When you’re starting your new side hustle as an email list manager, you’re going to need an email provider to create and send your clients’ emails.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the number of email providers out there.

Hey, I know that feeling well!

Nail down a good choice in email providers and watch your campaigns soar.

I'm here to help you sidestep common errors many novices face while selecting their first email service.

Choosing the wrong email provider can feel like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. You’ll end up with poor deliverability, fewer subscribers, and a lot of frustration. Imagine spending hours crafting the perfect email only for it to end up in the spam folder. Not fun, right? Picking the wrong email provider can mean wasted time, money, and effort. It’s a mistake you don’t want to make, so let’s avoid it together.

When you’re just starting out as a beginner email list manager, you don’t have a lot of money to spend. It’s tempting to go for the cheapest option. After all, saving money is always good, right? Wrong. A low price might mean fewer features, poor customer support, and limited scalability. You might save a few bucks now, but you’ll pay the price later when you need more advanced features and they just aren’t there. It’s like buying a cheap parachute – sure, you save money upfront, but do you really want to find out it doesn’t work when you’re 10,000 feet in the air?

That having been said, there’s a lot of email providers that you can consider and that offer free tiers. Some email providers let you use their platform free of charge for a limited time. Other providers let you use their produce for as long as you want, just as long as you don’t exceed a certain limit of emails or contacts. MailChimp, Klaviyo, and Campaign Monitor are three email providers that I’ve personally used and can recommend them.

As I always say, "If your emails ain't makin' the inbox, ya ain't makin' money."

Deliverability really matters. Some email providers have a bad reputation and end up in the spam folder more often than not. That’s why you definitely want to choose a provider with a good deliverability track record. Imagine you're picking the perfect delivery service. You want the one that gets your package to the door, not the one that loses it, or leaves it in some back alley.

I’m assuming that you’re going to be representing a reputable clientele that’s not operating in the gray area of the law. There are lots of email providers that spammers like to use because they can send a lot of emails for cheap. But because their sending reputation is so low, the reputation of the email provider’s own infrastructure has a low reputation.

And here’s where “guilt by association” can hurt your sending reputation. If you happen to be using an email provider that spammers are known to use, then mailbox providers will automatically assume that your emails are spam too. So they’ll route your emails to the spam folders of your recipients or refuse to accept them at all. Once again, you’ve wasted your time and money.

Every reputable email provider likes to publish what I call their “Hall of Fame” clients. If you’re looking at an email provider that doesn’t have this list, or if you don’t recognize a single one of the ones on their list, move on from them.

You want to select an email provider that has a list of reputable brands using their product because then it will be “guilt by association” in reverse. Because mailbox providers recognize that emails sent from this provider are legit, they’ll be more likely to give your emails the benefit of the doubt. The result is more of your emails making it to the inbox and not the spam folder.

As your business grows, your email marketing needs will evolve. Today, you might just need basic email functionality. You might find yourself needing automation, segmentation, and advanced analytics as soon as tomorrow. Choosing a provider that can’t grow with you is like buying a pair of shoes your kid will outgrow in a month. Save yourself the headache and pick a provider that can scale with your business from the get-go. Fast forward a few years; imagine how grateful your future self will feel about today's decisions.

So, you want to first think about what it is you want to offer as an email list manager. For example, if you want to specialize in creating web sales funnels, then you’re going to want to look for email providers that have landing page editors built into the platform. I recommend systeme.io as a great place to start. You can use their product for free. If you like it, then you can easily upgrade at an affordable price. Plus, there are several outstanding systeme.io Facebook Groups dedicated to sharing ideas and information. I am a member of several, myself.

If you want to just focus on creating and sending simple email campaigns, then I recommend you give MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and Robly a look. I’ve used all three. These email providers give you a simple UX that’s specifically designed for the email novice. They keep things simple on the surface, and they have robust platforms underneath.

If you want to start off with simple email list management with room to grow into creating automated email sequences, then I highly recommend Klaviyo. You can use Klaviyo for free and you have access to lots of great features including their Flows. I like that Klaviyo offers a menu of pre-built flows. All you need to do is identify what is the goal you want to achieve, and it will recommend the right flow from their catalog that you should use.