The Best Free Autoresponders for WordPress

Email marketing continues to be the most important channel for businesses. And autoresponders are the simplest form of email marketing automation. It’s easy and effective at the same time. If you have a WordPress site, you’ll start using autoresponders at some point in your business.

So today, we’ll tell you what autoresponders are, what they do, and which WordPress autoresponders you should be looking at. Don’t worry; all of them are free to get started!

What is an Autoresponder?

Many businesses use email autoresponders for automating regular email marketing tasks. An autoresponder is a tool that triggers pre-written emails or messages to your users based on events. This kind of email helps bring in additional customers and revenue.

Suppose someone subscribed to your blog. You might want to greet them with an offer by sending a custom welcome email. Similarly, you’d want to trigger a purchase confirmation email and include an upsell offer when someone purchases a product. Autoresponders make that job easy.

Depending on your autoresponder tool’s capabilities, you can go beyond triggered emails or messages to segment your leads and customers.

Autoresponders also store important data and generate reports so that you can evaluate what’s working and what’s not. So if you’re not using an autoresponder yet, you should start using one right now.

What is a Typical WordPress Autoresponder?

A typical WordPress autoresponder sends an email notification when an “event’ happens on your website. This can be anything ranging from form submissions to product purchases.

On WordPress, you can set up automated emails for some events such as:

• When someone submits a form
• When a new user is registered on WordPress
• When someone places an order on WooCommerce

In FluentCRM and other autoresponders, events are sometimes labeled “triggers.” A few FluentCRM triggers are:

• Form submission via Fluent Forms
• A contact is added to a List or Tag
• New order placement on WooCommerce
• New user registration on WordPress
• A student enrollment via integrated LMS plugin
• A new membership via integrated membership plugin

By selecting a trigger in an email autoresponder, you can create an automation funnel(also known as “workflow” or “user journey”) to send them automated emails and segment them for further marketing.

Why Use a WordPress Autoresponder?

The first and obvious reason to use a WordPress autoresponder is automation. Once you set up an autoresponder, they do everything automatically without requiring your direct involvement. Some other benefits to using WordPress autoresponders are:

• Saves time: WordPress Autoresponders allow you to skip responding to every customer manually. This saves a lot of time so that you can focus on growing your business.
• Immediate response: Autoresponders respond to your customers almost immediately. With a WordPress autoresponder set up, your customers don’t have to wait in the queue to get a response. Instead, they’ll get a timely response to their requests.
• Personalized messaging: Sometimes, autoresponders help you dig into your audience’s interest and data. Knowing your audience’s interest, it would be easier for you to prepare personalized messages tailored to your audience.
• Keep the audience engaged: One of the primary goals of an autoresponder is to keep your audience engaged with regular emails and messages. When you set up an autoresponder, be it for a first-time subscriber or a customer, you essentially make a path for them to engage with your business regularly.
• Generate additional revenue: While welcome messages help introduce the audience to your brand, simple sales autoresponders and upsell offers allow you to generate additional revenue by sending timely and personalized messages.

These are only a few significant advantages of using WordPress autoresponders. But there’s a lot you can achieve with autoresponders. So let’s get to the best WordPress autoresponders!

5 Free Autoresponders for WordPress

WordPress autoresponders are a must-have tool for any business. So let’s look at the five best autoresponders for WordPress.

FluentCRM

We mentioned FluentCRM already in this article. FluentCRM is an email marketing automation plugin especially tailored for WordPress users. Due to being a WordPress plugin itself, FluentCRM can be used as your go-to autoresponder tool.

FluentCRM gives you four types of autoresponder triggers-CRM triggers, WordPress triggers, time-based triggers, and plugin-specific triggers. While the CRM and WordPress triggers are available right from the beginning, plugin-specific triggers will only appear if you have an integrated plugin installed and activated.

FluentCRM integrates with many WordPress plugins such as WooCommerce, Elementor, Fluent Forms, LearnDash, MemberPress, BuddyBoss, Easy Digital Downloads, WishList, LifterLMS, TutorLMS, etc. without requiring additional plugins or addons. It also has incoming and outgoing webhooks so that you can connect with platforms that have webhook integration and trigger autoresponders using webhook responses.

All this essentially means you can set up thousands of autoresponder workflows when events occur through any integrated plugin or tool, making FluentCRM a perfect match for your need!

• Unlimited contacts
• Complete contact overview
• Contact segmentation
• Email campaigns
• Email sequence
• Email marketing automation
• Granular reporting
• Conditional logic
• A/B testing
• Conditional content
• Smartlinks
• 25+ integrations

Price: What makes FluentCRM unique is that it doesn’t charge based on the number of contacts on someone’s email list. Since it hosts everything inside WordPress, you can store unlimited contacts. The free version with limited features is available for download from the WordPress repository. But it’s best to get the premium version as FluentCRM is relatively cheap compared to any other tool in the market.

FluentCRM’s premium version will cost you $129 per year for a single domain. If you want to use the plugin on more domains, you can get a 5 site license or 50 site license for $249 and $499.

Note that FluentCRM doesn’t offer an integrated email service. It will use your WordPress site’s default emailing functionality to deliver the emails. So it’s recommended to set up an external email service like Amazon SES in order to ensure email deliverability.

Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a great marketing automation platform that offers email and SMS autoresponder for WordPress. They also have a live chat feature in case you need that too.

Although primarily a marketing automation tool, Sendinblue offers a suite of tools, including CRM, landing page builder, Facebook ad management, transactional emails, and so on.

For setting up autoresponders in WordPress, Sendinblue offers a free plugin and integrates with some popular plugins like WooCommerce, Elementor, Ninja Forms, Hustle, Mailoptin, etc.

However, most of the plugin integrations Sendinblue has are with form builders. This limits you from using more specific event-based triggers that may happen inside your WordPress site. However, you can always use an automation plugin to integrate other plugins with Sendinblue.

Like all other marketing automation tools, you can set up autoresponder rules within Sendinblue’s marketing automation platform and enjoy all their marketing automation features.

Sendinblue allows you to use both email and SMS features for free with some limits. So it’s a good choice if you’re just getting started. Some of the key Sendinblue features are:

• Email campaigns
• Email template library
• Email and SMS personalization
• Email marketing automation
• Landing page builder
• A/B testing
• Facebook ad management
• CRM
• Transactional email and SMS
• Real-time reporting

Price: Sendinblue is free for 300 email sends per day with unlimited contact storage. However, if you have more than 2000 contacts or if you want to increase the email send limit, you can choose a lite(starts at $25/mo), premium(starts at $65/mo), or enterprise subscription.

Note that the features are limited by the pricing plan you pick. They also increase based on the number of contacts you have. So keep that in mind when choosing a pricing plan.

HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one software that offers businesses a wide range of inbound marketing, sales, and service tools. It’s widely respected as the most powerful yet simplest customer relationship management platform.

Like Sendinblue, you can download HubSpot’s free plugin to connect your site to the platform and enjoy all the excellent features it offers. 

Primarily known as a CRM software, HubSpot can provide excellent autoresponder functionality through its marketing hub. The marketing hub lets you build excellent autoresponder workflows while you can use the plugin’s form builder for setting up form submission autoresponders.

Moreover, HubSpot has integration with tons of WordPress plugins and themes, including WooCommerce, Elementor, Avada, Gravity Forms, Fluent Forms, WP Fusion, and so on. So if your plugin or theme is already integrated with Hubspot, you can easily set up event-based autoresponders without using any automation plugins.

HubSpot offers loads of other features that make it a well-rounded choice for enterprise-level businesses. So it’s easy to get overwhelmed if you’re just getting started. Some of the best features are:

• Email subscription and pop-up forms
• Landing page builder
• Live chat
• Email personalization
• Multi-language content
• Email broadcasting
• A/B testing
• Contact activity tracking
• Marketing automation
• Advanced customer relationship management
• Appointment/booking tools
• Quote management
• Customer service
• Ad management

Price: HubSpot is free for 2000 email sends per month with some feature limitations. If you need more than that, their pricing starts from $45/month and depends on the size of your contact list.

Keep in mind that your email send limit is also determined by the number of contacts you have. For example, HubSpot’s starter plan only allows sending 5X emails per contact tier.

MailChimp

MailChimp is almost a household name in email marketing. Being the most popular email marketing tool, it does more than just email marketing.

MailChimp has a very popular WordPress plugin that is being used in more than two million WordPress sites. The plugin lets you connect your WordPress site and several plugins to MailChimp’s platform. With this plugin, you can also create sign-up forms to generate leads easily.

While you can create the form autoresponder right from your WordPress dashboard, you’ll need to use MailChimp’s customer journey builder to build advanced autoresponders.

Besides, many popular plugins and themes have built MailChimp integration through add-ons. So no matter which plugin you’re using, you can simply download their addon to trigger more event-specific WordPress autoresponders using MailChimp’s customer journey builder.

MailChimp has tons of features other than its excellent autoresponder. Some of the key features include:

• Marketing CRM
• Form and landing page builder
• Email campaigns
• Email templates
• Customer journey builder
• A/B testing
• Conditional logic
• Behavioral segmentation
• Dynamic content
• Built-in email spam checker
• Comprehensive reporting

Price: Mailchimp is forever-free for the first 2000 contacts with 10000 email sends per month. This gives you a head start if you’re just getting started. However, like all other email marketing platforms, you need to get a premium package if you exceed the free limit.

Mailchimp’s premium packages start at only $14.99/month. But the prices can go up very quickly as you grow your email list. Besides, many plugins charge for Mailchimp integration add-on. So you’ll have to consider that too.

MailPoet

MailPoet is another WordPress plugin that offers excellent email marketing features within WordPress. Although it doesn’t offer as many features as HubSpot, it does offer the simplicity you’d want as a beginner.

MailPoet is primarily an email marketing plugin that offers lead generation through various methods and some very simple autoresponders. Out of the box, the plugin has its own transactional email service, so you don’t have to worry about email deliverability.

MailPoet’s autoresponder functionality includes form autoresponders, welcome emails, latest post notifications, and so on. Its deep WooCommerce integration lets you build a wide range of autoresponders, such as customized WooCommerce email notifications!

Additionally, MailPoet integrates with many popular WordPress plugins such as Fluent Forms, Bloom, Gravity Forms, OptinMonster, Simple Giveaways, MemberPress, etc.

However, a notable downside of MailPoet is that the autoresponders are pretty basic. This means you can’t set up advanced autoresponder rules for conditional messaging or data updating. However, if you’re just getting started, MailPoet might be the perfect choice for you!

MailPoet’s features include:

• Lead generation forms
• Deep WordPress and WooCommerce store integration
• WordPress newsletters
• Welcome emails
• Latest post notifications
• Email templates
• WooCommerce email customizer
• Abandoned cart emails
• High-deliverability SMTP service
• 25+ integrations

Price: MailPoet is free for the first 1000 contacts with most features. However, it charges users based on the number of contacts after exceeding the free limit. The price starts from $15/month.

However, they also allow you to use the plugin features without the email service. In that case, you can pick a domain-based license that starts from $149/year.

Choose Your WordPress autoresponder Wisely

So there you have it, the best free autoresponders for WordPress sites. Although these five tools are excellent choices for anyone that wants to start using autoresponders, it can be hard to choose a specific tool for your business. So before we wrap up the article, let’s explain what you should look for in your automation tool:

1. Consider Your Business: Both MailPoet and FluentCRM are excellent choices for WooCommerce stores. But if you’re a course creator, FluentCRM would be a better choice because of its automatic integration with LMS plugins. On the other hand, tools like HubSpot and MailChimp are more suited for enterprise businesses because of their wide range of features.

2. Your List Size: Most email marketing tools charge based on the number of contacts in one’s email list. The more contacts you have, the more you’ll have to pay every year. So, it’s better to look at a tool that doesn’t charge based on your contact list size if you have a large number of people on your contact list.

3. Advanced Functionalities: While it’s nice to be able to set up some simple autoresponders, you will need advanced functionalities at some point in your business. Switching your automation tool is generally a very complicated and difficult task. So it’s best to choose a tool that already offers advanced automation functionalities.

4. Your Technical Soundness: Most people don’t talk about this. But setting up marketing automation is a job on its own. If you’re not confident about learning the software’s functionalities, consider choosing a simpler tool to avoid hiring a marketing automation specialist.

5. Consider Your Existing Tools Stack: WordPress lets you use many plugins and tools to power your business. These tools can be responsible for handling various user–events that you’d want to maximize. All of the above tools integrate with at least 25+ tools. But if you use any tools they don’t integrate with, you might have to pay for external automation services to make your tools work with the autoresponder. So it’s highly recommended to check if your tools work with the autoresponder first.

We hope these tips will help you choose the best WordPress autoresponder for your business. If you’re focusing on affiliate marketing, then consider reading this article.

Don’t forget to share which tool you’re using and why. If you liked this article, subscribe to our blog and follow us on Twitter.