15 Best Email Automation Tools [Tried & Tested]

From ➜ Discovery of the wheel  (Which helped in avoiding the daily heavy lifting)

To ➜ Using email automation (That has helped salespeople avoid the heavy lifting again)

Humankind has evolved, and so have I.

As a tech entrepreneur, I love it when automation simplifies tedious and complicated work. Of all the automation tools I’ve tried, Email automation tools have won my heart.

But you can’t use them all, right?

I can make it easier. I have a list of the best email automation tools for specific use cases.

YOU can choose which one to go for.

Email Automation Tools: Table of Contents

• TL;DR: Best Three Out of All Email Automation Tools
• In-Depth Review of XX Best Email Automation Tools
  • Cold Emailing Automation Tools
  • Email Marketing Automation Tools
  • CRM Tools With Email Automation
• Start Automating Your Emails With the Best!
• FAQs

TL;DR: Best Three Email Automation Tools

If you want to know which email automation tool I use, I will list these three as per their specific use cases).

In-Depth Review of 14 Best Email Automation Tools

Here’s what I did,

1. I picked my long list of email automation tools
2. Categorized them as per use cases (I have mentioned them just below)
3. Shared my personal experience with each of the tools

Here are the three broad categories of email automation tools,

• Cold Emailing Automation Tools
• Email Marketing Automation Tools
• CRM Tools With Email Automation

Cold Emailing Automation Tools

These are the breadwinners for many businesses, startups, and agencies. They help you send personalized, automated emails to potential leads who haven’t interacted with your business before.

Use case: They are mostly used for outbound sales and lead generation.

• Saleshandy
• Lemlist
• Instantly
• Woodpecker
• Smartlead

1. Saleshandy

Star Rating

• G2: 4.6/5 ⭐ (640+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 ⭐ (125+ reviews) 

About Saleshandy & My Experience

Saleshandy is an all-in-one cold email automation tool that helps you create email sequences and start your cold email campaign in just minutes.

How? I’ll explain.

If you want to automate your email campaigns, simply scheduling and increasing the sending amount won’t do the trick. Your emails will end up in spam!!

To avoid spam folder, you need to follow cold email best practices, which might be difficult to keep track of. 

But you don’t have to worry about this if you’re using Saleshandy. The tool helps you make sure that you are following the necessary checklist.

You can see this in the following screenshot of their sequence score feature.

Another thing that many of Saleshandy’s users appreciate is the level of simplicity in the UI. It’s very easy to set up your cold email sequence, even if you’re a beginner.

For example, you can create hyper-personalized emails with different use cases and add your prospects to the sending list. That’s it. Your work is done!

Saleshandy will ensure your emails are sent according to the pre-set schedule. 

You can then check the progress of your automated emails from the sequence dashboard (shown below).

Also Read: 8 Best Email Finder Tools Tried & Tested

Pricing

Of all the email automation tools on this list, Saleshandy is one of the most affordable and is worth every dollar.

The basic plan costs only $25/month and provides 10,000 emails per month with free email warm-ups.

Check the pricing page for more details.

2. Lemlist

Star Rating

• G2: 4.5/5 ⭐ (260+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 ⭐ (380+ reviews) 

About Lemlist & My Experience

I have kept Lemlist in the 2nd recommendation because it is a good cold outreach tool with multiple use cases.

Lemlist will surely help you automate your cold emails, but it will also help you connect with your prospects on LinkedIn.

Let me make it clear with an example.

Let’s say you’ve sent an email with 2 follow-ups scheduled and got no response.

What next? Is this it? No! 

A good sales rep will keep going.

Here’s where Lemlist helps. You can automate your outreach via LinkedIn if your email automation fails.

One common issue that many Lemlist users face – Lack of good analytics.

It’s quite complicated and takes a lot of time and effort to find some insights out of the analytics.

Pricing

Lemlist’s starter price is $32/month, but it does not contain many important features, like inbox rotation and warm-ups, which eventually hamper email deliverability.

Also, there are many additional costs reported by the users that make Lemlist costlier.

There are other email automation tools like Saleshandy that give you more features at better pricing.

3. Instantly

Star Rating

• G2: 4.8/5 ⭐ (3400+ reviews)
• Trustpilot: 4.2/5 ⭐ (380+ reviews) 

About Instantly & My Experience

Instantly is a highly reputed sales engagement platform where you can automate your cold emails.

From the volume of Instantly reviews, you can get the idea that it’s the OG (original gangster) of email automation tools.

But is it good for automating emails? Yes!

In fact, Instantly helps you personalize emails, A/B test them, and schedule them with follow-ups as and when needed.

Along with that, you also get the option to warm up your emails, which helps in improving your deliverability further.

Note: They also have their own CRM to make work easier for sales reps. It’s still in the improvisation stage, but you need to buy a higher plan to get access to it.

Here’s how it looks.

One limitation of Instantly that I personally didn’t like – Limited native integrations.

Pricing

Their pricing plans start at $30/month. For advanced features like A/B testing and enhanced email warm-up, you’ll need to upgrade to a higher tier plan as usage is limited in the basic plan.

As compared to other platforms in the market, Instantly is moderately priced. The value for money is questionable because many of Instantly’s users have complained about the high pricing.

4. Woodpecker

Star Rating

• G2: 4.3/5 ⭐ (70+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 ⭐ (30+ reviews) 

About Woodpecker & My Experience

I’ve found that Woodpecker is a very reliable tool for automating cold email campaigns. One of its noteworthy features is its ability to create condition-based campaigns that run automatically. 

The best part – I don’t need to be an expert in automation tools to use Woodpecker. It’s that intuitive. 

Take a look at the screenshot below, which I took while creating an automated email sequence in Woodpecker.

It will barely take you 5 seconds to understand what’s happening.

Woodpecker also comes up with a range of features like personalization, A/B testing, email warm-ups, and more. This helps you improve email deliverability when you are trying to automate and scale.

Pricing

One thing that I didn’t like about Woodpecker is their pricing structure. It sure starts with a decent $20/month, but it contains basic features.

You need to pay extra for specific features. I’ve listed the two most important ones below,

• Email Warm-up – $5 per month per inbox
• Integrations, Webhooks, & API – $20/month

5. Smartlead

Star Rating

• G2: 4.7/5 ⭐ (210+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.3/5 ⭐ (6+ reviews) 

About Smartlead & My Experience

Smartlead is one of the best tools in the market to automate your cold emails. It’s a dedicated platform that helps you improve deliverability and scale emails with the help of AI.

A cool feature of Smartlead – AI-powered email writing.

Trust me, it saves a lot of your time.

As a tech entrepreneur, I know what it takes to build a good product. And when I used Smartlead, I really liked the way they’ve put efforts into creating a user-friendly interface.

Even their dashboard is really helpful. With just one look, you can get a gist if there’s any anomaly in your email campaigns.

Note: Smartlead’s users have reported that their support can be unresponsive at times (which is a bit concerning because your bread and butter is associated with email automation).

Pricing

The starting price of Smartlead is $32/month, which is higher than the other tools on this list. This is one of the main reasons why I’ve kept Smartlead at 5th position.

Just keep in mind that you won’t get integrations and detailed analytics in the basic plan. For these features, you need to get their Pro plan ($78/month).

Email Marketing Automation Tools

These are the tools that will help you manage and automate email marketing campaigns to nurture existing leads and customers.

Use case: They are majorly used for inbound marketing, where you want to attract potential customers to your business through content and email campaigns.

• Omnisend
• ActiveCampaign
• GetResponse
• Brevo
• Mailchimp
• Klaviyo

6. Omnisend

• G2: 4.6/5 ⭐ (900+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 ⭐ (800+ reviews)

About Omnisend & My Experience

Omnisend earns a spot on this list because it’s one of the top email automation tools specifically designed for e-commerce businesses.

If you’re running an online store, Omnisend has your back with pre-built automation workflows like welcome emails, cart abandonment sequences, and post-purchase follow-ups. It helps you recover sales, nurture customers, and drive repeat business without lifting a finger after setup.

Let me give you an example.

Say a customer browses your store, adds an item to their cart but leaves without completing the purchase. Omnisend automatically sends a series of personalized follow-up emails to remind them of the product, offer a small discount, or create urgency — helping you win back that sale.

Another feature I find valuable is its omnichannel approach. You can combine email, SMS, and push notifications within a single automation workflow to reach customers on their preferred channels.

Pricing

Omnisend offers a free plan with all standard features available, including email automation with pre-built workflows. Paid plans start at $16/month, scaling based on the size of your contact list.

Compared to other tools, Omnisend stands out for offering comprehensive e-commerce-focused

7. ActiveCampaign

Star Rating

• G2: 4.5/5 ⭐ (13,600+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 ⭐ (2480+ reviews) 

About ActiveCampaign & My Experience

The name is enough. ActiveCampaign is very famous among marketers and is widely used as a marketing automation tool.

That means it’s a perfect fit for automating your marketing emails. 

When I tried ActiveCampaign, I had a wow moment when I saw their predictive sending feature.

Predictive sending helps you land your email when your contacts are most likely to open it. They do this by combining AI and your customer data to find the right timing.

It has features like visual automation builder, conditional content blocks, along with more than 135 triggers. It helps you build highly personalized marketing emails that you can send on autopilot.

ActiveCampaign also offers split testing of the whole email campaign and is not limited to 1 email.

This means that you can A/B test the entire sequence rather than testing 1-1 email at a time.

Pricing

The pricing starts with a very minimal rate of $15//month. The plan is very basic and contains limited features, but works for small businesses that don’t need to have a large-scale use case.

For businesses who want to set trigger-based emailers, there are higher plans that have more integrations and flexibility to automate your marketing emails.

The pricing for higher plans ranges from $49 to $145. You can also add credits for more contacts.

8. GetResponse

Star Rating

• G2: 4.3/5 ⭐ (750+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.2/5 ⭐ (510+ reviews) 

About GetResponse & My Experience

GetResponse is an all-in-one email automation tool like a Swiss knife. It packs everything you’ll need to capture, nurture, and convert leads on autopilot.

The most interesting thing about this tool is that it helps you automate everything from lead collection to sending marketing emails.

GetResponse is best for teams that lack enough human resources to grow their email lists and send mailers dedicatedly.

Their wide range of features can help you keep everything in one place and manage it from there.

For example, you can create forms, landing pages, pop-ups, and various other elements in GetResponse to grow your email list.

Then, use the email list to send promotional mailers. This can all be trigger-based, and after a one-time setup, you won’t have to lift a finger.

You only need to do a regular check to see if everything’s running smoothly.

Pricing

I’ll be candid here. The pricing is actually good for all the features GetResponse is giving.
(Except for the enterprise-level solution, it’s way too costly)

The range of prices starts from $15/month for simple email marketing to $1000/month for heavy emailing.

9. Brevo

Star Rating

• G2: 4.5/5 ⭐ (2070+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 ⭐ (2490+ reviews) 

About Brevo & My Experience

Brevo (ex Send In Blue) is an email marketing software that’s amazingly suitable for automating your email marketing campaigns.

I love using Brevo because it gives me good options for designing my email. 

There are many available templates that you can use to make your work faster. You can also use AI to generate subject lines and email content. 

Coming to the email deliverability part. Brevo has its own delivery infrastructure that ensures that 99% of your emails hit the inbox (as long as the emails are correct).

Similar to ActiveCampaign (on #6), Brevo has the predictive sending feature for better open rates and engagement.

Pricing

Brevo is one of the most affordable email marketing automation tools. Its basic plan starts at $8 per month. 

However, I recommend you go with the higher plan ($16/month) because the basic plan lacks some essential features.

Also, do not use Brevo’s free plan for business use because your email will contain a Brevo logo, which can make the recipient question your credibility.

10. Mailchimp

Star Rating

• G2: 4.3/5 ⭐ (12,500+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 ⭐ (17200+ reviews) 

About Mailchimp & My Experience

Mailchimp is a dedicated marketing automation tool. It has more than 300 integrations, which help ensure a smooth email marketing experience.

The coolest feature of Mailchimp – It has 50+ behavior-based triggers for email personalization.

You can start by using a pre-designed email template and customize it to fit your brand tone.

Then, all you need to do is connect the specific trigger with the email campaign and push it live.

It’s that easy!

Similar to Brevo, Mailchimp also offers a 99%+ email deliverability rate which helps in improving response rate and eventually impacts conversions.

Pricing

Mailchimp’s pricing is very flexible. Depending on your needs, you can select the volume of contacts you need to email every month.

Based on that, your pricing will be calculated.

11. Klaviyo

Star Rating

• G2: 4.6/5 ⭐ (1050+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 ⭐ (450+ reviews) 

About Klaviyo & My Experience

Klaviyo is an email marketing and SMS automation platform. This tool is bliss for those who are into the ecommerce business.

Why?

Because it contains pre-built automation for email sequences like welcome emails, abandoned cart series, and more. 

You can also build custom workflows tailored to your needs.

Also, Klaviyo is widely used by Shopify users globally. So, you can trust the tool because it actually helps you improve conversions.

Here are some of its best features –

• Dynamic product recommendations in your email (based on your user’s interests)
• AI can craft email and segment content blocks based on your prompt (within seconds)
• Email segmentation and personalization based on predicted lifetime value and churn risk

Pricing

Klaviyo is a tool that is very niche (ecommerce) oriented. It costs $45/month for using it to automate your email marketing campaigns. 

It’s worth the money if your business is in the ecommerce domain.

CRM Tools With Email Automation

These tools have combined customer relationship management (CRM) features with email automation capabilities. 

To keep it concise – A dream tool for sales reps!

Use case: These tools are used by sales and marketing teams to manage customer interactions and automate email communication throughout the customer journey. It helps in boosting user engagement and conversion rate.

• Zoho CRM
• Pipedrive
• Hubspot CRM
• Salesforce

12. Zoho CRM

Star Rating

• G2: 4.1/5 ⭐ (2690+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.3/5 ⭐ (6880+ reviews) 

About Zoho CRM & My Experience

Zoho is a big name among marketers and sales professionals. If you’re looking for a CRM with robust email automation capabilities, Zoho CRM is a solid option.

Though it may lack some basic features like “email warmups”, it’s still pretty decent if you simply want to reach out to your prospects and manage the conversion then and there.

One noteworthy feature – Just like Saleshandy, Zoho CRM allows you to send mass emails with personalization.

Even with all the good automation features, you still need to be very careful with email deliverability.

I mean, if your emails don’t get delivered, then it’s no use automating emails in the first place. This can ruin your email deliverability in the long run.

Zoho CRM also offers a combined inbox for all your email replies. This helps you keep track of conversations from one place itself.

Pricing

Zoho’s pricing is average, considering the features it provides. For the standard plan, you will have to pay $10 and higher plans can cost you something around $15 to $30.

If you ask me, Zoho CRM is good for automation but not as good as other tools in this list.

13. Pipedrive

Star Rating

• G2: x/5 ⭐ (x+ reviews)
• Capterra: x/5 ⭐ (x+ reviews) 

About Pipedrive & My Experience

Pipedrive is a sales management and pipeline management software that can be used as a tool to automate your emails.

It gives you the option to manage your contacts and keep a contact timeline for each and every one of the prospects you’ve added.

It’s one of the coolest things I like about Pipedrive. 

Also, if you are using some other CRMs (for contact management), then you can connect them with Pipedrive in no time (with the help of integrations).

Overall, it’s a good tool to automate and manage your sales process. It will surely save you time.

Note: Pipedrive does not have an inbuilt email warm-up, so you will have to use a third-party platform to avoid your email landing in the spam folder.

Pricing

The pricing of Pipedrive starts from a minimal $12/month and goes to $79 per month. Many of Pipedrive’s users have complained that the add-ons are too costly. 

So, if you are tight on budget, you can avoid using Pipedrive.

14. Hubspot CRM

Star Rating

• G2: 4.4/5 ⭐ (12,000+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 ⭐ (4260+ reviews) 

About Hubspot CRM & My Experience

HubSpot is best known for its CRM features, but you would be surprised that it also offers email automation in its Marketing Hub.

It lets you create dynamic lists, segment your contacts, route leads, and set up internal notifications.

These features are amazing if you want to collaborate between your sales and marketing teams.

Plus, HubSpot’s CRM integration can be beneficial for sending more targeted emails.

For instance, within HubSpot, you can group your email recipients based on where they are in their lifecycle journey.

This lets you send them emails with relevant subject lines, attachments, links, and CTAs.

With HubSpot Workflows, you can also establish personalized automated email sequences triggered by various actions.

Pricing

Hubspot CRM comes free with pretty basic features. For premium, it costs a lot, depending on your use case. Not recommended for startups.

15. Salesforce

Star Rating

• G2: x/5 ⭐ (x+ reviews)
• Capterra: x/5 ⭐ (x+ reviews) 

About Salesforce & My Experience

There’s a common saying – If it’s not on Salesforce, it does not exist.

That’s the level of Salesforce in CRM. But, with Salesforce’s automation features, you can automate campaign workflows, A/B tests, and automate lead scoring.

It also has lead scoring, which allows users to predict which lead is most likely to get converted based on its behaviors. 

Your sales teams can manage and receive automated alerts whenever the prospect engages with the product.

Also, while promoting, AI automation helps maintain consistent information in all customer touchpoints. 

The best part – The automated chatbot feature helps you solve basic queries. 

It lets the support agents (who are already loaded with work) focus on only complicated queries.

Pricing

Salesforce pricing is a bit unique here. If you visit their pricing page, you will find that they have done a great job in customizing pricing for various industries. 

Start Automating Your Emails With the Best!

Now that you’ve reached the end of the blog and are still unsure.

Let me help you.

What if you could do these 3 things,

1. Find emails and verify your sending list
2. Automate your whole email outreach campaign
3. Track and reply to emails from one place

Wouldn’t that make work convenient for you??

Try Saleshandy and experience this yourself!!!

FAQs

What is an email automation tool?

Email automation tools help you automate workflows to reach your prospects at the right time, with personalized messages with minimal effort.

Email automations like following up, scheduling campaigns, and automating complete workflows are done using email automation tools.

Are email automation tools suitable for small businesses?

Yes, there are pocket-friendly automation tools available for small businesses and startups. Depending on the workflow, small companies can leverage automation to scale faster.

Which is the best email automation tool?

Depending on your use case, multiple options provide advanced email automations. For example, Saleshandy is a great automation tool for cold outreach, Activecampaign is excellent for email marketing, Clay is amazing for waterfall enrichment, etc.

Why should I use email automation tools?

Email automation tools help scale your business by eliminating daily manual efforts. These tools also provide advanced information and suggestions by studying user behaviors from the data.

Is there a way to automate emails?

Yes, an email automation tool for email marketing or cold outreach (depending on your requirement) could help you automate the workflow.

What is email automation in RPA?

RPA (Robotic Process Automation) in email automation is used for automating regular tasks like replying to emails, monitoring inbox activities, and collecting data points from emails.

How do I automate email processing?

You can do that by using email automation tools, canned responses from Google, and automating replies in Outlook.