on Udemy is that you can easily promote your class inside their platform. You can use their marketing features to be included in site-wide discounts, be placed in their marketing emails, or join their affiliate program with tiered commission rates.

What does Udemy cost?

Udemy is free to use. They charge a 3% rev share for sales through instructor coupons, 50% for students who found your course through organic search (SEO), and 75% for transactions made through paid search marketing efforts.

Udemy Advantages

You get access to a large user base. Udemy’s 24,000 users are all potential students who will pay for your course. But just because you’re on their platform, it doesn’t mean you’ll start raking in sales right away.

You have to develop a strong marketing and sales strategy, much like a new e-commerce company, author, or real estate agent. It’s all about getting your name out there.

They provide a substantial revenue share for tuition fees. Udemy instructors set their course prices and receive revenue at 100% of the tuition fee for new users and 50% for existing users. That’s a substantial commission on sales and a massive benefit to using their platform.

You can participate in Udemy marketing promotions. Every so often, Udemy runs promotions that can help you reach a larger audience on their platform. These marketing promotions are opt-in, so instructors can choose to participate or not.

They have reliable technology and support. Udemy offers free 24/7 support, and they also have a vast library of helpful articles.

Udemy Disadvantages

There is intense competition with other courses. Udemy instructors are at the mercy of the placement and appearance on the Udemy website, which is controlled by their proprietary algorithms.

It can be difficult to outrank other instructors on particular topics if you’re new to the platform.

There is also stiff competition with other course publishers. Udemy isn’t the only course marketplace ranking on search engines for your course topics.

Other marketplaces like iSpring Learn, LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, and Skillshare can compete with Udemy in organic search, which can be a disadvantage for Udemy instructors.

They have lenient return policies. Refunds are guaranteed to all students within 30 days for any reason. Because of this, students could take a course, complete it within 30 days, and get a guaranteed refund – decreasing your sales.

Udemy Review: Final Verdict

Udemy is one of the most well known, widely used, and professional online course marketplace out there. With a robust rev share model, a vast audience to tap into, 24/7 support, and marketing offerings, you can’t go wrong with their platform.

Although there is healthy competition with other course creators and platforms, the company is likely to maintain its lead in the market.

Try Udemy today.

Try udemy

5. Treehouse.

Treehouse is a relatively new marketplace that believes in the democratization of education. Their platform is “committed to making education accessible to students of all races, genders, sexual orientations, and socio-economic backgrounds.”

They feature 300+ technical courses on coding and development, over 50,000 students, and over 27,545 minutes of video (and counting).

Treehouse partners with some big names, including Microsoft, IBM Watson, Amazon Alexa, and Google Developers.

What does Treehouse cost?

Treehouse offers a 7-day free trial. Then you can choose from three different plans ranging from $25 to $199 per month.

Their basic plan features on-demand courses, interactive practice sessions, and access to their online community.

The pro plan gives you access to bonuses, beta features, and downloadable content.

And if you’re looking to create a real portfolio and get job-ready skills, their Techdegree plan gives you personalized feedback, real-time support, and a custom curriculum.

Try Treehouse today.

Try Treehouse

6. Coursera.

Coursera is a professional online course marketplace with virtual classes from some of the world’s best companies and universities like the University of Michigan, Duke, and Stanford.

Instructors teach Coursera courses at some of the world’s top universities, take about 4-6 weeks to complete, and include video lectures, peer-reviewed assignments, and community discussion forums.

Ecommerce is quietly and conveniently taking over our lives. According to Jeff Bezos, Amazon has over 100 million Amazon Prime members. Free shipping is the norm. Two-day shipping is becoming one-day or two-hour shipping.

If you want to start your ecommerce store, choosing the best ecommerce platforms can be tough – there are over 477 different options.

I want to make this decision easier by showcasing the best ecommerce software so you can find the right solution for your online store. Let’s face it – with so many options on the market, there will only be a few left standing in the end, so you want to make sure you pick the winner.

Why should you trust these reviews?

I have over 10 years of ecommerce experience:

• I’ve managed marketing teams for ecommerce brands making over $100 million/year.
• In a previous role, I was in warehouses and managed wholesale shipments.
• I’ve managed 8-figure/year ecommerce marketing budgets.
• I’ve worked for SaaS companies in the ecommerce space.
• And I’ve launched online stores on almost every platform.

These reviews rank based on price, reliability, technical support, features, scalability, product options, shipping, fulfillment, control panel experience, and more.

We’ll also compare and review things like:

• The best choices for small businesses.
• The top cheap, free and open-source options.
• Enterprise solutions for large brands.

Let’s get started.

What Are the Best Ecommerce Platforms?

Ecommerce platforms are robust, full-featured software tools to sell products online. When choosing from the best options, there are many considerations, and each ecommerce website builder provides different features.

For example, your needs will be different if you’re selling three products vs. 100. Or if you want to do dropshipping rather than your own shipping and fulfillment.

Ultimately, ecommerce software should let you add your products quickly, offer coupons and discounts, and automatically track inventory. They should also help manage shipping and fulfillment so that you can focus on running your business.

Here are my picks for the best ecommerce platforms to try this year:

1. Wix.

Best Ecommerce Platform for Small Business and Hundreds of Themes ($23/month).

Wix is a fast-growing website builder that allows users to upgrade to full ecommerce functionality for $20 per month. They boast hundreds of designer-made templates, promotions and gift cards, beautiful product galleries, and easy order management and shipping.

They automatically optimize your online store on mobile, including iPhones and Android devices (Apple and Google). You can also customize the look of your mobile ecommerce site with their online store builder tool. You don’t need to dive into HTML or CSS to create a stunning website with Wix.

They have an excellent array of product galleries to layout your products in a beautiful (and conversion-optimized) way.

These product galleries layout great on mobile devices too and adapt in a stacked format.

Wix is also known as one of the easiest tools to use in both the website builder and ecommerce space.

There are literally only seven steps needed to build your online store:

1. Log in to your account or sign up for free.
2. Pick a template from the Online Store category.
3. Edit the text and add your business name.
4. Click “My Store” & “Manage Your Store”.
5. Add products to your store.
6. Select “Business Setup” to add Payments, Shipping & Store Settings.
7. Publish your site & connect to your own domain.

Finally, Wix offers a secure checkout, 24/7 customer support, multiple payment options and solutions, global tax and shipping, and coupons and discounts to help you sell more.

Try Wix for free and start selling your products online.

Try Wix

2. BigCommerce.

Best Ecommerce Platform for Large Businesses Built to Scale ($29.95/mo).

BigCommerce is my #2 ecommerce platform recommendation. They have best-in-class SEO features, 40+ payment gateways, advanced product options, 24/7 support, and can scale with your ecommerce business up to over $100 million per year.

Here’s what typically happens. 

A small business owner decides to get into ecommerce and chooses a platform like Shopify because of their name recognition. After 6-12 months, they start growing sales and paying extra for apps and add-ons to help their ecommerce business grow.

After some time, they hit a growth ceiling. These users may realize they are paying hundreds of dollars every month for apps, their SEO is lacking, or they’re outgrowing their platform.

Enter BigCommerce:

They are the most open SaaS ecommerce platform on the market – open APIs, zero transaction fees, and an open partner ecosystem.

BigCommerce has two product offerings: BigCommerce (their enterprise offering) and BigCommerce Essentials (built for small businesses). Both are built to scale with your growth.

On the one hand, they are an accessible platform for small business owners because of their features and built-in functionality. However, there is a slightly higher learning curve than an easier tool like Wix.

They’re also perfect for enterprise brands looking to leave expensive on-premise solutions like Magento and move to software as a service (SaaS). Brands like Ford, Toyota, Skullcandy, and others in the Fortune 1000 use BigCommerce and can easily bring in over $100 million in annual sales without hiccups.

In December 2018, they launched BigCommerce for WordPress, a “headless commerce” product, allowing users to manage their front end content on WordPress and their backend ecommerce with BigCommerce.

This use of APIs allows for faster WordPress site speed than you find with other WordPress ecommerce options like WooCommerce, which installs multiple plugins to work and hinders performance.

Their plans start at $29.95/month, and with that, you get a branded online store and domain name with the ability to sell on Amazon, eBay, and social media like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

They have a simple user interface to build your online store, including sections for your orders, products, marketing, analytics, taxes, and your storefront:

With the newly launched BigCommerce Shipping features, you get discounted carrier rates and gain the ability to print shipping labels and manage fulfillment right in your dashboard.

Their themes are fully responsive and optimized with conversion rates in mind. They also offer free SSL certificates, have a clear pricing structure, and again – zero transaction fees.

BigCommerce receives my highest recommendation for medium to large businesses and you can get started with a 15-day free trial.

Try Bigcommerce

3. Shopify.

Great Ecommerce Software for Dropshipping ($29/month).

Shopify is an ecommerce powerhouse, hosting over 400,000 merchants worldwide. When you think of ecommerce, your mind might go right to Shopify. They’re a Canadian company that launched in 2004 and quickly became one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in North America.

Dissatisfied by existing mobile apps and ecommerce products on the market, Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake built their open-source web application with Ruby on Rails and launched after two months.

That program became Shopify.

One reason Shopify gained massive brand awareness was by appealing to the audience of “dreamers” – new users who want to strike it rich in ecommerce.

With their integrations, even the most inexperienced users can set up a dropshipping store with relative ease. I tested it out. After picking my inventory, I integrated a few dropshipping suppliers with Shopify and test-launched a store.

It was easy to design a cool-looking website and add products. But just because you have an online store doesn’t mean it is a successful one – you need to market your business.

A few drawbacks to Shopify are their SEO rules. Your URL structure locks into their format. For example, instead of category pages located at campingsite.com/tents, Shopify forces you to use their format of campingsite.com/collections/tents. This structure is not ideal for search rankings, especially considering “category” is a higher-level subfolder than the more critical keyword “tents.”

Second, they have fewer product options than BigCommerce. If you are selling t-shirts, for example, and have different colors, materials, and sizes, your SKUs add up quickly. Shopify is limited to only 100 product variants – not enough if you have a lot of different product combinations.

Limitations aside, Shopify is a reliable ecommerce platform that works well for small businesses.

Shopify has three plans ranging from $29 to $299. Additionally, its enterprise Shopify Plus platform offers its own custom pricing.

All plans include unlimited products, free SSL, discount codes, inventory management, multilingual support, easy buy buttons, abandoned cart recovery, marketing features, and 24/7 support.

To test them out for yourself, they offer a 14-day free trial.

You can also read my full Shopify review or my article on a full comparison of BigCommerce vs. Shopify.

Try Shopify

4. Square Online.

Best For Retailers and Local Businesses Looking to Move Online (Free – $72/month)

Square, the popular POS system, launched Square Online as an ecommerce offering to help retailers move their businesses online.

It’s a strong standalone ecommerce platform but also adds great options for local businesses, like curbside pickup and local delivery.

Here’s how you can get started with Square Online:

• Create your website using their pre-made templates, add pages with page editors, and add your store details.
• Add products to your store.
• Launch your store for free (only pay 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction). Or you can move to a paid plan for more advanced features.

It’s a very easy setup and a flexible option made for small businesses looking to quickly and easily move online.

You can sell directly from your Instagram feed and then expand to a full ecommerce website when you’re ready.

Another strong feature is their secure online payments and ability for customers to pay via Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Square Online also has a number of unique features for small business websites:

• Online food ordering for restaurant websites.
• Tools for online and in-person retail.
• Online bookings through Square appointments.
• The ability to accept donations for nonprofit websites.

Square Online Pricing

Square Online has a completely free plan, which includes unlimited products, in-house and on-demand delivery, gift cards and coupons, SEO tools, an SSL certificate, integration with Instagram, inventory sync with Square POS, and more.

You only pay the 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee and $0.50 per delivery. One drawback of this plan is that you don’t get to use your own domain name.

If you’d like to upgrade to one of their paid plans, you get extra features:

• Professional ($12/month): Custom domain name (free for one year) and no Square branding.
• Performance ($26/month): Adds abandoned cart emails, on-site customer reviews, and discounted shipping labels.
• Premium ($72/month): Lower transaction fees, highest shipping discounts, and a real-time shipping rate calculator.

This is nice because you can scale your plan as your online business grows. If you’re just starting to sell online, I recommend you get started with their Professional Plan and then scale up to the higher-tier plans as your orders increase.

Overall, Square Online is a great choice if you’re a traditional retailer or local business looking to move online.

Try Squareup

5. Zyro.

New Ecommerce Platform Best for Multi-Channel Sales ($14.99/month).

Zyro is a popular website builder that just released its long-awaited Zyro ecommerce platform.

Launched in early 2020, their new online store builder takes all of the great features they’ve developed over the years as a website builder and adds a full suite of ecommerce features.

This platform excels in a few key areas. First, they provide their merchants the ability to sell products across multiple channels, including Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram.

Second, it’s simple to use. Much like Shopify, they say that you can start selling in under an hour. And it’s true. With their drag and drop website capabilities and quick set up guide, it’s an easy code-free process.

Zyro provides everything you need to run an online store, including:

• Order and inventory management
• 50+ payment options and commission-free sales
• Shipping and tax management
• Discount codes and gift cards
• Email messages and notifications
• Multiple storefronts: online store, plus Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram
• Free hosting

There are a few small drawbacks though.

Since they are such a new platform, advanced features are still being developed and may be absent. Zyro currently has 68 ecommerce themes to choose from. I also spoke with their team and they promise to have over 150 new themes soon. Not bad for a new platform!

One important note is that any Zyro template can be used for an online store – you just have to go to their elements section in the editor and “add e-shop functionality.”

Let’s move onto pricing.

In addition to their free plan, Zyro added two new ecommerce plans: Ecommerce (most popular) and Ecommerce +.

• Their Ecommerce plan is $14.99/month (or $8.99/month for a 3-year term).
• The Ecommerce + plan is $21.99/month (or $10.99/month for a 3-year term). This plan adds features like abandoned cart recovery, multi-channel sales, and multi-lingual stores.

Overall, if you want a simple-to-use, multi-channel ecommerce platform, give Zyro a try. You can start with a free plan to test out its website features, then upgrade to an ecommerce plan when you’re ready.

Try Zyro

6. Ecwid.

Best Online Store Builder For Existing Websites ($35/month).

With a customer base of 1.6 million small businesses, Ecwid is an excellent and one of the most popular ecommerce platforms available. It also got awarded the “fastest ecommerce implementation platform” by G2 Crowd.

It’s most suitable if you already have a website and want to add a new store or shopping capabilities to it. The good news is that the platform is simple and straightforward to use.

Moreover, it’s entirely flexible and enables users to sell on numerous sites like:

• Amazon
• eBay
• Facebook
• Instagram

This helps you reach out to a massive number of buyers across the world on different platforms from one dashboard.

Starting with Ecwid is also decidedly easy. And if you run your website on platforms like Joomla, Drupal, or WordPress Business, then things become even easier for you because of Ecwid’s in-built integration with them.

Furthermore, it has a highly customizable storefront, which ensures maximum visibility for your products – no matter which device the customer is using. You can prominently display brand elements like logos, colors, and messages to attract your target audience.

Ecwid also allows you to create, manage, and track all of your advertisements right from the dashboard itself. Curating the perfect Facebook advertisements or Google advertisements is also easy.

The payment process is straightforward, courtesy of Ecwid’s seamless integration with over 50 payment gateways like First Data, PayPal, Square, Stripe, WePay, and more via an in-built functionality with top POS systems.

Additionally, Ecwid is a ‘PCI DSS validated Level 1 Service Provider,’ which helps it ensure end-to-end data encryption and secure customer and merchant payment details.

Some of Ecwid’s other unique capabilities are:

• Inventory tracking
• Saving favorite products
• A comprehensive customer address book
• Managing product options
• Automatic updates
• Smart shipping calculations
• An easy checkout process

All these features (among others) help Ecwid stand out from its counterparts. That said, it has its limitations as well. Firstly, it doesn’t offer services in languages other than English. They also don’t provide any telephone support.

However, the feature-rich and diverse pricing plans make up for the limitations. The good news is that Ecwid comes with a free plan that provides all the necessary functions and lets you sell ten physical items in a month.

Then they offer three paid plans.

• The Venture plan lets you sell 100 physical or digital items for $12.50 per month.
• The Business plan comes at $29.17 per month allowing you to sell 2,500 items.
• The Unlimited plan ($82.50 per month) includes all sales channels.

If you already run an ecommerce website and want to migrate it to an easy-to-use-effective platform to sell across multiple channels, Ecwid could be for you.

You can try them out with a completely free plan.

Try Ecwid

7. 3dcart.

Best Ecommerce Platform for Small Business Sites ($19/month).

3dcart is one of the fastest-growing ecommerce platforms known for its robust SEO features, 50 free themes, and 100+ payment processors.

Their plans range from $19 per month for a Startup Store up to $114.50 per month for their Pro Store plan. All plans come with domain registration, no transaction fees, unlimited bandwidth, a Facebook store, a built-in blog, API

They recently released new shipping settings and an upgrade to their promotional tools. For shipping, you can display all of your order’s shipping carriers and rates on your checkout page instead of just one at a time.

Then rates are loaded automatically when a buyer checks out with their credit card or PayPal.

With their Advanced Promotion Manager, you can choose multiple Customer Groups to offer a promotion at once instead of one group like in the past. This option is excellent for B2B brands that want an online shopping cart for both consumers and retailers.

Their SEO features are strong and they are touted as “the best ecommerce platform for SEO”. You can create custom URLs, dynamic meta-tags, link titles, and more.

They also take security seriously and are 100% PCI compliant. You can also sell outside of your ecommerce platform with the 3dcart built-in Facebook store. Additionally, you can reach shoppers on the go with mCommerce for mobile devices.

Ultimately, if you’re a small business that needs strong SEO, marketing tools, and ecommerce functionality without the need for advanced enterprise features, 3dcart is a solid choice.

You can try them out with a 15-day free trial.

Try 3dcart

8. WooCommerce.

The Ecommerce Platform for WordPress (Free + Paid Add-Ons).

With over 74 million downloads, WooCommerce powers around 25% of online stores worldwide. This simple open-source ecommerce plugin for WordPress launched in 2011 and has grown into one of the most popular ecommerce solutions on the market today.

WooCommerce is a completely free plugin that you can add to your WordPress site. However, for more advanced functionality that you’ll find with other ecommerce platforms on this list, you need to add paid extensions.

Another drawback is scalability. I installed the plugin on my site and first noticed that it installed a total of four plugins to run and slowed down my site a bit.

Drawbacks aside, there are a few reasons that so many people use WooCommerce. First, it is a highly customizable solution. There is a large community of WooCommerce developers who add new functionality due to the open-source nature of the plugin.

Second, WordPress is one of the best platforms for SEO on the market. With endless SEO customizations and the ability to have more control over your search results, WooCommerce is a natural extension of the WordPress platform.

However, it’s not the only option, as I currently sell digital products on my WordPress site with the BigCommerce for WordPress plugin. I found it much faster as it’s a “headless commerce” solution that works via an API.

Overall, if you have a WordPress site and want to add ecommerce functionality for free, give WooCommerce a try.

Try Woocommerce

What Are Ecommerce Platforms?

Ecommerce platforms are software tools to help people sell products and services online. Historically, businesses had to purchase expensive, on-premise ecommerce software with an IT setup and in-house hosting to manage their ecommerce. Now, with SaaS software technology, users can build storefronts (front-facing sales channels) online.

These ecommerce platforms handle everything from web design and product listings to shipping, taxes, and marketing. Within these web-based software tools, you can add your own products, manage inventory and orders, communicate with customers, sync with other apps, and more.

What is the Best Ecommerce Platform for SEO?

When it comes to ecommerce SEO, there are a lot of important ranking factors, including site speed, URL structure, page titles/content, and sitewide HTTPS.

1. Wix.

Most online store owners struggle with SEO and rely on paid Facebook and Google ads to generate interest in their products.

Wix has a free SEO tool called Wix SEO Wiz. Wiz analyzes your ecommerce site and automatically provides a personalized SEO plan with a checklist to improve your Google rankings.

This includes optimizing your SEO titles and meta descriptions, adding alt text, and indexing tools to get your pages ranking faster. Wix and Google collaborated on this feature and Wix users can see their pages in search results immediately after using this tool.

2. BigCommerce.

My second pick for the best SEO is BigCommerce. Here’s why:

With site speed, you want to make sure your ecommerce host loads your site content quickly on mobile and desktop. Even a 100-millisecond delay in load time can drop your conversion rate by 7%.

Use tools like GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights to check your ecommerce site speed regularly.

Second, image compression is another critical factor in site speed. Images that take a long time to load increase page load times, which impacts user experience and SEO.

BigCommerce is the only ecommerce platform to give merchants Google AMP on both product and category pages, as well as automatic image compression with Akamai Image Manager.

Regarding the URL structure, BigCommerce features the best default URL format.

For example, as highlighted earlier, www.rebelpeak.com/camping/blue-tent is the best format to follow in the order of domain, category, and product. They allow you to do this, while other platforms like Shopify force you to keep their structure, including the static “/collections/,”/pages/,” and “/products/.”

This URL structure is not ideal for SEO, so BigCommerce wins in this regard and is a great pick.

What Are the Best Free Ecommerce Platforms?

If you’re looking for a free or open-source ecommerce platform, you can find many readily available. When researching different ecommerce frameworks to use, it’s essential to ask yourself a few different questions:

• Are you interested in self-hosting?
• How much web development experience do you have?
• How much creative control do you want?
• Would you rather pay a small fee every month to have everything wrapped up in one package?

I would personally go with a paid option over an open-source system because the small fee will save you a ton of time and development costs.

Open source platforms have some limitations. What you gain in flexibility, you lose in simple hosting, maintenance and security, and dedicated support.

What Are the Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Business?

Small businesses running online need uptime guarantees, security, PCI compliance, usability, and performance. If your business depends on ecommerce sales, your requirements will be more stringent than one individual selling online.

When it comes to B2B ecommerce platforms, there are also a lot of dependencies on your platform’s user access levels, shipping methods, tax calculations, and invoicing software. You need a solution that is easily managed by multiple users and minimizes time to complete orders.

After all, the more time you save on compliance, shipping, and fulfillment, the more time you have to market your business online.

Here are my top picks for the best ecommerce platforms for small business:

1. Wix.

Wix is best for businesses selling online because of their nice-looking templates and easy-to-use software. You can manage everything from one simple dashboard so it’s best for non-tech savvy users.

2. 3dcart.

3dcart is a great choice for small businesses because of their ease of use and SEO features. Local small businesses will benefit from their clean URL structure and easy access to selling products online. Plus, they have an excellent support team available via chat, phone, and email.

3. Shopify.

Shopify is another good ecommerce platform for small businesses for similar reasons. They are super intuitive and easy to use – almost any small business owner should be able to build and manage a site on Shopify. With automatic shipping and tax rates, they save business owners time.

Additionally, if you need to learn how to use POS systems, Shopify is a great choice. They integrate with many top point-of-sale systems for omnichannel retailers with both physical storefronts and online stores.

What Are the Best Ecommerce Platforms for Dropshipping?

Dropshipping software must easily integrate with wholesalers, connect your inventory across platforms, and automate shipping.

When you hook up your online store to a wholesale supplier, the first thing you need to check is that inventory levels automatically sync between platforms. The last thing you want to happen is someone orders a product on your site that’s out of stock with your wholesaler.

Here are my choices for the best platforms for dropshipping:

1. Wix
2. Shopify
3. BigCommerce

What Are The Benefits of Using an Ecommerce Platform?

‘If your business is not online, your business will run out of business.’

This statement by Bill Gates turned out to be prophetic — the ecommerce market is now massive and continues to expand with time.

According to a recent study, over 50% of Americans prefer to shop online. Ecommerce isn’t going anywhere and you can get a slice of that profit with a simple website.

However, you need an attractive and engaging website if you’re looking to gain customers.

So let’s look at all the benefits of building your ecommerce store, and how it can successfully drive your business.

1. Easy Scalability.

When you run a traditional brick and mortar retail shop, it’s difficult to cater to an audience that is geographically very far away.

Unless you become very successful, and operate like Walmart and other industry leaders, setting up multiple outlets in different areas become too expensive.

Naturally, it’s not very easy to do that for a small or medium-scale retailer, since it is exceptionally cost-intensive.

However, using ecommerce platforms, small and medium businesses can now target and reach out to a global audience, and scale up to many times their original size.

Most platforms let you set up your online store for between $15 and $50 per month, with the most common price being around $30.

Being online essentially makes the whole world your oyster, and you don’t need to target a particular neighborhood and restrict yourself to a specific area. With a broader reach, your sales will get a boost, and profitability will increase in the long run.

Ecommerce platforms help you achieve scalability by delivering fast-performance and impressive shopping experiences anywhere.

2. Excellent Customer Support.

Customer experience plays a big part in the annual revenue of any business. In fact, it is one of the most indicative yardsticks of a competitive company.

Even if you’re using a pre-designed template to build your website, you might run into an issue every now and then.

It can be anything — you might struggle with slow website speed or face errors with a webpage.

However, every single ecommerce platform offers customer support to help you with these issues.

For example, Bigcommerce provides 24/7 chat, email, and US-based phone support for technical issues.

They also have a premium services team, devoted to making your business excel and help you solve any technical issue to might face. And this can make all the difference.

With this type of support and flexibility, your business won’t slow down because of technical issues.

3. Social Media Integration.

More than 3 billion people in the world use social media – a huge market to tap into.

Plus, shopping behaviors are changing and more users are ready to purchase products via social media.

Ecommerce platforms easily integrate with Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest so that you can sell your products wherever your audience is.

Therefore, it’s essential to focus some attention on social media engagement.

For example, let’s take a look at Bigcommerce.

Their platform integrates with social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest right from the BigCommerce control panel, syncing your inventory for you, and making the backend sales with little work required.

4. Built-In Ecommerce Marketing Tools.

Social media integration will lead you to where your target audience is, but it isn’t the only marketing you should do.

After your website is up and running, you need to identify what your customers want to buy with the right marketing tools.

Ecommerce platforms help you do that by providing numerous in-built marketing tools. These tools provide you with all the essential data and analytics to help you draw a roadmap for future sales.

Take Squarespace, for instance:

It helps drive traffic to your website with its powerful marketing tools and also measures your success quantitatively with its advanced data analytics tools.

Built-in newsletters, exit-intent pop-ups, coupon codes, and promotions are just a few of the marketing features at your disposal.

5. SEO.

Pretty much every ecommerce platform provides basic to advanced SEO features. These features enhance your search engine visibility and manage everything from sitemaps to meta titles, descriptions, keywords, and more.

If you’re used to running sites on WordPress, you can try out WooCommerce for solid SEO results.

For example, WooCommerce is integrated with some of the best SEO-related WordPress plugins that you can help you optimize your website and make it appear higher in the search engines.

Some of the SEO tools include:

• Yoast SEO
• MonsterInsights
• All in one SEO pack
• Google XML Sitemaps
• W3 Total Cache
• BZ Lazy Load
• SEO Optimized Images
• WordPress SEO

Additionally, platforms like BigCommerce and 3dcart provide great SEO support out of the box.

Tips And Strategies For Using Ecommerce Platforms.

With the numerous advantages ecommerce offers over traditional retail, it’s a great avenue not just for buyers to save money, but also for sellers to maximize outreach at a minimal cost.

During the Black Friday online sales in 2017, US shoppers alone spent $5 billion.

96% of all Americans have made an online purchase at least once in their life.

However, with more intense competition, it’s challenging to stand out in a crowded market.

Merely using excellent software isn’t enough. You need to have a proper full-funnel ecommerce marketing strategy in place from day one.

Here are some tips and tricks to help your marketing strategy this year.

1. Focus On Mobile Users.

We all know that mobile phones are now more popular than personal computers.

In fact, in July 2019, Google announced that the mobile-first index was a new ranking factor and here to stay.

This means that Google predominantly looks up to the mobile version of your site for ranking and indexing.

Statistics show that over 63% of online users used mobile to browse online vs. desktop.

Naturally, focusing on your mobile site is now imperative.

Thus, make sure you’re using your ecommerce platform to optimize your mobile website along with your desktop site.

Shopify is one of the industry leaders when it comes to mobile optimization and theme design.

Many other ecommerce platforms provide similar benefits that can help you provide better mobile browsing experience to your audience. First, make sure your software provides a mobile-friendly homepage, category pages, and product pages.

Also, optimizing your mobile checkout experience and ensuring that your buying process is user-friendly is paramount.

2. Make Your Ecommerce Website Visually Appealing.

Studies suggest that it takes a user 0.05 seconds to decide whether they like your website or not. If they don’t find it visually appealing or understand what it’s about, they’re likely to exit right away.

Therefore, you have a shockingly small time frame to pique the visitor’s interest.

You have to make sure that you choose a website theme that is not only relevant to your niche but also appealing to look at.

On top of that, it’s important to pick a logo and imagery to give your visitors an idea about your brand right from the moment they enter your site.

The idea is to be as inventive as possible while offering a smooth browsing experience to your visitors.

Have a look at this website:

It is an excellent example of a visually appealing page, one that will make you want to scroll down. It is also easy to navigate and has relevant call-to-actions that are placed appropriately to draw the audience’s attention.

3. Provide Ease of Navigation.

It’s essential that your ecommerce site is well-structured and easy to navigate.

To make things easier for your website visitors, you can add numerous plugins with the help of the ecommerce platform you’re using.

For instance, WooCommerce allows you to automatically add a plugin that can let your users go back to the items they recently viewed.

When you integrate your website with these tools that make navigation more comfortable, you provide a positive user experience and are more likely to generate sales.

Additionally, leveraging product navigation with recently viewed and suggested products can increase ecommerce conversion rates.

4. Data and Analytics.

The voices that say, ‘Data is the new oil’ are now growing louder.

Currently, there are around 18 zettabytes of data in the world. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t tap into this area.

Your strategy to boost your business using the ecommerce platform should include a plan on how to make use of your visitor information that your website generates every day.

Most ecommerce platforms come with an in-built analytics tool that can help you track your demographics.

Take Wix, for example:

Wix provides you with an in-built visitor data analytics tool, Visitor Analytics, that can help you track the number of visitors, frequency of visitors, visualize the data generated, track by country and IP address, generate conversion statistics, and take better, well-informed decisions regarding the future.

This helps you streamline the marketing process and focus on an effective plan of action.

A majority of ecommerce platforms offer analytics tools, and it is something that you should take advantage of.

5. Provide Stellar Customer Service And Live-Chat Options.

In 2017, 64% of Americans contacted some form of customer service.

According to Zendesk, excellent customer service is the primary defining factor a customer looks at while doing business.

Furthermore, according to the Kano model here, a website that has features like live chat options and efficient customer service are delighters, and it can improve your business, boost revenue, and significantly drive up customer satisfaction.

Part of your ecommerce strategy should include the integration of an efficient live chat and customer service system – preferably 24/7.

Let’s take the example of Squarespace.

It provides an excellent and easy way to add Pure Chat, a live chat software, in just a few simple steps.

With the live chat option, you can:

• Provide instant answers to your website visitors’ questions
• Engage leads and prospective customers
• Improve your conversion rates and sales

6. Omnichannel Strategy.

More and more businesses are increasingly taking the omnichannel route to sell their products.

And a good ecommerce platform can seamlessly enable a perfect omnichannel strategy. It can help the online and offline counterparts of business work in tandem towards the specific goal of selling.

For example, Magento provides a ‘Magento Order Management’ system that helps businesses achieve precisely this.

Choosing the right ecommerce platform can go a long way in ensuring whether you manage to reach your omnichannel sales goals.

In the end, it’s vital to outline each individual sales channel and your goals for each.

Ecommerce Platforms FAQ.

Executive Summary.

There you have it – my list of the best ecommerce platforms.

• If you’d like to use the best overall platform that is easiest to use and best for small business, go with Wix.
• If you want the best software to scale your large business, I recommend you get started with BigCommerce.
• If you’re a dropshipper than needs the good integrations, Shopify is your best choice.

What popular ecommerce platforms do you recommend?

Email marketing software gives you the highest return on investment (ROI) among marketing channels – $38 for every $1 spent.

Plus, there are 1.5 billion active Gmail users – all of them could be potential customers.

How do you get started?

The best email marketing services, software, and platforms all have different price points and features.

Most of these tools are great – you just need to find the best match for you.

For example, if you’re sales-driven and want to care about email deliverability and marketing tools, Constant Contact is a great choice.

If you’re a blogger, a text-based welcome email series from ConvertKit would be a strong pick. Or if you’re selling products online, image-heavy, product-focused emails look great with Benchmark.

In this guide, I researched and ranked the best email marketing service providers to help you pick the best one for you, and save the most money.

Let’s get started.

What is the Best Email Marketing Software?

To choose from the best email marketing software, research price, reliability, technical support, template designs, ease of use, deliverability, automation, integrations, and any additional features you need.

The best email marketing software should allow you to design emails easily, segment your list, personalize your messaging, and view analytics reports. And they should most importantly hit users’ primary inboxes.

In the end, email marketing is about sending the right message to the right user at the right time.

1. Moosend.

Excellent All-In-One Email Marketing Automation Tool (Free – $8+/month based on list size)

Moosend is an email automation tool that helps you build your email list, personalize your messages, and automate tasks so you can focus on customer relationships.

They have intuitive drag-and-drop email templates in their campaign builder. This tool lets you add images, text blocks, social icons, and more to your emails. They have a large library of email templates with different layouts that are responsive and look great on desktop or mobile.

The area that Moosend stands out is the automation features. Using their “Recipes” (pre-built automation templates), you can automate messages via upsells, customer engagement, and customer loyalty. Every automation has three main components: the triggers, control steps, and actions. When you combine all three, you can filter email list segments and send sequences when your specified actions occur.

Some other key Moosend features include:

• Landing Page Builder Tools: Create custom webpages with email sign-up forms to increase conversions.
• Automation Workflows: These templates let you personalize your emails and nurture customer relationships with ease.
• Custom Opt-In Forms: You can design and create custom forms to let visitors subscribe to your email list.
• List Segmentation: Segment your list based on customer behavior like engagement metrics, abandoned cart emails, and more.
• Reporting Tools: Their analytics tools provide a bird’s eye view of all of your important email metrics.
• Customer Support: Each paid plan provides phone support. Custom enterprise plans all provide an account manager and support via email, phone, and live chat. They also have video tutorials and a huge knowledge base to answer your questions.

The pricing for Moosend is based on the number of subscribers in your email list. They provide a free plan for users with under 1,000 subscribers and includes sign-up forms, reporting, and the ability to send unlimited emails.

Moosend paid plans begin at $8 per month and scale up with the number of subscribers. Every paid plan comes with access to transactional emails, page builders, and SMTP servers. Their enterprise plans provide migration and onboarding support, and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML).

If you’re looking for advanced email automation tools, give Moosend a try.

Try Moosend

2. Constant Contact.

Best Email Marketing Service for Small Business ($16/month)

Constant Contact has been in the email marketing space since 1995, taking the name Constant Contact back in 2004. In 2015, they became a part of Endurance International Group, a powerhouse that other companies including Bluehost, HostGator, and Domain.com.

As stated on their website, the company’s ultimate goal is to help small businesses navigate the promise, power, and potential of the web.

They feature 100+ modern, mobile-optimized templates to engage and convert customers, real-time reporting and analytics, and bonus features like coupons, polls, and events.

One of their most unique features is event management and the ability to manage invitations, registrations, and tickets:

Email deliverability is above average and one of the highest among email service providers at over 90%.

Constant Contact pricing is tiered based on the number of email contacts in your list. Their paid plans start at $18/month for up to 500 contacts.

Their drip campaigns are easy to use and intuitive. You can create simple sequences, but can’t combine conditions or use advanced filtering.

Ultimately, if you’re looking for niche features like event management and also want top-notch email deliverability, Constant Contact is the choice for you. They are my #2 choice for email service providers this year.

You can get started today and take 10% off your first 12 months with my link below.

3. Sendinblue.

Best Email Marketing Service with Automation on a Budget ($20/month)

Sendinblue is an easy to use email marketing service with a free plan that allows unlimited contacts, and 300 email newsletter sends per day. If you’re serious about growing your list, you can use their Lite plan which starts at $20/month and allows up to 40,000 sends per month and no daily sending limit.

Their free platform is all built on ease of use. Its simplicity allows you to easily create clean-looking templates, automated welcome emails, and website opt-in forms. They also offer live chat and CRM in their free plan, which includes one automation workflow for up to 2,000 contacts.

Sendinblue also uses machine learning and AI to send emails at the best time of the day to maximize engagement.

You can also view real-time statistics with necessary reports that provide metrics like open rates, click-through rates, deliverability, and heat maps.

One of their best features is their email automation workflows. These allow you to set triggers and put your subscribers through custom workflows based on actions they take on your website and in the funnel:

These automated triggers create actions like sending emails and SMS messages, segmenting your contacts into separate lists, and updating their information in your database.

If you want advanced email marketing automation software on a budget, you can get started with their Lite Plan for $20/month and save 10% on annual plans.

Try Sendinblue

4. HubSpot.

Best Email Marketing Software for Marketers (Free – $50/month)

HubSpot is the most integrated marketing package on the market. Using their email marketing software is one of the easiest ways to design, optimize, and send fantastic looking emails. They provide a ton of custom features and you can pick and plan and upgrade whether you’re a small business or large enterprise.

When creating an email, you either use one of their pre-made email templates or start from scratch. These templates allow you to add text, images, buttons, dividers, and all different kinds of assets and layouts.

I found their email editor the easiest to use on the market. It’s much faster and more user-friendly than other tools on this list:

Once you’re happy with your email design, preview it based on different recipients, devices, or email clients like Gmail, Apple Mail, and Office 365.

This tool is super useful. Email subject lines, preview text, and the content itself can look very different based on the end user’s email client. These previews ensure your emails look great in any inbox.

Personalization is another strength with HubSpot. Like standard tools, you personalize content based on common merge tags like the recipient’s first name. HubSpot takes it a step further.

You can also personalize content based on a user’s device, list segment, and geographic location. Plus, you can A/B test your subject lines and content to make sure you maximize your email open rates and click rates.

Next, when you’re ready to hit send and publish your email, you can use their Smart Send functionality. This feature allows you to adjust your send time to maximize engagement.

After sending your email, it’s time to view your metrics. The HubSpot analytics dashboard gives you data on your opens and clicks, plus unique information on the amount of time spend viewing your email. 

Viewing whether subscribers Read, Skimmed, or Glanced at your email is one of the best reporting tools to observe how engaging your email content is:

For example, you may see that subscribers are only glancing at your emails for a short time. This data helps you know which types of email content need to be improved.

Consistently hitting users’ inboxes is another benefit with HubSpot. They have a healthy 99% email deliverability rate. These substantial numbers are due to proper domain validation settings with DKIM and SPF records, plus the ability to thoroughly preview and test emails.

The main reason that HubSpot is #1 on my list is that their email marketing platform is just one aspect of their product. The real benefits come with their Marketing Hub Starter Package.

This full marketing platform includes email marketing and everything else to align your marketing and sales efforts:

• Full-featured CRM
• Automated sequences
• Mobile optimization
• Personal calendar to schedule appointments
• Gmail extensions to track email sends and automate outreach
• Form builders
• Inbound lead, email, and ad analytics
• Phone and email support

HubSpot is my #3 pick for the best email marketing software for one simple reason: It perfectly aligns your inbound and outbound marketing in the most efficient way possible.

I recommend you get started for free, then upgrade to their Marketing Hub Starter Package for $50/month. 

Try Hubspot

5. Mailerlite.

Best Ease of Use and 24/7 Support (Free – $10/month)

Over 600,000 customers around the world use Mailerlite. They have flexible tiered plans based on the size of your contact list.

They are best known for their easy user interface, responsive email designs, and excellent 24/7 phone support and email support. You can start with their forever free plan if you have less than 1,000 email subscribers.

This free plan has limited features and allows you to send up to 12,000 emails per month.

Upgrading to their $10/month plan gives you access to all features that help your marketing strategy, including a landing page builder, embedded forms, and pop-ups.

With Mailerlite, you can track your email marketing results with a click map and opens by location reports.

They also provide some other great features, including:

• Live 24/7 customer support via chat and email
• A powerful and easy to use landing page builder
• Ecommerce integrations with the top platforms
• Email surveys
• Template Gallery
• Amazing email deliverability

Overall, if you’re looking for flexible pricing, want excellent deliverability, and don’t have a large list yet, give Mailerlite a try.

Try Mailerlite

6. GetResponse.

Best Automated Sales Funnels and Landing Page Features ($15/month)

GetResponse is an all-in-one online marketing platform to grow your business. They offer email marketing campaigns, high-converting landing pages, and webinar software to help your marketing efforts.

The real standout here is Autofunnel – a tool with 30+ ready-made landing pages, email templates, and sequences to generate sales. And you can choose your end goals.

Whether you want to drive lead generation, product sales, or webinar registrations, Autofunnel is the answer. They’re optimized to nurture your email list and maximize your funnel’s conversion rates:

On the downside, some of their 500 templates look a bit outdated, and they have middle-of-the-pack deliverability compared to others on this list.

However, one of GetResponse’s biggest strengths is its smart automation tools. Using these features, you create multiple advanced conditions to segment your lists automatically. Their drag-and-drop builder is also very intuitive and makes designing high-quality emails a breeze.

Overall, GetResponse is one of the best email marketing tools to create automated sales funnels and landing pages.

You can get started with a 30-day free trial and upgrade to their $15/month Basic Plan. You also save between 18 and 30% with annual plans.

Try Getresponse

7. Pabbly Email Marketing.

Excellent Inbox Delivery and Independent SMTP Service ($29/month)

Pabbly is an online platform, which offers a full-service suite of marketing tools for online form building, email marketing, subscription billing, and email list cleaning. Also, it provides a complete business management bundle of all these tools at a low cost named Pabbly Plus.

Pabbly’s email marketing service doesn’t restrict you on features like marketing automation, list management, autoresponder emails, segmentation of subscribers, etc. whether it’s a paid or free plan. You can effortlessly integrate in-built or 50+ external SMTPs and send emails without any additional charges.

With Pabbly Email Marketing, you can boost your email marketing performance by running campaigns and send bulk emails to all your prospective users in just one click. Also, it handles bounce and spam complaints about all popular SMTP services such as Amazon SES, MailGun, Mandrill, SendGrid, etc.

The pricing for Pabbly Email Marketing is based on your number of subscribers. Here’s a comparison of annual savings vs. other popular options on this list:

Some other important features include:

• Some highlight features of Pabbly Email Marketing include:
• A user-friendly drag-and-drop email editor
• 500+ Email templates that accept all types of customizations
• Collect leads & business-related information via its subscription forms
• Connect multiple SMTPs to route emails through multiple vendors
• Improve open rates by removing the invalid emails from your list with MX cleaner
• Send automatic follow-up emails to non-opens
• Use autoresponders and interact with the users without any manual efforts
• Automatically send emails on pre-set schedules for engaging the subscribers

Its email platform has a 99% delivery rate and they’re a great option if you’re looking for a service to regularly clean your list and keep your database up to date.

Get started with Pabbly Email Marketing. 

Try Pabbly

8. ConvertKit.

Best Email Marketing for Bloggers ($29/month)

ConvertKit is built by creators, for creators. They understand their client’s needs and know what it takes to grow an online following.

They boast attractive forms, increase conversion rates with automated emails, and organize your subscribers to maximize engagement.

For bloggers looking to send personalized, text-based emails, their designs look like they’re coming right from Gmail.

Additionally, they offer pretty advanced email sequences based on both site actions and actions within emails. Their advanced triggers make for some excellent list segmentation options:

ConvertKit is also a strong pick for a few main reasons:

• You can use advanced segmentation based on different actions to personalize your email funnels.
• Your text emails look professional and don’t have annoying email branding.
• The best emails for your blog will be strictly text. Don’t worry about fancy design features, adding your logo, or a bunch of imagery.

Ultimately, it’s an excellent platform for lead funnels.

For example, if a sales professional were trying to close a big deal, they would close it with either a phone call or a simple text-based email. They wouldn’t use an image-heavy marketing email full of company branding.

Although they don’t have a free plan, with pricing starts at $29/month and a 14-day free trial, it’s a great choice for bloggers focused on building high converting sales funnels.

Get started with ConvertKit – my top choice for bloggers.

Try ConvertKit

What is Email Marketing?

A simple email marketing definition is the use of email to promote products or services. Even better, email marketing is a way to use email to nurture and develop relationships with your email subscribers to complete an end goal like a sale.

Email marketing is just one form of digital marketing, which also includes things like search engine marketing, social media, SEO, blogging, etc.

Before email, direct mail was a way to reach consumers in their mailbox. Email marketing takes this strategy online by sending messages to users electronically to their email inbox. Unlike direct mail, email requires a user to opt-in to your email list to receive your messages.

How Does Email Marketing Software Work?

Email marketing software (or e-mail marketing) is using online platforms to send out bulk marketing email messages to your list of subscribers. This tactic allows you to acquire new customers better, enhance relationships, and encourage customer loyalty.

With email marketing campaigns, you can quickly and easily reach your audience exactly where they are without having to pay for expensive advertising space on Google or Facebook.

The best email marketing software works by leveraging some of these essential features:

1. Automation.

The ability to send email sequences when a user joins your mailing list or performs an action on your website. These could include making a purchase or abandoning their shopping cart.

2. Custom email templates.

Drag-and-drop email campaigns take the coding requirements out of email marketing so you can focus on adding content and images to your emails.

3. Dynamic content.

You can use merge tags in your emails to customize them for each member of your email list, by dynamically changing.

4. List segmentation.

The longer you engage with your email list, the more data you collect, including open rates, interests, purchase history, and more.

5. Analytics dashboard.

E, including open rates, click-through rates, purchases, and more.

6. Advanced features.

Look out for other cool features to add to your campaigns like polls, contests, coupons, and events.

What Are the Benefits of Email Marketing Platforms?

Email marketing is crucial because it is one of the best ways to build a loyal following, generate revenue, and find users where they hang out – their inbox.

When a user opts-in to your email list, they have shown interest in your business and are ready to receive your messages. Since 74% of buyers identify word of mouth influencing their purchasing decisions, email is a natural extension of that ability to collect and share information that’s important to them.

Additionally, if you’re in sales, email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences behind only personal workplace connections and recommendations from industry thought leaders.

By choosing the best email service, you cost-effectively send messages at scale, speak to warm leads without cold email outreach, and don’t pay a fee outside of your monthly subscription.

Here are more benefits of using email marketing services:

• Email marketing is cost-effective and has a proven ROI (every dollar spent can create a $44 return on investment)
• Ease of use and pre-designed email designers make creating stunning and mobile-friendly emails a breeze
• Email is one form of multi-channel marketing that builds customer loyalty and brand awareness
• You reach your customers exactly where they are – their inbox
• Email allows marketers to reach their audience with relevant, personalized, dynamic messages – 74% of marketers say personalization increases customer engagement.
• Automated emails like abandoned cart emails, welcome emails, and post-purchase emails allow you to generate incremental revenue with little work or time required
• Email marketing options are endless and you can find easy-to-use tools whether you’re a small business or large enterprise.

What Are Some Email Marketing Best Practices?

Email marketing isn’t as simple as writing a message and sending it to a list of contacts. There are a lot of email marketing best practices to follow and email marketing industry benchmarks to hit.

Here are some of the top email marketing best practices to be successful this year:

1. Do Not Use Purchased Email Lists.

Email marketing is so effective because people want to engage with your business and receive your message. Buying email lists takes away this trust by spamming their inbox with something they don’t want.

And the penalties for not following these rules are severe. According to Keap (formerly Infusionsoft), you can be fined up to $16,000 per incorrect email under the CAN-SPAM Act.

The health of your email campaigns depends on a healthy open rate. If you are interacting with a purchased list, you’re bound to have super-low open rates, spam complaints, and can even be blacklisted.

With the recent General Data Protection Guarantee (GDPR) rollout, it bears repeating – never purchase email lists. You should also clean your email list regularly to ensure your contacts are up to date.

2. Personalize Content with Merge Tags.

An email titled, “Dear {first name}” is much more personal than “Dear Member.” Any piece of data that you collect from your email subscribers should be used to personalize the content they receive.

If the item fits in a column within a CSV file next to their email address, a merge tag can fire. A merge tag is a piece of ESP-specific code that allows you to place unique pieces of user data from your email list into your emails.

First and last names are the most popular merge tags at an email marketer’s disposal. Plus, you can use other cards like company name, date of the previous visit, the number of emails opened, products purchased, or information from a survey.

Using merge tags in your initial greeting is a great place to start making your email more personal.

3. Write Compelling Subject Lines.

Email subject lines should be concise, compelling, and create a sense of urgency while providing enough information, so the user knows what they’re opening. Sound confusing? Don’t worry – it isn’t.

Subject lines should be between 30 and 50 characters (many email providers cut off subject lines more extended than that). They should cut through the noise and entice users to act. The use of numbers and symbols, well-thought-out emojis, and exciting offers and discounts will increase your open rates.

4. Use a Welcome Email Series for New Subscribers.

Email automation is a powerful tool most often used in a series of emails that welcome new subscribers into the list. These free autoresponder emails send automatically when new users opt-in to your list.

You can time these emails so that your subscribers get them on day one, day three, day five, or even day ten. Only you know the correct cadence for these emails based on your business goals.

For example, an e-commerce website may offer a 10% discount on the first welcome email. For emails 2 and 3, they can further showcase their brand story, product catalog, and social media accounts. A welcome email series is great because it runs on autopilot, engages your list, and nurtures prospects into customers.

5. Format Your Emails Properly.

Emails should be between 500 and 600 pixels wide – any wider than that and users may have to scroll horizontally on their mobile devices.

Never make your “from” email address a “no-reply” email, like [email protected]. Make it a name your subscribers will instantly recognize.

Place your main marketing message and call to action (CTA) above-the-fold so that most of your users will see it right away.

In your email content and imagery, stick to three fonts or less, and make sure the design matches the look and feel of your brand. Finally, put your logo at the top of the email so that subscribers recognize your brand at first glance.

Email Marketing FAQ.

Schedule and Send It (Summary)

That’s a wrap. I hope this list of top email service providers helps you choose the right platform for your online business.

As there are a ton of great tools out there, it’s ultimately about knowing your price point and which features are most important to you.

Focus on price, deliverability, template designs, ease of use, and the unique features you need.

My final recommendations: 

• If you’re looking for an excellent new email service with advanced automation, go with Moosend.
• If you want great email deliverability and the all-around best platform for small business, Constant Contact is your winner.
• If you are looking to add email marketing into your CRM and integrated marketing toolkit, HubSpot is your best choice.
• For new bloggers looking for text-based emails and sequences on a budget, get started with ConvertKit.

What did you think of this list? Are there any platforms not mentioned? Let me know in the comments.

As competition for leads and sales grows, sales teams and business owners need a better way to track customers through every stage of the buyer journey. This is where CRM software comes into play.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software aims to nurture these customer relationships across various channels, ensuring an excellent experience for customers, and ultimately guiding them down the sales funnel.

CRM tools help manage and improve company interaction within a database by leveraging email marketing, lead nurturing, and marketing automation.

These tools also help sales and marketing teams improve their database marketing by sending personalized messages to the right prospects at the right time.

To make your decision easier, I ranked and reviewed the best CRM software based on features, integrations, sales capabilities, marketing tools, support, pricing, and more.

Let’s get started.

What is the Best CRM Software?

After using a ton of different CRMs across numerous tech companies, here are my top picks for the best CRM software to try this year.

1. HubSpot CRM.

Best Free CRM with Marketing Tools.

HubSpot CRM is a full-featured marketing suite, with its CRM software being their most popular offering.

HubSpot CRM is great for sales professionals due to its great features and time-saving tools. It’s also a strong option for marketing teams with the ability to capture, track, and grow leads within a database.

They offer a 100% free version of their software, with the ability to upgrade and get access to their entire suite of marketing tools.

Key Features:

• Email and Lead Nurturing – You can send free, personalized emails, and track your results with built-in analytics reports.
• Contact Organization and Management – You can connect your email inbox to their CRM and automatically sync and organize your contacts in one place.
• Over 300 Integrations – Easily connect your existing tech stack go get more functionality out of the tools you’re already paying for.
• Live Chat and Chatbots – Help customers faster with support tickets, productivity tools, and instant chat capabilities.
• Sales Pipeline Data – Sales leaders can view their entire sales pipeline with insights into sales activity and individual performance.

Pros:

• A free plan that you can upgrade at any time.
• Integrated with their sales and marketing suites, which include live chat, landing pages, email marketing, ad management, document management, and more.
• Free email marketing and list segmentation.
• A team email and conversations inbox for access to all messages in one place.
• A great form builder to capture lead information.
• Ad management tools to track ROI across paid campaigns on Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.

Pricing Plans:

HubSpot CRM has a free plan that offers a lot of great features to start with. You can then choose to upgrade to one of their paid plans:

• Starter ($40/month): All features of the free plan, plus additional forms, up to 50 email list segmentations, $1k in ad management, 10 reporting dashboards, and limited conversational bots.
• Professional ($800/month): All features of free and starter, plus 2,000 email list segmentations, $10k in ad management, 25 reporting dashboards, and full chatbot features. This plan also opens up additional features like phone support, content strategies, an SSL certificate, and a blog.
• Enterprise ($3,200/month): All features outlined above (with higher-tier options), plus user roles, event-based segmentation, predictive lead scoring, API calls, multi-touch revenue attribution, webhooks, and more.

Get started with HubSpot CRM.

Try HubSpot

2. Zoho CRM.

Best CRM For Small Business (SMBs).

With Zoho CRM, you can get a 360-degree view of your business, track essential sales and marketing opportunities, and increase conversion rates. With more than 150,000 customers globally, Zoho CRM is one of the most popular tools on this list.

Key Features:

• Advanced CRM Analytics – Integrates your data and derive actionable insights.
• AI-Powered Sales Assistant – Zoho helps sales teams and representatives make decisions based on customer profile and detect anomalies.
• Performance Management – With features like gamification, reporting, sales forecasting, and territory management, you can make the best out of your small business spendings.
• Sales Enablement – Helps you generate price quotes and access sales scripts.
• Process management – Enables the team to chart out every step of the sales process with sales builder and processing rules.

Pros:

• Omnichannel customer support via phone, live chat, email, and social media.
• Provides high-level automation.
• Highly customizable.
• More than 100 third party integrations, including LinkedIn, Zapier, email integrations like Google and Outlook, and more.
• Highly scalable.
• 15-day free trial period.
• Offers a mobile version (for paid plans).
• Ensures data security, integrity, and regulatory compliance.
• Multi-language offered.
• Has a free plan for up to 3 users.
• Provides holistic calendar management.
• Offers data import/export.
• Predictive sales feature to help with data enrichment, email sentiment analysis, and more.

Pricing Plans:

All three paid plans, the ‘Standard,’ ‘Professional,’ and ‘Enterprise’ cost $12, $20 and $35 per user per month (billed annually). Zoho CRM also offers a freemium plan for up to 3 users.

Get started with Zoho CRM.

Try Zoho

3. Freshsales.

Smartest Sales Features.

Freshsales is an AI-based CRM for lead scoring, email activity, email capture, and so forth. One of its most prominent features is that it provides a 360-degree view of your business.

Key Features:

• Lead Management – Provides solutions to convert prospective leads into customers.
• Deal Management – Gives you a thorough picture of where the deal is placed in the sales funnel. Also helps you manage and organize every step in the funnel and maximize your chances of conversion.
• Tracking and Lead Scoring – With in-built AI-feature, you can rank and score leads, and identify the ones most likely to make a purchase.
• Auto Lead Assignment – The CRM allows handpicked leads to select salespeople automatically.
• Smartforms (web-to-lead) – When a person fills up the web-form on your website, they automatically become a lead and are added to your database.

Pros:

• Provides high-level automation and intelligent workflows.
• Extensive range of integrations, including MailChimp, Zapier, Calendar, Piesync, Segment, and more.
• RESTful APIs to help you read, modify, add, and delete data from the help-desk.
• Behavior-based lead segmentation.
• Advanced lead scoring based on characteristics and behavior.
• Sends out personalized welcome and voicemail messages.
• GDPR-compliant.
• 21-day free trial period.
• Excellent customer support via phone and email.
• Known as one of the best mobile CRMs with a mobile app.
• Event tracking (tracks previous communication to plan the future approach).
• Highly flexible.

Pricing Plans:

Freshsales offers four plans, starting from $12 up to $79 per user per month (when billed annually).

Get started with Freshsales.

Try Freshsales

4. Salesforce.

Best Enterprise CRM Software.

Salesforce is one of the most famous names on this list and has more than a million users worldwide. It’s a cloud-based CRM software that caters to all the branches of a business, including sales, service, marketing, analytics, and more.

Key Features:

• Opportunity Management – You can close more deals by identifying the perfect opportunities with the ‘opportunity management’ module.
• Contact Management – With this module, you can track parameters like customer history, communications, and social media mentions.
• Sales Performance Management – Set sales goals and update targets for the best sales performance.
• Visual Workflow – Using this, you can drag, drop, share, and track files and updates.
• First Feed Feature – Allows you to see what you want to see first (based on your settings).

Pros:

• 24/7 customer support available via phone, email, and tickets.
• High-level automation and personalization (provide great social experience).
• 30-day free trial period.
• Cloud-hosted (faster and inexpensive).
• Compatible with Linux, Windows, Mac, Android.
• Open API (therefore highly customizable).
• Offer enterprise territory management, a sales CRM, and management of social networks.
• Multi-language and multi-currency customer support.
• Wide range of email templates to choose from.
• In-built Einstein Lead Scoring.
• Lead management with sales force automation and business intelligence.
• Compatible with all devices, including mobile phones.
• Provides partner communities.
• In-built process builder and lead generation tools.
• A large number of third-party integrations (LeadExec, Ambassador, Zuora, Zendesk, among others).
• Mass emailing option to help you save time and effort.

Cons:

• Can’t be used by companies who want on-premise deployment.
• Live chat support isn’t available.

Pricing Plans:

Salesforce offers a variety of products; therefore, the prices may vary. However, the subscription plans start at $25 per user per month, and the most expensive plan costs $1,250 per user per month (both billed annually). You can also get in touch with them for a customized plan.

5. Nimble.

Best Simple CRM.

The Nimble is an excellent, albeit simple CRM software tool, that works within the G-Suite inbox or Office 365. It allows you to update contacts, access company & contact insights easily, and manage deals from within your workflow, among other impressive features.

Key Features:

• Relationship Management – helps you automatically combine and collate social media connections, communications, inboxes, and calendar appointments.
• Live Profiles – actionable, accessible contact records to quickly locate contact information and interaction history.
• Segmentation – helps you stay organized by segmenting your contacts into lists to take various actions.
• Reminder feature – never miss out on an opportunity with pre-scheduled reminder features.
• Pipeline management – always stay on top of every stage of the sales funnel by the visual representation of pipelines.

Pros:

• Sends out group emails to help you engage your audience at a large scale.
• Email tracking to engage customers/leads more effectively.
• Extensive range of third-party integrations, such as Gmail, Outlook, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and more.
• Offers a redesigned smart contacts app (enhanced widget to support, calendars, tasks, deals, and more).
• Highly scalable and customizable.
• 14-day free trial.
• The prospector tool allows you to visit a website and get professional details about people who aren’t listed on the website.
• Has a ‘group message’ feature.
• Extensive task management to create and assign tasks to different team members.
• Compatible with mobile phones.
• Ensures data security, integrity, and GDPR compliance.

Cons:

• Only a single plan is available.
• Doesn’t one with the auto-responder feature.
• Doesn’t have a free plan.
• Many integrations need a ‘sync’ tool to function properly.

Pricing Plans:

There is only one plan available. The price is $25 per month (billed monthly) and $19 per month (billed annually).

6. Pipedrive.

Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM that uses AI to automated repetitive tasks and manage leads and sales. They currently support over 90,000 customers and over $24 billion in deals have passed through their platform.

Key Features:

• Lead Management – Track leads and sales from forms, chatbots, and more on a 24/7 basis.
• Visual Sales Pipelines – You can organize your pipeline and create custom stages (hot, warm, cold) by rep or team member.
• Communication Tracking – A full contact history tracks calls, emails, chats, and more and allows you to set your schedule in real-time.
• Mobile Apps – You can use Pipedrive from your mobile device and integrate your smartphone with other sales apps to increase sales.

Pros:

• Can easily add deals, values, win probabilities, and close dates.
• Unlimited custom fields collect any piece of customer information.
• Custom reports can track revenue estimates and recurring revenue.
• Activity reports can track individual sales calls, emails, demos, and events.
• Lead source data reports tell you where your leads came from (organic, direct, SEM, social, outbound sales, etc.)
• “Sales Assistant” creates performance tips and automation recommendations to save you time.

Pricing:

Pipedrive offers four paid plans: Essential, Advanced, Professional, and Enterprise. These plans range from $12.50 per user per month to $99 per user per month.

7. NetHunt CRM.

NetHunt CRM works collaboratively with your Google account and all other applications. It brings to you all the familiarity of the G-suite, along with all the CRM functionalities.

Key Features:

• Customer Relationship Management – Takes care of managing and following up on leads, taking care of existing customers, create records, and answers questions.
• Pipeline Management – Picks the right deals and activities to select and follow-up on a daily or weekly basis and see how close you are to closing a deal.
• Sales Cycle Management – Go after leads more effectively, find out the status of the sales cycle, and optimize efforts.
• Leads Tracking – Ensure timely follow-up and status of leads so that you can track and address them effectively.
• Sales Tracking – Helps you track sales across multiple channels, monitor the KPIs of the sales team, and capture information about leads and customers.

Pros:

• Fully integrated with Gmail.
• 14-day free trial period.
• Filter, sort, and save data the way you need.
• Highly customizable and scalable.
• Sends out personalized, bulk emails.
• Capture prospective leads in one click.
• User-friendly, intuitive interface.
• Extensively integrated with third-party applications (LinkedIn, Mailchimp, Twitter, Facebook, and more).
• Cloud-hosted (inexpensive and easy setup).
• Multi-language platform.
• Email, phone, and live chat customer support available.
• Compatible with mobile devices.
• Data import and export is effortless.

Cons:

• Isn’t compatible with Linux.
• Ticket customer support not available.
• On-premise deployment isn’t available.
• No free plan available.

Pricing Plans:

NetHunt CRM offers three plans, called the ‘Professional,’ ‘Professional Plus,’ and ‘Enterprise.’ The prices start from $24 per month and go up to $48 per month.

8. Nutshell CRM.

Nutshell CRM is a comprehensive, cloud-based software aimed at solving a multitude of business process problems. It’s a holistic tool capable of handling all facets of a business CRM and perfect for keeping detailed records. It uses an Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.

Key Features:

• Contact Management – Manage, import, and export all your contacts to get started immediately (automatic contact sync, centralized database, business card scanner, intelligent search function).
• Reporting & Performance Tracking – Instantly view your sales performance by drilling down by product, representative, lead source, and more (sales report, forecast report, loss report, activity report, funnel report, dashboards).
• Sales Automation – Automate most processes with powerful tools for maximum efficiency.
• Extensive Integrations – Nullifies the need for an IT department by offering various third-party integrations like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Intercom, Outlook, Slack, and more.

Pros:

• Send bulk emails.
• Compatible with mobile devices.
• Easy data import & export.
• Provides a highly collaborative environment.
• Highly scalable and customizable.
• Cloud-hosted (inexpensive and easy to deploy).
• Extensive customer support via phone, email, live support, and tickets
• 14-day free trial.
• Comprehensive pipeline management (drag-and-drop board view, list view, chart view).
• Ensures data security, data integrity, and regulatory compliance (GDPR compliant).
• Provides continuous backups by taking snapshots twice-daily, weekly, and monthly.
• Payment card industry (PCI) compliant to protect billing information.

Cons:

• Doesn’t support multiple languages (only English).
• Doesn’t offer on-premise deployment.
• Pricing plans do not include any freemium plan.

Pricing Plans:

Nutshell CRM provides two plans.

The first one is the ‘Starter’ plan $19 per user per month, and then you have the ‘Pro’ plan for $19 per user per month (billed annually).

9. Insightly.

Insightly is a modern CRM platform that can help you grow your business faster by building lasting relationships with customers.

Key Features:

• Lead Routing – Tracks the most relevant lead information including a rich activity timeline of marketing campaign source, email, phone calls, meetings.
• Relationship Management – Enables you to build strong relationships with existing customers and get new customers on board.
• Extensive Third-Party Integrations – Integrated with a wide range of applications like Gmail, Mailchimp, Dropbox, Outlook, and more.
• Pipeline Management – Allows you to monitor the performance of the sales team, track sales pitch, and identify where it is precisely in the sales funnel.

Pros:

• Compatible with mobile devices, both Android and iOS.
• Provides visual dashboards for display and tracking important metrics.
• Ensures data integrity (military-grade AES-256 encryption) and regulatory compliance (GDPR-compliant).
• Highly flexible calendaring and events.
• Highly scalable and customizable.
• Offers features to ensure efficient filtering and tagging possible.
• In-built automated email reminders and tracking.
• 14-day free trial.
• One of the most affordable software solutions.
• Customer support available via phone, tickets, and email.
• In-built tutorials for hands-on experience working with the software.
• Get a real-time macro/micro view of your business.
• User-friendly and intuitive.

Cons:

• Doesn’t have live chat support and on-premise deployment.
• Supports only one language (English).

Pricing Plans:

The prices start from $29 and go up to $99 per user per month (billed annually). Insightly also offers a free plan for up to 2 users.

10. Engagebay.

Engagebay is a cloud-hosted CRM that integrates all business processes and functions like sales, marketing, and finances on to a single platform. On top of that, the software primarily focuses on automation for maximum efficiency.

Key Features:

• Email Marketing – Offers a great module, laced with features like A/B testing, auto-responders, CAN-SPAM compliance, dynamic content, event-triggered emails, and more.
• Lead Generation – Efficient lead generation with features like contact import and export, lead capture, database integration, nurturing, scoring, segmentation, and more.
• Marketing Automation – Offers customizable CTAs, drip campaigns, sales intelligence, website visitor tracking, and so forth.
• Social Media Marketing – You can perform analytics, contact management, automated publishing, content management, and multi-account management.

Pros:

• Offers a great free plan.
• Extensive third-party app integrations, such as Zapier, Xero, and more.
• Highly customizable and scalable.
• User-friendly and intuitive interface.
• Comprehensive customer support via phone, live chats, email, tickets.
• Offers free trial period for paid plans.
• One of the most affordable plans in the market (entirely cloud-based).
• Ensures data security, integrity, and regulatory compliance (GDPR-compliant).
• Real-time, consolidated customer information for all (including previous interactions and purchases).
• Variety of forms and pop-ups for visitor engagement and lead generation.

Cons:

• Doesn’t offer on-premise deployment.
• Supports only English software.

Pricing Plans:

It has four broad segments:

• All-in-one
• Marketing
• CRM & sales bay
• Service Bay

The CRM & sales bay segment has four plans (one free and three paid).

The paid plans start from $7.79 and range up to $29.99 per user per month, based on features (when paid bi-annually). You can also pay annually or monthly.

What is CRM Software?

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a type of online tool that helps organizations manage a sales pipeline all the way from lead generation to closing sales.

CRMs help companies access, organize, and make sense of customer data to generate more sales.

CRM collects information from various channels like social media, email campaigns, live chat, phone calls, personal interaction, feedback forms, and more. It further leverages data analytics to analyze the customer’s buying history, patterns, and needs.

The aim is to enhance the customer experience and customer satisfaction, turning leads into customers, then nurturing and upselling that relationship.

CRM has been around for a long time (earlier in paper form), but the benefits of CRM systems became apparent after widespread digitalization.

CRM systems link various departments, including sales, marketing, HR, customer service, IT, business intelligence (BI), and finance. Furthermore, data is readily accessible by any employee in real-time, which empowers teams to quick, data-driven decisions.

Overall, CRM solutions have managed to connect interdepartmental teams and increase sales while removing business silos.

What Should You Look For in CRM Software?

1. Sales and Lead Management.

Your CRM should generate leads from inbound marketing, sales calls, email sign-ups, and more. Look for preset tasks to follow up with leads in less time. Your CRM should nurture your leads through the entire sales pipeline, from lead to close.

2. Marketing.

Built-in marketing tools like email pipelines, databases, and social media integrations can help with marketing and sales alignment.

3. Integrations.

CRM systems integrate with other important business software like email marketing tools, advertising platforms, data visualization tools, and more.

4. Analytics and Reporting.

Most CRM platforms have built-in reporting capabilities and pre-designed reports. Check for live and dynamic reporting features.

5. Product Mobility.

Since sales teams are on the move, does the CRM offer usage across different devices? Check to see if your CRM can be used on not just computers, but also mobile devices and tablets.

6. Implementation.

The product implementation period should be relatively quick, low cost, and error-free. Ask your support engineer how long the timeline is and what resources are required from your team.

7. Project Management Workflows.

Task management boards and approval checklists should help your sales teams manage their tasks efficiently.

8. Security.

File storage and platform security are paramount when selecting your CRM. Since your CRM is integrated with so much important data, make sure your platform’s security is top notch.

9. User Experience is Key.

How easy-to-use is your CRM? Don’t forget UX and make sure that your team is comfortable working with this tool for the long haul and there is a short learning curve.

10. API Calls.

Your CRM should have a robust, extensible, and open architecture for custom data integrations.

Questions to Ask When Choosing CRM Software.

1. Is this built for small business or enterprise?
2. Does this software integrate with the tools I’m already using?
3. How many user seats are provided and are there user minimums?
4. Would it be easy to train employees?
5. Are there set up fees and what is the total cost?
6. What type of security features are standard in the software?
7. Is the API accessible?

What Are the Benefits of CRM Software?

Here are some of the demonstrated benefits of using a good CRM for businesses of all sizes:

1. Improved Client Relationships and Customer Interactions.

CRM software allows you to streamline customer information and can help you generate insights, allowing you to serve your clients better.

2. You Can Cross-Sell And Up-Sell.

Armed with knowledge about customer choice and preferences, you can easily suggest the purchase of complementary products. On top of that, you can recommend other value-added versions of the product(s) that are pricier than the one your customer has bought.

3. Improves Collaboration.

Breaking away from silos, every member of the organization can access the same data in real-time, which can lead to enhanced collaboration between team members, as well as between the different sales and marketing teams involved.