WordPress Email Plugins

Running a WordPress website for business would need strong user engagement, especially to promote products and services or give announcements and updates. One of the ways to build this strong engagement is by sending emails or newsletters regularly to web customers.

In the earlier time, emails for customers or newsletters were designed using tables or newsletter templates from email marketing providers like Mailchimp or Sendinblue. However, these days you can create beautiful newsletters directly from your WordPress back end using plugins.

In this article, you will learn more about WordPress email plugins and be introduced to several WordPress email plugins with unique features to fit your business and help you build a good network with your web customers.

What Does the WordPress Email Plugin Do?

WordPress email plugins would typically have some specific functionalities or features as followings:

1. Provide email templates

2. Opt-in form

3. Manage subscribers

4. Automatic response

5. Manage and schedule newsletter

6. Email marketing

Provide Email Templates

A WordPress email plugin allows you to create an email layout from scratch, but working from an email template is a great time saver, and would be very helpful for the no-coders. These email templates are relatively easy to customize to fit a web company brand.

Opt-in Form

Another important feature that a WordPress email plugin often offers is an opt-in form to get as many web subscribers to follow web content updates. The opt-in form can appear as popups, slide-ins, or just simply embedded into a web page.

Some plugins can have some more settings for the opt-in form such as conditional appearance or visibility settings based on logged-in-out users or based on the user roles. Additionally, a trigger appearance option can be set based on the time a user started to open a web page.

Manage Subscribers

The next thing that is also a crucial component of a WordPress email plugin is how good they are to manage the email subscribers. It began when a user started to subscribe and automatically registered with a default role.

Subsequently, the subscriber list would have easy-to-control user administration and moderation in the interface. Some plugins could have more advanced features to show the subscriber’s status, whether it’s an active/ inactive subscription, unconfirmed, or bounced.

Automatic Response

Following up on the initial subscription process, an email plugin can send an automated welcome email. This welcome email can also be sent to new customers when they make their first purchase.

Manage & Schedule Newsletters

Newsletters would need to be delivered on a specific schedule for effective business campaign marketing. Hence careful newsletter management should include an option to manage how frequently newsletters are sent to the subscribers.

Email Marketing

Last but not least the WordPress email plugin could use the optimum option to grow the mailing list with integrated email marketing functionality. It could be just a built-in email marketing feature or integration to email services such as MailChimp, AWeber, and many more.

It can also provide interactive lead generation by sharing freebies that require an email subscription or starting polls, and quizzes that make the potential subscribers feel fun and welcoming, yet be provided with useful content.

Tips to Choose the WordPress Email Plugins

Besides providing the main features, the WordPress email plugins would be most useful with some additional settings and options to add value to their performance. which can help you to choose among many of them. These options are as mentioned below:

1. Easy template customization

2. Easy integration and compatibility

3. Newsletter analytic and statistic

4. Export/ import data options

5. GDPR ready

6. Email test options

Template Customization

As we know that the WordPress email plugin often provides email templates, which should be easy to customize and responsive. A nice email template can have an easy option to add rows and columns in the layout, and also be provided with inline CSS or custom CSS options to make the design and template easily customized.

Integration & Compatibility

Once installed, a WordPress email plugin is expected to work optimally with an easy integration option to another eCommerce plugin such as the very popular WooCommerce. The integration to some third-party mailing lists also is a plus for a WordPress email plugin to start an effective newsletter campaign.

SMPT plugin compatibility also plays an important role because Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, or SMTP, works as an email protocol used to send and receive emails over the internet with high accuracy. Emails sent via SMTP contain authenticating data, which significantly increases the successful delivery.

Newsletter Analytic & Statistic

Email marketing relies on analytics and statistics because email is one of the primary means of turning users into customers. It concludes that a WordPress email plugin should have a good statistical dashboard feature and additionally can integrate with Google Analytics.

Export/ Import Data Options

Regarding data backup of email templates and subscriber lists, pick a WordPress email plugin that usually has an export/ import option feature. The exported subscribers list data can also be helpful for further email marketing analysis.

GDPR Ready

GDPR stands for the General Data Protection Regulation. The European Commission approved this privacy law on April 14, 2016, to protect the rights of all EU citizens (who are spread across the 28 member states) and their personal data. It is accordingly crucial to make sure that a WordPress email plugin meets GDPR compliance.

Email Test Option

Before sending your first created email design to many email subscribers, it’s always a good idea to send an email test to see if all settings in your email content work properly. Not all WordPress email plugins have the feature to switch to email test mode, but it can be a good consideration when you choose an email plugin.

Security Settings

Email subscriptions can be challenging on the security side. Some plugins would include Captcha settings and perform subscription spam checks in its configuration. More advanced protection would have options or settings to blacklist some malicious domain/ IP.

7 Best Free WordPress Email Plugins

The list features free WordPress email plugins that provide email templates, allow you to design or build an email layout, and several of them give you many options for email marketing.

1. Mailpoet

2. Newsletter

3. Email Templates

4. WP HTML Mail

5. Creative Mail

6. Email Subscribers & Newsletters

7. Hustle

1. Mailpoet

The Mailpoet is one of the leading WordPress email and newsletter plugins with a bunch of features, starting from subscription form, and newsletter builder, and provides integration with the WooCommerce-related emails to optimize customer conversio

Pros And Cons of Mailpoet

Pros
✅ Provide many types of automatic emails
✅ Drag and drop email designer
✅ List several email-type presets to start with
✅ Send emails super fast (up to 50,000 emails per hour)

Cons
❌ Only provide the basic engagement statistics in the free plan
❌ Google Analytics integration is not available in the free plan
❌ Limited to 1,000 subscribers for a free plan
❌ Not many option settings for security

2. Newsletter

The next popular WordPress email plugin is the Newsletter plugin which offers statistics and tracking functionalities. It’s relatively secure as there is a subscription spam check with domain/IP blacklists, Akismet, and captcha.

Pros And Cons of Newsletter

Pros
✅ Unlimited subscribers with statistics
✅ Unlimited newsletters with tracking
✅ WordPress User's registration seamless integration
✅ It integrates free SMTP Addon and is compatible with every SMTP plugin

Cons
❌ The Autoresponder feature is only available in the pro version
❌ No integration to WooCommerce in the free version
❌ The newsletter composer blocks are limited in the free version
❌ Provide only basic settings in email scheduling

3. Email Templates

If you’d prefer to have a simple email customizer on your WordPress website, the Email Templates plugin offers you an easy and basic interface to start with. The email template customization interface resembles the WordPress website live customization interface, which every WordPress user is familiar with.

Pros and Cons of Email Templates

Pros
✅ Provide send test email option
✅ Options to set the email body size, either using boxed or full width layout
✅ Simple interface to edit email header, body, and footer
✅ Option to choose the email background color
✅ Option to add custom CSS

Cons
❌ WooCommerce integration is not available
❌ No option for email marketing
❌ No option for SMTP settings
❌ Only focus on creating an email template
❌ Provided no email presets

4. WP HTML Mail

This WP HTML Mail plugin is pretty flexible and modular with an integration option to help you decide which additional supporting plugins that fit your website requirements. Some are not free yet you have full configuration control on the plugin that will not sacrifice your website performance for having unnecessary addons or extensions installed.

Pros and Cons of WP HTML Mail

Pros
✅ Provide a template library to start with
✅ Option for email test mode
✅ Inline CSS
✅ Option to export/import templates

Cons
❌ The WooCommerce drag and drop customizer is not available for free
❌ Email marketing functionality is only enabled after installing an additional plugin called: Ultimate WP Mail
❌ Custom template creation requires HTML and CSS coding

5. Creative Mail

The Creative Mail would probably be the most installed WordPress email plugin. After installing this plugin, it will create a WordPress instance that is connected to your Creative Mail account. In other words, most of the settings and customization are done in the Creative Mail app external site.

Pros and Cons of Creative Mail

Pros
✅ Provide relatively great designs of campaign ideas and theme style presets
✅ Extended features to personalize your email template to match your brand with integrated LogoBuilder and the user-friendly settings option for sections and appearance
✅ Customizable WooCommerce processing order email
✅ All eCommerce contacts and form entries are captured in the included CRM and synced automatically with the Creative Mail plugin
✅ Provide Social Campaigns options by connecting social media accounts

Cons
❌ Email scheduling via the Marketing Calendar dashboard will need a plan upgrade
❌ Accessible Booking dashboard can only accept online booking after a plan upgrade
❌ Marketing Automation settings can be activated after a plan upgrade
❌ Various types of WooCommerce-triggered emails will need a plan upgrade

6. Email Subscribers & Newsletters

This email plugin has a couple of different email campaigns. The first is by creating post notification, and the second campaign is to send broadcasts to the audiences.

Pros and Cons of Email Subscribers & Newsletters

Pros
✅ Options for Export/ Import contacts in the Audience setting dashboard page
✅ Built-in opt-in forms with basic settings, integrated using shortcodes and can show pop up in the front end
✅ Can create simple Email Workflows with various triggers
✅ Report dashboard for easy email tracking

Cons
❌ Opt-in forms custom field and captcha features are locked in the free version
❌ The email template campaign builder only has basic drag and drop blocks in the free version
❌ There are no campaign presets
❌ Email Workflows triggers are limited in the free version
❌ SMTP connection only available in the pro version

7. Hustle

This plugin focuses on email marketing and lead generation by allowing you to create a pop-up, slide-in, and embedded opt-in forms or promotional offers with CTA. It’s easy to integrate with the best email services for more functionalities.

Pros and Cons of Hustle

ChatGPT said:

Pros
✅ 18 pre-designed opt-in form templates available for a free version
✅ 16 pre-designed promotional offer templates available for a free version
✅ 4 default layout styles for the desktop
✅ Social sharing options
✅ Export/Import templates options
✅ Include behavior and visibility condition settings for email opt-ins or ads

Cons
❌ No live preview when customizing the pre-designed template
❌ No built-in email customizer without integrating it to another plugin, such as Mailpoet for instance

Conclusion

WordPress plugins for email marketing must prioritize solid deliverability either using built-in SMTP, compatible with other SMTP plugins or just having good plugin infrastructure to make it work flawlessly.

In the article, we have learned that WordPress email plugins can have multi-functionalities, or just focus on one specific function. However, it’s best to choose a plugin that has flexibility in integration with additional email services or other email plugins. This is because multi-function WordPress email plugins can be extremely complex in configuration and would avoid unnecessary features cluttering the WordPress admin dashboard.

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Frequently Asked Questions