Most free CRM plans aren’t designed to send newsletters. HubSpot is an important exception: its free tools include marketing email, with a monthly send allowance and HubSpot branding on every email. Paid CRM plans can send to a group, mostly in daily batches, which covers a plain update to people already in the CRM; Pipedrive and Capsule sell newsletters as add-ons. If your newsletter goes to people who sign up for it, on a schedule, use an email tool beside the CRM. Five of the six in this guide have a free plan, and a list of up to 250 contacts fits all five.

What counts as a newsletter here?

One email, the same for everyone, going to a list: news, offers, new stock, a monthly roundup. That’s a different job from the follow-ups a CRM is built around, where each email goes to one person about one conversation, even when a template saves you the typing.

A newsletter that promotes anything is commercial email under US law, with requirements such as a working way to opt out and your postal address. Can you send a newsletter from Gmail or Outlook? sets out what the FTC says and what your inbox allows. This page is the next question: whether the CRM you already use can do the job.

What can each CRM send, and on which plan?

Here’s what each CRM’s own pages say about emailing many people at once.

  • HubSpot: the free tools include marketing email, with a monthly send allowance and HubSpot branding on each email. Marketing emails count against the allowance; one-to-one emails from the CRM don’t. Starter ties the allowance to its marketing contacts, starting at 1,000, and removes the branding.
  • Zoho CRM: the free edition sends individual emails only, with a daily limit per user. Mass email starts on Standard, with a daily cap that rises on each higher edition and also counts autoresponders and scheduled emails.
  • Bigin (by Zoho): no mass email on the free edition. Express sends up to 150 a day per account, Premier up to 300 a day per account, and Bigin 360 up to 1,000 a day per account.
  • Freshsales: no bulk email on the free plan. Growth and higher send bulk email with a daily cap for each active user.
  • Pipedrive: group email on Growth and higher, to a limited number of contacts per send, repeated for more. Newsletters are its Campaigns add-on.
  • Capsule: newsletters go through its Marketing add-on, switched on inside your account.
  • Less Annoying CRM: connects to Mailchimp. The two keep names and email addresses in sync between CRM groups and Mailchimp audiences, and someone who unsubscribes in Mailchimp drops out of the CRM group.

So on most free plans the answer is no, and on most paid plans it’s a batch tool, not a newsletter tool. HubSpot is the exception, because its free tools include marketing email.

When is your CRM’s sending enough?

Our view is that you can send from the CRM if all four of these are true:

  • Everyone on the list is already in the CRM. Customers and leads you’ve dealt with, not people joining from your website.
  • It’s a plain update, not a designed newsletter. Outside HubSpot, a CRM’s mass email is a template sent in batches, which suits a short update a few times a year.
  • The allowance covers it. HubSpot’s free tools count sends per calendar month, so every newsletter you send in a month has to fit; Zoho CRM, Bigin, and Freshsales count per day, so a list bigger than a day’s cap goes out over several days.
  • Your plan already includes it. HubSpot’s free tools, or a paid CRM plan you have for other reasons.

If all four are true, send from the CRM and don’t add a tool. “Not yet” is a full answer.

When do you need an email tool too?

Any one of these is enough:

  • People join the list on their own. A sign-up form on your website, a sheet at the counter, an event list. Email tools are built around a list that people join and leave themselves.
  • The list outgrows the allowance. A month’s sends no longer cover every issue, or a daily cap spreads one newsletter over several days, so it’s old news to the last batch.
  • You want a designed newsletter on a schedule, and a report of who opened and clicked.
  • You’d be paying for a CRM upgrade or add-on just to send it. A free email plan may hold the list for nothing.

Keep the CRM for what it’s good at: the deals and the one-to-one follow-ups. If you’re weighing automated sequences too, do you need automation, or just a newsletter? covers that decision.

How do you run both without a mess?

The risk with two tools is two lists that drift apart, and someone who unsubscribed in one still getting email from the other.

  • Pick one list of record for the newsletter. Usually the email tool, because that’s where sign-ups and unsubscribes land.
  • Connect the tools if your plans include it. Bigin’s paid editions connect to Mailchimp and to Constant Contact, syncing your Bigin contacts with an audience or list. Less Annoying CRM syncs its groups with Mailchimp both ways. HubSpot keeps both jobs in one tool, and Pipedrive and Capsule keep newsletters in their own add-ons. One vendor or three tools? weighs keeping customers, email, and invoices with one vendor.
  • No connection? Export with care before every send. Take only the people who asked for the newsletter from the CRM, and strike anyone who has unsubscribed, from either tool, before you import; AWeber’s help center asks for the same. Don’t import people who never asked to hear from you.
  • Keep the unsubscribe record; don’t clear out unsubscribed contacts to tidy the list. What needs to survive is the tool’s note that the address opted out, not everything else you held about the person. Kit says an import won’t reactivate someone who unsubscribed from your list there, MailerLite lists an address already unsubscribed among the reasons an import can fail, and AWeber warns that deleted unsubscribe data is removed for good. If someone asks you to delete their personal data, handle it under the privacy rules that apply to you. MailerLite, for example, has a Forget option that permanently erases an unsubscribed contact’s data.
  • Tell the email tool about unsubscribes it didn’t record. Someone who asked you by reply, or unsubscribed from your CRM’s emails, isn’t in the email tool’s record. Mailchimp lets you import them as unsubscribed (on accounts created after May 15, 2019, they count toward its contact limit), Brevo as blocklisted, and AWeber and MailerLite can unsubscribe a group in bulk. On Kit or any other tool, check its help center for the same before you import.

What does adding an email tool cost?

Nothing, for most small lists. Five of the six email tools in this guide have a free plan, and they vary a lot in size: Mailchimp’s holds 250 contacts, MailerLite’s 250 contacts, AWeber’s 500 contacts, Kit’s 10,000 contacts, and Brevo’s 100,000 contacts, though Brevo’s sends at most 300 emails a day. Constant Contact has no free plan. When a free email marketing plan is enough compares the caps and sending limits, and what email marketing costs at 500, 1,000, 2,500, and 5,000 contacts shows the paid plans.

Say you run a three-person wine importer that sells to restaurants and wine shops. The three of you work deals in Bigin Express (by Zoho), and about 400 buyers get a monthly email about new arrivals: some from the CRM, the rest from a sign-up form on your website.

Bigin Express sends up to 150 a day per account, so each month’s email would go out in batches over several days, and every sign-up would need adding to Bigin first. Of the email tools in this guide, Bigin connects to Mailchimp and Constant Contact, but Mailchimp’s free plan stops at 250 contacts and Constant Contact has no free plan, so syncing would mean paying for one of them. (Bigin also lists Zoho’s own email tool, Zoho Campaigns, and Zapier among its connections; this guide doesn’t cover either.)

Instead, put the newsletter in a free plan that holds 400 and sends to everyone in a day: AWeber’s, up to 500 contacts and 3,000 emails a month, or Kit’s, up to 10,000 contacts. Brevo’s holds the list too, but at 300 emails a day one email would still take more than a day. Point the website form at the email tool, export the buyers who asked for the newsletter from Bigin once, leaving out anyone who has asked to stop, and add a new buyer to the newsletter only when they ask for it. Bigin keeps the deals and the follow-ups; the email tool keeps the newsletter and the unsubscribes. The newsletter costs nothing until the list outgrows the free plan.

What not to pay for yet

  • A CRM upgrade to get mass email. If the newsletter is the only reason, a free email plan does it.
  • A CRM’s marketing add-on before you’ve compared it with a free email plan. Pipedrive’s Campaigns and Capsule’s Marketing add-on are paid; check whether a free plan holds your list first.
  • A paid email plan just to get the CRM connection. Count how often you’d export. Once a month is a short job.
  • Automation before you’ve sent a few newsletters. A welcome email can wait until people are signing up.

Our view

Let each tool do what it’s built for. The CRM holds the deals and the one-to-one follow-ups, and the newsletter goes to people who asked for it, from a tool built to collect sign-ups and handle unsubscribes. The exception is HubSpot: if you’re on its free tools and your newsletter fits its monthly allowance, sending from HubSpot keeps one list and costs nothing, and the branding is the price. What this gives up: with two tools and no connection, you export once a month and look after the email tool’s record of who unsubscribed. For a small list, we think that’s a fair trade for a free tool built for the job.

Your next step

This week, count who would get your newsletter and where they came from. If they’re all already in your CRM, your plan includes marketing or mass email, and its allowance covers the newsletter (HubSpot’s free tools count sends a month; most other CRMs count a day, so a bigger list goes out over several days), send your next newsletter from the CRM, with an unsubscribe link and your postal address in the footer. Otherwise, start a free email plan that holds the list: check the caps on the free-plan page, start the one that fits (Mailchimp’s, MailerLite’s, Brevo’s, Kit’s, or AWeber’s), point your sign-up form at it, and keep the CRM for the follow-ups.