Choosing the Right Platform for Your Startup
The best email marketing tool depends on your stage, your technical resources, and your growth strategy.
If you are pre-revenue or bootstrapped, start with free tiers. Kit offers 10,000 free subscribers. MailerLite gives you 1,000 with most features. Mailchimp and AWeber have smaller free tiers but work for getting started. Switch to a paid tool when you need real automation.
If you are product-led, you need event-driven automation. Customer.io is the most powerful but expensive. Sequenzy and Loops offer simpler alternatives that still connect to your product events. Look for native Stripe integration if you have a subscription model.
If you are content-led, Kit is hard to beat. The generous free tier, built-in landing pages, and creator-focused features support audience building. Pair it with a transactional email service like Postmark or Resend for product emails.
The Startup Email Growth Stack
Three automations drive the most impact for startups:
User onboarding is your highest-leverage sequence. Users who complete onboarding within the first week are significantly more likely to convert and retain. Guide them to their first success moment as fast as possible.
Trial conversion directly impacts revenue. A well-timed sequence that highlights value, addresses objections, and creates urgency before trial expiration can double your conversion rate.
Churn prevention protects revenue you have already earned. Automated re-engagement triggered by inactivity catches users before they leave. A simple three-email sequence asking if everything is okay and showing what they are missing recovers a meaningful percentage of at-risk users.
Getting Started
Start with these steps regardless of which platform you choose:
- Set up user onboarding first because it has the highest impact on activation and retention
- Add trial conversion emails if you offer a free trial, to maximize the revenue from every signup
- Build churn prevention automation to catch disengaging users before they leave
- Create a product update cadence to keep active users informed and engaged
- Measure downstream metrics like activation, conversion, and retention, not just opens and clicks
The startups that win at email marketing are not the ones with the fanciest tools. They are the ones that set up the right automations early and iterate based on data.