Best free tier for marketing-automation

The most recognized email-marketing + marketing-automation name and the only one of the four with a real forever-free tier for email automation. Free forever for 500 contacts and 1,000 emails/month (10,000 lifetime email sends) with Mailchimp branding, a basic audience, email templates, a drag-and-drop builder, and 1-step basic automation (welcome email, tag-based). Standard from ~$13/mo for 500 contacts adds multi-step automations, A/B testing, and 24/7 support; Essentials from ~$6/mo for 500 contacts adds email scheduling + basic A/B testing.

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Free forever — 500 contacts + 1,000 emails/month with Mailchimp branding

Paid from

$6/mo

HubSpot Marketing Hub (the automation platform — email automation, workflows, landing pages, A/B testing, lead scoring) has no forever-free tier — a 14-day trial then Starter from ~$20/mo (billed annually) for 1,000 marketing contacts. The free HubSpot CRM does include free marketing tools (forms, ad management, email tracking, live chat) but not the email-marketing automation workflows. The all-in-one inbound-marketing default for B2B.

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Free HubSpot CRM tools (forms, ad management, email opens); automation flows are paid

Paid from

$20/mo

A marketing-automation and email-marketing platform best known for its visual workflow automation builder (site tracking, event tracking, lead scoring, conditional content, split automations). No forever-free tier — a 14-day free trial, then Starter from ~$15/mo for 1,000 contacts with unlimited emails, automation, landing pages, and forms; higher tiers add predictive sending, split actions, and custom objects. The deepest automation workflows of the four.

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14-day free trial (no forever-free tier)

Paid from

$15/mo

A data-driven email + SMS marketing-automation platform built for ecommerce (deep Shopify/Magento/WooCommerce integration, predictive analytics, CDP-style customer profiles, flows for abandoned-cart, welcome, browse-abandonment, win-back). Free forever for up to 250 contacts and 500 email sends/month with all core email features (flows, segmentation, A/B testing, predictive analytics); SMS available with a small monthly credit. Paid Email from ~$45/mo for 500 contacts unlocks more sends + SMS & email combined. The ecommerce-marketing automation specialist.

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Requests

Free forever — 250 contacts + 500 email sends/month (email); SMS pay-as-you-go

Paid from

$45/mo