The Best Email Marketing Tools (2026): Flodesk, Unless You Run a Store.

Email tools have specialized. There is no longer one best email platform, there is a best one for each way money reaches you, and picking by brand name instead of by that is how people end up switching twice. (I watched a friend move Shopify email onto a creator tool, then move again to Klaviyo 6 months later. 2 migrations, one avoidable.)

So, one question: do you email your list, or does a cart email them for you?

You write to an audience, on your schedule, and the email is the product: Flodesk. A shopper abandons a basket at 11pm and something has to fire without you: Klaviyo. Everything else on this page is a footnote to those 2 sentences.

Flodesk is not a recommendation I researched. It is the tool the opt-in box at the bottom of this page posts to. Every email you get from Less Tools was built in it, which means I hit its limits on a schedule instead of in a review window.

What it does better than anything else in the category: you drag blocks onto a template and the result looks like a designer touched it, because one did. Most platforms make you choose between easy and good-looking. Flodesk refuses the trade. Broadcasts, welcome sequences and capture forms all live in the same simple place, and none of it turns into a CRM you have to learn first. For a solo operator that matters more than a feature list, because the tool you find easy is the one you actually send from.

Now the honest part, and it is the thing people ask about most. Flodesk was famous for one number: $38 a month, flat, unlimited subscribers, forever. That is gone. It prices in tiers by subscriber count now, a free tier and paid plans from about $24 a month, like everyone else. The contrarian pricing argument died with it. The reason to use it did not. I stayed because the sends are fast and they look good, not because of the invoice.

Skip it if your revenue is a store that needs behavior-triggered flows. That is the next section, and it is the one real exception.

If your revenue comes through Shopify or any real ecomm cart, do not use Flodesk. Go straight to Klaviyo. Its whole reason to exist is knowing what every email earned. Plug it into the store and it reads every order, cart and browse, then fires the flows that make ecommerce money: abandoned cart, back in stock, post-purchase, win-back, each one triggered by what a shopper actually did. Email and SMS sit in the same tool, so one automation can text and email the same person without a second app.

It is free to 250 contacts and scales from about $20 a month, and yes, it gets expensive as your list grows, the same per-subscriber model I just complained about. The difference is that Klaviyo can prove what it is earning next to what it costs. Mailchimp charges stores the same way and cannot show its receipts.

It is heavier and pricier than a broadcast tool, and that is the point. Reach for it the day your revenue depends on behavior rather than a weekly send. For a plain list it is overkill and you will feel it in week 1.

Kit, for creators monetizing a list. Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is built around how a creator actually sells: someone joins from a lead magnet, gets tagged by what they clicked, enters a sequence, and buys a digital product at the end of it. In Mailchimp that flow is a weekend of duct tape. In Kit it is the path the interface assumes. Free to 1,000 subscribers, then from $33 a month. If selling courses and digital products off the list is the whole business, and the tagging matters more to you than the design, take Kit over Flodesk and do not feel bad about it. (Worth knowing before you compare old reviews: the free tier used to run to 10,000 subscribers. The 2025 pricing pass trimmed it.)

Brevo, for people who barely send. Its pricing model is the sane one nobody else uses: you pay for emails sent, not subscribers held. Free tier sends 300 emails a day, paid starts around $9 a month. That fits one specific person, you have a list, you email it once a month or less, and you resent paying rent on addresses you rarely use. It will not win design awards and the automations are basic. For a barely-sender that is the correct amount of tool.

Fair is fair, so here is the honest keep case: you are mid-quarter, email is wired into 6 other systems, and a migration right now costs more focus than the subscription does. Fine. Schedule the move instead of doing it today.

But that is a timing argument, not a product one. There is no business model left for which Mailchimp is the right long-term answer. Audiences have Flodesk, stores have Klaviyo, creators selling digital products have Kit, occasional senders have Brevo. Every lane has a better car in it. Export your list (Audience, then Export Audience, it is one CSV), import it into the right tool, and turn off the invoice that grows while you sleep.

The best email marketing tool is decided by how the money reaches you, and it is never Mailchimp. You email an audience: Flodesk, free tier, from about $24 a month, and it is the one this site sends from. A cart emails for you: Klaviyo, from $20 a month, and it will show you what it earned. Kit if selling digital products off the list is the business, Brevo if you barely send. The migration is a CSV and an afternoon. The savings start next month and compound every time your list grows, because for once growing it will not raise your bill on software from 2013. Money that stays in the business can go where it actually works (see the Wise piece for where mine goes).