So which one is right for you?
First off, I am clearly biased since I work for Revue, one of those 404 vendors on the list. But most of the following advice is by other experts, so I hope you find it useful.
If you look at the above list closely, you will have noticed that most of the tools are made for email marketing rather than newsletters. You could, of course, use those marketing tools for publishing newsletters, but you probably don’t want to.
If you’ve used MailChimp over a long period of time, you’ve seen the company put more and more focus on the marketing part of the email marketing equation. And while these things certainly matter to editorial publishers, they want to put out a great editorial product, too, and this shift gives the lingering feeling that the production part of the equation is getting pushed to the back burner.
So it might make sense to start by looking at what other newsletter publishers are using. That’s what newsletter consultant
Dan Oshinsky has done with his new “
guide to picking the right email tool for your newsroom”. He compares five tools commonly used by newsrooms: Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, ConvertKit, MailChimp and Revue.
That list actually includes a number of marketing tools. Here’s Dan’s summary of where they fit best:
- Campaign Monitor: Newsrooms that need to be able to send lots of different types of emails — newsletters, automations, and transactional messages — from a single ESP.
- Constant Contact: Constant Contact’s the right tool for anyone who needs very basic functionality — the ability to send newsletters or a welcome series.
- ConvertKit: Bloggers or writers seeking to build a product that could be monetized through paid subscriptions or sales of digital products.
- MailChimp: Any newsroom that’s just getting started with email.
- Revue: A newsroom that needs an ESP specifically for their editorial team.
Besides that summary, Dan’s document contains a list of publishers that use the tool, as well as a few paragraphs about what it’s good at, what it’s lacking and what it costs. A great starting point for vendor selection.
A more newsletter focused list of vendors can be found in this
crowdsourced Google sheet with almost 40 references to publishers and the email service provider they use.
