There are many email systems on the market but none so well known perhaps as MailChimp. It’s a nice catchy name and a nice catchy product which is, without doubt, the market leader at its price point.

The price can, in fact, be zero if your contact list is less than 2,000 and you need to send less than 12000 emails per month. Those parameters will cover many small businesses until they get established and the upgrade to a paid plan isn’t too painful – they start at $10/month.

MailChimp packs a lot of features into it’s system but please be aware that many of them are only available with paid plans.

In addition to all the list building, email authoring and analytics that you might expect MailChimp also includes basic marketing automation tools that enable you to send follow-up emails automatically if certain criteria are met.

There are plenty of email templates to choose from and designing a really effective email is achievable even for the beginner. If you are using other applications, such as an online e-commerce store for example, chances are that MailChimp will have an integration for that product which enables you to truly automate your sales process. Shopify, Magento and Woo Commerce are among the e-commerce store packages which are supported.