Looking to make money with email marketing?
If you’re just starting out, or even trying to save some cash in your business, choosing a free email plan seems like a great deal.
However, similar to SEO software or web hosting, sometimes ‘free’ tools aren’t worth the hype.
From limited features to privacy concerns, it’s a simple fact that free email plans aren’t geared with top-level money making in mind.
Learn from the email experts here at EcoSend why free email plans are best avoided.
Free Email Plans Are Aimed At Beginners 🐣
Hear us out. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being an email marketing newbie. Everyone has to start somewhere, after all.
But if you are looking to make big bucks with email (which is absolutely possible, since email has a $42 average ROI for every $1 spent!)—then you won’t be able to do this with a free plan that's aimed at those just starting out.
Free email plans give you a brief glimpse of what an email platform looks like. But they seriously lack the features and overall functionality you will actually need to succeed.
In contrast, paid email plans are for companies that want to grow their customers and sales through email. They are built, maintained and continually improved with revenue generating techniques in mind.
Without A Custom Domain - Your Emails Don’t Look Professional 👎
Free email plans rarely come with custom email domains.
Instead, your email will have a generic domain which features the name of the email provider in your email address.
An email ending in ‘gmail.com’ or ‘yahoo.com’ is fine for sending emails between friends or family.
But for your mailing list, a business using a generic email provider can look suspicious. That’s because purchasing an email plan and choosing a domain is much like having a professional website. If a company hasn’t done this, it’s questionable why not.
Instead, when your emails are sent with your company name in the domain name, the sender is instantly recognisable. This ensures your emails look genuine and trustworthy, which makes them more likely to be opened and engaged with.
Privacy Concerns 🔐
Have you ever heard the term, ‘If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product’?
Free email providers have to make their money somehow. Rather than allowing you to use their services out of the goodness of their own heart, they may do any of the following:
Make money from showing you ads in your inbox
Sell your user data, email content and contacts to third parties
Use your data to train AI models
Not offer any security tools to protect personal data
As a business, you also have a responsibility to keep your customer’s data safe.
If customer’s details are sold or shared with third parties without their permission, this can land your business in hot water due to GDPR. It can also harm the reputation of your business.
Restrictive Features 🛑
Free email plans often place severe limits on what you can actually do with the plan.
Common restrictions set by free email providers include:
The number of seats
Monthly email sends
Email list size
Email automation
Migration services
Personalised onboarding
Having email provider branding in emails
Email scheduling
Custom templates
Dynamic content
Email analytics and reporting
If you’re new to email marketing, heavy feature restrictions might not seem like a big deal. But once you realise you are limited as to how you can customise and ultimately grow your email campaigns, this will become really frustrating.
Some restrictions like the compulsory email provider branded emails can also make your campaigns look less professional. Plus, it also means you are giving the provider free advertising with every email you send!
You may also like: How To Get Your Share Of The $8.5bn Email Is Generating Every Year
Hidden Paywalls 💸
The email plan is advertised as free. But is it actually? Or is it just the actual signing up that's free?
For instance, Reddit users have recently been discussing Mailchimp’s hidden paywalls on its free plans.
What’s been happening is that Mailchimp advertises the plan as being free, only for users to discover key features they need are not. Instead, Mailchimp requests payment to allow access to things such as email automation.
Since the email plan is advertised as free, the provider can spin that as they like. If this means getting you to sign up for ‘free’ and then encouraging you to pay for an annual plan by paywalling all the key features, then so be it.
P.S. Mailchimp too expensive? Check out our guide on how to reduce Mailchimp pricing.
Domain Reputation Issues 📉
If your email domain doesn’t have a good reputation, your campaigns are more likely to end up in the spam folder. When this happens, your emails won’t be opened, and your overall ROI will plummet.
At EcoSend, we are really strict about maintaining a good domain reputation if you send your emails through our platform. That’s because we want your emails to be sent, opened and engaged with.
Generic or free email providers simply cannot compete with this stance. In fact, many free email providers are highly associated with spam activity, meaning sending your emails via their platform can instantly tarnish your campaigns and domain reputation.
Little To No Support 🤷♂️
If you are on a free plan, you aren’t making that email provider any money (apart from potentially selling your data, of course). As a result, you aren’t a priority when any support issues crop up.
For example, if your emails won’t send, or you are having another problem which is impacting your campaign performance. It’s unlikely you will receive a personalised response, because you aren’t a paying customer.
Again, if you want email to be a major growth channel for your business, then you need to know you can count on the support when needed.
With a paid email plan, dedicated customer support comes as standard.
No Sustainable Email Features Or Carbon Offsetting 🌎
Did you know email has a carbon footprint?
Over 300 billion emails are sent per day, and unless your email provider is doing something about the problem, your campaigns could be increasing the carbon footprint of your business.
Few email providers, let alone those which offer free plans, are tackling the environmental impact of email.
At EcoSend, we power our servers with renewable energy sources and plant trees based on the number of emails you send.
Try our free email carbon calculator to see your email CO2, plus how switching to EcoSend could lower your email-based emissions!
In Summary: To Make Money, You Sometimes Have To Spend Money
When it comes to making money with email marketing, we hope we've proved once and for all that a professional paid plan really is the way to go.
Not only will you benefit from more advanced features, but you’ll also avoid the many headaches associated with free email providers.
Crucially, you’ll benefit from a professional, secure platform which also offers you dedicated customer support.
Overall, giving your email campaigns the respect they deserve by investing in a paid email plan is the way to go!
Ready To Make Your Emails Successful And Sustainable? Choose Your EcoSend Plan Today
EcoSend is the world’s first email platform created to address the carbon footprint of email marketing.
Crucially, we’ll still give you all the features you need to succeed at email marketing, from our template builder to advanced segmentation and much more!
Our plans start from just £15 (USD and other currencies available) meaning there’s a perfect plan just waiting for you.
We’ll also give you a free 7 day trial on all of our plans to ensure EcoSend is a great fit for your business.
Please drop us a message if you have any questions. We look forward to welcoming you aboard!
