7 Best Marketing Automation Tools for 2026

The marketing automation industry is expected to be worth $11bn by 2030.

It’s unsurprising, then, that the list of marketing automation platforms to consider is growing year-on-year, making it harder than ever to find the right platform for you.

Short on time? I’d start with ActiveCampaign if you need multi-step automation and AI-assisted sequence improvements. Basic newsletters don’t justify its complexity, and its CRM is limited. For an eCommerce store, consider Omnisend.

Despite an endless variety of marketing automation services to choose from, I’ll focus on seven that stood out after conducting our annual review of 100+ email marketing & automation tools.

1. ActiveCampaign
2. Brevo
3. Mailchimp
4. Campaigner
5. HubSpot
6. ConvertKit
7. Omnisend

Our recommendations are based on a comprehensive study that looked at over 100+ marketing automation products and included surveying over 10,000 marketers for their feedback on their marketing automation provider. I’ve also shared my personal experiences using these platforms where possible.

The dataset we use to determine the top 10 marketing automation software providers is linked at the end.

The best marketing automation software at a glance

Mailchimp pricing verified September 2026; other listed prices date from April 2026, monthly billing. ActiveCampaign pricing depends on the plan, contact count and billing term. A fuller pricing comparison at 2,500, 10,000, and 100,000 contacts sits further down the page.

First things first, though. With so much variation between services, what do you need to look out for when comparing software providers?

What to consider when comparing marketing automation software

Before we go into the pros and cons, or the pricing comparisons, it’s important to know what to look out for.

I know several friends who signed up for marketing automation software, only to realise one month down the line that it wasn’t compatible with their CRM. Ouch.

It’s also very easy to get burned by the sliding scale pricing structures and unexpected additional costs.

It pays to do your research. Below are a few important considerations and questions to have in mind when comparing the marketing automation software.

Let’s start off with the deal-breakers. These are the first things you should look out for when comparing marketing automation software providers.

Deal breakers:

• Pricing - Most marketing automation tools are priced on a sliding scale with additional costs for training and add-ons. They can become ludicrously expensive very quickly if you’re not careful. I’d recommend taking a 3-5 year perspective when weighing up your options.
• Usability - Marketing automation is inherently complex. As such, usability matters because it’ll determine how much value your team extract from the tool. The less intuitive the software is, the more you will pay for training, and the more headaches your team will endure.
• Integrations with your existing software - This matters, yet sometimes gets overlooked. Some marketing automation tools only allow integration with a small number of third-party apps / CRM systems.

Now let’s look at the preferences. Some of these may be deal breakers for you, but they’re mostly to do with which features the software providers offer.

Preferences:

• CRM / sales capabilities - Some marketing automation tools have an in-built CRM system with lead scoring, and advanced tagging capabilities. Others have no in-built CRM, as they expect you to connect the software with your existing CRM. We’ve compared the tools that do both well in our guide to the best marketing automation CRMs.
• Email capabilities - while all marketing automation tools enable email marketing in some capacity, some are better than others. Do you need drip campaigns? subject line A/B testing? Demographic segmentation?
• Content capabilities - Do you need to create landing pages, webinars, or other forms of content to send out to your contacts? While most marketing automation tools enable this, some are easier to use and more extensive than others.
• e-commerce capabilities - Do you sell products online? Some marketing automation tools, such as Omnisend, integrate directly into your e-commerce platform.
• Social media capabilities - Some marketing automation tools integrate with Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), enabling you to control social advertising or build social apps from within the service. Some also offer social media monitoring, to pull comments made on social media platforms into your CRM. These features are usually nice-to-haves, but it might be worth considering whether they would be useful for you.
• Training & set-up is another consideration: how long will it take your company to implement the marketing automation software, and at what cost? This is not particularly well advertised on any of the software provider’s websites, so be sure to ask.

Comparing marketing automation software

Here’s the gist on the main pros and cons of each marketing automation provider.

I first used ActiveCampaign in 2012, and we’ve since run it across eight portfolio companies, sending over 124,000 emails. ActiveCampaign is a paid Test Lab partner, and we earn commission through our links.

I’d keep it first if your team needs multi-step lifecycle automation and AI help improving existing sequences. Its CRM and reporting feel neglected. Reaching human support takes more effort than I’d like.

The visual builder lets us connect conditions, waits and goals into sequences that respond to what contacts do. More advanced workflows need careful plan selection: Starter limits each automation to five actions.

Active Intelligence was most useful when I asked it to critique an existing onboarding sequence. It spotted an unfinished A/B test, a high unsubscribe rate and a missing preheader, then suggested a prioritised plan.

When I asked it to implement changes, it added goal exits, a day-seven re-engagement branch and a 48-hour non-opener resend. It couldn’t create the A/B split actions itself, so I still had to intervene.

The screenshot below shows Active Intelligence opening our Test Lab enquiry workflow after a request to critique it. It starts by fetching the step-by-step structure before offering a critique.

Campaign drafts also needed checking: my one-shot email prompt produced a campaign that ignored the requested one-image, one-column layout. I’d use the AI to suggest optimisations, with someone checking each change before activation (especially anything presented as an A/B test).

Here’s the latest test, including the automation and Active Intelligence findings:

Our ActiveCampaign review records a 32/40 result across eight tests. Automation was the strongest area; the CRM, reporting and support kept it from scoring higher.

For pricing, I’d budget around the Plus or Pro features you need, rather than choosing on the entry price alone. Check the current plans for your contact count, billing term and CRM or SMS add-ons.

Accounts created on or after 3 November 2025 are billed for all contacts, including unsubscribed, bounced and unconfirmed records. That makes an untidy list more expensive than its active subscriber count suggests.

Is ActiveCampaign the right marketing automation tool for you?

02Brevo

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) first became highly regarded as an underdog in the world of transactional email tools before they began to make waves with their marketing automation product.

Granted, Brevo’s visual marketing automation builder is less attractive than ActiveCampaign’s. It is still powerful, and so free of bells and whistles that it’s refreshing to use. Especially after tools that require contacting support or reading documentation just to complete basic tasks.

So, what are the main benefits?

1. Pricing - Brevo is one of the most affordable email marketing tools and offers marketing automation for free if you have fewer than 2,000 contacts. While most companies looking for marketing automation will have more than this, their pricing is still reasonable and based largely on email volumes.

2. Deliverability - Having used Brevo for one of our ventures, I can vouch for its deliverability rates. Recent research reports put them among the highest in the industry.

The main downside we’ve faced using Brevo is their sending limits. While it’s likely the flipside of a strong deliverability rate, Brevo limits how many emails you can send. While it appears to be a monthly limit, it’s actually a daily limit (the monthly limit is divided by 30). This has caused us several issues when going over our quota has meant emails end up being put on hold until the next day.

We still use Brevo to this day, and consider it a stable, simple marketing automation tool. Brevo is a French company, and was one of the first marketing automation companies to declare GDPR compliance. Its history in transactional email has also led to marketing automation features that are difficult to find elsewhere, such as SMS messaging and real-time deliverability reporting.

Is Brevo the right marketing automation tool for you?

I tested Mailchimp across eight areas in September 2026.

The email builder was the standout. I rebuilt a designed Slack campaign in eight minutes, faster than I managed in HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Omnisend, Constant Contact or any other email tool I’ve tested.

The small touches add up. Images can come from Canva, Instagram, Giphy, stock libraries or a file upload, and the block controls appear exactly where you expect them.

That ease of use suits non-technical marketers sending newsletters, product announcements or simple lead nurture emails. Template editors still have limits, so designers wanting fine control over every breakpoint will eventually get irritated.

Mailchimp’s AI is useful, but lighter than I hoped. Intuit Assist can generate text variants, suggest subject lines and populate content blocks, while the Claude connector turned a coffee roastery campaign plan into editable Mailchimp drafts.

The workflow was awkward. I could get editable drafts into Mailchimp, but I could not simply ask Claude to create one campaign directly, and the in-editor optimisation advice was more generic than strategic.

The automation builder is similarly split. I built a three-email welcome sequence, added a one-day delay, created a split path and checked behavioural conditions without needing help documentation.

This is plenty for welcome flows, nurture sequences and basic customer follow-up. I would be more cautious if you need AI to critique journeys, CRM-triggered automation or visible actions inside tools like Shopify and Google Sheets.

Mailchimp’s free plan covers 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends. Paid marketing plans start at $13/month for Essentials and $20/month for Standard at up to 500 contacts, which is fair if usability matters more than squeezing every pound from the bill.

Here’s a video from my latest Mailchimp test:

Is Mailchimp the right marketing automation tool for you?

04Campaigner

If ActiveCampaign and HubSpot feel like more tool than you need, Campaigner is the antidote. It doesn’t try to be a CRM, a webinar host, or a workflow studio. It sends email well, has SMS as an add-on, and ships a sensible AI layer focused on the two tasks that actually move metrics: subject lines and segmentation.

What sets Campaigner apart is that it’s been a deliverability-first ESP for over 20 years. Independent inbox-placement tests consistently put it in the top tier alongside ActiveCampaign. Even the most beautifully built campaign is worthless if it lands in spam.

Its Audience Intelligence tools benchmark AI subject lines and content suggestions against your own historical open rates, rather than a generic dataset. That gives you account-specific benchmarks compared with the ChatGPT wrappers most competitors have bolted on. It doesn’t learn from your account over time the way ActiveCampaign’s Active Intelligence does.

The automation builder is basic: branching, scoring, and conditional logic are all there, but anyone with serious workflow ambitions will outgrow it within a year. There’s also no free plan, though the 30-day trial comes with full AI access, which is more generous than the 14-day trials most rivals offer.

Pricing starts at $14/mo for 1,000 contacts on the Starter plan, and the AI suite isn’t paywalled behind a higher tier. That’s rare in this category.

Is Campaigner the right marketing automation tool for you?

05HubSpot

Having demoed their software, I’d say HubSpot is over-hyped.

Pretty much everything that HubSpot offers can be found elsewhere at a much lower cost. And yes, HubSpot does offer a free version of their software, but this doesn’t include any of their marketing automation features.

If you’re looking to use HubSpot for marketing automation, you’ll need to cough up at least $800/month (paid annually), plus an additional $3,000 in onboarding fees. In other words, if your marketing automation budget is below $12,600/year, HubSpot probably isn’t for you.

But to give credit where it’s due, their software is intuitive and easy to get the hang of, which for a non-technical small business can make all of the difference. The analytics are strong, which makes it dead easy for business owners to know what’s working and what’s not.

I can see how many small businesses would be impressed with their offering, but HubSpot’s pricing can get expensive as you grow.

HubSpot charges onboarding fees in the $3,000–$6,000 range for professional and enterprise customers (these are the only plans that include marketing automation). That’s on top of a typical monthly cost between $800 and $2,500.

If it were me, I’d take this money and instead spend it on ActiveCampaign, which is a significantly more advanced marketing automation platform. With what’s left over, you could get a pro subscription to a good piece of SEO software like SEMrush or Deepcrawl, and do some training on Google Analytics.

If you’re weighing up the cost, compare ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot before committing.

I might be missing something, but based on demoing their software it does seem overpriced.

Is HubSpot the right marketing automation tool for you?

Anyone whose marketing automation budget is below $12,600/year. Professional plans start at $890/mo plus a mandatory $3,000+ onboarding fee, and most teams end up needing a HubSpot specialist at £80-150/hour on top. For the same money, ActiveCampaign delivers more advanced automation and leaves budget for SEO tooling and training.

06Kit

Kit is the simplest marketing automation tool here. Designed primarily for bloggers and content creators, it’s a decent option for beginners looking for basic marketing automation software.

Don’t expect any bells and whistles — Kit doesn’t even have email templates, because it encourages plain-text emails to increase engagement.

If you’re just starting out, Kit is a decent option that’s also quite affordable, but only for individual content-based businesses.

Is Kit the right marketing automation tool for you?

Recommended for: Creators with an audience they want to nurture via email — YouTubers, podcasters, bloggers and course creators. The free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, and the minimal landing pages consistently convert at 30-50%. If your goal is “build a subscriber list and send them content regularly,” Kit is one of the easiest ways to get started.

Not recommended for: Businesses that need real marketing automation — branching workflows, lead scoring, CRM, or segmented nurture across a buying cycle. Kit has no CRM and only basic automation. E-commerce businesses should use Omnisend, and any team past the creator stage should look at ActiveCampaign.

Start Free with Kit - Up to 10K Subscribers →

07Omnisend

Founded in 2014, Omnisend is a marketing automation tool for e-commerce companies.

While their platform is far from the best designed, it integrates with 70+ tools to help e-commerce marketers automate their marketing across channels.

By only working with e-commerce companies, Omnisend’s email templates are all designed to solve specific challenges faced by e-commerce marketers, from reducing cart abandonment to driving product reviews.

The main reason to consider Omnisend for an e-commerce business is its native integration with your e-commerce platform.

Whether you use Shopify, Magento, or any other major platform, Omnisend will hook in. This means you can trigger campaigns based on customer behaviour and see how your marketing automation impacts sales.

Omnisend now offers a free forever plan allowing all users to test out their automation, segmentation, and prebuilt workflows. Paid plans start at $16/month and Pro plans start at $59/month and come with unlimited email sends. Pricing will vary depending on your contact list size.

Omnisend also offer free migration from any ESP. Their team handles the list imports, automation rebuilds, and deliverability setup, which removes most of the usual switching cost.

Is Omnisend the right marketing automation tool for you?

Recommended for: Shopify or WooCommerce stores doing more than $100k/year in revenue. I’d suggest Omnisend if you need abandoned cart emails, product recommendations, SMS marketing, and detailed revenue attribution inside one tool. Native omnichannel workflows and product catalogue integration mean less tape-and-glue between tools.

Not recommended for: Non-e-commerce businesses. If you’re B2B, a creator, or anything that doesn’t involve selling products through an online store, Omnisend’s feature set will feel irrelevant. Look at ActiveCampaign, Kit, or HubSpot instead.

Try Omnisend →

Comparing marketing automation software prices

It’s a challenge to compare marketing automation service prices like for like. Some price tiers are based on the number of users, while others depend on features or the number of contacts in your database.

I’ve done my best to do an accurate comparison of the different services at three different contact list sizes:

What’s the best marketing automation software for you?

No marketing automation tool is definitively the best. The right pick depends on the shape of your business.

Updates

22 September 2026: Updated ActiveCampaign against our latest review, added the workflow critique screenshot and test video, and corrected the repeated CRM and pricing claims. Kept ActiveCampaign first and added its paid Test Lab badge.

18 September 2026: Added Mailchimp after testing it across eight areas, including its email builder, AI features, automation builder, support and deliverability.

July 2026 - Added a “short on time?” summary and an at-a-glance comparison table near the top of the guide. Moved the FAQ into a structured format (which now renders FAQ schema) and rewrote several answers that had drifted out of line with our current recommendations - the old version still pointed small businesses at Brevo and ConvertKit rather than ActiveCampaign. Also added links to our ActiveCampaign review, our ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot comparison, and our marketing automation CRM guide, plus a note on Omnisend’s free migration offer.