If you’re an agency or freelancer looking to add email marketing to your services, you’ll likely need some white-label software that allows you to manage multiple client accounts and apply your own branding.
As a professional agency, you don’t really want software logos all over your reports and dashboards, especially if you provide client access to the platform.
Of course, you could build your own email marketing software but this isn’t always realistic – or even necessary when there are excellent platfoms already offering white label solutions.
Based on our annual review of 100+ email marketing services, here are the best white label options to consider.
What is white label email marketing software?
White label email marketing software allows you to remove the branding from existing platforms and customise their dashboards to a certain extent. The idea is to allow agencies to provide email marketing services by using these platforms, instead of building their own software solutions.
Why is this important?
Well, you’re going to need to provide your clients with reports to show them how your services are making an impact. In many cases, you’re also going to want to give your clients access to certain parts of the platform so they can access reports for themselves or even create their own email templates, campaigns, etc.
Regardless of how much access clients have to your email marketing platform, you want your agency’s logos, URLs and other branding elements to be there – not the branding of your software provider.
This is the key selling point of white label email marketing solutions and we’ve got five of the best options for your in this article.
#1: ActiveCampaign
Key features:
- Custom domain
- Replace ActiveCampaign logo with your own
- Modify HTML and CSS for button colours, borders, fonts and other elements to match your brand
- Add/remove buttons and other options
- Remove all references and links to ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is the email marketing software we use at Venture Harbour and it’s the platform’s excellent automation features and integration options that sealed the deal for us.
Aside from custom domains and logos, you can also modify the style of the interface itself to match your brand. As long as you’re happy to tweak some HTML and CSS, you can change the colour of buttons and borders, change font styles and other design elements.
You can also remove buttons entirely or add them to other parts of the interface. Crucially, ActiveCampaign makes sure all references and links to itself are removed from the platform.
#2: HubSpot
If you run an agency, chances are you’re familiar with HubSpot.
While their platform is not specifically white-labelled, thousands of agencies have joined HubSpot’s partner network. First, though, let’s look at why HubSpot’s platform is such a good fit for agencies.
HubSpot has the unique benefit of being an all-in-one sales and marketing platform. By managing everything in one place from email marketing and live chat, to CRM and social media management, HubSpot is able to do an exceptional job of reporting.
Surprisingly, most email marketing tools only report on email marketing insights, like open rate and unsubscribes. HubSpot go above and beyond, attributing every sale back to the email or channel that impacted it.
As an agency, this is crucial in proving value to clients. For clients, it solves a major problem faced by every business; knowing what’s working and what’s not.
While HubSpot comes at a hefty price, this can be an advantage to agencies who join the partner network, as HubSpot offers its partners discounts to offer clients, as well as referral fees – enabling you to build passive revenue for the agency.
HubSpot’s partner network
As a HubSpot partner, the number of perks you receive as an agency depends on how many clients you sign up. All partners receive white-label materials to educate clients, training and access to a consultant.
Agencies that bring in larger amounts of revenue get free tickets to HubSpot conferences, access to write for the HubSpot blog, and additional support from the HubSpot partner ecosystem.
So while HubSpot may not offer a fully white-labelled version of their platform, it’s a strong consideration for agencies looking for an email marketing platform to use with clients.
#3: Sendinblue
Key features:
- Excellent transactional emails
- Logo & URL personalisation
- Advanced contact segmentation
- Advanced, real-time reporting
- Multi-IP Manager
- API Access
- Multi-language Support
Sendinblue is a great email marketing platform and we use it here at Venture Harbour for sending transactional emails. When we first started using Sendinblue it was a relatively simple email marketing tool, lacking any of the automation features we really craved.
However, the company has expanded its offering greatly over the years and it’s a far more comprehensive marketing platform now, compared to when we first started using it.
This makes Sendinblue much easier to recommend in 2023 as an all-in-one email marketing solution and you should definitely check it out if you’re in the market for something more advanced than Mailchimp and other entry-level platforms.
With its white-label offering you can customise URLs to match your domain, add your agency logo to the interface and create custom reports for different clients. Overall, it’s not the most customisable white label option but you do get multi-language support, which could be crucial if you’re dealing with clients in foreign-speaking markets.
#4: Moosend
Key features:
- Code-free email marketing, every step of the way
- Excellent free plan
- Unlimited emails on all plans
- Scalable for businesses growth
- Easy automation
- Solid reporting
Moosend is a bit of a newcomer to the email marketing game and it benefits from approaching the strategy from a modern perspective. The platform is fresh, easy-to-use and provides all of the tools you need to create and manage campaigns without writing a single line of code.
The drag-and-drop builders are among the best you’ll find and the interfaces make it easy to navigate between all of the features you need.
All in all, it’s a well-designed piece of software and it’s nice to see more platforms like this hitting the market.
In terms of features, Moosend has a lot to offer, too, with countdown timers, conditional content, email automation, events tracking, A/B testing and a thoroughly impressive offering. Best of all, you get access to almost all of the features on the free version and you could almost use this as your only email marketing tool without paying a thing.
The major features reserved for paid plans are landing pages, transactional emails, custom reports and advanced support. Yes, they are important features for serious email marketers but the free version of Moosend alone offers a staggering list of pro-grade features.
Crucially, paid plans start from just $8 per month and scale reasonably as your subscriber list grows. By the time you hit 3,000 subscribers, you’ll be paying $16 per month while $44 covers you for up to 10,000 subscribers. For $100/monthyou can have between 10.5k-24.5k subscribers until you’re bumped up to $164/monthfor 28k-50k subscribers.
The pricing brackets leave you plenty of room for growth without your monthly fees suddenly jumping up and the incremental increases couldn’t be much more reasonable.
#5: MailerLite
Key features:
- Code-free email marketing
- Solid free plain available
- Extensive lead generation tools
- Automation & segmentation
- Impressive landing page builder
- Huge feature set
- Affordable
MailerLite is another relative newcomer to email marketing software, offering all of the same modern perks you get from Moosend – truly code-free campaigns, excellent drag-and-drop builders and clean interfaces.
MailerLite’s free plan might not look as impressive as Moosend’s when you see that you’re limited to 1,000 leads. But when you look at the full feature list for MairlerLite, you realise just how much this platform provides -everything from free websites and landing pages to email automation and built-in image editing.
In all honesty, you’re going to want to pay for the Pro plan of MailerLite, which priced per thousands leads. Prices start at just $10 a month and gradually scale as your business grows. By the time you reach 30,000 leads, you’re paying just $130 per month for a huge kit of marketing tools.
By 100,000 leads you’re looking at $360 per month, which is beyond competitive.
The quality of tools and features is consistently high, too, so it’s not merely a case of quantity over quality. Sure, you’re not going to get all of the advanced features of Photoshop in MailerLite’s free image editor but you get all the basic tools you need to edit images for email campaigns, quickly and easily.
Which is the best white label email marketing platform?
Choosing the best white label email marketing solution for your agency depends on a few factors:
- The quality of the email marketing software itself
- The amount of customisation options you need
- Usability of the software
First of all, you need to make sure you have all the email marketing features your agency and clients need. Then, you need to be confident you have the freedom to customise the platform sufficiently – otherwise, there’s not much point in going white label in the first place.
Finally, you also need a solution that provides the usability your agency and clients demand. This depends entirely on how your agency works, the tools you need to integrate with and how much access you plan to give your clients to the platform. For example, will you only give them access to reporting or will you allow them to create and manage campaigns for themselves?
If you’re looking for a recommendation, ActiveCampaign gives you all the email marketing, automation and CRM features you could ever need – you don’t need to worry about that. You also get a lot of room to customise the platform – from domains and logos to button colours and font styles.
For the vast majority of agencies, this should be more than enough.
While ActiveCampaign scales reasonably for SMEs looking to grow, there are some newcomers that cater to the very smallest of businesses and bootstrapping startups that need the absolute best value for small monthly fees. This is where the likes of Moosend and MailerLite come in, both of which offer excellent free plans that will get your business up and running with email marketing – and then some.
It’s taken some time for email software providers like these to emerge but they couldn’t be more welcome. Email marketing shouldn’t be reserved for brands with a significant marketing budget and options like Moosend and MailerLite allow new ventures to hit the ground running and maximise growth until they’re ready for more enterprise tools like ActiveCampaign and HubSpot.
