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Best Email Marketing CRM for Your Business in 2025
Explore How 6 Email Marketing CRM Stack Against Each Other
Nupur Mittal
April 27, 2025
Without a good CRM, your customer journey becomes a maze with dead ends and wrong turns.
It can also cost you valuable customer relationships and potential revenue.
That’s why I did the heavy lifting for you: testing dozens of email marketing CRM software, analyzing G2 reviews, and shortlisting 6 top contenders.
Let’s find the right one for you.
Table of Contents
Why You Need Email Marketing CRM Software
If your customer data and campaign execution look chaotic, you need an email marketing CRM.
But that’s not the only benefit you’ll see after using one. A good CRM can turn around your workflows. Here’s how:
Becomes Your All-In-One Command Center
Let's be honest: you're probably using too many tools. One for sending emails, another for tracking metrics, maybe a spreadsheet for segmenting your audience, and something else for scheduling.
With an email marketing CRM, everything is in one place.
You'll see exactly where subscribers came from, what content they engage with, and which emails drive results. No more jumping between platforms or merging conflicting reports—just one decision-making source.
Helps You Get Hours Back in Your Week
Think about how you currently spend your time:
Manually updating subscriber lists
Recreating similar emails for various audience segments
Building campaigns from the ground up every time
Cleaning and validating your email list
A good CRM automates these tedious tasks.
You only need to configure the workflow, and the CRM will handle everything else automatically while you oversee the work.
Reduce Your Mental Workload
The mental load of managing customer data is overwhelming. You're constantly wondering:
"Which content is actually resonating with my readers?"
"What percentage of my subscribers are engaged?"
"Is my deliverability rate hurting my reach?"
A CRM answers these questions automatically with clear metrics and insights (some might even generate AI-powered recommendations), reducing the workload while enabling informed decisions.
Build Deeper Connections With Your Audience
When you're not bogged down with technical tasks, you can focus on what really matters: understanding and serving your audience.
Run A/B tests to optimize your welcome sequence. Set up personalized email journeys for different segments. Use engagement data to create content that truly resonates.
The result?
You build stronger connections through personalized communication to different segments.
The Best Email Marketing CRM Software I’ve Tested
Here’s a snapshot of the 6 best CRM email marketing software that made the cut:
ActiveCampaign: Advanced email automation workflows with solid contact tracking but carry a premium cost
Brevo: Cross-channel messaging with built-in deal tracking but misses predictive insights
HubSpot: Delivers comprehensive contact tools, but emailing features serve only as add-ons
EngageBay: Provides an all-in-one marketing and contact management but requires significant onboarding support
Freshsales Suite: Purpose-built CRM platform but lags in email design and reporting
beehiiv: Growth-focused platform that packs a punch—affordable, intuitive, and scalable
1. ActiveCampaign: Best for Tech-Savvy Small Businesses and Agencies
Try discussing email automation without ActiveCampaign coming up. Spoiler alert: you can't.
ActiveCampaign is one of the best email marketing software with exceptional email automation capabilities, 500+ pre-built sequences, and 30+ triggers.
Its CRM capabilities are equally impressive.
You can create multiple pipelines, create visually appealing emails, and track lead status presented neatly on Kanban boards. You can implement automation to target different leads using its impressive automation builder.
You can use ActiveCampaign as a standalone CRM and integrate your existing email service provider (ESP), or use it as your ESP instead.
ActiveCampaign’s Key Features
Funnel report: Visualize the user journey through different stages of lead generation
Tasks: Create a to-do list for individual prospects
Email integration: Connect your ESP and combine CRM data with email engagement metrics like opens, link clicks, and replies
Deal forecast: Predict average deal closing value based on historical deal engagement and closing patterns
ActiveCampaign’s Pros
The deals interface is extremely self-explanatory—no documentation diving needed
Easy to build and manage automation due to oodles of examples to inspire
Integrates with over 900 tools, making your life a breeze
ActiveCampaign’s Cons
Pricing scales 2x with your subscriber count. You’ll pay $49/mo for up to 1,000 subscribers, but when you reach 2,500 subscribers, the cost more than doubles to $95/mo
A lot of CRM features are available as an add-on, adding extra to the overall cost
Default reporting dashboards lack in-depth email performance analysis capabilities
ActiveCampaign’s Pricing
ActiveCampaign pricing is based on your email list size.
For up to 1,000 contacts, here’s how much each plan costs. 👇🏼
Starter (Starts at $15/mo): 1 user, 5 action/automation, email A/B testing only, and 10x contact list emails send limit.
Plus (Starts at $49/mo): 1 user, unlimited automations, 10x contact list email send limit, and 5 email previews and inbox testing.
Pro (Starts $79/mo): 3 users, automation A/B testing, conversion tracking, and 10x contact list email send limit.
Enterprise (Starts at $145/mo): 5 users, Single-Sign-On (SSO), and 10x contact list email send limit.
CRM features like pipeline management and sales performance tracking are only available as an add-on on all the plans except the Starter.
What Do Real Users Say About ActiveCampaign?
Many users leverage ActiveCampaign as their email marketing solution and CRM, raving about its feature-rich platform.
Take Kelley B., who loves how it centralizes all her prospect data while the automation features save her countless hours.
2. Brevo: Best for Budget-Conscious Small Ecommerce Businesses
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is more of an intuitive, simple email marketing software than a fully-fledged CRM. However, you can still use it as your CRM, especially if you're a consultant, a small ecommerce business, or a solopreneur.
It offers two toolkits—one for email marketing and another for sales management.
What really impressed me was that both platforms offer generous free plans, allowing you to test almost all the features. You can build a single sales pipeline, add up to 50 deals, and set up automated flows to contact prospects within those deals—all without paying a cent.
Brevo Key Features
Automation: Build multi-channel automated flows to reach the target audience at the right time through the right channel.
Contact management: Create and manage multiple contact lists, segment them based on various attributes, or set up custom attributes like customer preference.
Pipeline management: Build multiple pipelines, each with custom deal stages, and track them through the list or Kanban board view.
Meetings: Set up a meeting booking page by integrating Brevo with your Google or Outlook calendar.
Brevo Pros
Generous free plan to test nearly all email marketing and CRM features
Boast of one of the highest deliverability rates, helping you reach your subscribers' inboxes
Intuitive interface that makes it easy to learn and navigate the platform
Brevo Cons
Lacks native deal forecasting and predictive analysis capabilities
Basic CRM toolkit that doesn't match the functionality of dedicated CRM solutions
Limited advanced features: A/B testing and reporting capabilities lag behind competitors
Brevo Pricing
Brevo offers separate packages for its email marketing and sales platform.
For the email marketing solution, there are four plans:
Free: 300 emails/day limit, 1 shared inbox, and marketing automation (only for 2000 contacts).
Starter ($9/mo): 5000 emails/month with no cap on daily send, add-on custom branding, and custom webhooks.
Business ($18/mo): Landing page builder, A/B testing, and geography & device reporting.
Enterprise (custom plan): Heat map reports, multi-user access, and dedicated account manager.
For the sales platform, you can choose from the following two plans:
Free: 50 open deals management, 1 pipeline, and only email support
Pro ($12/mo): Unlimited deals, unlimited pipelines, and chat and phone support
What Do Real Users Say About Brevo?
Reviewers rave about Brevo’s ability to consolidate email campaigns, customer data, and analytics easily.
However, many users find its email builder less intuitive and limited in customizations, suggesting a less flexible approach to scaling email campaigns. One user mentioned, “Sometimes, the design of the emails gets misconfigured, and the platform becomes a bit slow, making the creation process difficult.”
3. HubSpot: Best for Mid-Sized B2B Companies Seeking All-In-One Solutions
HubSpot is the gold standard for CRM. Its Sales Hub enables you to manage leads, draft targeted emails, set up automated sequences, and monitor user engagement throughout the funnel. It even won G2’s Best Sales Software Products 2025, making it a compelling choice for managing customer relationships.
It offers a generous free plan suitable for businesses looking to start using a CRM with built-in email drafting, automating, and tracking support.
HubSpot Key Features
AI-powered lead management: Get AI to suggest high-intent leads, capture key details, and generate insights into leads’ behavior.
Email templates: Turn high-converting emails into templates and use them to scale your outreach campaigns.
Email tracking: Get a 360-degree view of how prospects engage with your email—opens, clicks, downloads—and draft targeted follow-up strategies.
Sales automation: Set up sequences with personalized messaging that auto-enroll prospects based on intent signals.
HubSpot Pros
Purpose-built CRM with advanced reporting metrics and comprehensive customer journey insights
User-friendly interface with a minimal learning curve, allowing you to set up sales workflow in a jiffy
Sales pipeline analysis available in your company's currency, simplifying global data analysis
HubSpot Cons
Higher price point relative to the features offered
Contact lists frequently experience slow updates, requiring your manual intervention
Limited email template selection compared to dedicated email marketing platforms
HubSpot Pricing
HubSpot Sales Hub comes in three different tiers:
Starter ($20/mo/seat): 500-minute calling limit, task calendar sync, and 5,000 email templates.
Professional ($100/mo/seat): Default and custom forecasting, conversation intelligence, and integration with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Enterprise ($150/mo/seat): Interactive video response, pipeline approvals for deals, Deal Splits, and Lead Form Routing.
You can try its professional plan with a 14-day free trial, but there’s no free plan.
What Do Real Users Say About HubSpot?
One recurring theme across all HubSpot reviewers was that, despite being a powerful CRM, it is extremely easy to create a sales pipeline and start tracking deal progress.
Pricing remains a sore point among solopreneurs and small business owners, as many must-have features are locked behind higher-tier plans.
4. EngageBay: Best for Small to Medium Sized Businesses
Think of EngageBay as your business octopus—it stretches one arm to manage your email marketing campaigns while its other arms simultaneously handle all your customer data. And the best part is it does it all at prices that won't break the bank.
You might expect a platform this powerful to be complicated, but EngageBay's navigation is surprisingly simple. I could find what I needed in just a couple of clicks.
Depending on what you're looking for, you can either go with the complete package (their all-in-one suite) or cherry-pick just what you need from its Marketing or Sales and CRM Bay options.
EngageBay Key Features
Custom reports: Create dynamic dashboards using advanced filters, visualization tools, and automated scheduling.
Customer journey: Visualize end-to-end customer interactions across channels (website, email, support) to identify pain points, emotional states, and opportunities.
Sales automation: Automate repetitive tasks like lead scoring, drip campaigns, and workflow triggers.
Deal management: Track revenue opportunities through customizable pipelines with deal stages and milestones.
EngageBay Pros
All email and landing page templates automatically adapt to mobile devices
One of the most affordable all-in-one CRMs available on the market
Centralizes both sales and marketing functions, eliminating the need for multiple tools
EngageBay Cons:
Performance often slows down during resource-intensive tasks like mass email campaigns
The comprehensive feature set can feel overwhelming for first-time CRM users
Marketing automation capabilities are restricted to the Enterprise plan
EngageBay Pricing
Here’s a quick rundown of EngageBay’s all-in-one suite pricing packages:
Free: 250 contacts, email tracking, email sequences, and predictive lead scores
Basic ($14.99/user/mo): 500 contacts, custom deal milestones, and 3k branded emails
Growth ($64.99/user/mo): 5000 contacts, marketing automation, and automated sales workflows
Pro ($119.9/user/mo): Unlimited contacts, custom reports, call recording and scripts
What Do Real Users Say About Engagebay?
EngageBay users applaud its ease of use and comprehensive toolkit at budget-friendly prices.
However, to truly customize it to your needs, you'll need to invest significant time understanding its various features. This steeper learning curve becomes a drawback for teams seeking a quick-to-implement, scalable solution.
5. Freshsales Suite: Best for Medium-Sized Sales Teams
Freshsales Suite is an AI-powered CRM and email marketing platform that helps you manage the sales pipeline, create targeted email campaigns, and set up email sequences.
A close competitor to HubSpot, Freshsales Suite stands out with its more deeply integrated email capabilities. Its exceptional AI assistant, Freddy, analyzes conversation sentiment, suggests the next steps in the prospect's journey, and drafts personalized emails.
Freshsales is part of Freshworks, which offers two tools with CRM capabilities—Freshsales is a purpose-built CRM with sales-focused email tools, while Freshsales Suite is a fully integrated email marketing CRM.
Freshsales Suite Key Features
Team inbox: Shared inbox across teams providing real-time visibility into each prospect's communication.
Pipeline management: Build multiple pipelines with a drag-and-drop interface to keep prospects in the right funnel stage.
Conversations: Connect with your audience across multiple channels—emails, chat, and calls.
Freshsales Suite Pros
Excellent return on investment, especially for small business owners
User-friendly yet powerful CRM with native email campaign-building tools
Robust set of email triggers and actions for building targeted email journeys
Freshsales Suite Cons:
Limited email marketing tools with a simple editor and few customization options
Building custom reports has a steep learning curve due to numerous configuration options
Freshsales Suite Pricing
Freshsales Suite has four plans, including a free plan for up to 3 users. Here’s what’s included in each plan. 👇🏼
Free: 100 contacts, 1 segmentation, 200 monthly email limit, and deal management.
Growth ($11/user/mo): 500 contacts, 50 segmentation, 20 email templates, and 1 custom domain.
Pro ($47/user/mo): 500 contacts, 100 segmentation, 100 email templates, and advanced CRM customizations.
Enterprise ($71/user/mo): 500 contacts, 250 segmentation, 500 email templates, and auto profile enrichment.
You can try a 21-day free trial for all its paid plans.
What Do Real Users Say About Freshsales?
Reviewers praise Freshsales for its all-in-one CRM toolkit. One user noted, "It offers all the tools without the clutter."
However, the lack of integrations remains a concern for many users, including Davender K: “Integrations are limited and require connecting with additional tools like Zapier.”
6. beehiiv: Best for Content Creators
beehiiv is a newsletter platform that turns your content expertise into a thriving audience-based business—combining publishing, growth, and monetization tools in one creator-focused hub.
From a no-code website builder to segmenting subscribers, beehiiv offers a complete package.
Let’s see how beehiiv helps you build a scalable growth engine. 👇🏼
Feature #1: Subscriber Management and Segmentation
beehiiv doesn't just store email addresses—they help you understand and organize your audience meaningfully.
First, every subscriber gets their own profile page showing:
Sign-up date and source
Complete interaction history
Demographic information
Engagement patterns and status
But where beehiiv really shines is how it automatically categorizes subscribers:
Active: Regularly opening and engaging with your emails
Inactive: Previously engaged but have stopped interacting
Pending: Signed up but haven't confirmed their email
Pending approval: Waiting for manual admission (if you've enabled approval requirements)
You can start creating audience segments by having each subscriber’s status at your fingertips.
There are three ways to go about it:
Static segments: Create fixed groups based on one-time conditions—perfect for special campaigns or announcements.
Dynamic segments: Set parameters that automatically update as subscriber behavior changes, ensuring your targeting stays relevant.
Manual segments: Upload specific lists that remain unchanged until you decide otherwise—ideal for migrating from other platforms.
For static and dynamic segments, you can assign conditions (Subscriber data, acquisition source, location data, etc.) and save the segment.
Psst! Bookmark these beehiiv segment conditions charts to use for reference.
Feature 2: Email Automation
Unlike basic drip campaigns, beehiiv's automation:
Triggers based on specific subscriber actions or time intervals
Adapts content based on engagement patterns
Integrates with your publishing calendar for timely follow-ups
Getting started is simple, just select a trigger, define your audience segment, and map out your email sequence.
And, what good is an automation journey if you can’t analyze how your subscribers engage with it?
The Automation Overview tab is a masterpiece that gives a clean and informative breakdown of each email workflow. This report gives you a detailed synopsis of key metrics like:
Total number of subscribers enrolled in the journey
Completion rate
Average completion time (in hours)
Email metrics breakdown
Individual email performance
Feature #3: 3D Analytics
If I had to pick beehiiv’s top feature, it would be its 3D analytics.
The analytics dashboard goes beyond the baseline information and shows a true analysis of your email performance. There are three interconnected reports:
1. Subscriber reports: Track audience growth with acquisition source breakdowns, engagement patterns, and cohort retention analysis.
This report helps you answer crucial questions like:
Which acquisition channels bring your most engaged subscribers?
How does subscriber retention differ between cohorts?
What content types lead to higher engagement over time?
This report helps you compare different acquisition sources and analyze which one you should double down on.
Noah Edelman, the co-founder of The Neuron, loves beehiiv’s 3D analytics features. Edelman says, ‘it’s crucial to have engaged subscribers if you want to run your business the right way, and 3D analytics allowed him to keep a close watch on his readers.’
Post reports: Analyze each newsletter's performance with detailed delivery, open, click, and unsubscribe metrics.
As you scroll down, you'll see a section showing a detailed, beautiful breakdown of your posts—including newsletter and web-based.
Click reports: See which links generate the most interest, helping you understand your audience's values.
What makes these analytics powerful is how they connect to actionable insights.
For instance, the cohort analysis clearly shows how subscribers from different periods engage differently, helping you adjust your strategy for specific audience segments.
beehiiv’s Pros
Specifically built for content creators and small business owners, offering a rich collection of email marketing and growth tools
Offers a complete package to start and grow a business (with tons of options to generate revenue)
Offers flexible pricing tiers with an exceptional free plan for creators with up to 2,500 subscribers
Detailed analytics and visual reports that offer clear and detailed insights into the performance
beehiiv’s Cons
Even though beehiiv’s user-friendly, it might have a learning curve for budding email marketers
beehiiv Pricing
beehiiv offers four pricing tiers, and you can get a 30-day free trial for its Scale and Max tier.
Here’s a quick rundown of features and cost:
Launch (Free for up to 2,500 subscribers): 1 user, unlimited emails & posts, AI assistant, and custom domain.
Scale ($39.20/mo): Up to 3 users, 100,000 contacts limit, monetization tools, and 3D analytics.
Max ($87.20/mo): Unlimited users, 100,000 contacts limit, audio newsletter, RSS to send, and priority support.
Enterprise (custom plan): Unlimited contacts, custom publications and contact list size, dedicated IP addresses, SSO, and account manager.
Why Do Real Users Pick beehiiv?
Our team understands that scaling a one-person business successfully requires more than just sending emails.
That’s why beehiiv isn’t just a newsletter platform. It’s a “complete” package with built-in growth and monetization tools.
Hiten Smatani, founder of ten.31 media, says, “beehiiv makes his life and product so much easier.”
Ben Meer, founder of System Sunday, notes, "beehiiv is a great value pricing-wise compared to other competitors and has better analytics to see where newsletter traffic and subscribers are coming from.”
Comparing the Top Email Marketing CRM software
Each CRM platform offers the must-have features but is targeted towards different audience set and use cases.
Here’s a detailed comparison of all the tools. 👇🏼
How To Choose the Right Email Marketing CRM
The answer boils down to understanding the following:
Needs: Get clear on why you need a CRM
Do you want to consolidate multiple marketing tools into one platform?
Are you looking to scale personalized communication with your subscribers?
Do you need to centralize email campaigns while managing your contact database?
Goals: Identify what success looks like
Generating more revenue from your campaigns?
Growing your email list size and engagement?
Building stronger customer loyalty and retention?
Improving team collaboration and efficiency?
Users: Consider who will use the software:
Will multiple departments need access? (affects collaboration features)
How many users will need accounts? (affects pricing)
What's their technical skill level? (affects implementation)
Budget: Be realistic about your investment
What can you afford monthly or annually?
Which features are worth paying more for?
Are there hidden costs for implementation or training?
Once you have answers to these, start considering the features.
All the software I discussed offers all or many of the key email marketing CRM tool’s features listed below. 👇🏼
Workflow Automation
Handling everything manually—updating subscriber information, sending personalized emails, monitoring new subscribers—is a recipe for disaster.
Inevitably, something will go wrong.
So, check if the tool offers automation capabilities to build automated sequences and to set repetitive tasks on auto-pilot.
Contact Management and Segmentation
Check if the software offers intuitive options to organize contacts based on attributes like behaviors, demographics, or engagement history.
You should also verify the type of segments you can build. Some CRM solutions don’t automatically include new subscribers even when they meet segment criteria, forcing you to add them manually.
Email Personalization
If you're just starting, basic features like subscriber demographic information to personalize emails with their first name will suffice.
As you scale your campaigns, explore advanced personalization like dynamic content and behavior-triggered messaging.
Reporting
Without clear metrics, you're essentially flying blind.
Look for an email marketing CRM with a user-friendly reporting dashboard showing your emails' performance. The dashboard should show which subject lines get opened, which links get clicked, and which campaigns drive actual revenue.
Strong analytics support will enable you to transform your gut feelings into data-backed insights.
Also, watch for the kind of custom reports you can build. It will come in handy when you work across different types of campaigns.
Compliance Tools
Ensure your chosen CRM helps you stay compliant with major data protection regulations like
GDPR for European contacts
CCPA for California residents
CAN-SPAM for general email practices
Check if the software offers features like automated removal of unsubscribe contacts, manages consent preferences, and provides tools for handling data removal requests, especially if European subscribers exercise their right to be forgotten.
Deliverability Tools
All other features are pointless if your emails don't reach the inbox.
Look for a CRM that will help you stay up to date with deliverability best practices:
Authenticate your domain for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
Run spam tests
Automate email list cleaning
Implement appropriate opt-in processes
Monitor email performance across different email clients for effective seed testing
Integrations
No matter which type of CRM you select, it must integrate smoothly with the tools you use daily.
From team communication platforms to marketing analytics software, the easier these connections are to establish, the better your overall experience will be.
Three Tips for Picking The Best CRM for Your Business
Pay close attention to your specific use case. Depending on what you want out of a CRM, your selection might differ from what others use. Abhimanyu Roat, who works in the Founder’s office at Sortment, summarizes this neatly:
“If you mostly do email campaigns (newsletters, promos, onboarding flows, etc.) and don’t need a big sales pipeline tool, then an email marketing CRM is way better. General CRMs (like Salesforce and HubSpot) are overkill if you’re not doing deal tracking or sales team stuff. Email ones are cheaper, simpler and will do everything that a marketer needs to do.”
Go with an email marketing-focused CRM for higher deliverability. A CRM-first software will likely have limited deliverability tools compared to email-first. If you’re going for the former, ensure that the ESP you are using offers all the needed tools to keep your messages out of spam.
Sign up for free plans or trials. Don’t trust the words until you have seen the other side of the picture. Almost all the tools I mentioned offer a free plan or trial, allowing you to take them for a test drive.
The Best Email Marketing CRM for You
From your audience size to budget, each factor will influence which CRM you’ll pick.
But, each tool I discussed wins in most areas while lacking in others.
ActiveCampaign would be perfect if you can spare a hefty budget and want powerful automation but can compromise on comprehensive CRM tools. EngageBay, on the other hand, offers the best value for money.
And, as a creator or small business looking to grow their email presence, you cannot go wrong with beehiiv. Its affordable pricing and intuitive interface come packed with essential tools that help you increase your online presence, organize subscriber information, and create a reliable revenue stream.
And, if you have <2,500 subscribers, you can access it for free. Start your free plan today!
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