While it’s a favorite among marketers for crafting professional, responsive emails, it might not be the perfect fit for everyone. For instance, its collaboration features are quite basic, making real-time teamwork challenging. Or perhaps, you need a fully integrated email marketing platform rather than just a design editor.

Whatever the reason, exploring Stripo alternatives can help you find a tool that better suits your needs. To make your search easier, I’ve carefully curated a list of the best Stripo alternatives, categorized into three key groups: 

• Dedicated email design and template builders
  
• All-in-one email marketing platforms with template editors
  
• Enterprise-focused email design tools

Let’s dive in!

Stripo Alternatives: Features You Should Be Looking For

When searching for a Stripo alternative, you’ll want a tool that matches or exceeds Stripo’s best features. Here are the key aspects to consider:

1. Drag-and-drop email builder

Stripo makes it easy to design emails from scratch or customize templates with its intuitive drag-and-drop editor. Any alternative should offer a similar experience, allowing you to add branding elements like logos, fonts, taglines, buttons, navigation menus, and footers without needing coding skills.

2. Responsive design

Emails should look great on any device, and Stripo ensures this with its responsive templates. A good Stripo alternative should offer mobile-friendly designs that render correctly across different screen sizes, including interactive elements like carousels and image galleries.

3. Template library

Stripo has over 1,500 ready-to-use templates for every possible use case. Of these, over 100 are interactive by default.

A strong selection of pre-built templates and design elements can save you time. Ensure the alternative offers modern, customizable templates that fit your brand’s style.

4. Easy integration

If you need to export HTML code or integrate your email designs with marketing platforms, CRM tools, or ESPs (email service providers), check for compatibility with your existing stack.

5. Reporting and analytics

While Stripo isn’t a full-fledged ESP, it still offers real-time tracking of email performance, A/B testing, and CRM integrations. If tracking campaign success matters to you, ensure your alternative has built-in analytics and supports data-driven optimization.

6. Budget

Stripo is cost-effective for small and medium businesses, with custom pricing for enterprises. Consider your budget and whether the alternative offers flexible plans that scale as your business grows.

Stripo Alternatives: Features and Pricing

Now, let’s explore the features and pricing of each Stripo alternative.

Dedicated email design and template builders

If you’re looking for an email design tool that focuses solely on building stunning, responsive emails without additional marketing features, then a dedicated email builder is your best bet. 

These platforms specialize in creating professional-grade emails with intuitive drag-and-drop editors, pre-built templates, and HTML export capabilities.

They are ideal for teams that need advanced design flexibility, real-time collaboration, and seamless ESP integrations.

Here are some of the best dedicated email design and template builders to consider:

1. Unlayer

Best for real-time collaboration 

Unlayer checks all the boxes on our ‘Stripo alternatives checklist’ right away. It provides 1,800+ email templates you can use to adapt into unique designs. The filters make sorting through the options easy. When you find one you like, the drag-and-drop email builder makes editing and formatting it effortless.

Unlayer has a user-friendly interface where you can create entire campaigns from scratch, sync them with your email service provider or CRM, and track performance in real-time.

Key features

• White-label editor
• 1800+ responsive email templates
• Comprehensive knowledge base
• Multiple integration options
• Real-time collaboration
• Custom HTML editing

Unlayer pricing

Comes with a 14-day free trial. Unlayer offers three monthly price plans:

• Free: with limited features
• Unlayer Designer: $20 per month (billed monthly)
• Unlayer Team: $30 per month (billed monthly)

Unlayer pros and cons

2. BeeFree

Best for simplifying brand compliance for email teams

Beefree is an ideal Stripo alternative for small businesses. It has all the key features you’d expect from an email design tool: a drag–and–drop editor, responsive templates, and real-time collaboration.

It simplifies brand compliance for email teams and allows you to create mobile and desktop versions of your emails – font and alignment errors are now a thing of the past.

The platform also provides HTML export and direct ESP integrations, making it a strong choice for marketers and designers alike.

Key features

• Mobile design mode (optimize pages for mobile in real-time)
• Two-factor authentication
• Digital asset management
• AI-generated content
• Real-time approval workflows

BeeFree pricing

BeeFree offers a 15-day trial before you make a purchase. It has three paid plans: 

• Free plan (allows you to store up to 10 email templates)
• Team: $30 per month 
• Business: $160 per month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

The free plan is fully-featured but has no customer support. Paid plans have extra features and access to customer support.

If you opt for its annual billing, you can save up to two months of subscription costs.

BeeFree pros and cons 

3. Topol.io

Best for unlimited template creation

Topol.io is an email design tool that emphasizes simplicity and efficiency, allowing users to create professional emails quickly. It comes with a variety of pre-built templates and an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor. Unlike Stripo, it has a strong focus on speed and usability, making it a great option for individuals or teams that want a hassle-free design experience.

Key features

• Unlimited test emails
• AI assistant 
• Access to stock photos and premium templates (limited to its paid plans)
• Easy collaboration 

Topol.io pricing 

Topol.io offers a free plan and two paid plans with a 14-day trial period. 

The free plan is best fit for personal use with unlimited template creation. Its paid plan: 

• Pro: $15 per month (best for individuals) 
• Team: $20 per month (best for team collaboration) 

Opting for annual billing can reduce your monthly price. 

Topol.io pros and cons

4. Mailmodo

Best for sending highly interactive AMP emails

Mailmodo stands out for its AMP email support, enabling users to create interactive emails with forms, surveys, and carousels — all within the inbox. Unlike Stripo, which supports AMP but requires coding, Mailmodo provides a no-code AMP builder, making interactive email creation accessible to all users. 

Additionally, it includes built-in automation and ESP features, making it more than just a design tool.

Key features

• No-code AMP builder
• Email form builder and interactive widgets
• Built-in ESP capabilities
• Email scheduling
• AI content generator

Mailmodo pricing 

Mailmodo offers three paid plans, and opting for its annual pricing gets you a 20% discount. 

• Lite: $49 per month (2,500 contacts)
• Pro: $99 per month (2,500 contacts)
• Max: $199 per month (2,500 contacts)

Mailmodo pros and cons

5. Chamaileon

Best for advanced email-building tools

Chamaileon is built for team collaboration, allowing multiple users to edit emails in real time. It provides robust brand consistency features, making it ideal for companies that require strict design control. Its modular email design system lets teams save and reuse content blocks, speeding up email creation while maintaining brand identity.

Key features

• Multi-user editing
• Modular email design
• Brand control tools
• Flawless email rendering

Chamaileon pricing 

Chamaileon plans are customized to fit your needs while ensuring top-tier service. Annual subscriptions start at $4K, including tailored onboarding, email design system setup, 24/7 support, and regular check-ins.

Chamaileon pros and cons

All-in-one email marketing platforms with template editors

If you’re looking for more than just an email design tool, all-in-one email marketing platforms offer built-in template editors alongside automation, segmentation, and analytics. 

These platforms let you design, send, and track email campaigns from a single dashboard, making them ideal for businesses that want a fully integrated solution. 

Whether you need advanced personalization, A/B testing, or CRM integration, these tools provide a complete email marketing ecosystem.

Here are some top all-in-one email marketing platforms that come with robust template editors.

6. EngageBay

Best for SMBs seeking an affordable, integrated solution 

Email is just one aspect of EngageBay’s comprehensive sales and marketing capabilities. With this tool, you can design, test, send, track, and iterate email campaigns at scale. For email design, it offers a wide range of templates, a drag-and-drop email builder, plus advanced segmentation capabilities in a single place.

You also get a landing page builder to capture contacts. Thanks to a built-in CRM, you can create lists and personalize names and email addresses quickly.

It also offers a library of 1,000+ free HTML email templates designed for different industries and purposes. 

Key features

• List management
• Analytics and Reporting
• Helpdesk
• Advanced automations (scheduling, email sequences, workflows)
• A/B testing

EngageBay pricing

Email marketing is included in EngageBay’s All-in-One plans and Marketing Bay.

EngageBay All–in-One monthly plans

• Free for up to 250 contacts
• Basic: $14.99 per user per month ( for 500 contacts)
• Growth: $64.99 per user per month (for 5,000 contacts)
• Pro: $119.99 per user per month  (unlimited contacts)

EngageBay Marketing monthly plans

• Free for up to 250 contacts
• Basic: $12.99 per user per month (for 500 contacts)
• Growth: $49.99 per user per month (for 3,000 contacts)
• Pro: $79.99 per user per month (for 10,000 contacts)

Opting for its annual billing gets you an 8% discount on your subscription cost. 

EngageBay pros and cons

7. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)

Best for robust email and SMS capabilities

Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue, is a comprehensive marketing platform offering tools for email marketing, SMS campaigns, chat, and CRM. 

Designed to enhance customer relationships, it provides automation features and a user-friendly interface suitable for businesses of all sizes. Brevo’s flexible pricing model is based on the number of emails sent rather than the contact list size, making it a cost-effective solution for many.

Key features

• Customizable templates
• Manage SMS & WhatsApp campaigns
• Workflow automation and built-in CRM tools
• Supports transactional emails
• Predictive sending

Brevo pricing

Free plan limits you to 300 emails per day to unlimited contacts

• Starter Plan: $9 per month for 5,000 emails
• Business Plan: $18 per month for 5,000 emails
• Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for advanced needs and dedicated support

Brevo pros and cons

8. Mailchimp

Best for personalizing emails

Mailchimp is an all-in-one email marketing platform that includes a built-in email editor, automation tools, and audience management features. 

It’s ideal for small businesses looking for a user-friendly solution with advanced marketing capabilities like customer segmentation, A/B testing, and advanced analytics. 

With a vast template library and AI-driven recommendations, Mailchimp helps optimize email campaigns for better engagement.

Key features

• Drag-and-drop email builder
• Pre-designed and customizable templates
• Marketing automation and customer journeys
• A/B testing and AI-powered recommendations
• Integration with 300+ apps

Mailchimp pricing 

• Free: Basic features, 1,000 monthly emails
• Essentials: Starts at $13 per month
• Standard: Starts at $20 per month
• Premium: Starts at $350 per month

(Pricing varies based on audience size.)

Mailchimp pros and cons 

9. MailerLite

Best for newsletter senders and eCommerce businesses

MailerLite is an all-in-one email marketing platform designed for both newsletter creators and eCommerce businesses.

It simplifies email automation, subscriber management, and online selling, making it a powerful yet user-friendly tool. 

Whether you’re building a product page, automating email sequences, or managing sign-ups, MailerLite streamlines the process with its intuitive features.

Key features

• Drag-and-drop email editor with 30+ design blocks
• eCommerce tools with Stripe integration for direct selling
• Automated subscriber management (sign-ups, cancellations, updates)
• Personalization and behavioral email triggers
• Landing page and website builder
• A/B testing for optimization

MailerLite pricing 

• Free: Up to 1,000 subscribers, 12,000 emails per month
• Growing Business: Starts at $10 per month for 500 subscribers
• Advanced: Starts at $20 per month for 500 subscribers
• Enterprise: Custom pricing for over 100K subscribers

You can save 10% by paying yearly. 

MailerLite pros and cons 

10. Moosend

Best for pre-built automation triggers

Moosend is an all-in-one email automation tool that does everything from email design to list management and workflows to performance tracking. It has advanced segmentation features and A/B testing that repeatedly lets you hit engagement and conversion goals.

Key features

• Drag-and-drop email builder
• AI-powered product recommendations
• Marketing automation with pre-built workflows
• Advanced segmentation and personalization
• A/B testing for email optimization
• Integrations with popular CRM and eCommerce platforms

Moosend pricing 

There’s a 30-day free trial to try out Moosend.

Monthly plans

• Pro plan: $9 per month (for 500 contacts)

Annual plans

• Pro plan: $7 per month (for 500 contacts)
• Moosend+: Custom pricing
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Moosend pros and cons

11. ActiveCampaign

Best for advanced email automation needs

ActiveCampaign’s marketing tool is as powerful as its sales automation and CRM apps. It lets you run omnichannel marketing campaigns across touchpoints — email, ads, social media, website tracking, and more. The email template builder lets you personalize messages, track engagement rates, and optimize send times to take your ROI to the next level.

ActiveCampaign lets you build custom workflows to automate routine tasks and focus on strategy.

Key features

• Advanced email automation and workflow builder
• CRM with sales automation
• AI-powered predictive sending and content personalization
• Multi-channel marketing (email, SMS, site messages)
• Dynamic segmentation and lead scoring
• A/B testing for emails and automation flows

ActiveCampaign pricing

• Starter: $15 per month (for 1,000 contacts)
• Plus: $49 per month (for 1,000 contacts)
• Pro: $79 per month (for 1,000 contacts)
• Enterprise: $149 per month (for 1,000 contacts)

ActiveCampaign pros and cons

12. Omnisend

Best for omnichannel marketing efforts

Omnisend is an easy choice for eCommerce marketers. It offers a complete suite of SMS, app, and email marketing features for managing one or more online stores. These features include campaign scheduling, automation workflows, product recommendations, and reporting.

You can create custom workflows across touchpoints and channels and track real-time performance. If you need any help, 24×7 customer support has your back.

Key features

• Omnichannel automation (email, SMS, push notifications, social ads)
• Pre-built automation workflows
• Advanced customer segmentation
• Drag-and-drop email builder with a template library
• A/B testing for emails and subject lines
• Seamless integration with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and more
• Built-in analytics and reporting for performance tracking

Omnisend pricing

Omnisend offers three plans:

• Free for up to 250 contacts and 500 monthly email send limit
• Standard: $16 per month (for 500 contacts)
• Pro: $59 per month (for 2,500 contacts) 

All plans, including free and paid, give you access to all its features. The main difference between plans lies in the number of emails, web push notifications, SMS, and product review credits included.

Omnisend pros and cons

13. GetResponse

Best for event-based marketing

GetResponse is a versatile email marketing platform that excels in event-based automation, making it a great choice for businesses that rely on webinars, live events, and automated email sequences. 

It offers a robust email editor, automation workflows, and built-in webinar hosting, helping businesses nurture leads and engage attendees effectively. 

With its AI-powered email generator and pre-built automation templates, GetResponse simplifies campaign management while enhancing personalization. That’s why it’s on our list of Stripo alternatives.

Key features

• User-friendly drag-and-drop email editor 
• Advanced automation workflows for event-based triggers
• Built-in webinar hosting and landing page builder
• Segmentation and personalization tools
• A/B testing and analytics for campaign optimization
• CRM and eCommerce integrations (Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.)

GetResponse pricing

GetResponse doesn’t offer a free plan, it provides a 30-day free trial period. 

• Starter: $19 per month (for 1,000 contacts)
• Marketer: $59 per month (for 1,000 contacts)
• Creator: $69 per month (for 1,000 contacts)
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

GetResponse pros and cons

14. Klaviyo

Best for unified, cross-channel campaigns

Klaviyo is much more than an email design tool. It’s an omnichannel marketing automation tool that lets you run SMS, paid ads, and in-app campaigns. With Klaviyo, you can set up triggered email campaigns and even track deliverability.

On the design front, it provides a wide range of templates for emails and forms, plus a drag-and-drop builder so you can mix and match. It also has a comprehensive reporting feature that lets you leverage data to improve send time, frequency, etc.

Key features

• Comprehensive automation library for workflow creation
• Segmentation and targeting tools for personalized messaging
• Wide range of integrations
• Dynamic product recommendations
• Landing pages and forms
• Lead scoring and nurturing
• Social media management

Klaviyo pricing

Klaviyo comes with a flexible pricing model based on usage. That makes it highly scalable.

• Free for 250 contacts
• Email: $30 per month (for 1,000 contacts)
• Email + SMS: $45 per month (for 1,000 contacts)

Klaviyo pros and cons

15. EmailOctopus

Best for budget-conscious marketers

Next on our list of Stripo alternatives is EmailOctopus, which promises to ‘speed up email creation with the next gen email template builder.’ It certainly does have the tools for the job — a template builder (emails, landing pages, and forms), list management, plus a wide range of integrations to your existing tech stack.

You can build interactive emails, create and reuse on-brand assets at scale, and schedule campaigns from one place. The reporting features are quite basic, but EmailOctopus makes up for them through integrations.

Key features

• Easily customizable templates
• Automation workflows for welcome emails, drip campaigns, and more
• Seamless integrations across platforms
• Segmentation and personalization features 
• Real-time analytics and high deliverability 
• GDPR-compliant subscriber management

EmailOctopus pricing

• Starter: Free (for 2,500 contacts and 10,000 emails per month)
• Pro: $9 per month (for 500 subscribers)

EmailOctopus pros and cons

Enterprise-focused email design tools

For large businesses and marketing teams that require advanced collaboration, security, and automation, enterprise-focused email design tools offer robust features beyond basic template editors. 

These platforms come with approval workflows, brand compliance controls, multi-user access, and enterprise-grade security to ensure seamless team collaboration while maintaining consistency across campaigns. 

Many also support dynamic content, AI-powered personalization, and deep analytics to optimize large-scale email marketing efforts.

16. Litmus

Best for advanced email testing, analytics, and collaboration tools

Litmus is a powerful email design and testing platform that helps teams build, preview, and optimize emails for maximum engagement. 

It’s widely used by enterprises that require pre-send testing across multiple email clients, in-depth analytics, and seamless collaboration between designers, developers, and marketers. With built-in QA checks, spam testing, and automation features, Litmus ensures emails are error-free and perform well across devices and inboxes.

Key features

• Email Builder with code and visual editing for flexible design
• Pre-send testing to preview emails across 100+ email clients and devices
• Spam filter testing to improve deliverability
• Advanced analytics for tracking engagement and conversions
• Collaboration tools for feedback and approvals
• Automation & integrations with ESPs
• AI-powered insights for optimizing email performance

Litmus pricing

• Litmus Basic: $99 per month (up to one user) 
• Litmus Plus: $199 per month (up to five users)
• Enterprise: Custom pricing (more users)

Litmus pros and cons

17. Dyspatch

Best for strict compliance and localization workflow needs

Dyspatch is an enterprise-grade email design and management platform that helps teams create, test, and collaborate on email templates at scale. 

It provides a modular email design system with pre-approved content blocks, ensuring brand consistency and compliance.

Dyspatch also supports interactive AMP emails and offers a streamlined approval workflow, making it ideal for organizations of all sizes with strict security and operational requirements.

Key features

• Modular email design system 
• Real-time collaboration 
• Interactive AMP email support 
• GDPR compliance with permission controls 
• ESP agnostic 
• Previews & testing

Dyspatch pricing

Dyspatch offers custom pricing based on business needs. You can reach out to their team directly for a quote and a demo of the product. 

Dyspatch pros and cons

Conclusion

There you go! You now have a whole bunch of options that could replace Stripo without too much hassle. Remember, Stripo is an excellent ‘design only’ tool. However, most marketers know the value of swapping single-use tools for multipurpose ones that can get more done.

It’s simply a better choice in terms of both cost and productivity.

EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing automation platform that can bridge the performance gap for your team while adding $0 to your marketing overhead. Try it out today or talk to our team.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why is EngageBay a great alternative to Stripo for email template building?

EngageBay offers an intuitive drag-and-drop email builder, 1000+ free pre-designed templates, and seamless CRM integration, making it a powerful alternative to Stripo. Plus, it includes automation and marketing tools, providing more value for businesses.

2. Can EngageBay’s email builder replace the need for standalone tools like Stripo?

Yes, EngageBay’s email builder includes all the essential features of standalone tools like Stripo, along with built-in automation, CRM, and analytics — eliminating the need for multiple platforms.

3. Does EngageBay offer responsive email templates for mobile and tablet users?

Absolutely! EngageBay’s email templates are mobile-friendly and automatically adjust to different screen sizes, ensuring a seamless experience for users on desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

4. How does EngageBay compare with BeeFree and Unlayer in terms of features and pricing?

Unlike BeeFree and Unlayer, EngageBay combines email design with CRM, automation, and sales tools at a more affordable price. It makes for a cost-effective all-in-one marketing solution.

5. What additional features does EngageBay provide beyond email template design?

EngageBay goes beyond email design by offering CRM, marketing automation, sales tracking, customer support tools, and detailed analytics, making it a complete business growth platform.

Post updated for freshness and SEO by Nikita Agarwal

The post 17 Stripo Alternatives for the Perfect Email Template Builder appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

Will you open this email? Does this pique your interest in the brand? 

We wake up to over a hundred emails in our inbox. But what prompts you to open an email? The subject lines!

Emails build a communication bridge between brands and customers.

You can use it to announce new product launches, exclusive offers, special announcements, or reward your customer’s loyalty. But all these will have no value if the subject line does not strike a chord. 

According to Forbes, working professionals check their emails at least 15 times daily. But how often do they open and read them? No one has the time to check every email and read your flawlessly crafted content to make a decision. You have only a few seconds to hook, communicate, and sell your products. 

Imagine scrolling endlessly on a lousy Wednesday afternoon. It is extremely sunny outside. Your phone is blowing up with deadline reminders. And that’s when you get an email notification – “Experience Tropical Paradise In 10 Minutes!” 

 That sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?

A good email subject line must create a certain urgency, curiosity, or excitement to click on it.

Something personal or descriptive or both. But it should also maintain clarity and brand relevance. While the above-mentioned subject line sounds fun, it still sounds incomplete. Your audience will be confused about what to expect in that email.

So, what makes an email subject line stand out? Read along to find out about the key characteristics, best practices, and examples of a good email subject line.

What Is the Need for an Email Subject Line?

According to recent reports, over 45% of email recipients click on an email solely based on its subject line.

69% of recipients report emails as spam based on the subject lines. It is fascinating how one element of an email deeply impacts its success rates. An effective subject line can lead to better open rates, increased engagement, and effective communication of brand tone. 

Email subject line is the first step to grabbing your target audience’s attention. Think of it as someone who introduces your brand narrative to the audience. These are the stepping stones to building a long-term relationship with your consumers. And in this scenario, the first impression matters. 

A good email subject line will not only increase open rates but also improve the click-through rates. It serves as a crucial link to enhance the trust between the brand and customers.

An effective subject line will improve your email deliverability and marketing strategies. This will help your target audience understand the brand better and improve engagement. 

Now that you know why it is important, let’s discuss how you can create effective email subject lines!

Psychology Behind Good Email Subject Lines: The C.U.R.V.E. Approach

A good email subject line should draw the attention of your target audience and should stand out from the thousands of emails in their inboxes.

After years of experience testing out email subject lines, Alex Williams, a digital marketing expert, came up with an interesting theory: The C.U.R.V.E. Approach.

Let’s take a look at how this approach can help you create the best email subject lines.

Curiosity

The best way to attract your audience is to make them curious. Curious about what the email stands for. Curious about what you have in store for them. 

It can be something simple or a mind-blowing fact. But don’t promise more than you can offer.

Urgency

Humans love thrill. The adrenaline rush when they have to submit right before the deadline or exciting adventures. Words like ‘Hurry up!’, ‘Few Slots Remaining’ or ‘Last 2 Hours To Go’ can invoke a quick response.

But remember that you cannot always push them into making last-minute decisions! 

Relevancy

While it all narrows down to the ability of effective subject lines, you cannot sell sugar-loaded cakes to a diabetic. It is like promoting ballet lessons for kids to a teenager.

Your message through the subject line should be relevant to the recipient and the email. 

Value

You cannot be selfish! Brands send emails with a purpose. But they should offer something. The customer needs to know what they are getting out of it.

Emotion

The best way to get a response from anyone is by triggering their emotions. Humans mostly make more purchase decisions based on their emotional instincts than logical or rational theories. 

The C.U.R.V.E. Approach includes a basic understanding of what a good email subject line needs. But how do you use it? 

How Can You Implement the C.U.R.V.E Approach?

To figure out the best email subject lines for your brand, you need to dig deeper.

Understanding how your target audience will react to the subject lines will help make them more engaging. Here’s how you can implement the C.U.R.V.E. approach for writing effective subject lines:

The FOMO angle

This creates a sense of urgency in the consumers to make a quick decision. 

Example:

Hootsuite, a popular social media management platform, sent out this email to talk about special offers and discounts.

Their main aim was to grab your attention and share an exclusive limited-time offer. It creates urgency and encourages the customer to take immediate action.

Curiosity

An attempt at instigating the audience’s curious mind to click on the email to get more information.

Example:

Dan Koe, an author and co-founder of Kortex, loves everything about the internet & creative writing styles. In this email, he talked about tips from his own experiences.

This subject line invokes a sense of curiosity for people to click on the email. 

Social proof

This helps build trust and credibility in the target audience before taking action. 

Example:

This email subject line was used for a LinkedIn Newsletter by Andy Crestodina.

It talks about a case study on how to write an article that ranks for 100+ keyphrases. Now, this provides credibility to the claim made in the subject line. As a result, the email subject line builds trust and encourages the consumer to take action. 

Reciprocity

An attempt to offer valuable resources or offers to elevate engagement with the target audience.

Example: 

upGrad, a skill learning company, offers free courses to professionals and students.

They have various programs catered to every niche. This email talked about one of their exclusive interview masterclass. They offered a valuable resource in exchange for engagement from their audience. 

Personalization

An attempt to customize the message to the recipient. These are tailor-made based on the recipient’s past behaviors. 

Example:

Rebecca, Your Cart Is Waiting For You! Avail 20% off On Gaming Consoles

This email subject line communicates directly to the audience while highlighting their abandoned cart.

This provokes the recipient to check out their cart for special offers. As a result, a personalized email subject line can trigger and influence open rates. 

How to Start Writing Effective Email Subject Lines

Now that you have some inspiration and knowledge, it is time to work on crafting the best email subject lines.

Are you still unable to decide how? Here’s a simple 5 step process to get you started:

Determine the goal

First, define the goals & intentions behind writing the subject lines, even before you start discussing ideas.

Be completely clear about why you are writing this subject line and who you are targeting. Make notes of the goals, intentions, and focus of this email subject line. Ask yourself questions to gather more understanding of the situation.

Brainstorm the possibilities

Once you are clear on the ‘why,’ it is time to brainstorm ideas, you can use any approach that works for you.

Generally, it is better to create a mind map and add words to a blank canvas. It gives you something to start with. While this is a fun process, don’t get carried away.

That will cost you time, resources, and energy.

Create a data dump

Does your whiteboard look messy after all the word vomit?

Well, that will make it difficult to proceed. You need to organize all your thoughts in a single sheet.

Start categorizing the ideas into why, what, where, and how. Add all the subject line variations you have thought about. Talk about why you thought of that.

This will give you a neat look into how your strategy is shaping up.

Make a checklist

Before testing these email subject line variations, run them through a checklist. This checklist is a step to eliminate the variations that are not relevant to your goal, brand, or consumer.

It mostly consists of the following questions:

• Why will your target audience open this email?
• Does it highlight your brand tone?
• Will it trigger any psychological response from your target audience?
• Is the subject line compatible with your email’s body content?
• Is there a way to shorten it by removing redundancy?

These are just some of the criteria that your variations should pass. You can customize it according to your preferences and goals.

Test. Optimize. Repeat.

Writing, brainstorming, and organizing the subject lines will not be enough.

Your role does not end here. You have more than one variation, but which one should you use? It is time to run tests, review the results, optimize your content, and repeat the process.

Do this till you land on what works best for your brand.

How to Test Your Email Subject Lines

You have created a list of email subject lines that you think are the best. But is there a way to figure out the winner? Let’s put your variations to the test!

A/B testing

This is a simple way to test if your email subject line is aligned with the brand tone, relevancy, proposition, etc. A/B testing can further help you to optimize your content and improve open rates. 

So, how can you do the test?

It is quite easy. Take two variations of the email subject lines and send them to your targeted groups. Analyze the results to find which one works the best.

The variations don’t have to be completely different. It can be as simple as shuffling the same words into two variations. You can add a personalized tone to one and the FOMO angle to another.

This will help you determine what hooks your target audience. 

Tools & resources

You can also use tools to analyze your email subject line. They will filter out spam content and help optimize your content. These tools can also generate inspirational ideas for you. A great way to combat the blank screen fatigue! 

Here are some popular email subject line tools: 

1. EngageBay

EngageBay has an email marketing and email personalization tool.

EngageBay gives a complete outlook of your email subject lines. You can also maintain a centralized customer database to improve your email marketing strategies. 

2. Mizy

Mizy is an AI tool developed by an email marketing software company called Automizy. It is a free tool that can be used to test and analyze your email subject lines to increase open rates.

3. Snov.io

If you struggle with A/B testing, Snov.io is the solution! This tool helps you compare the two variations of the same email subject line to analyze what works the best.

4. Omnisend

Omnisend is a paid email subject line tester tool that analyzes your options and provides a percentage-based score. It also suggests actions based on your needs and preferences.

You can also use Omnisend’s tips to improve and optimize your content and increase open rates.

Source: Omnisend 

5. Send Check It

Send Check It is a widely used simple tool that suggests insights and tips to improve your email subject line. It also shares further information on the scannability, readability, character length, etc.

Send Check It also shares a quick preview of how your email subject line will look. It also points out spam words and sentiment levels. 

6. Test Subject by Zurb

Test Subject by Zurb helps assess your email subject lines under various parameters.

This tool not only shares a score for your variations but also has a great feedback mechanism. An easy-to-use tool that also shares a quick preview of how your email subject line will appear on different devices.

Examples of the Best Email Subject Lines

The C.U.R.V.E. approach can be a great start for drafting some effective subject lines. Do you still feel stuck? Well, you can use some inspiration!

Let’s look at some examples of email subject lines based on different categories and industries:

1. Generic subject lines

These subject lines are for general emails or daily offers. They can be regular offers or rewards for your loyal customers. 

• Exclusive Offers Only For You!
• Last Chance To Avail 50% Off
• Action Required: Your Sweet Cravings Need Attention

2. Personalized subject lines

These subject lines are tailored for every customer. They can be crafted keeping in mind the recipient’s past behaviors. Such subject lines should be directly addressed to the customer.

• Josh, Guess Who’s Back? Our OG Sliders!
• A Quick Delivery Of Mojitos For Sarah
• Looks Like Chad’s Getting Blingy Cases!

3. Seasonal email subject lines

These email subject lines are for specific occasions or events. They can be quick holiday offers, greetings, topical moments, or seasonal sales.

• Savings For The Spooky Season Is Here!
• It’s Time For Some Merry Making & Lemon Frostings
• Check What’s New For The Cyber Monday Sale!

4. Abandoned cart & re-engagement email subject lines

Think of these as a quick catch-up with your customers. These email subject lines should trigger a response for engagement, whether for abandoned carts or just maintaining the brand-consumer relationship.

• Looks Like You Forgot Something In Your Cart
• Chase, It’s Been So Long …
• Are You Still Interested In Our Cherry Coke Bags? Get 10% Off Today!

5. Curiosity-driven subject lines

This is to trigger curiosity in your target audience’s mind. The subject lines need to be catchy, witty, and in the language that your customer speaks. 

• We Figured The Best Way To Save $100 Every Week!
• Your Files Are In Danger… From AI
• We Have Been Keeping A Secret From You.

6. Urgency & scarcity-based subject lines

Remember how we talked about the FOMO angle? These email subject lines should trigger urgency and desperate need.

• Hurry! Only 5 Slots Left For The Exclusive Reading Club!
• Our Strawberry Whey Protein Is Almost Sold Out!
• Last Chance To Avail 25% Off! Offer Ends At Midnight. 

7. Query-based subject lines

Twisting informative emails into a question will provoke a reaction. People are always curious to know more and learn about things.

• Can You Believe The 2025 Marketing Trends?
• Have You Heard About This New AI Technology?
• What Is Your Email Marketing Strategy Missing?

8. Onboarding emails

A quick welcome and conversation starter for your target audience.

• Welcome To Our Coffee Club! Here’s What We Have In Store For You-
• Hello! Are You Enjoying These Properties In Florida?
• Let’s Get You Started With The Next Step!

9. Niche-specific subject lines

You have to customize email subject lines as per your industry. Here are some popular categories:

a. eCommerce

• Guess Who’s Back? Our Annual Beauty Sale!
• Are You Ready To Meet Our Cooling Superstar?

b. SaaS & tech

• 5 Reasons Your XYZ Strategy Is Failing!
• Elevate Your Productivity In 5 Mins.

c. Finance

• Take This Investment Quiz To Know Your Plan!
• Top 5 Places To Start Your Investment
• Why You Should Sell These Stocks Today!

Common Mistakes To Avoid in Email Subject Lines

Often, brands end up making common mistakes while writing email subject lines. Those mistakes can reduce your credibility and trust, and reduce open rates. 

Do you also overlook these mistakes?

Misleading titles

There is a fine line between writing curiosity-driven subject lines and clickbait content. Overpromising or making false promises in subject lines to trigger a response can be deceiving.

This will result in a loss of trust and credibility from your audience. Overusing emojis can also look suspicious and spammy. 

Unfiltered & unedited content

If your content has not been through various edit stages, it can end up looking spammy.

Incorrect usage or punctuation errors, spelling mistakes, and overusing words like ‘Free’ will reduce the credibility and reputation of your brand. 

Overused punctuations

Adding exclamation marks can look more engaging than just adding a full stop.

But when you overdo them, it defeats the purpose. Adding wrong punctuation or excessive exclamation marks will make your content less engaging.

Your email will end up in the spam section. 

Vague content

Using only generic statements in subject lines reduces engagement.

Such content is more likely to blend in with countless other emails. If you send the same email to everyone without personalization or compelling hooks, it risks becoming irrelevant and going unnoticed.

Remember, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to crafting effective email subject lines.

Neglecting crucial factors

Email subject lines are not just about shuffling exciting words.

There’s a lot that goes into the process. When you forget to categorize or segment your ideas, your content loses relevance.

If your content is not optimized for all the devices, you will lose out on a huge chunk of your target audience.

Spam Words To Avoid In Email Subject Lines

The need to create urgency in email subject lines often results in a heavy use of spam words. Oftentimes, brands do not understand why their content gets flagged as spam. 

Here’s a list of a few spam words that you should avoid while crafting email subject lines:

• Guaranteed results
• Limited time offer 
• 100% Free
• Urgent
• Click here
• Apply Now
• Earn extra money/Earn money
• Giveaway
• Guaranteed sales
• Lowest rates
• Congratulations!
• Order Now
• No hidden costs
• Free gifts
• Please read

Some of these words might have come as a shock to you.

People do not realize how they regularly use such spam words in their content. These spam words will lead to your content being flagged as spam, and your content will never see the light of the day. 

Do a good research on all the spam words. Always run proofread tests. Avoid using spam in any part of the email content or email subject line.

Tips to Take Your Email Subject Lines to the Next Level

You have all the resources to start writing effective email subject lines. But would you like to take them up a notch?

Here are some tips to help you in this journey:

1. Be clear

Your email subject lines need to be completely aligned with the goal.

The content should only include the necessary points. Adding irrelevant information or talking in circles will make your audience lose interest quickly.

2. Use the C.U.R.V.E. approach effectively

The C.U.R.V.E. approach is a great way to format your email subject line.

Include any one or a balanced blend of all five elements in your subject line. Customize according to your audience. Add the scarcity factor. Induce curiosity, but remember not to overdo it. 

3. Keep it short

Lengthy content formats are the worst enemies of today’s reduced attention span.

You only have a few seconds to hook your readers. With everyone reading emails on their phones, long subject lines will get cut off. There goes all your hard work! Keep the subject line to 50 characters at most.

This also reduces the chances of using spammy words.

4. Use emojis

Emojis add a fun element to your content! Don’t shy away from adding them.

The emoji you use should be relevant to your brand tone, email content, and target audience. Remember to use emojis sparingly to avoid getting marked as spam.

5. Right time. Right audience.

Timing is the key to better open rates. Sending emails at the wrong times can mess up the order in which your email is viewed.

Figure out what time suits the best for your target audience and schedule the emails. Sending Christmas decorations after the winter will not make any sense. 

Wrapping Up

Emails are still a crucial part of every marketing strategy.

We check our emails right after we wake up and before the day ends. Email marketing is a great opportunity for brands to make their mark and be a part of their audience’s lives.

The first thing they see before even reading your email is the subject line. It needs to grab their attention without trying too much. 

Writing the best email subject lines takes a lot of practice and testing. Even with all the tools and tips, you still need to test them religiously. You have to be patient with the process, as it may take some time before you see effective results.

But once you figure out the approach that works for your brand, it is going to be a piece of cake. Are you ready to craft some killer email subject lines?

An older version of this post was authored by Debolina Coomar.

The post The Best Email Subject Lines To Copy and Hit Send! appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

While they serve different purposes, integrating them can create a seamless system for tracking, nurturing, and converting leads more effectively.

Whether you’re a small business or an enterprise, understanding how these tools complement each other can help create a more seamless and data-driven customer experience. We’ll also share the eight top CRM marketing automation tools that you can consider using for your business for increased efficiency. 

Jump to:

1. EngageBay
2. Insightly
3. HubSpot
4. Zoho
5. Freshsales
6. Keap
7. Constant Contact
8. Salesmate

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation refers to the use of software to streamline and automate repetitive marketing tasks, allowing businesses to engage with leads and customers more efficiently. 

This includes automating email campaigns, social media posting, lead nurturing, customer segmentation, and behavioral tracking — all without requiring constant manual effort. 

It’s not just about improving efficiency and boosting conversions but also enables personalized customer experiences at scale. To achieve this, businesses set up workflows that trigger personalized messages based on user actions.

For instance, if a lead adds an item to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase, an automated system can send a personalized abandoned cart email, possibly including a special discount coupon as an incentive.

Here’s an example (this landed in my inbox): 

Marketing automation frees up time so your team can focus on more strategic tasks. Plus, its built-in analytics provide valuable insights, helping your marketing team refine campaigns and make data-driven decisions.

What is CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a software solution designed to manage a company’s interactions with current and potential customers. 

It serves as a centralized database that stores customer information, including contact details, purchase history, communication records, and preferences. CRM systems help businesses track customer interactions across multiple touchpoints — whether through emails, calls, meetings, or social media — ensuring a comprehensive view of each customer relationship.

Modern CRM software has evolved into a powerful sales and customer management tool, consolidating various sales team tasks. From tracking the sales pipeline to automating follow-ups and scheduling meetings, it enables sales teams to nurture prospects more efficiently.

This leads to better customer service and fosters stronger, long-term relationships, driving loyalty and repeat business.

For instance, EngageBay’s sales CRM allows users to make and receive calls directly from the platform, eliminating issues like misdialing, long wait times, and call drops.

What is the Difference Between CRM and Marketing Automation?

While CRM and marketing automation both help businesses manage customer interactions, they serve distinct purposes. 

Purpose and focus

Marketing automation is designed to generate, nurture, and qualify leads through automated marketing campaigns. It focuses on engagement at scale, using tools like email sequences, behavioral tracking, and segmentation to move prospects through the sales funnel. 

In contrast, CRM is centered around managing customer relationships after a lead has been qualified, helping sales teams track interactions, close deals, and maintain long-term relationships.

Primary users

Marketing teams primarily use marketing automation to execute and optimize campaigns. It ensures that potential customers receive personalized content at the right time. 

On the other hand, CRM is a tool for sales and customer support teams. It helps them keep track of leads, follow-ups, and ongoing customer interactions to drive revenue and retention.

While both tools store customer information, CRM is more sales-driven, and marketing automation is engagement-driven.

Benefits of Marketing Automation

Marketing automation helps businesses save time, improve campaign efficiency, and deliver personalized customer experiences at scale. 

Here are some key benefits of using marketing automation. 

1. Increased efficiency and time savings

Marketing automation reduces manual work by handling repetitive tasks like email follow-ups, lead scoring, and social media posting. 

This frees up marketing teams to focus on strategy and creative initiatives rather than routine processes. 

Besides, campaigns can run 24/7 without manual intervention, ensuring consistent engagement with potential customers.

2. Enhanced lead nurturing and conversion rates

Not all leads are ready to buy immediately. You need to nurture leads over time through automated workflows by delivering targeted content based on behavior and interests. 

This keeps leads engaged until they’re sales-ready, improving conversion rates without excessive manual effort.

3. Personalized customer experiences at scale

Modern customers expect tailored interactions rather than one-size-fits-all messaging. Marketing automation enables businesses to segment audiences based on demographics, behavior, and engagement history. 

This ensures personalized email sequences, product recommendations, and offers — thereby enhancing engagement and customer relationships.

4. Better data-driven decision making

Marketing automation’s built-in analytics tools track customer behavior, campaign performance, and conversion patterns. 

Businesses can use these insights to optimize strategies, refine messaging, and allocate resources more effectively. Features like A/B testing and performance tracking help marketers make informed decisions that boost ROI.

5. Improved customer retention and loyalty

Marketing automation isn’t just for acquiring customers and nurturing them — it also helps with customer retention. 

Automated follow-ups, personalized offers, and re-engagement campaigns help maintain strong relationships. Features like loyalty programs, anniversary emails, and VIP offers can be delivered effortlessly, enhancing customer satisfaction and repeat business.

Best Practices for Marketing Automation

Implementing marketing automation effectively is crucial to maximize its benefits and avoid common pitfalls. Follow these best practices to ensure success:

1. Define clear goals and KPIs

Clearly outline your objectives — whether it’s lead generation, higher engagement, improved conversion rates, or better customer retention.

Setting specific goals helps you design effective workflows and identify key performance indicators (KPIs) to track success and refine your strategy accordingly.

2. Segment your audience for targeted messaging

A good marketing automation system lets you segment your audience based on demographics, behavior, purchase history, or custom criteria.

Proper segmentation ensures personalized and relevant communication, leading to higher engagement and conversions.

3. Nurture leads with multi-step workflows

Effective marketing automation goes beyond sending a single follow-up email. 

Create multi-step workflows tailored to different stages of the buyer’s journey.

For example, an upsell workflow might include a product recommendation email, a discount offer, and a follow-up highlighting product benefits.

This structured approach keeps prospects engaged and moves them closer to conversion.

4. Ensure seamless integration with CRM and sales tools

For maximum impact, marketing automation should be integrated with CRM and other sales tools. 

This ensures a smooth flow of customer data between marketing and sales teams, enabling personalized follow-ups and efficient lead management. Without integration, businesses risk missing out on key customer insights.

How do CRM and Marketing Automation Work Together?

CRM and marketing automation are powerful on their own, but together, they create a seamless customer experience by bridging the gap between marketing and sales.

Marketing automation generates and nurtures leads through targeted campaigns, personalized emails, and behavior-based workflows. 

Once a lead is qualified, CRM takes over, helping sales teams track interactions, manage relationships, and close deals efficiently.

By integrating the two, businesses get a centralized view of customer data, ensuring that marketing, sales, and support teams are aligned.

This alignment allows for smoother lead handoffs — marketing can track lead engagement and score prospects based on their interactions, while sales teams gain real-time insights into customer behavior, making their outreach more relevant and timely. 

Additionally, support teams can access the full history of a lead journey with your company. This enables them to provide better, more personalized service to increase the chances of conversions. 

With a unified CRM marketing automation system, businesses can create cohesive customer journeys — from the first touchpoint to post-purchase follow-ups. This ensures no leads fall through the cracks and every customer interaction feels seamless and personalized.

5 Best CRM Software with Marketing Automation

SMBs and startups need smarter tools to manage customer relationships and drive growth.

CRM software with built-in marketing automation streamlines lead nurturing, sales tracking, and customer engagement — all in one platform, enabling businesses to scale efficiently.

Let’s look at the top 5 CRM marketing automation platforms. 

1. EngageBay

EngageBay is an all-in-one CRM and marketing automation software made for SMBs with super affordable pricing. 

It also consolidates customer service tools, ensuring seamless communication and collaboration across various business functions.

Features

• Email marketing: The platform offers robust email marketing capabilities, including customizable templates, automated drip campaigns, and detailed analytics. SMBs can create and manage effective email campaigns to engage their audience.
• Lead generation and nurturing: Facilitates lead generation through forms, pop-ups, and landing pages. Besides, automated workflows enable SMBs to nurture leads with personalized content, ensuring a smooth transition through the sales funnel.
• CRM and sales automation: The CRM module allows businesses to manage contacts, deals, and tasks efficiently. Sales automation features streamline selling processes, from lead qualification to deal closure, ensuring a cohesive approach to customer acquisition.
• Social media integration: Allows SMBs to integrate and manage various social media platforms. This feature enhances social media marketing efforts and provides a holistic view of customer engagement.

Pricing 

EngageBay offers both marketing automation and CRM bay as a standalone solution. You can choose to integrate their features and opt for its all-in-one solution. 

The Free plan is suitable for startups and small businesses with basic CRM and email marketing needs.

The Basic plan (priced at $13.79 per user per month) is the affordable entry-level plan offering expanded features for growing businesses, some of which include lead scoring, landing page builder, tag manager, etc. 

For SMBs looking for advanced marketing automation and CRM capabilities, the Growth plan (priced at $59.79 per user per month) works the best. 

Lastly, its Pro plan (priced at $110.39 per user per month) comes with a comprehensive list of advanced features for businesses seeking scalability and customization.

**The mentioned price is on annual billing. 

2. Insightly

Insightly combines robust CRM features with marketing automation capabilities, providing a comprehensive solution for businesses aiming to streamline their operations and foster customer relationships.

Features

• Workflow automation: Businesses can automate repetitive tasks and processes with Insightly’s workflow automation, ensuring consistency and accuracy in various business processes.
• Contact and lead management: Insightly enables efficient organization and tracking of contacts and leads across multiple channels. Businesses can easily manage customer information, track interactions, and identify opportunities for engagement. 
• Project management integration: Integrates CRM and project management, offering a holistic view of customer interactions and project progress. This integration enhances collaboration and ensures a unified approach to customer engagement.
• Customizable dashboards: Provides customizable dashboards and reports, allowing businesses to track key metrics and gain insights into their marketing and sales performance. 

Pricing

Insightly offers various pricing plans to cater to different business needs. It combines CRM, marketing, AppConnect, and service needs in its all-in-one platform. 

• Plus Plan: Starting at $349 per month (billed annually)
• Professional Plan: Starting at $899 per month (billed annually)
• Enterprise Plan: Starting at $2,599 per month (billed annually)

3. HubSpot

HubSpot offers an all-in-one customer platform to manage customer relationships and execute marketing initiatives efficiently. 

With its user-friendly interface and scalable features, HubSpot empowers businesses to grow and succeed in the digital landscape.

Features

• Email marketing: Enables businesses to design, schedule, and track email campaigns. Furthermore, it offers analytics to measure engagement and optimize their email marketing strategy over time (limited to the Professional plan).
• Landing pages and forms: HubSpot enables SMBs to capture leads by embedding forms on their website and building a responsive landing page. 
• Meeting scheduling: HubSpot’s meeting scheduling feature allows users to share a booking link, enabling prospects and customers to schedule meetings directly based on real-time availability. It syncs with Google and Outlook calendars, eliminating back-and-forth emails.
• Mobile app: HubSpot’s mobile app allows users to manage contacts, track deals, and monitor marketing campaigns on the go. With real-time notifications and task management, it helps teams stay connected and productive from anywhere.

Pricing

HubSpot offers a tiered pricing structure.

• Starter Customer Platform: Starting at $15 per month (billed annually)
• Professional Customer Platform: Starting at $1,170 per month for up to 5 seats (billed annually)
• Enterprise Customer Platform: Starting at $4,300 per month for up to 7 seats (billed annually)

HubSpot also provides a free version with limited features, allowing businesses to explore and get started with the platform at no cost. 

The pricing flexibility caters to the diverse needs of SMBs at different stages of growth.

4. Zoho CRM Plus

Zoho CRM Plus is an integrated platform that goes beyond traditional CRM, offering a comprehensive solution for businesses looking to unify their sales and marketing efforts.

It centralizes business data, customer interactions, and workflows — ensuring a customer-centric approach at every touchpoint.

Features

• Marketing automation: Includes advanced automation tools for creating personalized campaigns, automating workflows, and nurturing leads. Enables businesses to orchestrate targeted and data-driven marketing strategies.
• Omnichannel support: The platform supports multiple communication channels, including email, phone, live chat, and social media. This enables SMBs to engage with customers across various touchpoints, fostering a seamless and integrated customer experience.
• Lead management: Provides a centralized hub for organizing and tracking customer interactions to effectively manage leads and contacts. 
• AI assistant, Zia: Provides SMBs with insights into business trends and suggests the best time to interact with customers for maximum impact. 

Pricing

Zoho CRM Plus offers a single affordable monthly/yearly pricing structure to ensure transparent pricing. It starts at $57 per user per month when billed annually and has a 30-day trial period. 

5. Freshsales Suite

Freshsales Suite is a robust CRM and marketing automation solution designed for businesses of all sizes. It offers a comprehensive platform to manage leads, streamline sales processes, and engage with customers effectively.

Features

• Mobile CRM: Enables you to respond to leads, do follow-ups with leads, check in to meetings, and analyze dashboards from anywhere. 
• Built-in phone and chat: Enables you to engage with your prospects and customers on their preferred channels, including phone, chat, or email — ensuring a seamless customer experience
• Advanced reporting: Provides in-depth analytics and reporting tools, allowing SMBs to track the performance of marketing campaigns, measure lead engagement, and assess the overall effectiveness of their strategies.
• Workflow automation: Simplifies complex processes by automating repetitive tasks, setting up trigger-based actions, and creating personalized communication sequences based on user behavior.

Pricing

SMBs can choose a plan based on their team size and the required functionality level. 

• Free: for up to three users
• Growth: Starting at $9 per user per month (billed annually)
• Pro: Starting at $39 per user per month (billed annually)
• Enterprise: Starting at $59 per user per month (billed annually)

Other notable CRM marketing automation tools 

6. Keap

Keap integrates marketing, CRM, sales, and service into a unified platform under a single plan. Pricing starts at $249 per month (billed annually) for up to two users and 1,500 contacts, with costs increasing as your business scales. It offers an extensive set of features, including lead management tools, reporting capabilities, and more. 

7. Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM

Constant Contact’s Lead Gen & CRM platform offers an all-in-one solution that combines lead generation, marketing automation, and customer relationship management to help businesses attract and convert leads more effectively. It offers real-time analytics that links marketing spending to sales performance, pipeline growth, and revenue impact. Reach out to their sales team to get a quote directly. 

8. Salesmate.io

Salesmate is a comprehensive CRM marketing automation platform designed to enhance business efficiency. It offers features such as customizable sales pipelines, email tracking, and robust integration options with third-party applications. Pricing plans are structured to accommodate various business needs, starting at $23 per user per month if billed annually. 

Wrap Up 

Businesses can boost efficiency and foster long-term customer relationships by integrating CRM and marketing automation. Together, these tools create a unified system that enhances customer engagement, streamlines processes, and drives repeat business.

This also eliminates the hassle of managing multiple software solutions for different tasks. Instead of juggling disconnected tools, businesses can ensure a smooth flow of information across teams, improving collaboration and decision-making.

For SMBs and startups seeking an affordable yet powerful solution, EngageBay is an excellent choice. It offers a free plan for up to 14 users with essential CRM and marketing automation features. Even its paid plans are budget-friendly, providing an extensive suite of tools to help your business grow efficiently.

Sign up for a free demo here.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is marketing automation in CRM?

Marketing automation in CRM refers to the use of automated workflows within a CRM system to streamline marketing tasks like email campaigns, lead nurturing, and customer segmentation. It helps businesses engage prospects efficiently while maintaining a unified customer database.

2. What is the difference between marketing automation and CRM?

CRM vs marketing automation — CRM focuses on managing customer relationships, sales pipelines, and data while marketing automation software is designed to automate email marketing automation tools, lead scoring, and campaign tracking. Together, they create a seamless flow from lead generation to customer retention.

3. What is the purpose of marketing automation in CRM?

The purpose of marketing automation in CRM is to enhance lead management, personalize customer interactions, and improve efficiency. It allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks while keeping customer data centralized for better decision-making.

4. Do you need both CRM and marketing automation?

Yes, using both CRM and marketing automation ensures a smooth transition from lead generation to customer retention. While CRM automation helps sales teams manage customer relationships, marketing automation nurtures leads and drives engagement, creating a cohesive growth strategy.

5. How do you integrate CRM with marketing automation tools?

Most modern CRM and marketing automation software offer native integrations or API connections. Businesses can sync customer data, automate lead handovers, and track interactions across platforms to create a unified CRM for marketing automation workflow.

The post 8 Top CRM Marketing Automation Tools for Business Efficiency (2025) appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

Most CRMs cover the basics, but pricing can vary significantly based on factors like contact limits, advanced tools, and scalability. For example, a CRM pricing plan at $15 might include robust features but limit you to 250 contacts, while a $20 plan could allow 1,000 contacts but with fewer functionalities.

Understanding these pricing models is crucial to avoid overpaying for features you don’t need or outgrowing a budget-friendly plan too soon. 

In this best CRM pricing comparison guide, we’ll break down what drives CRM pricing and compare the top 10 options to help you make the best choice for your business.

Key Factors Affecting CRM Pricing

While the base price gives a general idea of affordability, the true cost depends on your business’s specific requirements. 

Factoring in customization, scalability, and additional features will help you make a more accurate CRM cost comparison and find the best value.

Here are the key factors that influence CRM pricing:

User-based pricing

Many CRM providers charge based on the number of users. Some platforms offer per-user pricing, where businesses pay a fixed rate for each user added. 

This model is great for small teams but can become expensive as the company grows. Others provide unlimited user plans, often at a higher base price, making them more suitable for larger businesses with multiple departments needing CRM access.

Subscription models 

CRMs typically follow three main payment structures:

Monthly subscriptions: Provide flexibility and are ideal for startups or businesses that don’t want long-term commitments. However, they often cost more over time compared to annual plans.

Annual subscriptions: Offer cost savings, with most CRM vendors providing discounts for paying upfront. This is a good option for businesses committed to long-term CRM use.

One-time payment: Some on-premise CRMs require a hefty upfront investment but eliminate recurring costs. While this can be budget-friendly in the long run, it may lack ongoing updates and support.

Feature-based plans 

Most CRMs offer tiered pricing based on features:

Basic plans: Include core CRM functionalities like contact management, task tracking, and simple reporting. Best for startups or small businesses.

Professional plans: Add more advanced tools like workflow automation, sales forecasting, and analytics. Suitable for growing teams that need deeper insights.

Enterprise plans: Provide extensive customization, AI-powered insights, API access, and multi-level security. Designed for large organizations with complex needs.

Customization & integration costs

Not all CRMs come with out-of-the-box solutions that fit every business. Customizing workflows, dashboards, or automation rules often incurs additional costs. 

Similarly, integrating the CRM with third-party tools (e.g., accounting software, email marketing platforms, or customer support systems) may require premium API access or developer assistance, increasing the overall cost.

Cloud-based vs on-premise CRM costs

The deployment model affects pricing as well.

Cloud-based CRMs operate on a subscription basis, with costs covering storage, maintenance, and updates. They offer lower upfront costs but require ongoing payments.

On-premise CRMs involve a one-time license fee but require businesses to handle their own server infrastructure, security, and updates. 

This is often a better fit for companies with strict data security requirements.

AI & automation add-ons

AI-driven CRM features — such as predictive analytics, lead scoring, and chatbots — can improve efficiency but often come at an additional cost. While some platforms include basic AI capabilities in higher-tier plans, others charge separately for automation tools. 

Businesses should evaluate whether these features justify the added expense.

Pricing Comparison: Top 10 CRM Tools for 2025

Here’s a quick overview of the top 10 CRM pricing comparisons that are currently available in the market.

CRM Software	Free Plan	Basic Plan	Mid-Tier Plan	Enterprise Plan
HubSpot CRM	Free	$20/user/mo	$1,300/user/mo	$4,300/user/mo
EngageBay	Free	$14.99/user/mo	$64.99/user/mo	$119.99/user/mo
Salesforce	No	$25/user/mo	$100/user/mo	$165/user/mo
Zoho CRM	Free	$14/user/mo	$23/user/mo	$40/user/mo
Pipedrive	No	$19/user/mo	$34/user/mo	$74/user/mo
Freshsales	Free	$9/user/mo	$39/user/mo	$59/user/mo
Monday.com CRM	No	$15/user/mo	$20/user/mo	Custom Pricing
Insightly	No	$29/user/mo	$49/user/mo	$99/user/mo
Close CRM	No	$29/user/mo	$109/user/mo	$149/user/mo
Microsoft Dynamics 365	No	$65/user/mo	$105/user/mo	$150/user/mo

** Please note that while most prices mentioned are billed monthly, some CRMs only offer annual billing. Be sure to check the provider’s pricing details for exact billing terms.

CRM Usage Limits: What Do You Get in Each Plan?

Let’s break down what each CRM pricing plan offers in terms of free vs paid options, contact and storage limits, feature access, integrations, and support availability.

1. HubSpot CRM 

HubSpot CRM is a great choice for small businesses and startups looking for a free, user-friendly CRM. It offers a free plan with core features like contact management, email tracking, and deal pipelines. 

However, businesses looking for advanced automation and custom reporting may need to upgrade to a paid plan, which can get expensive as user counts increase. 

Free vs paid CRM plans: what’s included?

HubSpot CRM’s free plan provides essential features, but upgrading unlocks premium tools like automation, advanced reporting, and increased contact limits.

Feature access differences

Feature	Free Plan	Starter ($20/user/mo)	Professional ($20/user/mo)	Enterprise ($20/user/mo)
Contact Limit	1,000	1,000	2,000	10,000
Contact Management	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sales Automation	No	Limited	Advanced	Full
AI Insights	No	No	Yes	Yes
Custom Reports	No	No	Yes	Yes

Integration & API limitations

• Free Plan: Limited integrations (Google Workspace, Outlook, Stripe).
• Starter Plan & Above: Unlocks custom API integrations, Salesforce, and more.
• Enterprise: Advanced customization with unlimited API calls.

Support availability

2. EngageBay

Best use case

EngageBay CRM is an affordable all-in-one solution for CRM, marketing, sales, and customer support that can be used by both small and large enterprises alike. 

It offers a generous free plan and budget-friendly paid plans with advanced marketing and sales automation, live chat, and integrations — making it a strong alternative to HubSpot for businesses on a tight budget.

Free vs paid CRM plans: what’s included?

EngageBay’s free plan includes core CRM features and marketing automation for up to 250 contacts. Paid plans unlock advanced automation, higher contact limits, and integrations with third-party apps.

Feature access differences

Feature	Free Plan	Basic ($14.99/user/mo)	Growth ($64.99/user/mo)	Pro ($119.99/user/mo)
Contact Limit	250	500	5,000	Unlimited
Contact Management	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Marketing & Sales Automation	No	No	Yes	Yes
AI Insights	No	No	No	Yes
Custom Reports	No	No	No	Yes

Integration & API limitations

• Free Plan: Basic integrations (Google Workspace, Stripe, Zapier).
• Basic & Growth Plans: Unlock third-party CRM and marketing integrations.
• Pro Plan: API access for advanced customization and automation.

Support availability

3. Salesforce 

Best use case

Salesforce CRM is best suited for large enterprises and growing businesses that need a highly customizable, scalable CRM with advanced automation, AI-powered insights, and deep integrations. 

Free vs paid CRM plans: what’s included?

Salesforce doesn’t provide a free plan, but its higher-tier plans unlock advanced AI-driven insights, workflow automation, and deep customization options.

Feature access differences

Feature	Starter ($25/user/mo)	Pro ($100/user/mo)	Enterprise ($165/user/mo)
Lead & Contact Management	Yes	Yes	Yes
Workflow Automation	No	Limited	Yes
Forecasting	No	Yes	Yes
Custom Reports & Dashboards	Yes	Yes	Yes

Integration & API limitations

• Starter Plan: Limited integrations (Google Workspace, Slack, Microsoft 365).
• Pro Plan: Web-service APIs with an additional $25 USD/user/month
• Enterprise Plan: Full API access for deep automation and third-party system integration.

Support availability

All plans include access to knowledge articles, documentation, and Salesforce Trailhead for self-guided learning. However, for expert guidance and priority support, you’ll need to subscribe to the Salesforce Success Plan.

4. Zoho CRM

Best use case

Zoho CRM is an affordable and flexible solution ideal for small and mid-sized businesses, especially those already using Zoho’s ecosystem (Zoho Books, Zoho Desk, etc.). It offers seamless integration, making it a cost-effective all-in-one platform. 

Free vs paid CRM plans: what’s included?

Zoho CRM offers a free plan for up to three users, making it a great option for startups. However, paid plans unlock advanced tools, making it a scalable option for growing teams.

Feature access differences

Feature	Free Plan	Standard ($14/user/mo)	Professional ($23/user/mo)	Enterprise ($40/user/mo)
Contact Limit	100,000	250,000	500,000	1,000,000
Lead & Contact Management	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Workflow Automation	No	Basic	Advanced	Full
AI Insights (Zia AI)	No	No	No	Yes
Custom Reports & Dashboards	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zoho Ecosystem Integration	Limited	Limited	Yes	Yes

Integration & API limitations

• Free & Standard Plans: Basic integrations with Google Workspace and Outlook.
• Professional & Enterprise Plans: API access, third-party integrations (Slack, WhatsApp Business, QuickBooks), and seamless Zoho ecosystem connectivity.

Support availability

5. Pipedrive

Best use case

Pipedrive is an excellent choice for businesses that need a no-fuss, sales-focused CRM with an intuitive interface and strong automation capabilities at affordable pricing.

It excels in deal tracking, automation, and lead management, making it a great option for businesses that prioritize sales efficiency over complex CRM features. 

Free vs paid CRM plans: what’s included?

Pipedrive does not offer a free plan, but all paid plans come with unlimited contacts, deal tracking, and customizable pipelines. 

Feature access differences

Feature	Essential ($19/user/mo)	Advanced ($34/user/mo)	Professional ($64/user/mo)	Power ($74/user/mo)
Contact Limit	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Pipeline Management	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sales Automation	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
AI Sales Assistant	No	No	Yes	Yes
Custom Reports	No	No	Yes	Yes

Integration & API limitations

• All plans include 500+ integrations and access to its API.  

Support availability

6. Freshsales

Best use case

Freshsales is a powerful yet affordable CRM that combines AI-powered automation, built-in telephony, and intuitive sales management tools, making it an excellent option for growing businesses looking for an all-in-one sales solution.

Free vs paid CRM plans: what’s included?

Freshsales’ free plan is free for up to three users. Paid plans offer AI-powered insights, advanced automation, and workflow customization.

Feature access differences

Feature	Free Plan	Growth ($9/user/mo)	Pro ($39/user/mo)	Enterprise ($59/user/mo)
Contact Limit	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Pipeline Management	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sales Automation	No	Limited	Advanced	Full
AI Insights (Freddy AI)	No	No	Yes	Yes
Built-in Phone Dialer	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Custom Reports & Dashboards	No	No	Yes	Yes

Integration & API limitations

• You get access to its API and Freshworks Marketplace with all its paid plans. 

Support availability

7. Monday.com CRM

Best use case

Monday.com CRM is ideal for teams that prioritize collaboration and workflow automation over traditional sales features. 

Its visual pipeline management, extensive customizability, and seamless integration make it an excellent choice for marketing teams, agencies, and businesses managing multiple projects.

Free vs paid CRM plans: what’s included?

Monday.com CRM does not offer a free plan, but its paid tiers provide increasing levels of automation, lead scoring, and reporting tools.

Feature access differences

Feature	Basic ($15/user/mo)	Standard ($20/user/mo)	Pro ($33/user/mo)	Enterprise (Custom Pricing)
Contact Limit	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Customizable Dashboards	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sales Automation	No	Limited	Advanced	Full
Advanced Analytics	No	No	Yes	Yes
Lead Scoring	No	No	No	Yes
Custom Reports	No	Basic	Advanced	Full

Integration & API limitations

• Basic and Standard: Limited third-party integrations like Gmail.
• Pro: API access, integration with Mailchimp, HubSpot, and other CRMs.
• Enterprise: API calls, advanced security, and compliance features.

Support availability

8. Insightly CRM

Best use case

Insightly CRM is an excellent choice for service-based businesses, consultants, and project-focused teams that need a CRM with built-in project tracking. 

Its Google Workspace integration, project automation, and affordable pricing make it a strong alternative to traditional sales-first CRMs.

Free vs paid CRM plans: what’s included?

Insightly does not offer a free plan, but its paid tiers provide access to contact management, pipeline automation, email tracking, and project management features.

All Insightly plans are billed annually, and they offer a 14-day free trial so businesses can test the features before committing to a paid plan.

Feature access differences

Feature	Plus ($29/user/mo)	Professional ($49/user/mo)	Enterprise ($99/user/mo)
Contact Limit	100,000	250,000	500,000
Pipeline Management	Yes	Yes	Yes
Project Management Tools	Yes	Yes	Yes
Lead Assignment Automation	No	Yes	Yes
Custom Dashboards & Reports	No	Limited	Unlimited
Built-in Business Intelligence Dashboards	Yes	Yes	Yes

Integration & API limitations

• All plans: Basic integrations with Google Workspace, PandaDoc, QuickBooks, etc, and access to REST public API. 
• Enterprise Plan: Supports AppConnect low-code, no-code integration, enterprise-grade security, and full customization capabilities.

Support availability

9. Close CRM

Best use case

Close CRM is best suited for sales-driven teams and startups that prioritize outbound calling, email automation, and pipeline management. 

Unlike traditional CRMs, Close is built specifically for inside sales teams, offering features like a built-in power dialer, SMS automation, and multi-channel outreach. 

Free vs paid CRM plans: what’s included?

Close CRM does not offer a free plan. However, its feature-rich sales automation tools justify the pricing for teams that need high-volume sales engagement.

Feature access differences

Feature	Startup ($29/user/mo)	Professional ($109/user/mo)	Enterprise ($149/user/mo)
Contact Limit	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Built-in Calling	No	Yes	Yes
Sales Automation	No	Yes	Yes
AI Insights	No	Yes	Yes
Custom Reports	No	No	Yes

Integration & API limitations

• Close CRM offers 100+ one-click integrations with popular third-party apps like Zoom, Zapier, Calendly, and Google Workspace.
• Users also get access to the Close REST API, allowing developers to build custom integrations.

Support availability

10. Microsoft Dynamics 365

Best use case

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is best suited for large enterprises and businesses already using Microsoft products like Office 365, Teams, and Azure. 

It offers robust AI-driven automation, deep customization, and enterprise-grade security, making it ideal for companies needing advanced CRM capabilities with strong sales, marketing, and customer service modules.

Free vs paid CRM plans: what’s included?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 does not offer a free plan. However, its paid plans provide a scalable and highly customizable solution for businesses of all sizes.

Feature access differences

Feature	Sales Professional ($65/user/mo)	Sales Enterprise ($105/user/mo)	Sales Premium ($150/user/mo)
Contact Limit	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Contact Management	Yes	Yes	Yes
Customization and Automation (Requires additional licenses)	Limited	Yes	Yes
Conversation Intelligence	No	Included capacity	Included capacity
Reporting and Dashboard	Yes	Yes	Yes

Integration & API limitations

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 seamlessly integrates with the entire Microsoft ecosystem, including Office 365, Teams, SharePoint, and Azure AI.
• It also supports third-party integrations through Power Automate and APIs, allowing businesses to connect with external tools like Salesforce, Slack, and SAP.

Support availability

Hidden CRM Costs to Watch Out For

Setup & implementation fees

Many CRM providers charge a one-time setup fee for onboarding, data migration, and initial configuration. For enterprise-level CRMs, implementation can cost thousands of dollars, depending on the complexity.

Customization & API integration fees

Customizing workflows, dashboards, and API integrations often require developer support or third-party tools, which can lead to additional costs. Some CRMs charge extra for access to advanced APIs.

Training & support costs

While basic support is often included, premium customer support (priority assistance, dedicated account managers, or personalized training) is usually an add-on service that can increase your costs.

Scaling costs as your business grows

As your team expands, adding more users or upgrading to higher-tier plans may be necessary, significantly increasing your CRM expenses over time. Some CRMs also charge based on the number of contacts stored.

Storage & automation limits that may require upgrades

Most CRM limits storage space for files, emails, and contacts. If you exceed these limits, you may have to pay for additional storage or upgrade to a more expensive plan. Similarly, advanced automation features might only be available in higher-tier plans.

Conclusion

While doing CRM pricing comparison, consider features, scalability, and hidden costs.

CRM pricing models vary widely, from user-based pricing to feature-based tiers, and some tools charge extra for customization, integrations, and premium support.

Best CRM picks based on business size and budget:

Before committing, take advantage of free trials and demos to compare pricing structures and ensure the CRM fits your business needs.

Many CRMs offer limited free plans, so testing different platforms can help you make an informed decision.

Start a free trial today and compare CRM pricing plans to see what works best for your business. 

The post CRM Pricing Comparison of the 10 Best CRM Tools (2025) appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

HubSpot is awesome, but surprisingly, there are even more awesome alternatives to HubSpot. These include EngageBay (for huge savings!), ActiveCampaign (for cool marketing automation), GetResponse (for brilliant webinar marketing), and Salesforce (for huge companies). Read on for the most detailed article you can find on the web if you’re looking for HubSpot alternatives

Introduction

The HubSpot story in brief: In 2006, two MIT students named Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan founded a small company called HubSpot. In 2021, HubSpot’s revenue was more than a billion dollars. Talk about growth!

When it comes to sales, inbound marketing, and customer relationship management (CRM), HubSpot is the cream of the crop, right?

Yes and no.

The HubSpot CRM software has tough and growing competition. And there’s also another pain point. Despite HubSpot advertising some of its services as free, you need to go for a paid plan to get real work done.

It’s true that HubSpot is still the most well-known marketing software out there, but it is also among the most expensive. In fact, HubSpot can cost so much that it is often considered out of reach by small businesses and startups — their mandatory onboarding fees cost a whopping $12,000!

So, how much is HubSpot per month? Here’s a breakdown of HubSpot pricing: 

Here’s what a Capterra review said about HubSpot:  Expensive software like HubSpot offer powerful functionalities but are not ideal for small businesses. That’s why thousands of marketers and salespeople are always on the hunt for alternatives to HubSpot.

If you’re among them — wondering who HubSpot’s competitors are, you’re reading just the right blog. Why is HubSpot so expensive? We can’t say for sure — but we love it — both their website and the product. It is one of the best unified marketing, sales, and customer support software.

The only catch is that it is not ideal for small businesses and solopreneurs (the pricing for HubSpot alone can give you nightmares). Also, most enterprises and companies like HubSpot because of its ‘Flywheel’ approach, unifying marketing, sales, and customer support – all under one platform. Don’t worry. We have an affordable alternative for that, too!

In this article, we’ve explored some of the best HubSpot alternatives. We will discuss why they’re good, who they’re best for, and how much they cost. They all come with similar inbound marketing functionalities as HubSpot, but without the price tag that turns so many small businesses away.

The Top 14 HubSpot Alternatives

These are 14 of the best Hubspot alternatives for most business needs:

1. EngageBay: Best all-in-one software for small businesses.
2. ActiveCampaign: Offers hundreds of integrations.
3. GetResponse: Great for webinars.
4. Sendinblue (Brevo): Amazing price-to-performance ratio.
5. Sharpspring: Customized features for industry verticals.
6. Drip: Affordable email marketing software.
7. Ontraport: Advanced referral management features.
8. Pipedrive: Sales CRM built for salespeople, by salespeople. 
9. Insightly: Best for medium-sized businesses.
10. Zoho: Suite of tools for all business processes.
11. Freshworks: Best mid-range CRM.
12. Marketo: Largest enterprise marketing automation software.
13. Pardot: Acquired by Salesforce.
14. Salesforce: #1 CRM in the world.

These 14 platforms are similar to HubSpot in terms of features, but offer better pricing. 

Let’s get started!

#1. EngageBay

Best all-in-one software for small businesses

What Is It?

First up is the only truly free HubSpot alternative, EngageBay. EngageBay is designed for startups and small businesses looking for a comprehensive, all-in-one Customer Relationship Management (CRM) suite — similar to the HubSpot bundles. We know firsthand how expensive the HubSpot CRM software can be for these businesses and how limited their options are.

That’s why we’ve created EngageBay, the perfect free HubSpot alternative. EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing, sales, and customer support software with a unified CRM. Over 46,000 businesses globally love our services for the comprehensive yet tailored features at affordable pricing — the best CRM tool for small businesses, digital marketing agencies, and startups.

It’s a great CRM similar to HubSpot but won’t burn through your funds. 

Why Should You Consider It?

EngageBay is highly affordable; in fact, you get a year’s worth of Pro plan subscription at a much lower cost than HubSpot’s onboarding cost! You also get most of the features that platforms like HubSpot offers, but without the exorbitant pricing. 

The services are neatly classified into three Bays: Marketing, Sales, and Customer Support. 

1. In the Sales Bay, you can find CRM and sales enablement tools, a contact management dashboard, and an integrated calendar with appointment scheduling.
2. There’s email marketing with automation features, SMS marketing, web forms, landing pages, email sequences, and more in the Marketing Bay.
3. There is a powerful Help Desk and Live Chat tool on the support end.

Read Also: Is HubSpot CRM Free? An Unbiased Guide (with User Reviews)

What Do You Get In the Sales Bay?

These are the features offered in the Sales Bay:

• CRM telephony lets you track the context and content of conversations to help you make targeted offers.
• Appointment scheduling with Outlook 365 and Gmail Calendar integration and plenty of ways to customize your calendar.
• Email tracking with Outlook 365 and Gmail integration with contact management, real-time updates, and notifications.

What About the Marketing Bay?

The Marketing automation software comes with:

• Visual marketing automation builder to automate your routine marketing tasks.
• Email personalization, email sequences, marketing campaign management, drip email campaigns, and built-in analytics to create a holistic marketing system, making EngageBay a great HubSpot CRM alternative. 
• Social Suite boosts your social media presence with brand mention monitoring and live engagement stats.
• Marketing automation tool for generating and nurturing leads, tracking tasks, syncing your data, scheduling your email sends, and more.
• Landing page designer and templates, with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.
• Web forms builder with customization.

What’s in the Service Bay?

The Service Bay helps you offer exceptional customer support:

• Integrated customer service software for speedy resolutions.
• Simple ticket view and search functionality to help maintain and organize all the tickets.
• View open, new, and closed tickets and keep track of the status of every ticket.
• Get reports and analyze the efficiency of individual service agents as well as the whole support team.
• Prebuilt answers to frequently asked questions through Canned Responses.
• Service automation tool helps automate ticket routing, creation, and escalation.

EngageBay User Reviews

This is what users say about EngageBay:

EngageBay Pricing

EngageBay’s All-in-One Suite has four plans: Free, Basic, Growth, and Pro.

• Free: This plan is free forever for up to 15 users and offers 500 contacts, 1,000 branded emails, email marketing, lead generation, autoresponders, email broadcasts, sequences, lead grabbers, landing pages, helpdesk, and Live Chat. This makes EngageBay a top choice among free HubSpot alternatives.
• Basic: This plan costs $13.79 a month and adds a tag manager, social suite, third-party integration, SMS marketing, conversational inbox, AI-based predictive lead scoring, landing page builder, web pop-ups, and email templates. You also get 500 contacts and 3,000 branded emails.
• Growth: This plan costs $59.79 a month and adds proposals, service automation, email form builder, call records, custom domain, A/B testing, site messages, push notifications, and inbound marketing automation feature. You can send 25,000 branded emails a month and store 5,000 contacts with this plan.
• Pro: The Pro plan costs $110.99 a month and adds phone support, uptime SLA, a dedicated account manager, custom reporting, goals tracking, employee role management, and SSO. You also get proposal analytics, web analytics, marketing automation, 50,000 branded emails a month, and unlimited contacts.

You also get an 8% discount on annual plans and a 15% discount on two-year plans. This affordable pricing makes EngageBay one of the best HubSpot CRM alternatives.

Pros

• Designed for small businesses and startups specifically as a cheaper alternative to HubSpot CRM.
• Though there are expensive apps like HubSpot, EngageBay is one of the very few all-in-one solutions under $120.
• Free (forever) plan for 15 users. Paid plans are easy on the pocket.
• Easy to use, growing in features.

Cons

• Can add more integrations (in the works).

	EngageBay	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one
Free plan
Free trial	15 days	30 days
Annual discount	8%	10%
G2 rating	4.6	4.4

Learn more about EngageBay:

• Compare EngageBay with HubSpot
• Visit our website
• Request a demo with our experts
• Check pricing

Sign up with EngageBay for free

#2. ActiveCampaign

Offers hundreds of integrations

What Is It?

Our second pick for HubSpot alternatives is ActiveCampaign. A marketing automation service with small business CRM and email marketing, ActiveCampaign has a large customer base and has been recognized well. It’s designed for sales, marketing, customer service teams, and verticals like higher education, software as a service or SaaS, eCommerce, and bloggers.

Why Should You Consider It?

The ActiveCampaign CRM solution offers a decent set of features and hundreds of integrations — making it one of the best HubSpot alternatives when it comes to sheer numbers. These include machine learning, messaging, CRM & sales, inbound marketing automation, and email marketing.

Machine Learning

• Predictive sending based on email response behavior.
• Win probability feature to predict the chances a lead will close a deal.

Messaging

• Templates for early stages of the customer journey.
• Facebook custom audiences.
• SMS marketing with automation, notifications, and reminders.
• Email marketing with personalization.

CRM & Sales

• Deals CRM app for changing deals, calling leads, tracking tasks, and generating contact information on the go.
• Sync with Gmail and Outlook via ActiveCampaign Chrome extension.
• Automated segmentation, win probabilities, and lead scoring.
• Sales process management.
• CRM and sales automation for a hands-off approach.

Marketing Automation

• Split testing or A/B testing.
• Attribution across the customer lifecycle.
• Goals tracking.
• Advanced reporting.
• Mitigation services to merge contacts, forms, emails, and automation.
• Automated sign-up forms.
• Site tracking to know who visits your pages and for how long.

Email Marketing

• Email scheduling.
• Automated email funnels.
• Email autoresponders like lead magnets and welcome emails.
• Triggered emails based on customer behavior.
• Broadcast emails.

ActiveCampaign Pricing

ActiveCampaign is an excellent HubSpot competitor because of its pricing. It has four paid plans: Starter, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise.

• Starter: This plan costs $15 a month for three users. You also get email and chat support, marketing automation, newsletters, email marketing, and unlimited emails. This makes ActiveCampaign a great alternative to expensive CRM like HubSpot.
• Plus: With the Plus plan, you add SMS marketing, training, custom branding, a custom domain, and custom user permissions for $49 a month. You also get deep data integration, lead and contact scoring, sales automation CRM, unlimited email sending, and support for up to 25 users.
• Pro: The Professional plan costs $79 a month and adds win probabilities, predictive sending, attributions, site messaging, and unlimited email sending.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan starts at $145/month and adds uptime SLA, phone support, social data, design services, and onboarding support. There’s also a dedicated account rep, a custom mail server domain, custom reporting, and unlimited message sending.

Pros

• Comprehensive service.
• Lite plan is affordable for small businesses.
• Many integrations.

Cons

• Once you get past the $49 Plus plan, it gets pricey quickly.

	ActiveCampaign	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial	𐄂	30 days
Annual discount		10%
G2 rating	4.5	4.4

Too long to read? Just watch this video roundup of the best HubSpot alternatives instead:  

#3. GetResponse

Great for webinars

What Is It?

Among the most popular HubSpot alternatives is GetResponse. This is a marketing software product catering to small businesses.

Why Should You Consider It?

GetResponse offers a wide range of marketing solutions — similar to HubSpot — including webinar support, autoresponders, landing pages, and a conversion funnel.

GetResponse’s webinar features make it one of the best HubSpot alternatives for companies that require a marketing tool without high pricing.

Autoresponders

• Drag-and-drop editor for autoresponse messages.
• Advanced timing controls.
• Unlimited daily messages.

Website Support

• SSL-encrypted webinar URLs with password protection.
• Customizable webinar URLs.
• Webinar platforms to stream and record your webinars.
• Webinar analytics, including conversions, survey vote responses, time spent watching the webinar, and the location of viewers.

Marketing Automation

• Automated communication with scoring and tagging.
• Visual workflows with filters, actions, and conditions.
• Drag-and-drop visual workflow builder.

Conversion Funnel

• Webinar funnels, lead funnels, sales funnels.
• Automated tracking of the customer journey.

GetResponse Pricing

GetResponse has five plans: Free, Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, eCommerce Marketing, and GetResponse MAX. Pricing is based on the number of contacts.

• Email Marketing: This plan starts at $15.6/month and offers unlimited newsletters, autoresponders, website builder, landing pages, templates, among other features.
• Marketing Automation: This plan costs $48.4/month and adds features like event-based workflows, push notifications, and predictive email delivery.
• eCommerce Marketing: This plan starts at $97.6/month and includes eCommerce-specific features like abandoned cart recovery, transactional emails, and product recommendations.
• GetResponse MAX: Finally, the Max plan offers custom features like priority support, dedicated IP, SSO, SMS marketing, and unlimited users for $1,099/month.

Pros

• Extensive webinar support.
• Conversion funnel to track the customer journey.
• Free trial for 30 days.

This is what a user liked about GetResponse:

Cons

• Not a full-fledged CRM software.
• Costly for small businesses with a large contacts database.

Luis M, sales director of an SMB, shares his experience with the platform on G2:

	GetResponse	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation	𐄂
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan
Free trial	30 days	30 days
Annual discount	18%	10%
G2 rating	4.3	4.4

Read also: 5 Great GetResponse Alternatives

#4. Brevo (fka Sendinblue)

Amazing price-to-performance ratio

What Is It?

Our fourth pick for marketing and sales software to try over HubSpot is Brevo (fka Sendinblue). A digital marketing resource, Brevo (Sendinblue) has served quite a few businesses for more than a decade.

Why Should You Consider It?

Brevo (Sendinblue) can help with your Facebook advertising, landing pages, signup forms, CRM, email & marketing automation, SMS marketing, and email marketing — making it one of the most versatile HubSpot alternatives. For Facebook Ads, landing pages, and web forms, you can use Brevo’s (Sendinblue) customizable templates and drag-and-drop editor.

CRM

• Segmentation and transactional email design to personalize your messages.
• Chat support.
• Contact management to identify sales opportunities and target leads.

SMS Marketing

• Transactional SMS features, including Sendinblue’s (Brevo) API.
• Review KPIs and other metrics.

Email Marketing

• Templates for email, drag-and-drop builder.
• Personalized, dynamic content.
• No limit on contacts and lists.
• A/B tests.

Brevo (Sendinblue) Pricing

Sendinblue (Brevo) has four marketing pricing plans: Free, Starter, Business, and Enterprise.

• Free: The Free plan lets you work with unlimited contacts but limits the emails to 300 per day. It doesn’t offer any other features. This is a great free alternative to HubSpot for small businesses. 
• Starter: The Starter plan for $8.08 per month is recommended for new marketers, with email volume starting from 5,000 emails, no daily sending limits (within your plan limits), basic reporting and analytics, and email support. 
• Business: The Business plan is $16.17 a month and offers an email volume starting at 5,000 emails, marketing automation, Facebook Ads, landing pages, multi-user access, and telephone support.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan has custom pricing and adds priority support, a dedicated account manager, and features like retargeting ads, chat, send-time optimization, sub-account management, advanced integrations, tailored onboarding, and personalized support. 

Pros

• Free plan.
• Affordable Starter plan for small businesses (a cheaper HubSpot alternative for small businesses)

Cons

• Free plan has a limited number of features.
• The BrevoPlus plan has few useful features over the Business plan and can get pricey for small businesses.

	Brevo (Sendinblue)	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation	𐄂
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan
Free trial	𐄂	30 days
Annual discount	10%	10%
G2 rating	4.5	4.4

Read also: 5 Best Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternatives

#5. SharpSpring

Acquired by Constant Contact

What Is It?

SharpSpring was acquired by Constant Contact in 2021, and has since been rebranded as ‘Lead Gen & CRM’. 

For more information, click here. 

Sharpspring Pricing

SharpSpring, acquired by Constant Contact, now offers one plan: Lead Gen & CRM. 

• Lead Gen & CRM: This plan starts at $449/month and offers lead gen, lead scoring, marketing automation, CRM, pipeline management, sales automation, and analytics. 

Pros

• Features customized for industry verticals.

Cons

• Too costly.

Read also: 9 Affordable SharpSpring Alternatives For SMBs [With Pricing, Features]

#6. Drip

Affordable email marketing software

What Is It?

The next pick for the top HubSpot competitors to try for your next campaign is Drip. This eCommerce CRM platform (ECRM) provides marketing automation services. Drip offers an enhanced email marketing automation system and improved customer data and insights with its ECRM.

Why Should You Consider It?

Drip’s features come under four categories: customer data, personalization, engagement, and optimization.

Customer Data

• Integration with several other data apps.
• Track customer journey with your website and brand.
• Custom fields for personalization and engagement.
• Tags to divide your audience into segments and your tasks for priority.

Personalization

• Send segmented deals and messages like price-drop notifications.
• Behavior-based email outreach.
• Custom fields for segmentation of contacts.

Customer Engagement

• Instagram and Facebook advertising based on customers’ shopping behavior.
• Visual email builder.
• Automated email campaigns.

Optimization

• Analytics to track metrics like revenue per subscriber, rate of unsubscribes, clicks, and opens — a boon for your marketing team.

Drip Pricing

Drip’s pricing plan is based on a sliding-scale model:

• For 2,500 contacts: $39 a month.
• For 5,000 contacts: $89 a month.
• For 10,000 contacts: $154 a month.
• For 50,000 contacts: $699 a month.

Pros

• Many integrations.
• Relatively affordable for startups — making Drift a good marketing alternative to HubSpot. 

Cons

• Services are mostly limited to the ECRM or CRM sphere.

	Drip	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing tool
Sales automation	𐄂
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial	14 days	30 days
Annual discount	𐄂	10%
G2 rating	4.4	4.4

Read also: 5 of the Best Drip Alternatives

#7. Ontraport

Advanced referral management features

What Is It?

Next, we’ve got Ontraport. It has attracted a relatively large customer base and has good reviews.

Why Should You Consider It?

With Ontraport, you get a host of solutions. There are referral programs, membership sites, business process automation, marketing analytics, CRM, landing pages, eCommerce, email marketing, sales force automation, and marketing automation.

Referral Programs

• Stash referral program data in a referral management system.
• Integrate with other referral programs you might have with Ontraport’s WordPress plugin (PilotPress).
• Make your own partner center on WordPress for commissions, sales, and traffic management for your partners.
• Share partner promotional tools for referrers, each with its own tracking.
• Generate partner sales reports.
• Use automated promo tools like emails, links, lightboxes, and banners for promoting referrals.

Membership Sites

• Web forms for your WordPress website.
• Customizable templates.
• Web forms and landing pages.
• Automation for membership levels.

Business Automation

• Customer onboarding automation.
• Resources and content automation like welcome emails.
• Predictive results, lead management.
• Sync data to a single dashboard.
• Fulfillment lists that go out every month or week.
• Automated customer follow-ups.
• Automated tasks.

CRM

• Business card-style contact organization.
• Interaction tracking based on communication and behavior.
• Contacts grouping by job title, demographics, and other data.
• Email campaign assigning automation.
• Tags based on behavior.

Landing Pages

• Add responsiveness and mobile optimization to your landing pages.
• Include one-click upsells or order bumps to your sales page.
• Share lightbox pop-up forms that come pre-filled.
• A/B testing for landing page elements.
• Review landing page success with detailed analytics.

eCommerce

• Keep a limited purchase data cache for customers to buy again.
• Provide an add-on or upsell on the thank-you page.
• Provide secure payment processing through secure gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, etc.
• Share group or individual coupons for event promotions, holidays, birthdays, etc.
• Ontraport Forms to make your own order forms branded to your company.

Marketing Automation

• Automate appointment reminders, thank-you messages, greetings for holidays and birthdays, etc.
• Text reminders for appointments.
• Text-based opt-ins.
• Response and bounce tracking.

Marketing Analytics

• Split testing for emails.
• UTM variable data lead source report filtering to track revenue, leads, etc.
• Customizable analytics.
• Conversion stats, such as time taken to finish surveys, open emails, etc.

Sales Force Automation

• Weighted Random to assign more leads to the top salespeople.
• Round Robin to distribute leads evenly to all salespeople.
• Lead score degradation on older leads.
• Follow-up funnels with automation.
• Review of expected win percentages and deal values.

Ontraport Pricing

Ontraport offers four different plans: Basic, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise.

• Basic: This plan costs $29 per month and can support one user. You get unlimited emails and 1,000 contacts.
• Plus: The Plus plan costs $83 a month, adds a second user, and offers 2,500 contacts.
• Pro: With the Pro plan, you can have three users and 10,000 contacts for $124 a month. You also get email consultations and unlimited emails.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan supports five users, more than 20,000 contacts, and 200,000 monthly emails for $249 a month. You get a personal account rep, email consultations, and Ontraport account set up.

They also offer free trials for all the plans.

Pros

• A plethora of services.
• Free trial for two weeks.
• Useful integrations such as secure gateway payment processing through Stripe or PayPal.

Cons

• Steep pricing.

	Ontraport	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial	14 days	30 days
Annual discount	2 months free	10%
G2 rating	4.5	4.4

Read also: What is HubSpot Good For? Features, Pricing, Who it’s Best for

#8. Pipedrive

Sales CRM built for salespeople, by salespeople

What Is It?

Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM software designed specifically for sales teams. Its visual sales pipeline feature is one of the best in the industry and helps you track leads through streamlined workflows. This makes Pipedrive an ideal sales CRM for both small and medium-sized businesses and offers a multitude of integrations. 

Why Should You Consider It?

If you want a sales-first CRM, Pipedrive is the way to go. With numerous features and a tightly integrated toolkit, Pipedrive offers everything your sales reps need to close deals smoothly — one of the best HubSpot sales alternatives. This includes: 

Managing Leads and Deals

• Customizable pipelines and fields to add your own spin
• Deal management for smooth deal closure
• Deal rotting feature to let you be aware of idle/dead deals
• Activity management to keep tabs on everything that goes on in your sales team
• 2-way email sync for improved productivity

Automation

• Sales assistant that offers intelligent insights and advice to help win more deals
• Workflow automation to set up a consistent sales workflow process and reduce manual work and errors

Reporting and Insights

• Activity reports
• Visual dashboards
• Revenue reports
• Team management

Pipedrive Pricing

Pipedrive offers five plans: Essential, Advanced, Professional, Power, and Enterprise:

• Essential: The Essential plan costs $14/month with a daily open deal limit of 3,000. The plan also offers lead and deal management, inbox, deal rotting, people management, AI sales assistant, and deal reports — an excellent HubSpot replacement.  
• Advanced: The Advanced plan costs $34/month for a daily open deal limit of 10,000. You also get 2-way email sync, customizable email templates, customizable signatures, schedulers for emails, meetings, and video calls, and more. 
• Professional: The Professional plan costs $49/month with a daily open deal limit of 100,000. The plan also offers advanced formula fields, contacts timeline, document tracking, workflow automation, team management, and more. 
• Power: The Power plan starts at $64/month and offers project planning, phone support, CRM, account permissions, and more. 
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan costs $99/month for unlimited open deals. It is essentially the Professional plan with unlimited access and enterprise-grade security and features. 

Pros

• Sales-focused and offers a vast set of sales features
• Excellent deal management
• Affordable

Cons

• Report configuration can be hard sometimes, according to user reviews
• Not an all-in-one CRM solution

	Pipedrive	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial	14 days	30 days
Annual discount	17%	10%
G2 rating	4.2	4.4

Read also: EngageBay vs HubSpot — Market Leader or Emerging Powerhouse?

#9. Insightly

Best for medium-sized businesses

What Is It?

Insightly is a unified customer relationship management software that aligns marketing, sales, and project teams around a single view of your customers. The platform is great for entrepreneurs and small business owners executing campaigns, managing contacts, and growing their audience list.

Why Should You Consider It?

Insightly has a clean and intuitive user interface making it the best alternative to HubSpot for people looking for a leaner CRM. In addition, it offers social media management and various products for specific marketing requirements.

Lead Management

• Lead management, assignment, and routing.
• Outbound email scheduling.
• Web to lead capture.
• Automatic social profile enrichment.

Customer Relationship Management

• Contact and organization management.
• Task and event management.
• Relationship linking.

Sales Features

• Opportunity management.
• Customizable sales processes.
• Sales teams assignment.
• Batch update records.
• Event activity sets.

Project Management

• Integrated project management.
• Milestones and associated task tracking.
• Calendar synchronization.
• Configurable project processes.

Insightly Pricing

Insightly CRM offers four plans: Free, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise.

• Free: The Free plan offers Insightly CRM and other basic features for up to 2 users. 
• Plus: Costs $29/month and offers company collaboration tools, integrated project management, calendar synchronization, and more. This cost-effective pricing makes Insightly better than HubSpot. 
• Professional: Costs $49/month for lead management, email templates, social profile enrichment, opportunity management, and more.
• Enterprise: Costs $99/month and adds relationship linking, task and event management, complete workflow automation, custom validation rules, and configurable profiles.

Insightly vs HubSpot: Pricing, Functionality, Features & More

Pros

• Feature-rich.
• Intuitive dashboards.
• Affordable pricing.

Cons

• Customer support is not reliable.

	Insightly	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan
Free trial	𐄂	30 days
Annual discount	𐄂	10%
G2 rating	4.2	4.4

#10. Zoho

Suite of tools for all business processes

What Is It?

Zoho is a great affordable solution for SMBs as it offers a complete business solution. In addition to a comprehensive CRM solution, they offer other products, too – from event management, webinars, eCommerce, loyalty management, and more. 

Why Should You Consider It?

Zoho CRM makes it easy to integrate multiple products easily, offering a truly integrated solution. Let’s take a look at the key features of Zoho.

Field Management

• Mobile application
• On-field representatives
• Field management
• Easy-of-use

Sales Intelligence and Automation

• Logic, rules, and triggers
• automates both operational and data entry tasks 
• Creating and updating tasks
• Automatic lead routing based on various factors 

Pipelines

• Deal management
• 360-degree customer views
• Account management
• Intuitive dashboards

Team Management

• Admin control
• Documentation library 
• Meeting scheduler
• Restriction management
• Easy management and collaboration 

Zoho Pricing

Zoho offers four plans: Standard, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate:

• Standard: Zoho’s Standard plan starts at $14/month and offers pipelines, sales forecasting, templates, task management, email insights, and other standard features. 
• Professional: The Professional plan is a popular Zoho plan and starts at $23/month for webhooks, email relays, macros, assignment rules, and custom reports and dashboards
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan costs $40/month for advanced features, including email parsers, custom functions, segmentation, developer sandbox, and advanced dashboard components.
• Ultimate: The Ultimate plan costs $52/month and offers advanced features, scalability, and dedicated BI capabilities. 

Pros 

• More affordable than some of its competitors, including Salesforce CRM, HubSpot, and more. 
• A powerful suite of features, along with numerous integrations
• User-friendly integration

Cons

• Customer support may not be as comprehensive
• Each product of Zoho has to be paid separately, and the integrations may not always work

	Zoho	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one
Free plan
Free trial	15 days	30 days
Annual discount	Up to 34%	10%
G2 rating	4.0	4.4

Read also: 11 Agile CRM Alternatives and Why They’re Better

#11. Freshworks

Best mid-range CRM

What Is It?

Freshworks offers Freshsales, a unified CRM to help businesses align their marketing and sales teams all from a single platform. While Freshworks CRM offers multiple platforms – Freshmarketer, Freshsales, and Freshdesk, we’ll focus on Freshsales. 

Why Should You Consider It?

Freshsales is a great solution for both SMBs and startups as it offers a clean interface. Key features of Freshsales includes: 

Sales Management

• Sales campaign automation
• Automated scheduling
• Deal tracking
• Deal management
• Follow-up workflows
• Goals and milestones

Deal Management

• Freddy AI
• Ability to recognize high-value prospects
• Deal win probability

Profile Enrichment

• Automatic data and lead information capture
• CRM sync
• Data organization

Advanced Filters

• Territory management
• Automatic contact assignment
• Advanced filters and criteria

Freshworks Pricing

Freshsales offers three plans: Growth, Pro, and Enterprise:

• Free: The Free plan offers sales dashboards, email templates, Kanban boards, and more for up to 3 users
• Growth: The Growth plan starts at $9/month for sales sequences, deal management, contact management, and so much more. 
• Pro: The Pro plan starts from $39/month and offers territory management, time-based workflows, 3,000 bot sessions per month, sales pipelines, and more. 
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan starts at $59/month for advanced CRM, custom modules, a dedicated account manager, AI-based forecasting insights, and more. 

Pros

• Offers a robust set of features
• Apps are updated regularly

Cons

• Quality of integrations may not be good, as mentioned in some of the reviews
• Reports may not be as robust as some of the competitors

	Freshsales	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan
Free trial	21 days	30 days
Annual discount		10%
G2 rating	4.5	4.4

Read also: 15 Freshworks Alternatives for Great Customer Support

#12. Marketo Engage

Largest enterprise marketing automation software

What Is It?

Adobe Marketo is a marketing automation platform solely for enterprises and is touted as the ‘world’s largest marketing automation’ platform. The platform combines the power of automation, content, account-based marketing, and lead development to help enterprises engage with customers. 

Why Should You Consider It?

For enterprises, Adobe Marketo is the way to go. It’s feature-rich and is designed from the ground up with enterprise-grade features and security. Let’s take a deep dive into the features of Adobe Marketo Engage.

Cross-Channel Marketing

• Coordinate engagement across channels
•  Social media marketing with personalized messages, campaigns, and sweepstakes
• Email marketing tool with impactful email campaigns
• Real-time behavior analysis

Sales and Marketing

• Sales insights through sales intelligence tools
• Account profiling using AI-powered workflows
• Target account management
• Lead and account-based audiences

Data and Insights

• Marketing Analytics
• Advanced journey analytics
• Multi-touch attribution

Marketo Pricing

Adobe Marketo offers four plans: Growth, Select, Prime, and Ultimate. All plans are custom-priced. 

• Growth: This plan offers 10 users, 20,000 API calls/day, lead and account database, native CRM integration, audience segmentation and targeting, advanced dynamic content, advanced personalization, and more. 
• Select: The Select plan offers 50,000 API calls/day, campaign user roles, intelligent cross-channel nurturing, scoring, email marketing, and dynamic chat. 
• Prime: The Prime plan offers target account management, predictive audiences, advanced journey analytics, sandbox, and more. 
• Ultimate: The Ultimate plan offers 25 users, 50,000 API calls/day, 50 assets for predictive content, workspaces, partitions, and discounted pricing for Marketo Measure. 

Pros

• World’s largest marketing automation platform
• Great customer support and great community

Cons

• Not suitable for SMBs, startups, and solopreneurs
• Expensive plans
• Limited analytics and reporting capabilities

	Adobe Marketo	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial	𐄂	30 days
Annual discount	𐄂	10%
G2 rating	4.1	4.4

#13. Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Salesforce Pardot)

Acquired by Salesforce

What Is It?

Pardot was acquired by Salesforce and rebranded as ‘Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.’ The platform is designed for large businesses and helps them automate email marketing, lead generation, email campaigns, multi-channel marketing, and more. 

Why Should You Consider It?

Pardot offers a powerful suite of features, including marketing analytics, landing pages, lead management, and more. 

Marketing Analytics

• Understand marketing effectiveness
• Analyze conversions, interactions
• Custom dashboards
• Customer touchpoint analysis

Landing Pages and Forms

• Landing page builder
• Custom template styles

Lead Management

• Lead management
• Lead scoring
• Grading
• Data management
• Customer personas

Pardot Pricing

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement by Salesforce offers three plans: Marketing Cloud Engagement, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, and Marketing Cloud Growth Edition.

• Marketing Cloud Engagement: Starts at $1,250/month
• Marketing Cloud Account Engagement: Starts at $1.250/month
• Marketing Cloud Growth Edition: Starts at $1,500/month

Note: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement requires an annual contract.  

Pros 

• Great lead management features
• CRM integrations with Salesforce
• Enhanced data visualization and management

Cons

• No free plan
• Too expensive for SMBs
• Limited team coordination and management

	Salesforce Pardot	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial		30 days
Annual discount	𐄂	10%
G2 rating	4.0	4.4

Read also: Pardot Pricing, Features, Reviews, and Affordable Alternatives

#14. Salesforce

#1 CRM in the world

What Is It?

Salesforce offers ‘Salesforce Business CRM’ developed specifically for small businesses. Rated the #1 CRM in the world, Salesforce offers a plethora of tools – from lead management, data insights, and more. 

Why Should You Consider It?

Let’s take a look at the key features of Salesforce:

• Lead management
• Lead conversion
• Social insights
• Social media engagement
• Real-time sales forecasting
• AppExchange marketplace
• Customized sales, marketing, and customer service

Salesforce Pricing

Salesforce Small Business CRM offers two plans: Starter Suite and Pro Suite.

• Starter Suite: starts from $25/month.
• Pro Suite: starts from $100/month.

Pros 

• Powerful CRM 
• Customizable features
• Popular CRM platform, meaning it’s easy to hire sales professionals having experience with the software

Cons

• Quite expensive compared to other HubSpot alternatives
• Expensive add-ons
• Complex setup
• Steep learning curve

	Salesforce	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial		30 days
Annual discount	𐄂	10%
G2 rating	—	4.4

Read also: Top 9 Salesforce Competitors And Alternatives [Tables]

Conclusion

While the HubSpot CRM software is a leader in the marketing and CRM automation niche, it is not suitable for small businesses and startups.

You may think that the platform is quite affordable when you’ve just started, as the Starter Customer Platform only costs $15 a month for 1,000 contacts. But what happens when your company grows, and you need to store more contacts and have better features? That’s where the pricing becomes unaffordable.

The cost of HubSpot’s Starter Customer Platform jumps up to $758 a month for 25,000 contacts

If your business has boomed and you need advanced features, you must choose the Enterprise plan. The pricing? HubSpot costs a whopping $3,600 a month for 10,000 contacts in the Marketing Enterprise plan. Add to this the mandatory onboarding fee of $7,000, and your annual billing exceeds $50K!

That’s why small businesses need more affordable HubSpot alternatives, and we have done the homework for you. You might wonder, ‘What can I use instead of HubSpot?’. It depends on your business size and requirements. For enterprises, we recommend choosing Salesforce or Adobe Marketo.

For businesses needing complete customer experience automation with a lot of integrations, it’s better to go for ActiveCampaign. Small businesses that need an affordable all-in-one marketing, sales, and support solution can try EngageBay.

EngageBay is built from the ground up with affordability and ease of use in mind. 

You get a forever free version, the Basic plan only costs $14.99, and the Pro plan with a plethora of advanced tools — and unlimited contacts — costs just $102 a month! Try it today

HubSpot Alternatives Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What platforms are similar to HubSpot?

Here is a list of the best HubSpot alternatives for small businesses: EngageBay, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Sendinblue, Sharpspring, Drip, Ontraport, Pipedrive, Insightly, Zoho, and more. 

Each platform caters to a different audience, and a few software like EngageBay are designed specifically for small businesses and startups. We love ActiveCampaign too, but it’s great only for marketing automation — you’ll need another CRM solution to go with it.

What is the catch with HubSpot free CRM?

The catch with HubSpot free CRM? Like any for-profit business, HubSpot’s free plan is designed in such a way that businesses will eventually have to upgrade to a paid plan to unlock more features.

We’ve laid it all down in this blog: Is HubSpot really free?, HubSpot’s free version does not offer automations. Once businesses grow and need advanced features, that’s when HubSpot’s high costs become painful. Leandro N., the owner of an e-learning company, offers an unfiltered view of HubSpot:

“I do not think there is any startup or early business that can afford to increase its marketing and CRM suite costs by 2,300%. Most businesses must make the painful decision to abandon Hubspot and find new CRM suites with much more reasonable cost escalations.” ~ Leandro N., on Capterra

Is HubSpot really worth it?

Is HubSpot good?

That’s the million-dollar question. HubSpot is an amazing all-in-one platform with all the bells and whistles. That said, HubSpot targets large corporations and businesses with deep pockets. For small businesses, HubSpot’s high price tag is definitely not worth it.

Imagine paying thousands of dollars just for onboarding! We recommend trying out more affordable HubSpot alternatives mentioned in this blog. For small businesses and startups, EngageBay has got the same all-in-one approach and ease of use as HubSpot, but without the exorbitant price tag.

Is there a better CRM than HubSpot?

For small businesses, EngageBay is a better CRM than HubSpot as it offers most of the features at a highly affordable price. Choosing EngageBay could mean saving more than 80% of costs.

Objectively speaking, there are better platforms than HubSpot. Salesforce has been ranked #1 CRM in the world by IDC – but top CRM providers like these are designed for corporations and large businesses. These CRM software are super expensive, complex, and require extensive training.

SMBs need an affordable, easy-to-use CRM software that can be quickly set up. This is exactly why EngageBay is the best HubSpot free alternative for small businesses, and that’s what many of our 46,500+ customers have said too

Is HubSpot difficult to use?

We love HubSpot’s UI – it’s clean, easy to use, and modern. But what we (and many small businesses) don’t like is how much they charge for their products — one of the biggest cons of HubSpot for SMBs. That’s why we built EngageBay: a CRM software that is as easy to set up and use without the need to pay thousands of dollars.

Our Pro plan with unlimited contacts costs just $101.99/month

Learn more about HubSpot’s pros and cons. 

Do large companies use HubSpot?

Yes, HubSpot is designed for large companies with deep pockets. Some huge companies that use HubSpot include Trello, Headspace, BBC, and more.

Why do large companies choose HubSpot? It’s because HubSpot offers an integrated CRM system as opposed to point solutions (including tools like HubSpot CMS Hub). But what about small businesses? In our own experience, we found that HubSpot is not for SMBs, solopreneurs, and startups.

If that’s you, we recommend trying EngageBay to have everything in one place, or ActiveCampaign if you need only marketing automation.

Who competes against HubSpot? 

There are several competitors to HubSpot, from Salesforce to ActiveCampaign and EngageBay.

Even though HubSpot is one of the best all-in-one CRM software for medium and large businesses, there are a lot of competitors when it comes to affordable CRM solutions. We’ve compiled a list of some of the most affordable CRM solutions in this blog.

The post HubSpot Alternatives For Small Business Budgets [2025] appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

With the onset of the spring season, consumers want to replace their dark and gloomy clothes and moods with bright and colorful products. This is why businesses must up their spring marketing strategy game through strategies backed by customer buying behavior. 

There are multiple aspects to rebranding or developing marketing strategies, such as launching new products, creating fresh marketing campaigns, holding outdoor events, and having spring sales. All these spring marketing tips can help keep consumers engaged and beat the competition. 

In this blog post, we’ll discuss the best spring marketing ideas for your campaigns this year, which will help increase sales and attract more customers.  

14 Fresh Spring Ideas to Revitalize Your Small Business 

Spring is the perfect time to refresh your marketing strategy. Here are fourteen of the best spring marketing ideas to help your business bloom this season.

1. Refresh your branding with spring themes

Spring is all about new beginnings, making it the perfect time to refresh your brand’s look and feel. Your audience is ready for something fresh, so why not give them a reason to engage with you?

Start by updating your website and social media visuals with soft pastels, floral elements, and nature-inspired designs. If you run an online store, swap out your banners for spring-themed promotions that highlight seasonal sales.

If you’re in the travel or hospitality industry, use bright, outdoor imagery to promote spring getaways. Restaurants can freshen up their branding with spring flavors and themed graphics to attract seasonal diners.

Whatever you go with, make sure that your website is user-friendly, fast, and visually appealing.

You can also flaunt user-generated content (UGC) on your website and social media to show that people authentically engage and enjoy your products. Encourage customers to share photos of their spring purchases using hashtags like #SpringRefresh, #SpringVibes, and #FreshForSpring.

Feature their posts on your website or Instagram Stories to show real customers enjoying your products. It’s a simple way to boost credibility and to make your audience feel included.

2. Plan your spring clearance sale

Spring is the perfect time to clear out old inventory, introduce fresh collections, and offer limited-time deals that get people shopping.

More than discounts, give your customers a reason to refresh their wardrobes, skincare routines, or workspaces. Use messaging like “Out with the old, in with the new” to create hype and urgency. You need to tap into the spirit of spring cleaning season.

Here’s a spring clearance sale email example from Legacybox with a simple headline, “Start the Cleaning.”

For retail and eCommerce brands, flash sales and tiered discounts work wonders. Try offering discounts like, “Buy one, get 10 percent off. Buy two, get 20 percent off.” This encourages people to buy more while helping you move last season’s stock.

If you sell clothing, clear out winter coats to make way for spring fashion. For beauty brands, we suggest promoting lightweight, hydrating skincare to replace heavy winter creams.

If you’re in B2B, position this as the perfect time to refresh business tools. Offer limited-time software upgrades, discounted annual plans, or exclusive perks for renewals.

Promote your sales everywhere: email, social media, and website pop-ups. A message like “Spring Refresh Sale—Ends in 48 Hours!” can push last-minute buyers to act quickly.

3. Spark engagement through spring-themed outdoor events and promotions  

Since it’s spring, the weather is best to hold outdoor events with popup stalls as the population is outdoors, mainly soaking in the sun. Leverage the excitement and create a spring marketing strategy around it.

Host one-in-a-lifetime outdoor events that revolve around the brand’s social media strategy and contest. Ensure that this event should be about connecting with your audience. Do not limit this event’s aim to increasing sales. 

For example, hold a pop-up spring fair, online treasure hunt, or egg hunt for Easter or flower arrangement events in real life or over Instagram.

Provide special springtime prizes to encourage participation and subtly advertise your goods in these spring-saving events. Recall that the goal is to interact, amuse, build closer relationships with your audience, and make sales.

Another purpose of these events is to launch the spring collection. For example, Starbucks China launched a limited edition of the Spring Meadow Series.

This unique initiative showcases various beverages and desserts, like Matcha Cotton Cloud Latter and Orchid Oolong Cotton Cloud Latte, each decorated with picturesque works of peasant painters. This collaboration celebrates local artistry and catalyzes conversations on social media platforms.

4. Start fun April Fools’ Day campaigns 

April Fool’s Day is your chance to have some fun with your audience. A clever prank or a playful promo can get people talking and if you’re lucky, even drive sales.

If you’re in retail or e-commerce, try launching a fake product, like a candle that smells like pizza or an invisible phone. Brands like Taco Bell and Google have pulled off viral April Fool’s stunts with outrageous announcements that had everyone talking. Take the Taco Liberty Bell ad, for example, that caused a stir with newspaper ads even before social media was a thing.

Not into pranks? No problem. Run a mystery discount sale where customers unlock surprise deals at checkout. Use fun messaging like “No Joke; These Prices Are Real” to add a festive touch without going overboard.

Get people involved with a “Guess the Prank” poll or a contest where they spot the joke in your promotions.

5. Make Easter more fun with interactive egg hunt campaigns

A well-planned Easter egg hunt campaign can turn your casual shoppers into excited participants, whether online or in-store.

If you run an eCommerce store, try a website-based Easter egg hunt. Hide discount codes or special offers across different product pages and challenge visitors to find them.

On social media, turn Easter into a game. Post a spot-the-egg challenge where followers search for hidden Easter eggs in past posts or Instagram Stories. Ask them to send a message or comment their answers to win a special discount or a freebie.

For brick-and-mortar stores, you can launch a QR code Easter hunt. Place Easter-themed QR codes around the store, each leading to a surprise discount or a small gift. This makes shopping much more interactive and keeps customers engaged for longer.

No matter how you run it, an Easter egg hunt adds a sense of fun while driving more traffic and sales. Use hashtags like #EasterHunt, #SpringSurprise, and #EggcellentDeals to get more people to join in.

6. Celebrate Earth Day with purpose-driven marketing 

Earth Day is celebrated on 22^nd April. Consider incorporating some green themes into your spring marketing campaigns. Throughout the month, if your brand is purpose-driven, tell the narrative that informs your mission and core values.

Demonstrate your dedication to environmentally friendly activities by implementing a recycling program to keep used goods from landfills or transport them without using plastic or carbon.

7. Help customers find the perfect Mother’s Day gift

Mother’s Day shopping can be overwhelming, so why not make it easier for your customers? Help them find the perfect gift with personalized recommendations and curated gift guides.

Create lists like gifts under $50, luxury gifts for mom, and last-minute finds so they can shop based on their budget. Whether she’s into tech, loves the outdoors, or enjoys a little self-care, offering tailored suggestions makes the decision simpler and more enjoyable. Promote your discounts with emails, social media posts, influencers, etc.

A personal touch can make all the difference. Give customers the option to add engraved jewelry, monogrammed accessories, or handwritten messages at checkout. Small details like these turn an ordinary purchase into something truly meaningful, making the gift feel even more special.

But Mother’s Day isn’t just about gifts. It’s also about celebrating moms and everything moms do. A great example is Allswell’s #BanTheBrunch campaign, which encouraged people to think beyond a traditional Mother’s Day gesture like brunch and recognize another way moms want to be appreciated.

8. Celebrate Father’s Day with thoughtful gifts 

Father’s Day is just before the last day of spring. As the season ends, help your clients honor the father figures in their lives. 

Provide gift suggestions with carefully chosen products for all dads, including the sports enthusiast, the bookworm, and the stylish dad. To give customers more options, consider having a store-wide sale or offering discounts on your most giftable items. As the formal day approaches, change your approach to emphasize digital gift cards and last-minute shipping choices.

The following image shows a beautiful campaign by Galleria, showing all their gifting products suitable for Father’s Day. This will not only help them make sales and clear their inventory but also make fathers happy throughout the world!

9. Tap into the Wedding season with smart promotions

Spring is the start of wedding season in the USA. Engaged couples, wedding guests, and honeymooners are all looking for the perfect outfits, gifts, and getaways. This is the perfect time to step up your marketing to help them find exactly what they need.

If you’re in the fashion or retail business, put together style guides for different types of weddings, from beachside ceremonies to black-tie events. Bundle deals on dresses, shoes, and accessories can make it easier for customers to shop for the whole season.

Travel and hospitality businesses can promote hotel deals, resort stays, or couples’ experiences like spa weekends and wine tours. Last-minute honeymoon planners and couples celebrating anniversaries will be on the lookout for special packages, so early promotions can help them book in advance.

If you offer gifts or subscription services, highlight wedding registries and experience-based presents. Personalized gifts, curated subscription boxes, or travel vouchers make thoughtful options for newlyweds. You can even put together gift guides to help people get or make the perfect gift.

Run your campaigns through email, social media, and ads to reach customers at the right moment. Messages like “The Perfect Outfit for Wedding Season” or “A Gift They’ll Never Forget” can grab attention and inspire action.

10. Host Memorial Day sales and promotions to kick off summer

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer and one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year. Shoppers eagerly look for early deals, travel getaways, and outdoor essentials during this time. So, you have to stay prepared with strategic deals and promotions.

Start early with pre-Memorial Day deals. Offer early access discounts a week before the holiday to attract shoppers before the weekend rush. Try different ideas like flash sales, VIP early-bird pricing, and bundle deals. For travel and hospitality, promote staycations, road trips, and last-minute getaways with special weekend offers.

Outdoor brands can push summer essentials like grills, camping gear, and beach accessories. Use messaging like “Kick Off BBQ Season” or “Get Ready for Summer” to make your promotions stand out.

11. Create innovative email and SMS marketing campaigns

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to connect with your target audience. Since 64% of small businesses use it, launching fresh campaigns is ideal.  

You may send a promotional email in March to entice prospects to become clients, a sales follow-up email in April once a transaction has been made, and a final email in May requesting a review.

Too Faced, a leading cosmetics brand, has nailed this. With their email marketing campaign, they not only nail the colors and other visuals but also ensure that the audience can buy at better prices as the newsletter rolls out.

Make sure you add a lot of colors, spring-themed pictures, and seasonal subjects like Earth Day. In these emails, you may also include links to any spring promotions you are running or your new spring collection.

Try crafting captivating subject lines that encapsulate the essence of spring, such as “Spring Specials are Here!” or “Unwrap the Magic of Spring with our new collection.” Remember that email effectively builds rapport with clients and sends them to your web store.

12. Use community engagement and local SEO to promote your spring event

Organize a springtime event with nearby companies, such as restaurants, travel agencies, and florists. This partnership will increase your company’s visibility to a broader market.

Collaborating with nearby companies can improve your reputation in the neighborhood.

Select companies that share your beliefs and enhance your brand. Consider collaborating on promotions, running joint campaigns, or even co-hosting neighborhood activities. The secret is to use everyone’s reach and influence to create an unmatched spring campaign.

13. Refresh your digital advertising and target the right customers

Like spring cleaning of your website, your PPC must also be cleaned of cobwebs. Here are some ways to do so:

• Try a new platform: Do not limit yourself to only running search or display ads. Also, try social media ads, as they are the second largest market in digital advertising. 
• A/B test spring-themed creative: Pay special attention to ad copy and creative for a refreshing approach to local PPC. Clear out old winter copies with spring-themed related terms. 

• Refresh your CTAs: With the change in season, change your CTAs as well. CTAs are essential for paid advertising as they guide customers to take action. Change your winter or fall-related CTAs to spring-themed ones. 
• Check your targeting: as your business adopts spring marketing strategies, it’s vital to know your key marketing metrics within your audience data to judge what your spring marketing initiatives might need. 

14. Host spring contests with collaborations and partnerships

Speak with micro-influencers, who typically have a following of between 10,000 and 50,000 individuals, as their fees will be more affordable and suit your needs. After establishing a relationship with an influencer, you can ask them to tag you on Instagram, mention your company in their story, and do other things to help you gain more followers.

If you want to generate buzz, try holding a social media giveaway or contest to entice your fans to discuss the upcoming season. Pose a springtime trivia question, for instance, and offer your followers a prize if they respond with their answers.

Organizing a springtime social media giveaway or contest will encourage people to comment on your posts and increase engagement, which will help you appear in the news feeds down the road. As you can see the below example, giveaways don’t only make your feed look appealing, but also encourage a lot more traction on the platforms. 

Wrap Up 

With the right spring marketing strategies, tools, and data, your spring theme collection launch will be a success. Sales will skyrocket, you will gain a large number of social media followers, and you will develop a base of loyal customers. 

For small business owners, developing spring marketing ideas to stay relevant throughout the year becomes even more critical. Whether Mother’s Day, spring holidays, work tax season, Easter, or all spring festivals, it’s vital to create content around them, offer spring sales, and hold outdoor events that can connect with the target audience. 

EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing, sales, and customer support software for small businesses, startups, and solopreneurs. You get email marketing, marketing automation, landing page and email templates, segmentation and personalization, sales pipelines, live chat, and more. 

Sign up for free with EngageBay or book a demo with our experts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Let’s answer some commonly asked questions on the internet about spring marketing!

1. What are some budget-friendly spring marketing ideas for small businesses?

For low-cost spring marketing, consider using social media to increase engagement through giveaways or seasonal contests. Join forces with nearby companies to jointly promote, expanding reach without incurring additional expenses.

Make material with a spring theme, like videos or blog entries for your YouTube channel, to draw people in and interest in your spring collection. 

Send your email subscribers exclusive springtime bargains and updates via email campaigns. Plan outdoor activities or tiny pop-up events to engage the community. Use handcrafted spring décor to draw attention to your shopfront.

Offer bundle discounts or seasonal sales to entice customers to buy, and celebrate customer loyalty with a customer appreciation day.

2. How can small businesses measure the success of their spring marketing campaigns?

By monitoring essential parameters, small businesses can assess the effectiveness of their spring marketing activities. With social media analytics, track interaction, likes, shares, and comments on posts. Examine website traffic to determine if it’s increasing and determine where it is coming from. 

Keep an eye on campaign email click-through and open rates.

Analyze sales data to spot any increases in earnings or new clientele. To determine client happiness, get feedback from them via surveys or reviews. Monitor contest or event participation rates as well in order to evaluate the overall efficacy and reach of the campaign.

3. What are the best tools for managing and scheduling spring marketing content?

Hootsuite and Buffer are two of the best platforms for organizing and planning spring marketing content since they simplify social media analytics and scheduling.

Trello and Asana are great tools for managing team projects and marketing assignments. Canva provides simple-to-use design tools for producing visually striking content. Email marketing initiatives benefit greatly from Mailchimp’s scheduling and analytics features. 

Google Analytics facilitates monitoring website traffic and campaign success. Planoly and Later concentrate on scheduling visual material, particularly on Instagram. With the help of these tools, small businesses may effectively plan, carry out, and oversee their spring marketing campaigns.

4. How important is it to update local SEO for the spring?

For small businesses, springtime local SEO updates are essential. Seasons bring about changes in consumer behavior and search trends.

You may make your website and online profiles more visible to local clients looking for seasonal goods and services by optimizing them with spring-related keywords and content.

Update your Google My Business listing with recent information about spring hours, deals, and images. In local directories and on social media, draw attention to special discounts and seasonal activities.

Updating your local SEO may increase your chances of drawing in local customers, remaining competitive, and generating more in-person and online traffic in the spring.

5. Can digital spring promotions effectively replace in-person events?

Digital spring promotions can effectively replace in-person events by reaching a broader audience and offering convenience. Online contests, virtual workshops, and social media campaigns can engage customers and drive sales.

However, they lack in-person events’ personal touch and community feel, making a balanced approach ideal for maximum impact.

Related Blog Posts

• March Marketing Ideas
• April Marketing Ideas
• May Marketing Ideas
• 160+ Spring Email Subject Lines To Nail Your Open Rates
• Refreshing Spring Email Templates to Revitalize Your Campaigns
• 5 Spring Newsletter Ideas to Light Up Your Marketing Campaigns

Content updated for freshness and SEO by Swastik Sahu.

The post Top 14 Fresh Spring Marketing Ideas for 2025 appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

But their expectations are evolving. Travelers today crave personalized itineraries, sustainable options, and unique, meaningful experiences.

This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for travel agencies. How can you stand out in a crowded market and attract this new wave of experience-seeking travelers? 

In this blog, we’ll share actionable travel agency marketing strategies to help your agency build a strong brand, connect with your ideal customers, and drive bookings like never before.

Let’s dive in. 

1. Know Your Tribe: Who’s Booking With You?