Free Marketing Software Shortlist
Here’s the list of the best tools that I’ll cover in this article.
- Canva - Best for creating marketing graphics
- Google Analytics - Best for website intelligence
- HubSpot - Best for unification of marketing & CRM
- Hotjar - Best for website heatmaps
- Twilio - Best for SMS/text marketing
- Buffer - Best for social media scheduling
- MailChimp - Best for form building & surveys
- Hootsuite - Best for social listening & monitoring
- Crowdfire - Best for curating content for your feed
- SumoMe - Best for email marketing
Almost every business has a long list of marketing tasks like these that they dread working on all day, week, or month. When it looks like you need a tool for every aspect of your marketing, your store’s budget starts to curl into a ball and hide in the corner after seeing the monthly spend.
I have good news for you! Plenty of free tools are available for you to use and effectively manage your budget. Either through free trials, free base plans, or completely free software. In this article, I compare and review the best free marketing software on the market, providing detailed overviews, best use cases, key features, and pricing details.
What Is Marketing Software?
Marketing software refers to a broad category of tools and applications designed to assist businesses in planning, executing, and analyzing their marketing activities. It encompasses various software solutions that automate and streamline marketing processes, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, email marketing platforms, social media management tools, design tools, content management systems (CMS), marketing automation software, and data analytics platforms.
Overviews Of The 10 Best Free Marketing Software
This is my review of the best free marketing software. I included what's free in each plan so you know what you're in for.
1. Canva - Best for creating marketing graphics
Canva is a highly popular graphic design platform. Before the platform, businesses relied on teams of designers or freelance graphic artists to create all their visual assets. Canva allows non-designers to create high-quality graphics for various social media platforms; and their paid ads, blogs, email, and print ads.
Why I Picked Canva: Canva is an excellent option if you don’t have the skills or experience with software such as Photoshop or Illustrator. The massive variety of optimized sized and built-in templates makes it quick and easy for anyone to create any graphics they want. You can also use the platform to collaborate with your team or clients by sharing a link for them to view the graphic and make any necessary edits.
Canva Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include a vast library of templates and design elements (25,000+ free templates, 100+ asset types), including graphics, images, fonts, and customizable layouts. You can create and design a variety of marketing materials, such as social media graphics, presentations, infographics, and posters. Everything is drag-and-drop, point-and-click, so you can adjust assets with much more ease than a platform like Photoshop.
Integrations include DataPocket, Wedia, Flowcode QR, Widen DAM, SharePoint, Dybder, Brandfolder, Smartmockups, Publuu Flipbooks, and other options centered around storing and sharing graphic assets.
What's Free: 25,000 free templates, 100+ design types, 1 million assets and graphics, and 5GB storage.
PROS
- Constantly updating their assets & templates
- Easily upload your own images & assets
- Valuable to every business type & size
CONS
- Nicest templates tend to be paid-only
- Level of design control is limited
2. Google Analytics - Best for website intelligence
Google Analytics helps your digital marketing team understand the best messages and channels that provide their ecommerce store with the best results. Google Analytics can give your teams insights that can help everyone understand your site’s users and efficiently evaluate your product’s performance. Small and large stores can use the software’s testing and conversion tools to create better customer experiences and maximize their digital strategy.
Why I Picked Google Analytics: Google Analytics provides your business with almost everything regarding business intelligence and data visualization. For example, in the software’s dashboard, you can monitor the average amount of time your visitors spend on your site. You can also see who’s on your site at the time you are on your dashboard in real time. Use this data to see where your visitors are coming from and how to get them to keep coming back.
Google Analytics Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include comprehensive tracking capabilities provide detailed insights into website traffic, user behavior, and conversion tracking, enabling marketing teams to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and website performance. It allows segmentation of data based on various dimensions, such as demographics or traffic sources, providing deeper audience insights. It also offers real-time reporting, goal tracking, and advanced analytics features like funnel visualization and attribution modeling.
Integrations include Shopify, WordPress, Facebook, Zendesk, and Marketo, plus others, as well as additional Google solutions like Google Ads, Google Cloud, Google Play, and Google Ad Manager.
What's Free: Google Analytics is totally free to use. You'll have access to dashbaords, data analytics, data sorting, and more.
PROS
- Tons of ways to sort and segment audience data
- Plugs in to any website easily
- Works in tandem with other free Google tools
CONS
- Steep learning curve for new users
- Frequent updates means constant re-training
3. HubSpot - Best for unification of marketing & CRM
HubSpot Marketing Hub provides all the marketing tools you need and your data in one platform. It can help you save time and get the vital context required to give your customers a personalized experience to attract and convert customers. Your team can use the HubSpot Marketing Hub as a part of their CRM platform to help you use this data in other business functions.
Why I Picked HubSpot Marketing Hub: HubSpot Marketing Hub helps you gain significant information about your e-mail leads. The pop-up tool collects e-mail addresses from your site and gives your team vital data, such as the pages these leads visited. The hub can also show you which of your web pages are converting at higher rates compared to others.
HubSpot Marketing Hub Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include these features enable companies to automate marketing tasks, nurture leads, engage with customers, and measure campaign performance, all within a single platform. You can also tap into their free CRM, which offers a centralized database for managing customer interactions and tracking leads.
Integrations include Wistia, Databox, Seventh Sense, Zerys, PandaDoc, Aircall, Oz Content, Kixie, Gatsby.ai, Merlin Guides, and other software options.
What's Free: Send up to 2000 e-mails and have 5 active contact lists.
PROS
- Access to multiple Hubspot platforms for free
- Comes with blog, email, and live chat
- Offers basic ad management
CONS
- Simple website audiences only for ad management
- Free chat will have Hubspot branding
4. Hotjar - Best for website heatmaps
Hotjar is a behavior analytics that can help your team see what your website visitors are looking at on your store. The platform provides you with product experience insights to show you what they feel strongly about your site. Your product teams can use this information to develop and deliver real value to them.
Why I Picked Hotjar: Hotjar is a powerful tool that can be highly valuable for marketing teams. It offers features such as heatmaps, session recordings, and user feedback, which allow marketing teams to gain deep insights into user behavior and preferences. By analyzing heatmaps, teams can understand how users interact with their website, which sections receive the most attention, and identify areas for optimization. Session recordings provide a visual playback of user sessions, enabling marketers to see firsthand how visitors navigate their websites.
Hotjar Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include click maps, heat maps, scroll maps, and visitor recordings. These let you see exactly what visitors are doing on your site, where they click, and how far they scroll. The platform also gives you options to help you analyze your sales funnel. You can also insert surveys and messages to show your site’s visitors.
Integrations include Slack, Optimizely, Hubspot, Shopify, and WordPress, plus others if you link up with Zapier, though that may require a separate paid plan.
What's Free: Access to 1050 sessions/month.
PROS
- Great for customer feedback & behavior analytics
- Helps with UI and DX improvements on-page
- Track when/where CTA button & link clicks happen
CONS
- May slow website while installed
- Dashboard somewhat confusing
5. Twilio - Best for SMS/text marketing
Twilio is a cloud communications platform that enables businesses to integrate messaging, voice, and video capabilities into their applications, enhancing customer engagement and communication experiences. They do SMS, MMS, email, and call-based customer communications.
Why I Picked Twilio: Twilio excels in providing SMS marketing and customer support solutions by offering a robust and scalable platform that enables businesses to seamlessly integrate SMS functionality into their marketing and support workflows. With Twilio, businesses can easily send and receive SMS messages programmatically, leveraging its APIs and developer-friendly tools. This allows for personalized and targeted SMS marketing campaigns, as well as efficient customer support interactions through two-way messaging. Twilio's platform also provides features like message templates, automated responses, and delivery tracking, ensuring reliable message delivery and enhancing the overall customer experience.
Twilio Standout Features and Integrations
Key features include a global carrier network, allowing businesses to reach customers across the globe reliably and efficiently. With its extensive coverage, businesses can engage with their customers on a global scale. Twilio provides a suite of developer-friendly APIs and tools, enabling businesses to easily integrate SMS functionality into their existing applications and systems. Twilio's platform supports a wide range of messaging types beyond standard SMS, including MMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger
Integrations include Microsoft Teams, Emotive, Gladly, Telemarketr, Iterable, Leanplum, Sprinklr, Fastcall, CallTracker, Meya, PagerDuty, PingPilot, VoiceBase, Freshworks, and many other apps. You can access their API for other integration options.
What's Free: 5000 free active hours.
PROS
- Holistic marketing solution
- Personalized campaigns along customer journey
- Tons of integrations options
CONS
- Convoluted trial & pricing structure
- Steep learning curve
6. Buffer - Best for social media scheduling
Buffer is a social media management platform that simplifies the scheduling, publishing, and analysis of social media content for businesses and individuals. The free plan also comes with a landing page builder and an AI assistant.
Why I Picked Buffer: Buffer is an efficient and user-friendly social media management platform that excels in social media scheduling. With Buffer, users can schedule posts across multiple social media platforms in advance, ensuring consistent and timely content delivery. Its intuitive interface allows users to easily create and organize their content, add images or videos, and select the desired posting schedule. Buffer also offers features like content curation, where users can discover and share relevant content from trusted sources within the platform. Additionally, Buffer provides analytics and insights to track post performance, engagement metrics, and audience growth.
Buffer Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include their Optimal Timing Tool analyzes the engagement patterns of your social media audience and suggests the most effective times to post. Buffer offers a social inbox feature that allows you to manage and respond to social media interactions from various platforms within a single interface.
Integrations include Canva, WordPress, Feedly, and Pocket. You can use Zapier to integrate Buffer with thousands of web applications, such as WordPress, Feedly, Google Sheets, Trello, and Googe Calendar.
What's Free: Connect up to 3 channels and schedule ahead to 30 posts. You also get 50 AI Credits.
PROS
- Can generate content ideas
- Comes with photo editor
- Simple UI/easy to use
CONS
- Does not connect to YouTube yet
- Hashtag manager is paid only
7. MailChimp - Best for form building & surveys
Mailchimp is an all-in-one email marketing platform that helps businesses create, send, and analyze email campaigns to engage with their audience and drive results.
Why I Picked Mailchimp: Mailchimp offers robust form building and customer survey features that allow businesses to gather valuable information from their audience. With Mailchimp's form builder, users can easily create custom forms and embed them on their website or landing pages to capture leads, newsletter sign-ups, or other marketing customer data. The form builder provides a user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop functionality, making it simple to customize the form's design and fields. Additionally, Mailchimp's customer survey feature enables businesses to create and distribute surveys to collect feedback, opinions, or preferences from their audience. Users can design surveys using pre-built templates, and responses are automatically collected and organized within the v platform for analysis.
Mailchimp Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include that Mailchimp now goes beyond email marketing and provides users with an all-in-one marketing platform. In addition to email campaigns, users can create landing pages, run social media ads, build customer journeys, and integrate with e-commerce platforms. This comprehensive suite of tools allows businesses to manage their marketing efforts from a single platform, saving time and effort while ensuring a cohesive and integrated approach.
Integrations include 300+ apps, like QuickBooks Online, Shopify, Stripe, Yelp for Business, LiveChat, SimpleTexting, Zendesk, WordPress, Mixpanel, and Firebase.
What's Free: 1 user account and 1000 email sends per month.
PROS
- All-in-one marketing platform
- 300+ Integrations
- Incl. form & landing page builders
CONS
- Only 1000 emails per month
- Customer support for 30 days only
8. Hootsuite - Best for social listening & monitoring
Hootsuite helps digital marketing teams schedule social media posts, monitor trends, and engage with audiences through various networks. Your teams can also access Hootsuite for expert certification, training, and coaching in social listening, customer care, and social commerce.
Why I Picked Hootsuite: When using Hootsuite, you can schedule social media posts across several networks, such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Your team can manage paid and social content to monitor customer conversations. The platform also has a calendar or post planner view to help you plan your content and see what posts need approval and which are rejected. Hootsuite allows teams to track campaigns through various pre-built report templates they can share with the rest of the company or clients.
Hootsuite Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include their social listening capabilities, allowing users to monitor mentions, hashtags, and conversations happening across social media platforms. Users can set up customized streams to track specific keywords or topics, enabling them to stay informed about industry trends, track brand sentiment, and engage with their audience effectively. This feature helps users gather valuable insights, identify opportunities for engagement, and proactively manage their online reputation.
Integrations include over 150 apps, such as Adobe Stock, Google My Business, WordPress, Canva, HubSpot, and ZenDesk. It also connects to over 35 social networks.
What's Free: 2 social accounts, 5 scheduled posts, and 1 user.
PROS
- Comprehensive social media management
- Team collaboration & workflow
- Social listening & analytics
CONS
- Sometimes scheduled posts don't launch
- Limit file size for uploading (no animations, etc.)
9. Crowdfire - Best for curating content for your feed
Crowdfire is a free social media marketing solution that connects to all the platforms you would expect: YouTube, WordPress, Shopify, Ebay, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Through Crowdfire, you can schedule social media posts, have topics and images recommended to you, gather relevant hashtags to your product, and track followers of your company online.
Why I Picked Crowdfire: Crowdfire assists users in curating articles and images for their social media feeds through its smart content recommendation system. By analyzing the user's social media accounts and audience preferences, Crowdfire suggests relevant articles and images that align with their interests and engagement patterns. Users can discover and select content from a wide range of sources within the Crowdfire platform, including blogs, news websites, and image libraries. Additionally, Crowdfire offers features such as content curation queues, which allow users to schedule and automate the sharing of curated content across their social media accounts.
Crowdfire Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include hashtag recommendations for each of your posts by scraping social platforms for hashtags with high user impressions and engagement and connecting them to your posts with similar content and themes. Crowfire also offers unlimited images recommended for easy Instagram and Pinterest growth.
Integrations include Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Shopify, Etsy, Wordpress, Shopify, Vimeo, Twitch, and other social and content platforms.
What's Free: 3 linked accounts from either Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram and up to 10 scheduled posts.
PROS
- Helpful (unlimited) content curation tool
- Chrome extension to share articles
- Hashtag recommendations
CONS
- Twitter limitations due to new API costs
- Track mentions is paid-only
10. SumoMe - Best for email marketing
behaviors.
SumoMe is a tool available on WordPress that provides users with tools to help grow an e-mail list. You can use the services it offers that maximize your social engagement, traffic, and conversion rate. It provides a central platform where everything it offers is available, and you can select the tool you need to build your list. The platform handles multiple vital tasks that might ordinarily need seven, eight, or nine separate plugins.
Why I Picked SumoMe: SumoMe is a powerful all-in-one suite of apps that can handle many marketing needs at once. SumoMe’s collection of apps falls into six main categories: list building, social sharing, on-site analytics, communication, traffic boosting, and ecommerce. The combination of all these tools can help you improve your site’s performance. Some of the features these tools provide ecommerce businesses include building pop-up opt-in forms, creating full-screen calls to action, web analytics, and allowing visitors to highlight content to share on social media. These powerful functionalities can help you grow an entire business, not just a website.
SumoMe Standout Features & Integrations
Key features include a suite of list building tools, including pop-ups, welcome mats, and scroll boxes, which help businesses grow their email subscriber lists. These tools are highly customizable and can be designed to match the website's branding. SumoMe's unique Smart Mode functionality adjusts the timing and behavior of the pop-ups based on user behavior, increasing the chances of capturing leads without being intrusive.
Integrations include ActiveCampaign, Aweber, BriteVerify, Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, ConvertKit, Drip, Emma, Feedblitz, GetResponse, HubSpot, iContact, InboxFirst, Infusionsoft, Klaviyo, Mad Mimi, MailChimp, Wrike, and others with a focus on email and communications platforms.
What's Free: Unlimited subscribers and 10,000 emails a month.
PROS
- Comprehensive all-in-one suite of apps
- Audience can easily highlight-to-Tweet your content
- Easy, excellent email list building
CONS
- Not as much of a focus on trending keywords
- Can have unlimited contacts but only send to 10K/month
Other Options
Here are a few more that didn’t make the top list.
- Moz - Best for keyword difficulty checks
- Crowdfire - Discover, schedule, and publish posts for every social network.
- Wistia - Best video marketing platform
- Google Trends - Best for search & keyword trends
How I Selected the Best Free marketing software
When evaluating and comparing free marketing tools I first build a list of options using personal experience, positive user reviews online, those that have recieved rewards and recognitions, and industry leaders. I further honed my list by considering the value they provide as a free tool and what limitations users may come up against. I also considered things like usability, features, and customization options. This top 10 list is the result of my research, tests and trials, and extensive experience in the marketing profession.
Core Functions
I broke functionality down to the very basics since everything on this list is so varied. Here's what functions are required to be considered for this list:
- Software features and functions can be justifiable used for marketing efforts, with concrete examples as to how
- Offers a free plan or free trial to justify being on a "free" software list
Key Features
I tried to choose a variety of software and I fully expect you will have picked 2-3 to work with by the time you're done reading this article. Because of that, the software on this list often varies wildly and can't be compared feature-to-feature in the traditinoal sense. These are some of the features I look for in general but you won't see them all in any one given platform.
- Email marketing: This feature allows users to create and send email campaigns, manage subscriber lists, automate email workflows, and track email performance metrics like open rates and click-through rates.
- Social media management: Marketing software often includes tools for scheduling and publishing social media posts, monitoring social media channels, engaging with audiences, and analyzing social media performance.
- Content management: Content creation and management features enable users to develop and organize marketing content, such as blog posts, articles, landing pages, and website content. It may include features like a content editor, content calendar, and collaboration capabilities.
- Marketing automation: This feature automates repetitive marketing tasks, such as lead nurturing, customer onboarding, and personalized messaging. It helps streamline processes, save time, and deliver targeted content to prospects and customers.
- Customer relationship management (CRM): Some marketing software includes CRM capabilities, allowing businesses to manage customer data, track interactions, and segment audiences for personalized marketing campaigns.
- Analytics and reporting: Marketing software often provides robust analytics and reporting features, allowing users to measure and analyze the performance of their marketing campaigns. It includes metrics like website traffic, conversion rates, ROI, and customer engagement.
- Landing page and form builders: These features enable users to create customized landing pages and forms to capture leads, conduct surveys, or gather customer information. They often come with templates, drag-and-drop editors, and integration with other marketing tools.
- A/B testing and optimization: Marketing software may offer A/B testing capabilities, allowing users to test different variations of marketing elements, such as email subject lines, landing page designs, or call-to-action buttons. It helps optimize campaigns for better results.
- Integration and connectivity: Marketing software often integrates with other systems and platforms, such as CRM, e-commerce, analytics, or advertising platforms. Integration ensures seamless data flow and enhances the overall marketing ecosystem.
- Personalization and segmentation: Advanced marketing software provides features for audience segmentation and personalization. It allows businesses to target specific customer segments with tailored content and offers based on their preferences and behavior.
- Asset development or design: Multimedia assets are essential to modern online marketing, so I look for software that helps create, proof, and publish things like ad graphics, blog banners, and social media videos.
Usability
Free software often doesn't come with dedicated customer support (saved for paying customers, of course) so I look for software that is easy to learn, offers self-service help documentation, and may even have an active online community to help troubleshoot problems. Online training and tutorial videos are a welcomed bonus.
Free Plan Value
What exactly is included in the free plan? Free marketing software often has user, storage, or feature limitations that need to be considered when evaluating whether it's a useful free tool. Anything too restrictive may not be considered for the list.
People Also Ask
Here are some questions I wanted to answer about free marketing software before I sign off.
Who uses free marketing software?
What are the benefits of marketing software?
What is the easiest free marketing software to use?
The Takeaway
It can be challenging to decide which free marketing software is best for your business. Some believe in the motto of “you get what you pay for,” so if it’s free, that must mean it’s not good. However, as you might discover from this list, you can get exactly what your business needs for free. Start by looking at your existing marketing software and see if any free alternatives are available. It might surprise you to see what’s out there, and you can expand your marketing budget at the same time.