There are over 450 email marketing platforms in the world right now, but not every one of them is suited for an enterprise.
An enterprise email marketing software can handle a vast amount of data and large email lists that big businesses manage. It also provides flexibility and an array of features typical ESPs offer, catering specifically to enterprise needs.
When evaluating software for your enterprise, consider the level of automation, ease of use, depth of data insights, quality of customer communication support, and of course, your budget.
Yes, it can be overwhelming.
To make it easier, we have analyzed four email marketing software solutions and provided an inside look at their features and pricing.
Table of Contents
1. Pardot
2. Mailchimp
3. ActiveCampaign
4. SendXWrap Up
Pardot aligns your sales and marketing into one platform. With detailed analytics, dashboards, and automation, the marketing team can quickly provide actionable data to the sales team to reach the right customer at the right time.
For lead nurturing, Pardot offers a visual canvas-like feature called Engagement Studio. Here, you can create drip email marketing campaigns using three elements: actions, triggers, and rules.
You can have up to 10 scheduled and active repeating programs at a time.
Source: Pardot
You also get some building blocks to get started and create your own automation engines.
A key advantage is the ability to test your program before activating it. You can see how prospects move through emails based on actions and logic, testing all possible combinations before going live.
Pardot’s email builder allows you to:
Create your own template.
Import a template from a third-party builder (replace existing HTML code).
Edit an existing template.
Note that all options require knowledge of HTML and some CSS, as there’s no drag-and-drop functionality yet.
Source: Pardot
Pardot is developing a new “Lightning Email Builder” to improve mobile responsiveness, templates, and potentially include drag-and-drop functionality.
If you want to preview an email before sending, you can send a test email or perform a rendering test (available for Pro and Ultimate editions only).
Pardot’s lead scoring assigns values to prospects to indicate interest level. Higher scores represent stronger interest. You can segment audiences (highly engaged, moderately engaged, or not engaged) to tailor communication.
You can also use scoring to nurture colder leads through drip campaigns. Default scores are assigned to activities (e.g., 50 points for form submissions), but you can customize these.
Source: Pardot
Source: Pardot
Pardot's Pricing:
Pardot’s pricing starts at $1,250 per month. While reasonable for a powerful automation tool, advanced analytics and A/B testing are only available in higher plans. Add-ons such as Salesforce Engage or AI-driven recommendations are available at an additional cost.
Source: Pardot
Mailchimp has served both beginners and enterprises for 18+ years. Its refined interface, template system, and reporting capabilities reflect years of iteration and user feedback.
Mailchimp's Email Builder
Mailchimp’s builder is easy to use and requires no HTML knowledge.
You’ll find five main template categories:
Layouts (Featured & Basic): Start with a structure and customize.
Themes: Pre-defined, editable templates.
Saved Templates: Templates you created or imported.
Campaigns: Past campaign designs.
Code your own: Create templates from scratch using HTML.
All templates are mobile-friendly.
Mailchimp's Layouts:
Source: Mailchimp
Mailchimp's Themes:
Source: Mailchimp
Mailchimp's Campaign: 
Source: Mailchimp
Source: Mailchimp
All categories support drag-and-drop editing, except coded templates. Mailchimp offers 13 functional blocks for text, images, social icons, videos, and buttons.
Mailchimp's Reporting: Each campaign report in Mailchimp will give you an overview of results on different metrics (open rate, unsubscribe, bounces, etc.).
Source: Mailchimp
In addition to this, you can also view more details under different tabs - activity, links, social performance, eCommerce purchases, conversations, and analytics.
Source: Mailchimp
There is also a built-in sharing tool that allows you to share your campaign report with colleagues of clients.
Mailchimp's Integrations:
In an enterprise space, as your requirements are diverse, you might need to use tools outside of your email marketing platform.
So for the functions that MailChimp doesn’t provide on its own platform, it helps you to integrate with third-party tools, easily.
For example, you can integrate PayPal with Mailchimp and import contacts of everyone who buys using your PayPal into your email marketing ecosystem. Or you can create sophisticated forms and quizzes for lead generation, sales, and client onboarding on Type form & integrate with your Mailchimp account.
Source: Mailchimp
Source: Mailchimp For some of the websites, Mailchimp is a default option for email marketing integration (e.g. Shopify, Squarespace). In case you want some custom integration options, you can always outsource to Polish software developers or specialists from other international IT hubs.
Mailchimp's Pricing:
Mailchimp’s pricing is based on a combination of the number of contacts and the level of features you want to access. So if you have high customers or need advanced features, you will have to go for higher-priced plans.
And, do note that you will be charged for Subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed contacts because Mailchimp believes that they are still in your ecosystem & you can reach them via social media retargeting, etc.
ActiveCampaign provides email marketing, automation, and CRM all in one so that you can manage the customer experience from just one platform.
ActiveCampaign's Automation:
For creating automation, they provide an easy to use flowchart system that is pretty intuitive. If you want to add any element, you just use a drag-and-drop builder. You can get started on basic automation and drip campaigns by using pre-built automation templates and customize according to your needs.
Soruce: ActiveCampaign
With the Automation Map feature, you can view how different automation are connected to each other. This way you can see which marketing gaps to fill or where to simplify the process. When you edit one automation, you don’t have to guess which other automation it might affect. You can analyze the consequences and make a decision. You can also see high-level reports on how each automation is performing.
ActiveCampaign's List Management:
ActiveCampaign’s list management features are also impressive. You can segment contacts via custom fields (which are contact fields that include additional data about the contact, e.g. location or interests, etc.). Tags and custom fields can be added or removed via automation.
Source: ActiveCampaign
For enterprise plans, you can add as many users as needed (without any additional cost) and change their access at any time from the admin panel.
ActiveCampaign's Email builder:
ActiveCampaign provides a basic drag-and-drop email builder. You can also code your own template using HTML and CSS. You get 30 pre-designed template options to get started
Source: ActiveCampaign
One thing that’s good about their email builder is that you can create as many columns as you want & even adjust the column size.
Once you have built a template, you can use it for your broadcast campaigns and even for automation.
ActiveCampaign's Pricing:
ActiveCampaign’s pricing is based on a combination of the number of contacts and kind of features you need. via GIPHY
ActiveCampaign doesn’t charge you for unsubscribed, duplicates or unconfirmed.
SendX is an all-in-one cloud-based email marketing software. Their pricing really hits the sweet spot & 24x7 customer support (through email) is something you don’t find with other platforms unless you choose a ridiculously high priced plan.
SendX's WYSIWYG Editor:
SendX provides a simple WYSIWYG editor where you can design professional-looking emails without having to struggle with any HTML coding. Every element - buttons, image placeholders, text boxes, etc. can be dragged-and-dropped. It offers full customization as you can experiment with colors and layouts to design beautiful emails even if you don't know HTML.
Source: SendX
SendX's Instant preview for desktop and mobile:
You won’t have to guess how your email will exactly look like on a mobile screen or desktop because SendX WYSIWYG Editor shows an instant preview of your email newsletter for mobile and desktop screen sizes.
SendX's Pre-built email templates:
You will get access to free premium responsive email templates for use in your newsletter, sales, holidays, or update campaigns. You can check out the template library here.
Source: SendX
You also get access to more than half a million (yes, half a million!) royalty-free stock photos so you will never run out of creatives and won’t have to chase any photographer or graphic designers to get your email out.
SendX's Automation:
The automation features in SendX lets you create a series of emails that are sent to subscribers triggered by a specific time, activity, or event
Some examples are:
1) Starting a series on onboarding emails when a user buys a subscription
2) Congratulating a user for completing a milestone in the user journey
3) Rewarding with offers on cart abandonment
4) Stopping a campaign on receiving the required action or reply.Source: SendX
SendX offers a number of in-built triggers and other settings, so you can quickly find and create the right campaign for your business needs. You can also create custom automation from scratch.
Source: SendX
Free Migration to SendX:
If you are looking to migrate from your existing platform, SendX will do it for free if you! Their instant customer support team will be able to help you no matter the size of migration or the time zone of your country.
SendX's Pricing:
Without cutting corners on features and support, SendX has been able to keep their pricing affordable and simple. You get charged based on the number of subscribers only. Unlike other email marketing software where responsive and modern templates are behind higher paywalls, with SendX, you get access to everything even if you are on your free trial. Even after the free trial ends, you can access all of the editor functionalities, templates, 24x7 customer support (through email) for as low as $7.49/mo. If you don’t find your desired pricing here, you can always contact them for a custom quote.
If you are an enterprise looking to leverage the best features of email marketing platform (A/B Testing, Integrations, Popup banners and so much more…), but without burning a hole in your pocket or trying to train your team on complex systems, I would suggest trying SendX.
SendX offers a 14-day free trial before you commit and signing up doesn’t require any credit card. You get access to everything from day one & can also test their customer support before signing up for an affordable paid plan. Check it out!.
