Postscript
SMS marketing built for Shopify merchants, with carrier fees billed on top of message rates
From $49/mo
Category
The best Marketing software
Marketing and analytics software empowers businesses to create, execute, and measure marketing campaigns across multiple channels. These tools provide insights into customer behavior, campaign performance, and ROI, enabling data-driven marketing decisions that drive sustainable business growth.
- Tools listed
- 50
All 50 marketing tools
Every listing shows its published starting price on the same footing, so a shortlist does not take ten tabs.
What marketing software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 50 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $7Vimeo
- Median entry price
- $49across 32 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $10,000Optimizely
- Publish a $0 plan
- 14of 50
Paid marketing plans in this set start anywhere from $7 a month for Vimeo to $10,000 for Optimizely. The median entry price across the 32 tools that publish one is $49, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
14 of 50 publish a $0 plan, and 4 of those charge nothing at all. 22 tools have no free tier of any kind.
26 of 50 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 50 marketing listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- quote
- 14
- subscription
- 10
- freemium
- 7
- usage-based
- 2
- Open source, no licence fee
- 1
- Per month by connected client count
- 1
- Per month by contact count
- 1
- Per month by credits and usage limits
- 1
- Per month by data source count
- 1
- Per month by event count
- 1
- Per month by plan, plus per-number and per-minute overages
- 1
- Per month plus per message sent
- 1
Separately, 26 of 50 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for
Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 42 marketing tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.
Named most often
- Dedicated support , 5 of 42
- A/B testing , 3 of 42
- Email support , 3 of 42
- Heatmaps , 3 of 42
- Priority support , 3 of 42
Named by fewer
- Advanced analytics , 2 of 42
- Advanced attribution , 2 of 42
- Advanced dashboards , 2 of 42
- AI-powered insights , 2 of 42
- All Optimize features , 2 of 42
Named by exactly one vendor: A/B testing and advanced segmentation, Attribution, journeys and recommendations, Dashboards and metrics, Healthcare marketing and compliance advisory, Onclusive Social listening, Suited to high-volume senders. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.
What “Marketing” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 50 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- analytics15
- attribution7
- Enterprise6
- marketing-automation5
- privacy5
- ab-testing4
- b2b3
- call-tracking3
- Customer Data Platform3
- customer-analytics3
- ecommerce3
- gdpr3
Carried by a single tool: Ad Management, communications, data-integration, first-party-data, Igaming, media database, project-management, social-media. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
14 of 50 marketing tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with dedicated support, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$7 to $10,000 is a $9,993 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $10,000 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
27 of 50 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 3 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, dedicated support, a/b testing, email support, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 12 billing models: quote on 14 listings, subscription on 10, and 10 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare marketing tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- Postscript vs CleverTap
- CleverTap vs Netcore Cloud
- Netcore Cloud vs Insider
- Insider vs Umami
- Umami vs WebEngage
- WebEngage vs CallRail
- CallRail vs Optimove
- Optimove vs Zoho Marketing Automation
Go straight to the numbers
- Postscriptpricingalternatives
- CleverTappricingalternatives
- Netcore Cloudpricingalternatives
- Insiderpricingalternatives
- Umamipricingalternatives
- WebEngagepricingalternatives
Questions people ask about marketing software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How much does marketing software cost?
- Across the 50 marketing tools listed here, paid plans start between $7 and $10,000 a month, with a median entry price of $49. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $10,000 a month (Optimizely). 14 of 50 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest marketing software?
- 4 of the 50 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Vimeo has the lowest published entry price at $7 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free marketing software?
- Yes, 14 of 50 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 4 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- What features should marketing software have?
- Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are dedicated support (5 of 42 tools that publish plan detail), a/b testing (3) and email support (3). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as a/b testing and advanced segmentation or attribution, journeys and recommendations, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
- How is marketing software usually billed?
- quote (14), subscription (10), freemium (7), usage-based (2), plus 8 less common arrangements, counted across the 50 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 26 of 50 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does marketing software actually cover?
- The 50 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are analytics (15), attribution (7), enterprise (6), marketing-automation (5), privacy (5). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under marketing may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do marketing tools offer?
- 43 of 50 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 3 tiers. 27 of 50 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many marketing tools are listed on Softwr?
- 50 approved marketing listings appear on this page, including Postscript, CleverTap, Netcore Cloud, Insider. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/marketing, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep this
Email me these 50 picks
The shortlist for “Marketing”, plus a note if any of their prices change.
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Neighbouring categories
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.