Email Marketing Automation Tools: Best Choices for Product Marketers

Choosing email marketing automation tools can get complicated for product marketers. You need software that can integrate emails into your whole lifecycle marketing strategy and support product engagement.

To make it easier to find the right provider, I’ve compiled a list of 15 email marketing software in three categories: all-in-one platforms, in-app engagement software with email capabilities, and email-first tools.

15 Best email marketing automation tools: Summary

Here’s a quick summary table of 15 email marketing automation tools. I’ll review each in detail below.

All-in-one product experience platforms with email automation features

First, let’s go over product experience platforms that combine product analytics (product performance, in-app events, charts, etc) with in‑app engagement (tours, tooltips, checklists, surveys) to create a consistent experience across channels.

1) Userpilot

​🏆 Best for: Integrating omnichannel engagement with product analytics and user feedback, no-code.

💰 Pricing: Starter from $299/month billed annually. Growth $799/month billed annually. Enterprise custom.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.6/5 based on 809 reviews.

⚠️ Considerations: Pricing may not suit early‑stage startups with very small budgets.

Userpilot is an all‑in‑one platform for omnichannel engagement and unified product analytics, great for product-led growth teams. It lets me design email campaigns along with in‑app and mobile messages without juggling multiple tools. Plus, I can personalize emails based on user behaviors and other product-related attributes without coding. Emails and all email features are accessible to all customers on Growth and Enterprise plans.

Key features:

• Drag-and-drop email builder: It lets me create emails visually with blocks for text, images, video, buttons, columns, dividers, and HTML.

• Email template library: I have access to email templates for common product marketing use cases. I can also save my emails as reusable templates.

• Dynamic attribute personalization: Userpilot allows me to insert user properties such as first name, plan level, company, role, or any custom attribute into the email. I can also personalize signatures.
• AI localization: Userpilot can translate all our content with AI based on the user’s location attributes.
• Segmentation: I can target the same segment across email, in-app, and mobile. I can also create new segments from email interactions like opens and unsubscribes.
• Throttling and frequency: I can manage our sending volumes and limit how many emails a user can receive to protect domain deliverability.
• Condition and event-based triggering: Our non-technical team members can set up multi-channel flows based on in‑app events or conditions. For instance, if a user hasn’t completed the first activation task in 5 days, I can show an in‑app message saying “need help?”, send a personalized follow-up email 24 hours later, and trigger a mobile push 48 hours later.

• Omnichannel communication: Userpilot lets me plan messages via in‑app, mobile, and email in one place.

• Dedicated email analytics: It monitors classic email metrics like delivered, opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes.

• Unified product analytics: Since Userpilot integrates all data across channels, I can tie email engagement to in‑app behaviors. I can also cross-reference email data with product analytics, including funnels, path, retention, and other reports in one dashboard.

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2) Pendo

​🏆 Best for: Combining strong product analytics with omnichannel engagement workflows.

💰 Pricing: Free plan (up to 500 MAUs). Paid plans are custom, but Vendr data lists a median ACV of $48,300 per year.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.4/5 based on 1,511 reviews.

⚠️ Considerations: Email is gated behind the Orchestrate add‑on and the ultimate plan. This means you’d need to be on the higher end of their pricing to get access to email.

Pendo is a product experience suite that combines analytics, user feedback, and omnichannel communication. You can trigger emails in your multi‑channel journeys based on product signals. Considering the high pricing of the tool and the add-on, Pendo emails will be the most useful for those already relying on the platform for their in-app engagement and product analytics.

Key features:

• Drag-and-drop email editor: It builds messages with blocks for text, images, buttons, and side‑by‑side layouts.
• Pre-built templates: You get templates for welcome emails, feature announcements, and re‑engagement campaigns to speed up production.
• Visual workflow builder: Pendo lets you visualize and align your omnichannel communication flows with an intuitive builder.
• Audience targeting: You can send targeted emails to your existing Pendo segments and create new groups from email activity.
• Scheduling controls: Pendo lets you schedule standalone emails or add emails to existing journeys with custom limits.
• Unified analytics for email and in-app guides: You can see which users achieved an adoption goal (e.g, completed onboarding checklist) after an email, versus those who only saw an in-app message.

​3) Gainsight PX

​🏆 Best for: Enterprise-grade product experience with deep analytics and in‑app guidance.

💰 Pricing: Custom. Vendr lists a median ACV of $50,753 per year.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.4/5 based on 240 reviews.

⚠️ Considerations: Email lives primarily in Gainsight CS via Journey Orchestrator and Email Assist, which adds packaging complexity.

​Gainsight PX is a product experience platform for analytics, in‑app engagements, and feedback. It supports email in its Journey Orchestrator feature, which allows you to create cross‑channel experiences.

Key features:

• Email Assist and Programs: Gainsight lets you compose and send emails from P360 (mostly for CSMs reaching out to customers) or orchestrate multi‑step outreaches in Journey Orchestrator Programs. There’s also an AI writing assistant.
• Personalization and tokens: You can add customer and account fields in templates for personalized messages.
• Branching and waits: Build conditional paths that react to opens, clicks, or survey responses.
• Template management: You can create reusable templates, manage domains, and configure compliance settings.
• PX analytics and guidance: Combine emails with funnels, adoption dashboards, and in‑app guides to connect email performance to product adoption metrics.

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User engagement platforms with email automation features

Now, let’s explore user engagement tools that support email marketing campaigns. These will let you build omnichannel communication workflows, but require a separate analytics stack for deeper product analysis, and sometimes user feedback collection.

4) Appcues

​🏆 Best for: Fast, no‑code onboarding and product adoption with behavior‑based messaging.

💰 Pricing: Start from $300/month for 1 app billed annually. Grow from $750/month. Enterprise pricing on demand.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.6/5 based on 338 reviews.

⚠️ Considerations: Users mention issues with the unclear organization of the workflows. Also, the setup requires complex developer help.

Appcues is a no-code onboarding platform that includes emails as part of its Workflows feature. It‘s best for combining in‑app messaging with behavior‑based emails without heavy engineering.

Key features:

• Visual email builder: Appcues supports content blocks for columns, headings, text, images, buttons, dividers, HTML, and more.
• Templates and saved layouts: Start from pre-built templates or save messages as reusable resources.
• Workflow orchestration: Build multi‑touch journeys that mix in‑app flows with email in one canvas.
• Audience targeting: You can segment users by events and properties to trigger contextual emails.
• Subscriber management: Appcues lets you maintain unsubscribe lists and apply email rate limits to protect deliverability.
• Connected PX features: Appcues can connect emails with checklists, tooltips, banners, and surveys to drive adoption.

5) Intercom

​🏆 Best for: Combining a helpdesk with lifecycle email automation tools.

💰 Pricing: Pricing is seat‑based. Includes Essential ($29/mo/seat), Advanced ($85/mo/seat), and Expert ($132/mo/seat) tiers.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.5/5 based on 3,542 reviews.

⚠️ Considerations: Email as a channel is available on any plan, but using it with the Outbound feature (that lets you create communication flows including in-app elements) is behind a $99/mo add-on.

Intercom is a conversational platform that unifies helpdesk, chat, and outbound messaging. Email works alongside in‑app posts, banners, and push notifications. All of these can be automated in the Series feature to guide users through onboarding, feature adoption, and re‑engagement.

Key features:

• Visual email template editor: Design branded emails in a no‑code builder. You can also switch to HTML when needed.
• Templates and content blocks: Intercom lets you start from pre-built layouts, add multi‑column sections, and reuse components for faster production.
• Audience rules: You can target emails based on events such as sign up, feature use, or billing changes, as well as attributes like plan, role, subscription status, and language.
• Series automation: Build lifecycle journeys that include emails, in‑app prompts, chat messages, banners, and push notifications.
• Scheduling and sending controls: Set send windows and test messages before activation.
• Email analytics: You can track delivered emails, opens, clicks, and unsubscribes.

6) Braze

​🏆 Best for: Enterprise‑grade omnichannel engagement via email, SMS, and push.

💰 Pricing: Custom. Vendr lists a median ACV of $88,507 per year.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.5/5 based on 1,218 reviews.

⚠️ Considerations: Steep learning curve. You need a mature data setup (e.g., a clear taxonomy for tags, events, and naming conventions) to use advanced personalization and reporting. Custom integrations can require additional engineering.

Braze is a customer engagement platform used for omnichannel communication. It can orchestrate journeys across channels with event‑based logic and dynamic content. It is well-suited for advanced personalization and testing across large audiences.

Key features:

• HTML and drag‑and‑drop editors: Build emails visually or write custom HTML with CSS inlining.
• Email templates and variants: Braze lets you create reusable templates and spin up variants for testing.
• Liquid personalization and Connected Content: The tool pulls attributes and remote data (from web server and public APIs) into email copy for real‑time dynamic content.
• Canvas Flow orchestration: Combine email with push, SMS, and in‑app. You can also add waits and branches.
• Testing and experimentation: You can run A/B and multivariate tests to optimize email performance.

7) Customer.io

​🏆 Best for: Behavior-triggered emails and cross-channel automation for tech-savvy teams.

💰 Pricing: Essentials starts at $100 per month. Premium starts at $1,000 per month, billed annually. Enterprise is custom.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.4/5 based on 565 reviews.

⚠️ Considerations: Users mention insufficient analytics and issues with workflows’ UI.

Customer.io is a lifecycle messaging platform that integrates email, push, in‑app, SMS, and webhooks in a single workflow builder. You can create emails in an intuitive editor and use dynamic personalization.

Key features:

• Dual email editors: Customer.io offers a visual editor or a full HTML code editor with previews.
• Liquid personalization: You can reference user, event, and object data across emails, as well as program fallbacks.
• Visual workflow builder: Orchestrate journeys on an open canvas with triggers, waits, conditions, and branches based on in‑app events.
• Segmentation: You can build audiences from attributes, events, custom objects, and real‑time filters.
• Transactional and triggered sends: Customer.io supports API‑triggered messages and transactional emails alongside marketing campaigns.
• Testing and optimization: The tool includes A/B + multivariate testing with conversion tracking and campaign reports.
• Cross‑channel communication: You can combine email with push, in‑app, SMS, and webhooks in the same flow.

Standalone email automation software

These tools focus on email first. The trade-off is that they need integrations to deliver omnichannel experiences and to analyze product data, which ramps up costs and demands multiple integrations. It may be especially inconvenient when setting up and maintaining user segments.

8) Mailchimp

​🏆 Best for: Basic automations for sales and marketing teams at ecommerce businesses.

💰 Pricing: Free email marketing tools for up to 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly sends with a daily cap. Essentials starts at $13 per month for 500 contacts. Premium starts at $350 per month for 10,000 contacts. Pricing rises with list size and monthly send limits.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.4/5 based on 5,300+ reviews.

⚠️ Considerations: Advanced segmentation, multivariate testing, and comparative reports are only available on higher tiers.

Mailchimp is an email marketing platform that started with email and expanded into forms, landing page builders, simple CRM, and ecommerce integrations. It is popular for its ease of use and a broad template catalog.

Key features:

• Drag‑and‑drop email builder: You can produce responsive emails with text, images, buttons, dividers, social blocks, and HTML snippets.
• Template library: Choose from hundreds of layouts for newsletters, product updates, and feature announcements. You can also save custom automation templates for reuse.
• Customer journeys automation: Mailchimp allows event‑based campaigns with if‑then rules, delays, and goals for email sequences.
• Customer segmentation: You can organize contacts with tags and target campaigns based on profile data or email engagement.
• E-commerce and transactional options: Connect stores for product recommendations and abandoned carts. There’s also Mailchimp Transactional for API‑driven emails.
• Attribution reports: Track opens, clicks, and revenue attribution on a simple dashboard.

9) GetResponse

​🏆 Best for: Email automation with built‑in funnels, landing pages, and webinars in one toolkit.

💰 Pricing: Free plan. Starter from $19 per month for 1,000 contacts. Marketer from $59 per month. Creator from $69 per month. Enterprise is custom.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.3/5 based on 798 reviews.

⚠️ Considerations: Users often cite insufficient segmentation, with limited conditions.

GetResponse is a complete marketing platform that combines email, automation, landing pages, funnels, and webinars. The email marketing features cover visual editing, segmentation, and testing, while the automation builder supports event‑based flows and ecommerce triggers. It mostly caters to marketers, e-commerce, and creators.

Key features:

• Drag‑and‑drop email editor: Build responsive emails with text, image, button, and HTML blocks with mobile previews.
• Template library: GetResponse provides a catalog of templates for newsletters, promotions, and product updates. You can also save custom designs.
• Automation builder: Trigger multi-channel workflows across email, web push, and SMS.
• Segmentation and dynamic content: Target content based on dynamic attributes, behavior, and purchase data.
• A/B testing: Test subject lines, content, and send times to optimize your email performance.
• Webinars: Host both live and on‑demand webinar sessions. You can automate reminders and add attendees to post-event nurture flows.

10) Userlist

​🏆 Best for: B2B SaaS companies that need lifecycle emails based on account‑level data.

💰 Pricing: User‑based pricing with two plans. $10/mo per 1,000 on Basic plan and $12/mo per 1,000 on the Professional plan. The enterprise plan is custom.

🥇 G2 rating: 5/5 (only 2 reviews.)

⚠️ Considerations: Smaller ecosystem and a lighter analytics layer than broader platforms. You’d need other tools for deep reporting or complex omnichannel flows.

Userlist is a SaaS lifecycle email platform with an automation workflow builder and a clean editor. It supports company accounts, covers transactional emails, and offers reusable components such as headers, footers, signatures, and CTAs.

Key features:

• Visual workflow builder: Userlist provides a drag-and-drop builder for triggers, conditions, waits, and actions to map lifecycle journeys. You can switch to HTML when needed.
• Segmentation for users and accounts: You can group users and companies based on attributes, events, and roles.
• Transactional and marketing emails: Userlist supports broadcasts, lifecycle campaigns, and transactional notifications in the same tool.
• In‑app messages: Pair emails with lightweight in‑app messaging.
• APIs and integrations: Userlist supports HTTP API, webhooks, and integrations with product data to trigger messages.

11) Loops

​🏆 Best for: Smaller SaaS startups sending simple transactional emails and newsletters.

💰 Pricing: Free for up to 1,000 contacts and 4,000 monthly sends. Paid plans start at $49 per month based on subscriber count. Transactional sends are included for free on paid plans.

🥇 G2 rating: –

⚠️ Considerations: Migrating user data and integrations demand coding, which means triggers cannot be set up without developers’ help.

Loops is an email platform built for smaller SaaS companies. It brings a design-first editor, simple automation called “loops”, newsletters, and transactional email into a single user-friendly interface.

Key features:

• Three email modes: Write in Styled, Plain, or Code mode. You can toggle these modes per message for full control over your email’s design.
• Personalization: You can add dynamic content to emails based on contact properties and variables.
• Sequences and newsletters: Automate lifecycle emails with delays and conditions. You can also schedule one‑off broadcasts.
• Transactional email API: You can send password resets, alerts, and product notifications with a simple REST API.
• Uploads and HTML: You have to use custom MJML or HTML when a fully custom layout is required.
• APIs and integrations: Move data in and out with REST endpoints, webhooks, and guides.

12) Brevo

​🏆 Best for: Budget‑friendly email and SMS marketing with simple automation. Caters to marketing and sales teams.

💰 Pricing: Free plan with unlimited contacts and 300 emails per day. Starter begins at $9 per month for 5,000 emails and scales by monthly sends. Pay‑as‑you‑go credits are available.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.5/5 based on 2,300+ reviews.

​⚠️ Considerations: Brevo’s email customization options are less flexible than the competitors’. Additionally, there are automation limitations, such as no date triggers or “delay until.”

Brevo combines email, SMS, chat, a lightweight CRM, and a pricing model that scales by monthly email volume. It suits SaaS teams that need reliable email deliverability, low costs, basic automation, and transactional messages without a heavy platform.

Key features:

• Drag‑and‑drop editor: Build responsive emails with blocks for text, images, buttons, video, social, and HTML.
• Template and section library: Start from ready‑made templates and save reusable content sections for faster production.
• Marketing automation: Creates workflows for welcome, nurture, or re‑engagement campaigns.
• Segmentation and personalization: Targets campaigns by attributes and customer interactions. It also supports dynamic fields with fallbacks.
• Transactional email: Uses SMTP relay and webhooks to send order confirmations, password resets, and alerts.
• SMS and chat: Supports multi‑channel outreach via SMS and live chat.
• Reporting: Monitors deliverability, opens, and clicks. Includes email heatmaps on higher-tier plans.

13) MailerSend

​🏆 Best for: Developers and product teams that need a transactional email API.

💰 Pricing: Free plan allows up to 3,000 emails/mo. Paid plans start at $28/mo for 50,000 emails and scale by volume. Overage is $1 per 1,000 additional emails.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.2/5 based on ~45 reviews.

⚠️ Considerations: Transactional focus means it offers lighter marketing automation features.

MailerSend self-describes as a “comprehensive tool for your everyday business.” It focuses on transactional emails with SMTP relay and APIs, while giving non‑technical teammates a visual template builder. It fits teams that primarily send programmatic emails and want simple collaboration on templates without a heavy marketing suite.

Key features:

• Drag‑and‑drop template builder: You can create templates with reusable sections and brand styles.
• Dynamic fields: Personalizes emails based on name, plan, company, order details, and other custom fields.
• SMTP relay and REST API: Send programmatic emails with robust authentication and SDKs.
• A/B testing: Allows you to experiment with email variants to optimize email engagement.
• Deliverability and analytics: Monitors bounces, opens, and clicks. You can also manage domains and use suppression lists to protect inbox placement.

14) Encharge

​🏆 Best for: Connecting product and billing data for behavior-driven marketing automation in PLG SaaS.

💰 Pricing: Starts at $79 per month for 2,000 subscribers with higher tiers by list size. Free trial available.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.7/5 based on 349 reviews.

⚠️ Considerations: Encharge is email-centric (no native SMS or push notifications as of now). If you want multi-channel beyond email, you’d need to integrate with external tools.

Encharge is a marketing automation platform built for PLG companies. It can automate onboarding sequences, activation flows, and re‑engagement campaigns from product and billing data. It fits well when you need behavior-based emails without adopting a heavyweight marketing hub.

Key features:

• Two email editors: Encharge lets you choose between a drag‑and‑drop HTML editor for visual layouts or a simple editor for plain‑text emails.
• Liquid personalization: You can insert merge tags and dynamic attributes into subject lines, preview text, bodies, and even sender fields.
• Visual flow builder: Orchestrate journeys on a canvas with triggers, actions, and filters that react to product and billing events.
• Segmentation: Encharge builds audiences from fields, events, email activity, tags, groups, and data that update in real time.
• Integrations for SaaS data: You can sync billing events from Stripe, HubSpot, and Intercom so you can personalize flows.

15) Bento

​🏆 Best for: Small businesses wanting to combine a marketing automation platform with a lightweight CRM.

f💰 Pricing: 30‑day free trial. Pricing is $0.01 per identified user per month (e.g., 3,000 users = $30/month). Every plan includes all the advanced features.

🥇 G2 rating: 4.8/5 based on 31 reviews.

⚠️ Considerations: New users may need time to configure events and data to unlock the full automation model.

Bento combines broadcasts, automation flows, transactional email, and an AI CRM. Pricing is transparent and scales with identified users rather than email volume. Deliverability is a core focus with warm‑up guidance, batching, and reputation monitoring built in.

Key features:

• Deliverability toolkit: Bento supports batch sending, warm‑up guidance, list hygiene, spam score checks, and domain reputation monitoring.
• Three email editors: Offers plain‑text, drag‑and‑drop, and full‑HTML editors.
• Automation flows: You can build visual journeys that react to events and attributes. These can be built based on waits, goals, and conditional logic.
• Transactional email API: Set up programmatic emails through REST endpoints and SDKs.
• Advanced segmentation: Target audiences by attributes, tags, and real‑time behavioral events from websites and apps.
• Analytics and attribution: Track engagement and revenue impact with performance dashboards.
• Integrations and SDKs: You can connect to Stripe, Shopify, WordPress, and Zapier. It also offers first‑party SDKs for web and back‑end frameworks.

Set up automated email campaigns with Userpilot

Standalone marketing automation software is cheaper on paper. But in my experience, the real cost shows up when you need to add product analytics tools to your stack. Also, you will require developer help for integrations and data migrations to set up triggers and segments, especially if you want them to update in real time.

So for me, the best path is keeping omnichannel engagement, product data, and analytics in one place. And with Userpilot, I can capture events without code, target the right segments, and communicate with users on multiple channels in one flow.

Want to see how Userpilot can help you automate emails based on in-app behavior? Book a demo to start designing your lifecycle email campaigns!

​DISCLAIMER: Userpilot strives to provide accurate information to help businesses determine the best solution for their particular needs. Due to the dynamic nature of the industry, the features offered by Userpilot and others often change over time. The statements made in this article are accurate to the best of Userpilot’s knowledge as of its publication on August 20, 2025.

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