The Ultimate Checklist for Choosing the Right Email Platform (ESP) for Your Small Business
Choosing an email platform can feel overwhelming, especially for small businesses like Etsy and Shopify store owners, consultants, coaches, and anyone whose business has gathered an email audience (even if your list only includes 25 contacts). With dozens of providers promising the best deliverability or the lowest price, it’s hard to know which one actually fits your needs.
That’s why I put together this simple but powerful checklist - so you’ll know exactly what to ask before you commit to an email service provider (ESP).
1. Ease of Use & Onboarding
Does the platform offer a user-friendly dashboard?
A dashboard is the main control panel you see when you log into your email platform (ESP); it usually shows key metrics like total contacts, emails sent, open and click rates, unsubscribe counts, and recent campaign performance - helping you quickly understand how your email marketing is doing at a glance.
Is there a drag-and-drop email editor?
A drag-and-drop email editor lets you easily build emails by clicking on elements - like text boxes, images, or buttons -and dragging them into place on your email template, so you can design professional-looking emails without needing to write any code.
Do they include mobile-friendly templates?
Mobile-friendly templates are email designs that automatically adjust their layout, images, and text size so your message looks good and is easy to read on any device - especially smartphones and tablets.
Are there guided onboarding tools or tutorials?
Guided onboarding is the step-by-step process an email platform provides to help new users set up their account, learn key features, and start sending emails—often through tutorials, pop-up tips, or short videos.
Do they provide a knowledge base or training resources?
Step 2: Deliverability & List Health
Deliverability makes or breaks your email marketing. Ask about:
List cleaning tools to catch invalid addresses.
List cleaning tools are features in an email platform that identify and remove invalid, inactive, or risky email addresses from your contact list - helping you maintain a healthy list, improve deliverability, and avoid being flagged as spam by email providers.
Many ESPs offer this for a small fee in addition to their monthly fee.
A spam score checker to run your emails through before they blast live.
A spam score checker tests your email content before sending to predict how likely it is to be flagged as spam, helping you fix issues in subject lines or wording so your messages reach more inboxes.
Email previews across devices and clients (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail).
Email previews across devices let you see how your email will look on different screens and email clients - like Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail - so you can make sure your design displays correctly on both desktop and mobile before sending.
How they handle soft bounces vs. hard bounces.
Soft Bounce: A soft bounce happens when your email reaches the recipient’s mail server but can’t be delivered temporarily - like when their inbox is full or the server is down.
Hard Bounce: A hard bounce happens when your email can’t be delivered permanently - usually because the email address doesn’t exist or the domain is invalid.
Clear reporting on bounce reasons.
Bounce reasons explain why an email failed to deliver - such as an invalid address, full inbox, or blocked domain—and reviewing them helps you identify issues, clean your list, and improve future deliverability.
Prefer to learn about what your checklist should include in audio format? In this love, email actually podcast episode, you’ll learn how to evaluate and compare email marketing platforms the smart way. I share a simple 7-part checklist that helps small businesses decide which email service provider (ESP) fits their goals, budget, and workflow.
Step 3: Reporting and Analytics
Data helps you grow smarter. Look for:
Customizable reports and dashboards.
The ability to customize allows you to choose which email metrics - like open rates, click rates, bounces, or conversions -you want to see and how they’re displayed, so you can focus on the data that matters most to your goals.
A/B testing features beyond just 50/50 splits.
A/B testing features beyond just 50/50 splits let you test different versions of an email with smaller portions of your list (like 10%, 20%, or 30% of the list) to find the winning version before sending it to the rest of the contact list.
Flexible segmentation tools to target your audience effectively.
For example, flexible segmentation tools let you create targeted groups - like subscribers who opened an email in the last 30 days, clicked a specific product link, or live in a certain city - so you can send each group more relevant and personalized emails.
Step 4: Pricing & Scalability
Don’t get caught off guard by hidden fees. Make sure you know:
Are there extra or hidden charges?
Do they offer monthly vs. annual contracts?
For example, some email platforms offer a monthly contract where you pay month-to-month and can cancel anytime, while others require an annual contract that locks you in for a full year - so it’s important to check whether you’re committing long-term, how billing works, and if early cancellation fees apply.
How do they charge (by contacts or emails sent)?
You can ask: “Does your pricing depend on the number of contacts in my list or the total number of emails I send each month?” This helps you understand whether your costs will increase as your list grows or as you send more frequent campaigns.
What does scaling up look like as your business grows?
Things to look for:
Do higher plans increase gradually or jump sharply in cost?
Will you unlock advanced tools (like automation or segmentation) as you move up, or must you pay extra?
Can you easily switch plans or integrate with new tools as your business evolves?
The goal is to find a platform that grows with you - offering fair pricing, flexible plan upgrades, and scalable features without unexpected costs or limitations.
Step 5: Support & Reliability
Customer support is your lifeline. Ask:
Do they offer chat, phone, or email support?
Are they available 24/7 or only during business hours?
Will you get a dedicated account manager?
If you do, be sure to find out how much of their time they will devote to you on a monthly basis. Will they meet with you once a week, once a month? Find out what the “dedicated account manager” offers in terms of support.
Is there an active community or forum you can learn from?
These communities are especially helpful for small business owners who want real-world insights, not just what’s in the help docs. You can learn from other users’ successes, mistakes, and creative workflows before testing things in your own account.
Step 6: Compliance & Security
Security isn’t optional. Check for:
TLS encryption to keep emails secure in transit.
TLS encryption (Transport Layer Security) protects your emails while they’re being sent from your server to the recipient’s inbox, ensuring the message can’t be read or tampered with in transit - which matters because it keeps your business communications and customer data private and secure.
If the ESP you’re reviewing does not include TLS encryption, walk away.
Guidance on SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup.
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are special security settings you add to your domain (like yourcompany.com) to prove that your email platform is allowed to send emails on your behalf.
Without these, your emails are more likely to land in spam or be blocked entirely. With them set up correctly, you improve deliverability and protect your brand from phishing.
Guidance from an ESP on how to configure them saves time and avoids mistakes.
Transparent policies on data storage and usage.
What you want to find out here are things like:
A clear statement that your contact lists and customer information will never be sold or shared with third parties.
How long your data (like email activity or deleted contacts) is kept before being permanently removed.
Confirmation that you can export, update, or delete your data anytime.
Images and file storage for uploading logos, templates, and attachments.
Step 7: Integrations
Finally, make sure your ESP plays nicely with your tech stack. Key questions:
Do they offer native integrations with tools you use (Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce, etc.)?
This means checking whether the email platform can connect directly and automatically with the other tools you already use - like Shopify, WooCommerce, or Salesforce - so data such as customer purchases or contact updates sync in real time without extra setup or third-party apps.
If not, can you connect them easily through a service like Zapier?
Wrapping-Up
Choosing the right email platform doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With this checklist in hand, you’ll be ready to compare providers side by side and confidently choose the best fit for your business.
And if you’d like a more in-depth walkthrough, don’t miss my podcast episode on this topic - where I cover each section with practical examples and tips.
