Top 20 Marketing Automation Tools for 2023

If you don’t use marketing automation platforms, then you and your team are putting in twice the effort for half the benefits.

A well-selected marketing automation software can help with everything, from improving customer journeys to sending personalized messages and even gathering more data about your audience.

Before you navigate the marketing automation landscape on your own, we’ve selected 20 of the best automation tools you’ll want to check out.

What Are Marketing Automation Platforms?

Marketing automation tools are software that helps automate many repetitive tasks your team does.

There are a lot of different types of automation tools, such as:

• Email and SMS automation
• Automation workflow
• Marketing analytics automation
• CRM automation
• Social media automation

In most cases, these solutions combine several approaches to offer companies a more powerful tool.

Great marketing automation tools can help a company with:

Gathering More Data

Marketing automation tools can pull user data from most, if not all, your channels.

Seeing all this information in one place enables you to make data-based decisions across all stages of your sales funnel and overall marketing strategy. 

Through data, you can segment your audience, build highly targeted campaigns, close more deals, and create more effective ad audiences.

Reducing Costs

The biggest benefit of marketing automation tools is that it frees up the marketing department from manually performing certain tasks.

These tools allow you to trigger actions based on customer data or behavior. For example, they can enable you to send customers a promo email on their birthday, introduce new customers in an automation sequence, and recover abandoned carts.

With marketing automation software, your team only needs to spend time setting up the criteria and messages.

The rest is performed by the tool.

Centralizing Marketing Efforts

Marketers use a lot of tools to sell goods and services.

But the more tools you use, the harder it is to keep track of everything. Many marketing automation tools go beyond automating repetitive tasks and provide powerful extra features in one interface.

From social media management to creating landing pages, contact forms, and even managing contacts, these automation solutions can provide a centralized hub for your marketing strategy. 

Increasing the ROI

Automation tools provide efficiency and reduce costs. As a result, it can become cheaper to get a potential customer to convert.

This helps improve the company’s ROI through several methods, from lead generation to better lead nurturing sequences, increased marketing efficiency, automated email campaigns, and more.

20 Best Marketing Automation Tools

Now that you know what marketing automation tools are, it’s time to meet some of the best solutions on the market.

We’ve selected 20 marketing automation tools based on several business needs, marketing goals, and budgets:

Marketing Automation Tool	Free account	Free trial / Demo	Price	Best for
Marketo	No	Demo	Custom Pricing	Top Marketing Automation Tool
ActiveCampaign	No	14-day free trial	Starting at $29/month, paid yearly	Runner-Up
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement	No	Demo	Starting at $1,250/month	Large Businesses
GetResponse	Yes	30-day free trial	Starting at $59/month	Customer Engagement
Keap	No	14-day free trial	Starting at $189 /month	Lead Capturing
HubSpot	Yes	No	Starting at $20/month	Inbound Marketing
Sendinblue	Yes	–	Starting at $25/month	Free Tool
Ontraport	No	14-day free trial	Starting at $24/month	Social Media Marketing
Mailchimp	Yes	30-day free trial	Starting at $13/month	Customer Journeys
Omnisend	Yes	Demo	Starting at $16/month	Ecommerce Businesses
Ortto	No	14-day free trial	Starting at $99/month	Audience Segmentation
EngageBay	Yes		Starting at $14.99/user/month	Small to Medium Businesses
Drip	No	14-day free trial	Starting at $39/month	Targeted and Drip Campaigns
Iterable	No	Demo	Custom pricing	Growth and Analytics
Campaigner	No	Free Demo and 30-day free trial	Starting at $59/month	Email Marketing Automation
Customer.io	No	14-day free trial	Starting at $100/month	Third Party Integrations
ConvertKit	Yes	14-day free trial	Starting at $9/month	Beginners
Mautic	Free Software	–	–	Open Source Marketing Automation Tool
Trapica	No	Demo	Custom Pricing	AI-Powered Automation
Buffer	Yes	14-day free trial	Starting at $6/month	Social Media Publishing

1. Marketo – Overall Best Marketing Automation Software

Marketo is Adobe’s marketing automation software designed for lead management, cross-channel engagement, content intelligence, and more.

The platform enables you to find your ideal customers for any marketing campaign and helps track its performance with in-depth analytics. 

Through Marketo, you can connect with customers via email, social media, messaging tools, or the web.

The tool also uses data and AI technology to automate many marketing tasks and workflows, saving the team significant time when creating customer profiles, and segmenting their audiences.

Marketo Overview

• Customized pricing
• AI-built predictive audiences and segments
• Lead nurturing across all marketing channels
• Personalization through content triggering and active listening features
• Marketing automation workflows

Pros

• Fully automated platform
• Works both for B2B and B2C businesses
• Many features for growth and increasing revenue
• Highly intuitive platform
• Easy setup

Cons

• The landing page builder could be better

2. ActiveCampaign – Runner-Up Marketing Automation Platform

ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation software combines marketing and email automation into one interface. 

However, if you’re also looking for a new CRM, ActiveCampaign allows you to select the marketing automation+CRM plan in the Bundles section, which is more affordable.

On the automation tool side, ActiveCampaign is best for companies that rely more on email.

You can set up welcome emails that trigger certain actions, like website visits or add to cart.

You can also build a multi-channel marketing campaign with this tool. 

ActiveCampgin will pull data from several sources (website, social media, and paid advertising), then use automation to segment your audiences.

Then, you can set up highly targeted email campaigns.

ActiveCampaign Overview

• Pricing starts at $29 per month
• Site and goals tracking
• A/B testing 
• Customer lifecycle tracking
• Sign-up forms
• Lead scoring
• Email marketing automation
• Landing pages

Pros

• Great automation tool for individuals and small to medium businesses
• Has one of the best email deliverability out there
• CRM integration
• Over 800 third-party integrations
• Versatile email builder

Cons

• Needs a Plus plan or higher for the more advanced features

3. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement – Best for Large Businesses

Salesforce is best known for its powerful CRM and sales solutions, but don’t discount its marketing automation tools.

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement allows you to automate your marketing efforts across every channel, create custom emails, and build a highly targeted customer journey.

Salesforce has some impressive audience segmentation capabilities and powerful reporting to keep track of your performance.

Salesforce Overview

• Pricing starts at $1,250 per month
• Email tools
• Lead management
• Social media marketing
• Audience segmentation
• Loyalty management

Pros

• AI-integrated technology
• Intuitive platform
• Integrations with social media platforms and ecommerce sites like Shopify

Cons

• Expensive

4. GetResponse – Best Marketing Automation Tool for Customer Engagement

GetResponse is an inbound marketing software with powerful automation capabilities. 

The automation software lets you visualize the customer journey by creating workflows based on your user’s behaviors and actions.

Its email tools feature a drag-and-drop builder to quickly set up messages for newsletters, abandoned cart sequences, and other automated messages.

GetResponse also allows a lot of integrations, which you can browse on this dedicated page to see if you can connect any of your existing tools.

Using its advanced API, you can also create your integrations if necessary.

While there’s a free account, it only includes some email marketing and landing page-building features. The automation tools are only available starting with the “Marketing Automation” plan.

GetResponse Overview

• Pricing starts at $59 per month
• Landing pages
• Website Builder
• Audience segmentation
• Web push notifications
• Email marketing automation
• Autoresponders 

Pros

• Visual workflows
• Lots of free features for email marketing campaigns and building landing pages
• Useful automation templates for abandoned carts and other events
• Intuitive platform

Cons

• Automation features aren’t available in the free plan

5. Keap – Best Marketing Automation Tool for Lead Capturing

Keap doesn’t help you find prospective clients.

But once you do acquire a lead, Keap’s powerful marketing automation tools help you quickly move them along your pipeline.

The platform is designed to support both sales and marketing teams, nurture leads, book meetings, send automatic reminders, and even push upsells or new offers.

Its advanced automation builder goes one step further and provides additional personalization capabilities.

Users can use the simple drag-and-drop builder to create custom automation that triggers based on any goal they want.

The entire ecosystem is optimized to help small businesses grow. Keap plans also include additional services like CRM, email campaigns, and more. 

Keap Overview

• Pricing starts at $189 per month (for 1,500 contacts and 2 users)
• Email tools
• Sales automation
• Marketing automation
• Phone line for US and Canada
• Automated lead capture and follow-up
• Appointment booking
• Payments, invoices, and quotes

Pros

• Comprehensive ecosystem for small online businesses
• Easy setup and onboarding
• Great personalization features
• Many third-party integration options

Cons

• Somewhat expensive

6. HubSpot – Best Inbound Marketing Automation Tool

If it’s inbound marketing you need, then HubSpot will deliver some of the most powerful marketing automation tools on the market.

This solution includes inbound marketing automation software, email tools, contact management, and social media ads in one interface.

The platform allows you to create custom triggers and visual workflows to build a highly personalized marketing automation strategy.

HubSpot has a free account, too, but you won’t get many features in it. However, the advanced tools are available in the Starter package.

Hubspot Overview

• Pricing starts at $20 per month
• Email marketing
• Workflow automation
• Lead nurturing
• CRM integration
• Inbound Marketing 

Pros

• User-friendly marketing platform
• All-in-one solution
• Free CRM software
• Good social media management features

Cons

• Not ideal if you’re looking for a point solution

7. Sendinblue – Best Free Marketing Automation Tool

Sendinblue’s marketing automation software helps both marketing and sales teams automate certain tasks in their workflow.

You can set up your own rules and conditions that trigger specific actions, such as sending emails or SMS messages.

The solution allows both simple automation actions like welcome emails and more advanced ones.

You can track customers throughout the sales funnels through the lead scoring features and create an onboarding workflow that adapts to specific behaviors or needs of the customer.

It’s also worth mentioning that Sendinblue includes these features in its free account. This can be useful for small companies looking for an affordable solution.

The free account comes with a 2000-contact and 300 emails a day limit.

Sendinblue Overview

• Free account includes automation tools (limited daily emails and contacts)
• Automation workflow builder
• Email marketing
• SMS marketing
• Audience segmentation
• Landing pages
• Sign-up forms
• Facebook ads

Pros

• A/B testing
• Drag and drop builder
• Intuitive marketing platform
• Digital advertising features
• Simple setup
• Lots of third-party integrations
• Low-cost plans

Cons

• Limited pre-built template gallery

8. Ontraport – Best for Social Media Marketing

Ontraport provides marketing automation software that plays in the big leagues but without the high costs that only enterprise businesses can afford.

It works by gathering as much customer data as possible, which then empowers marketing and sales teams to make better decisions. 

Through its automation software, you can segment your audiences, build marketing campaigns through a drag-and-drop builder, and send cross-channel messages.

You can also use Ontraport to capture leads through its forms tool and build a Custom Audience on Facebook for advertising purposes.

Ontraport Overview

• Pricing starts at $24 per month
• Drag-and-drop automation tool
• Tracked trigger links
• Split automation
• CRM
• Webpage builder

Pros

• Highly affordable marketing automation tool
• All-in-one marketing, CRM, and sales system
• Enables data-driven decision making 
• Large range of ecommerce marketing features

Cons

• Slightly steep learning curve for using the tool’s full features

9. Mailchimp – Best for Customer Journeys

Mailchimp is widely used for its email tools, but it also provides one of the best marketing automation software, called Customer Journeys.

With it, companies can create drag-and-drop workflows, manage personalized paths for their consumers, and send them timely emails that increase the likelihood of a conversion.

Mailchimp is best used if you already rely heavily on email marketing.

However, you can integrate this tool with a plethora of other solutions, such as Shopify, Yelp, or even Canva, to create a more comprehensive tool.

Mailchimp Overview

• Starting at $13 per month
• Email marketing tools
• Forms and landing pages
• A/B testing
• Campaign manager

Pros

• 30-day free trial
• Over 300 integrations
• Lots of pre-built templates for emails and customer journey
• Intuitive marketing platform
• Thorough reporting

Cons

• Free plan is limited

10. Omnisend – Best Marketing Automation Platform for Ecommerce Businesses

Omnisend is a marketing automation software optimized for ecommerce marketing.

You can send personalized messages automatically via email, SMS, and web push notifications.

The tool includes many useful templates for setting up quick email sequences, such as welcome series, abandoned cart recovery, or reminders.

You can integrate Omnisend with your Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce store and automatically pull product information to include in your emails.

This is especially useful when creating follow-up emails, such as for upsells or cross-sells.

Omnisend Overview

• Free account (capped at 500 emails per month)
• Email marketing automation
• SMS automation
• Pre-built ecommerce workflows
• Custom events
• Automation splits
• Form builder
• Marketing campaign management 

Pros

• Free accounts include many useful marketing automation tools
• Intuitive and user-friendly platform
• Great ecommerce tools and integration capabilities

Cons

• Limited email templates compared to its competitors

11. Ortto – Best Marketing Automation Tool for Audience Segmentation

Ortto’s automation tool is powered by customer data.

Its integrated data platform connects all the information you have about your customers into one place.

Then, you can segment your audiences and set up custom events and journeys based on their characteristics or specific actions.

Moreover, with this tool, you can automate both email and SMS campaigns, sales, and marketing workflows and get in-depth analytics to help you understand your customers better. 

Ortto Overview

• Pricing starts at $99 per month
• Data platform
• Email marketing automation tools
• SMS marketing
• In-app messages
• Forms, pop-ups, and surveys
• Engagement scoring
• Multilingual marketing

Pros

• 14-day free trial
• Includes automation templates
• Many integrations options
• Enables collaboration between team members

Cons

• Not the most affordable
• No integrated CRM

12. EngageBay – Best Marketing Automation Tool for Small to Medium Businesses

EngageBay is an intuitive marketing automation platform specifically created to help small and medium-sized businesses.

The automation software comes with a plethora of useful features that can save marketing and sales team time: drip campaigns, email marketing, message personalization, predictive lead scoring, and more.

You can use the drag-and-drop builder to create custom landing pages to support your marketing campaigns and even split-test them.

EngageBay Overview

• Pricing starts at $0 per month (capped at 250 contacts)
• Autoresponders
• Email marketing
• Landing pages
• CRM
• Lead scoring
• Automated workflows

Pros

• Easy-to-use platform
• Combines CRM, marketing automation, and sales automation tools in one place
• Many third-party integrations
• Simple email template builder

Cons

• Both Free and Basic plans allow a small number of contacts (250 and 500, respectively)

13. Drip – Best for Drip Campaigns

Drip is one of the most popular marketing automation platforms among ecommerce businesses.

It gathers customer data from any marketing channel in a single place, enabling you to make data-based decisions about all your sales efforts.

Drip provides great user segmentation features to create highly targeted drip campaigns and automates a lot of marketing workflows to save time.

You can easily split-test your efforts to see which performs better and view in-depth analytics reports to make a good decision.

Drip Overview

• Pricing starts at $39 per month (capped at 2,500 contacts)
• Cross-channel marketing
• Onsite marketing
• Drip campaigns
• Email marketing
• Social retargeting for Facebook and Instagram

Pros

• 14-day free trial
• Customizable forms
• Lots of ecommerce integrations
• Visual email builder
• Sub-accounts for managing multiple websites

Cons

• Slightly complex marketing automation tools, which require a bit of practice

14. Iterable – Best for Growth and Analytics

Iterable is one of the best marketing automation tools for growth.

Its goal is to provide companies with the information they need to send highly-personalized marketing messages to their customers as if they’re discussing one-on-one.

It’s great for cross-channel marketing by combining both email and SMS. Through the tool, you can also manage web push notifications and social media and send in-app messages.

It’s one of the most data-heavy automation tools we’ve seen and gathers information about users in real-time.

Using all this data, Iterable can create custom marketing campaigns automatically.

Iterable Overview

• Custom pricing
• Growth marketing
• Email marketing
• Mobile marketing
• Direct mail marketing 

Pros

• A data-driven approach to marketing
• Great message personalization capabilities
• In-depth analytics 

Cons

• No free trial (free demo available) 

15. Campaigner – Best for Email Marketing Automation

Campaigner is one of the most affordable email marketing tools considering its advanced marketing automation solutions.

It provides segmentation features, landing page builders, and great conversion tracking to get all the information surrounding your successful sales.

Users can automate marketing workflows and trigger email messages based on the specific actions of their customers. These efforts can also be extended to SMS.

Campaigner also provides personalization options through its dynamic content feature, where the emails are customized based on each contact in your list.

Campaigner Overview

• Pricing starts at $59 per month
• Landing pages
• Social integrations
• Facebook audience builder
• Email marketing
• Ecommerce integrations

Pros

• 30-day free trial
• Over 900 responsive templates
• Great audience segmentation features

Cons

• The user interface could be improved

16. Customer.io – Best for Third-party Integrations

Customer.io is a great marketing automation tool if your business already uses a lot of third-party apps daily.

It has an impressive integrations catalog that includes Instagram Ads, Google Ads, Shopify, Asana, and more.

With Customer.io, you can create automated campaigns and broadcasts via email, SMS, push notifications, and in-app messages. 

It also provides many audience segmentation options to help you create highly targeted campaigns.

Customer.io’s suite of features seems appropriate for every stage of the sales funnel. And with lots of integrations available, you can turn it into a highly custom marketing automation solution.

Customer.io Overview

• Pricing starts at $100 per month (capped at 5,000 contacts, and additional contacts cost $0.009 each)
• Visual workflow builder
• Email marketing
• SMS marketing
• Ad Audience Syncing 

Pros

• Intuitive visual builder
• Enhanced third-party integration abilities
• Data-driven segments
• Easy to set up campaigns for email and SMS

 Cons

• No free trial

17. ConvertKit – Best Automation Tool for Beginners

ConvertKit is the best beginner-friendly marketing automation platform.

The software was primarily developed for bloggers and content creators, though small businesses will also get everything they need on the platform.

You can create visual email sequences that help engage your subscribers and grow your email list with a plethora of extra features like building landing pages or forms.

ConvertKit enables lots of useful integrations, but you can extend its gallery if you use Zapier. 

The tool isn’t as advanced when compared to others on this list, but the simplicity of ConvertKit is its most prominent feature.

With a straightforward array of tools and a highly intuitive user interface, it’s easy to get ConvertKit up and running.

ConvertKit Overview

• Free account available, capped at 300 subscribers (marketing automation is only included starting with the $9 per month plan)
• Landing pages
• Broadcasts
• Audience tagging and segmentation
• Visual automation builders
• Email marketing

Pros

• Highly affordable marketing automation tool
• User-friendly interface
• Straightforward workflow automation
• Simple and fast setup

Cons

• Lacks more advanced features

18. Mautic – Best Open Source Marketing Automation Tool

Mautic is an open-source marketing automation tool that helps companies deliver multi-channel campaigns across all their digital assets.

You can use it to create personalized user experiences and track customer journeys.

Mautic offers lots of useful features like website tracking, landing pages, email marketing, and more in a single interface.

Using open-source SaaS can come with lots of benefits, such as customization options and better integration capabilities.

However, Mautic has a steep learning curve, and it may be too much for small businesses that need a ready-to-use solution.

Mautic Overview

• Free open-source software
• Email marketing
• Lead generation
• Website tracking
• Automated workflows
• Landing pages

Pros

• Highly customizable
• Great suite of marketing automation features
• Can be integrated with any website and tool

Cons

• Must be installed on a Virtual Private Server or a Dedicated Server
• Complex tool

19. Trapica – Best AI-Powered Automation

Trapica aims to give busy marketers a break.

The marketing automation platform uses AI technology to deliver a fully autonomous service.

Trapica will find the best audience to spend your social media budget on and optimize the campaigns at every level based on your marketing objective.

Additionally, Trapica offers a deeper look into your social media and advertising audiences and improves targeting to ensure your ads always reach users at the best possible time to score a conversion.

Trapica Overview

• Custom pricing
• Campaign automation
• Budget optimization
• Ad analytics and insights
• Performance forecast
• Market research
• Split testing

Pros

• Easy-to-use platform
• Powerful AI-enabled ad solution
• In-depth ad data and analytics

Cons

• Takes time to get results (the tool needs enough conversions events to learn what works and what doesn’t)

20. Buffer – Best Social Media Publishing

Buffer is a tool designed to help brands build a stronger audience on social media organically.

The tool allows you to curate your content and schedule it across multiple channels. It automates all your social media publishing needs.

Moreover, the Buffer AI assistant can further save the marketing department time.

It can generate new post ideas, translate and repurpose old content into different variants, and A/B your posts.

Buffer Overview

• Free account (capped at 3 channels and 10 posts per channel scheduled in the queue)
• Automated social media scheduling
• Landing page builder
• AI assistant
• Free marketing tools, such as Instagram Stories Creator

Pros

• 14-day free trial for paid plans
• Integrated photo editor
• Intrusive platform
• Connects with all major social media channels

Cons

• No email, SMS, or other marketing automation features

Choosing the Best Marketing Automation Software

There are lots of players in the marketing automation space, so you have lots of options available.

But not all these options will suit your company. When looking for good marketing software, you should consider:

Your Unique Marketing Automation Needs

A small marketing agency will have different expectations from a marketing automation platform than enterprise businesses.

To make the best choice, you’ll need to use your business profile and see whether the software provides the right type of services.

You can consider:

• Business type (B2B or B2C)
• The types of automation you need
• Marketing and sales department size
• Budget
• Your primary channel (email, social media, SMS, etc.)
• Other important factors for your business

While it’s next to impossible to find marketing automation software that ticks all the boxes, look for solutions that get as close as possible to what your business needs.

Third-Party Integrations

So the tool you found doesn’t tick all the boxes after all; but, it’s still a decent solution for the company.

In that case, look at what types of third-party apps you can integrate with the marketing tool.

Integrations allow you to personalize your experience when using these tools by combining the benefits of two or more platforms.

Moreover, if you already use certain tools, such as a project management tool, it helps to know your new automation software can integrate with them.

User-Friendliness 

A tool can only be useful if your marketing and sales team can use it.

While most modern software is designed with the user in mind, don’t take this for granted.

More complex solutions might present bigger learning curves or could even create unnecessary hurdles in your marketing process.

Consider tools with free demos or free trials to give yourself a chance to see whether it’s suitable for your team. 

Software Ecosystem

Is the marketing tool a point solution, or is it part of a bigger marketing ecosystem?

While neither is wrong, consider your business needs again.

Your business might benefit more from an advanced tool that provides other features to complement automation, such as in-depth analytics or social media scheduling.

Additionally, some tools like HubSpot don’t work well as point solutions at all, usually because they’re not designed to be one.

They work best when used in addition to the other services provided by the developer.

Customer Support

Hopefully, you’ll choose a marketing automation tool for your team and use it perfectly from day one. 

But in case it doesn’t, it’s worth looking for developers that provide quality customer support. 

Sometimes, you need to get in touch with these teams quickly to resolve a bug or even request a special integration.

It’s good to know that the marketing automation tool comes with helpful customer service when these situations pop up.

Wrapping Up

The best marketing automation tools can be a game-changer.

They directly tie into how well a company converts potential customers, retains them, and increases its profits.

But what the “right marketing automation software” looks like is for you to decide.

By taking into account your specific business needs, you can determine which of these 20 marketing automation software meets your expectations best.

Once you do that, it’s all a matter of getting to know the tool and setting up your first automation.

From then on, the tool has it covered.