The 5 Best Free & Paid Newsletter Plugins for WordPress

Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools today to take your blogs and businesses to the next level. Once you’ve setup  your WordPress website, added the needed content, it is time to start getting subscribers!

At the core of any successful blogger-reader or company-customer relationship is maintaining a strong, transparent, one-to-one communication; and that’s where email newsletters come in handy. So how do you go about building these newsletters and more importantly, how do you check whether they are effective or not?

Here’s a look at the five best newsletter plugins for WordPress that can help you build a comprehensive newsletter, mail it to all your subscribers and furthermore keep a close eye on it. With a multitude of functionalities like dual subscription options, autoresponders, easy import/export of contacts, checking the spam score so that your mail does not land in the subscriber’s spam folder and more, these plugins make life much easier!

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1. MailPoet Newsletters

Formerly known as WYSIJA Newsletters (an acronym for What You Send Is Just Awesome), MailPoet Newsletters – the most popular email marketing plugin for WordPress – has grown to have over 3.6 million downloads and 200,000+ active installs. Unlike external email management systems like MailChimp or AWeber, MailPoet lets you control all newsletter and email settings from the admin panel itself.

It has a host of other features too, some of which are listed below:

• Drag and Drop options for creating newsletters.
• User-friendly interface and straightforward widget, theme and form customization.
• Publishing of automated newsletters on uploading new posts.
• Autoresponders enabled for a new subscriber or WordPress user addition.
• Easy listing and categorizing of subscribers.
• Easy import of contacts using CSV file uploads. Contacts can be exported to MS Excel sheets too. This enables backing up of data off-site in case of a security breach.
• Detailed tracking statistics and info such as whether the newsletter was clicked, opened bounced and unsubscribed.
• Scheduling of newsletters on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

The premium version includes various extended functionalities like exclusive templates, in-depth statistical dashboard, automated bounce handling, integration with WooCommerce, and priority support options. It also has an unlimited subscriber membership option as opposed to a 2000 subscribers limit for the free version.

MailPoet is a great option for newsletter building. The Premium version costs about $99/year for one site, while the Sending version (that sits above the Premium version), is perfect for growing businesses since the cost is calculated based on the number of subscribers. MailPoet handles email delivery and plans start from $10/month for 500 subscribes and you can upgrade the plan as your subscriber list grows.

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2. Newsletter

Another leading WordPress email marketing plugin, Newsletter, true to its name, helps you create email newsletters, send and track them without a hiccup. Some of the main features of this plugin are as follows:

• Unlimited subscribers and emails.
• Compatibility with several SMTP platforms like Postman, WP Mail, Easy WP and Mail Bank.
• Excellent documentation and online support.
• Popup extension for subscription widgets.
• Fully customizable widgets, themes, pages and contact forms.
• Text and HTML versions of emails available.
• Automated newsletter generation for latest blog posts and events.

The plugin provides premium extensions for Amazon SES, Sendgrid, Mailjet, Mandrill and WooCommerce integration.

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3. ALO EasyMail Newsletter

One of the best multilingual plugins for WordPress to create and send newsletters, ALO EasyMail helps build a clean newsletter within no time. Available in over 20 languages, it is the quintessential plugin for a multi-translatable newsletter.

ALO EasyMail also has other unique features, some of which we’ll see as follows:

• Unlimited number of subscribers.
• Custom post type newsletters, which can be edited like posts or pages on WordPress.
• Batch sending of emails can be enabled. This constitutes sending emails at regular intervals till all the recipients in the subscriber list are completed.
• Integrated functionality to view the number of times the newsletter has been opened and the links therein accessed.
• Easy management of user roles and capabilities for restricted access.
• Option for automatically unsubscribing email addresses wherefrom the emails have bounced.
• Easy import of contacts from CSV files.

ALO EasyMail Newsletter is a completely free plugin with no paid versions. It has customized support for long subscriber lists and if you are any coder, there are plenty of tweakable themes and action hooks for you to add any of your own developments.

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4. Pabbly Email Marketing

Pabbly Email Marketing is a great email marketing software. With this, you can easily create & send attractive emails & newsletter using the drag-and-drop editor or use the readymade templates. It provides top quality services and has the highest email delivery rate.

Some of Pabbly’s unique features :

• Create professional newsletters & emails quickly & send to unlimited no. of recipients.
• Track the stats like clicks, opens, bounce, unsubscribe, etc.
• Provides In-built SMTP for sending emails via a fast and secure path.
• Creating emails, newsletters, campaigns, and promotions have become very easy with the drag and drop email editor. You can also use the Basic Text Editor and Custom Code editor too.

Pricing :

Pabbly Email Marketing offers different pricing plans which are based on the number of subscribers such as-

Rookie – With this plan, you can send unlimited emails to 5,000 subscribers at the cost of $29 per month.
Pro – Buy now this plan and send emails to 15,000 subscribers at the price of $49 per month.
Advance – This plan includes all the advanced features of Pro at the cost of $99 with 50,000 subscribers. Also, you can upgrade your plan based on the number of subscribers on your mailing list from 50,000 to 1,000,000.

5. SendPress Newsletters

SendPress Newsletters is a fully responsive, easy-to-use newsletter plugin that focuses on simple creation and effective scheduling. One of the main advantages of this plugin is that it has numerous newsletter templates that are completely customizable which ensures that your newsletter is unique in every aspect.

Some of the other features that SendPress offers are:

• Unlimited number of subscribers.
• Single and Double opt-in confirmation enabled. The first is direct subscription, while the second requires a secondary confirmation (like an e-mail confirmation) from the subscriber.
• Customizing and managing user roles possible. Restricted access or specific permissions can be enabled.
• Newsletter Editor is similar to the WordPress Editor and plenty of formatting and editing options are available.
• Both Text and HTML versions of the newsletter can be viewed.

The Pro version includes all of the above features and then some. These are:

• Advanced statistics reports of who opened the email, on what device and which links therein were clicked on.
• One-click spam testing by SpamAssassin so that your emails never bounce.
• API integration for Mandrill, Sendgrid, Elastic Email, Mailgun and Amazon Web Services.

The price here is slightly steep as compared to the other plugins. SendPress Newsletters costs $99 per year for 1 site, $199 per year for 3 sites and $399 per year for an unlimited number of sites.

6. FluentCRM

FluentCRM has quickly become one of the most powerful email marketing and CRM plugins for WordPress. The plugin lets you manage your contacts, broadcast email campaigns and newsletters, and create basic autoresponders. Unlike other plugins, you can compose newsletters using a block-based email composer, similar to writing a blog post in WordPress. You can also view all your email sending statistics and perform sophisticated email marketing activities.

FluentCRM’s key features include:

• Built-in form builder integration to capture and store leads
• View contact information and details in a 360° contact overview platform
• Block-based email composer for producing beautiful-looking email newsletters
• Contact management features to segment and categorize your email list
• Template management for creating and storing email templates 
• Create email marketing workflows and autoresponders with a visual automation builder
• Granular email performance analytics to measure and optimize your email marketing efforts

Since its release, over 20,000+ businesses have adopted FluentCRM because of its affordable yet powerful marketing automation features. The premium version comes with much more advanced automation features and integrations. You can connect FluentCRM with many popular plugins such as WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, Learndash, LifterLMS, MemberPress, BuddyBoss, etc.

Thus, FluentCRM would be the perfect choice for you if you’re looking to do more than newsletter marketing. The premium version costs only $129/year, and you can choose a 5-site license($249/year) or a 50-site license($499/year) based on your needs.

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Bonus Recommendation:

Tribulant Newsletters

Developed by Tribulant Software, the Tribulant Newsletters plugin for WordPress is completely equipped with solutions to all subscriber, email, newsletter and marketing requirements in its arsenal. Satisfying both personal and professional needs, the plugin has quite a few unique features, listed below:

• Off-site subscription forms are enabled. This implies that one can subscribe to your WordPress site via external, third-party websites like Facebook or Twitter too.
• Posts can be sent as newsletters.
• Enables a user to subscribe to the latest posts on the website.
• A large number of newsletter templates are available and new ones can be added and customized.
• Apart from individual listings, group listings of subscribers can be created.
• Statistical, chart-based analysis of the number of emails sent, subscriber growth, bounces and unsubscribes can be done for any given period of time.
• Creation of custom fields on the subscription form such as name, address, gender, etc. is enabled.
• Integrated Gravity Forms and Embedded Images are available.

The plugin also has several extensions available for WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, Google Analytics and hooks for third-party plugins. Quite reasonable cost-wise, it is for $64.99 per year for a single user and $194.97 per year for an unlimited number of sites.

 

Conclusion

Each of these newsletter plugins has distinct features that make it stand apart from the rest. If you are an independent blogger and easy handling is what you are looking for, MailPoet Newsletters is the way to go. If a highly creative and customizable newsletter is your cup of tea, Tribulant Newsletters is a good option.

That said, there is always a bit of security risk involved with plugins hosted directly on WordPress, so if you have a large subscribership or email management on a huge scale, you might want to consider external email management systems like MailChimp or AWeber.

Also, you check the cheapest email marketing services that give you the ability to contact your visitors even after they leave your website.

However, these newsletter plugins have a host of great functionalities that support all the requirements of individual bloggers and small-scale businesses. So choose the one that you think suits your needs best and start getting your subscribers!

Are there any other plugins that you think should be included here? Let us know in the comments section below!