Do you need automation, or just a newsletter?

Just a newsletter, for most small businesses, at first. Automation earns its place when the same email should go to each new person at the same moment (a welcome when someone joins, a thank-you after a first purchase or booking) and new people arrive every week. Until then, send that email by hand. When you’re ready, three free plans include a little automation (AWeber’s, MailerLite’s, and Brevo’s), and on most tools the first paid plan includes some: at 1,000 contacts, MailerLite’s Comfort is $19 a month and Mailchimp’s Essentials $26.50 a month.

What’s the difference, in practice?

A newsletter is the email you write for your whole list: this month’s news, the sale, the new menu, the event. You decide when it goes, and everyone gets the same one.

An automation is an email, or a short series, that a tool sends to one person at a time when something happens: they join your list, buy for the first time, book, or haven’t opened anything in months. You write it once and it keeps going out.

For a small business, three automations cover nearly everything worth automating:

• The welcome email. Who you are, what they’ll get from you, and one thing to do next (book, visit, use a first-order code).
• The after-the-first-purchase email. A thank-you, how to use or care for what they bought, and how to reach you.
• The “we haven’t heard from you” email. A short note to people who haven’t opened anything in a long while, asking if they still want your emails.

If none of these sounds like something you’d send, you need a newsletter, and nothing more.

Do you need automation yet?

Answer these four from what happened last month, not from what you plan.

1. Did new people join your list every week?
2. Is there an email you’d want each of them to get, the same one every time?
3. Did you forget to send it to someone, or send it late?
4. Does it matter that it arrives the moment they join? A first-purchase code they’d use today, a booking link while they’re deciding, or a download they signed up for can’t wait for a weekly send.

Yes to the first two and to either of the last two: automate the welcome email. Yes to the first two only: your hand-sent welcome is working, so keep it until it slips or timing starts to matter. No to either of the first two: you need a newsletter, and nothing more. Our view is that automation fixes two things, forgetting and waiting: a hand-sent welcome reaches people up to a week after they join, and if that’s too late for what the email asks them to do, automate it even if you never forget.

The no-automation setup

You can run a welcome email without any automation, and on most lists it takes ten minutes a week.

1. Write the welcome email once and save it as a template in your tool.
2. Pick a weekly slot, the same half hour every week.
3. Send it to the people who joined that week: a saved segment or a filter by sign-up date, whichever your tool offers. Check the count before you send, so nobody gets it twice.
4. Put the one thing new people need on the sign-up confirmation page, so the wait for your weekly send matters less.

When the weekly slot starts slipping, or the list of new people is long enough that you dread it, that’s the day to automate.

Where does each tool put automation?

Each vendor counts automation differently (steps, automations, templates), so these aren’t directly comparable; read the line for the tool you’d use. Every figure is the monthly bill at 1,000 contacts, billed monthly.

• Mailchimp: the free plan has no automation flows. Essentials allows up to 4 steps per flow, enough for a welcome email or a short series, at $26.50 a month. Standard allows up to 200 steps per flow and up to 3 triggers per flow, at $45 a month.
• MailerLite: every plan has the automation builder. The free plan allows a few short automations, up to its 250 contacts cap. Comfort includes 50 automations, at $19 a month. Power adds unlimited automations and multiple triggers, at $39 a month.
• Brevo: the free plan and Starter both include automation, and on both up to 2,000 contacts can enter your workflows; Standard removes that cap. The free plan sends at most 300 emails a day, and Starter has no daily limit. At one email a week to 1,000 contacts, Starter is $17 a month and Standard $35 a month.
• Kit: the free plan has no automation builder or email sequences; it can only send a freebie to new sign-ups. Creator includes unlimited automations and sequences, at $39 a month.
• Constant Contact: Lite includes 1 automation template and Standard 3 automation templates. Its help center says every plan allows a single automated welcome email, even though the pricing page lists auto-send welcome emails under Premium; custom automations are Premium only. At 1,000 contacts that’s $30 a month for Lite, $55 a month for Standard, and $110 a month for Premium.
• AWeber: the free plan includes 1 workflow automation, up to 500 contacts. Lite includes 3 email automations, at $25 a month, and Plus unlimited, at $45 a month.

What does just a newsletter cost?

If the test says newsletter only, this is your bill: each tool’s cheapest plan that fits, at list price, billed monthly, for one email a week to the whole list. Where a free plan fits, the cell says so.

Compare that cell with the automation line above for the same tool, and you have the price of automating on it. What email marketing costs at 500, 1,000, 2,500, and 5,000 contacts has the same table at more sizes.

Say you run an independent bookshop with about 900 people on your list, from the till and the website. You send a weekly new-arrivals email, and about fifteen people join each week. You’d like each of them to get a welcome note with a first-purchase code, and twice last month you forgot to send it. People who sign up on the website are asking for your emails; at the till, ask whether they’d like the newsletter rather than adding every receipt address, and add only the ones who say yes.

That’s a yes to the first two and to both of the last two: you forgot, and a first-purchase code works best while they’re still thinking about the shop. Automate it. It’s one trigger and one email, which the first paid plan on most of these tools can handle. What it costs depends on the tool. At your size, MailerLite’s Comfort is $19 a month and Mailchimp’s Essentials $26.50 a month, and both include it. On Brevo, Starter at $17 a month covers both, since its automation takes in up to 2,000 contacts; at about fifteen new people a week, you’d reach that cap only after a long while, and Standard, at $35 a month, removes it. On Constant Contact, its help center says every plan allows a single automated welcome email, so Lite at $30 a month covers it.

What not to pay for yet

• A series before one email works. Start with the welcome email. Add a second only when the first is doing its job.
• Multiple triggers and branching. They’re for businesses with several products and several kinds of customer. If you can’t name the flow you’d build, you don’t need the plan that builds it.
• A higher plan to “have automation”. If your tool’s first paid plan already includes it, there’s nothing to buy.
• Yearly billing. Pay monthly until the automation has run for a few months and you know you’ll keep it.

Your next step

This week, write the welcome email: who you are, what people will get from you, and one thing to do next. Then run the four questions above. If it’s not yet, set up the weekly slot and send it by hand. If it’s yes and your list fits a free plan with automation, start there: AWeber’s free plan includes 1 workflow automation up to 500 contacts, MailerLite’s free plan a few short ones up to 250 contacts, and Brevo’s free plan automations for a capped number of contacts on a list it can email in a day. If your list is bigger than that, MailerLite pricing and Mailchimp pricing show the first paid plans that include it.