Email automation software sends the right email when a person does something: signs up, buys, leaves a cart, or goes quiet. No single feature solves this. A working setup needs five parts: a trigger, steps with waits, an exit rule, store or purchase data for cart and post-purchase flows, and a way to test before going live. Store-focused tools run cart and order flows from store events. Creator tools like Kit cover sign-ups and purchases well but not carts. Pick by which triggers your business actually produces.
What email automation software needs to cover
Think of a flow as a small machine. The trigger starts it: a form submission, a tag, a purchase, a checkout that was started and not finished. The steps are the emails themselves, and the waits between them decide whether the series feels helpful or pushy. Conditions split people by what they did, such as opened, clicked, or bought. Exit rules take people out the moment the goal is met. Without them, a customer who already paid still gets the reminder.
Two parts are easy to forget. The first is data. A welcome series only needs an email address, but cart and post-purchase flows need the store to send events (cart started, order placed, product bought) into the email tool. If the tool cannot see the cart, it cannot remind anyone about it. The second is testing. A flow runs on its own for months, so a mistake repeats quietly with every new subscriber.
That is why the right email marketing automation software depends less on the editor and more on which events it can hear. A course seller lives on sign-ups and purchase tags. A store lives on carts and orders. A local service lives on a welcome email and a follow-up. The sections below sort the products in our catalog by those situations, using what each one actually documents.
Write down the three events that should send an email in your business, then check whether each tool can actually hear them. That filters the list faster than any feature table.
The abandoned cart email: the flow that needs store data
The abandoned cart email earns its own section because most of the money in ecommerce automation sits here. Across 50 studies, the average documented shopping cart abandonment rate is 70.22% [1].
The timing that recovery specialists publish is simple. Rejoiner recommends a three-email series: the first one hour after abandonment, the second one day after, the third three days after [2]. Its data shows why: contacting abandoners too soon lowers conversion rates, and waiting too long does even worse. Keep the first email a plain reminder. Save any discount for the follow-ups, if you use one at all.
Not every tool here can send it. Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign and Brevo (on Standard) run cart flows from store events. MailerLite does it through store integrations on paid plans. Constant Contact keeps it on Premium. Mailchimp's Free plan does not carry the abandoned-cart automation. Kit has no abandoned-cart trigger; its Shopify app syncs buyers, not carts. Beehiiv lacks store-event automations entirely. If carts matter to you, this one fact narrows the list fast.
A cart or sales series without an exit on purchase keeps reminding people who already paid. Add the exit before the flow goes live, not after the first complaint.
Online stores: flows driven by orders and carts
A store needs the full set: welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase and win-back. These three tools run those flows from store events.
Klaviyo is the most store-shaped. Its flows sit in the base email plan, and it ships pre-built versions of the four flows to start with. Our guide walks through setting up Klaviyo's first four flows, starting with abandoned checkout. ActiveCampaign puts abandoned cart in its ecommerce core on every tier, and our piece on ActiveCampaign's abandoned cart for stores covers what breaks when you hit your contact limit. Brevo moves cart, post-purchase and win-back flows to Standard.
Flows run on store events from your commerce integration, and pre-built abandoned checkout, welcome, post-purchase and win-back flows are ready to switch on and adjust.
- Start from the pre-built abandoned checkout flow
- Send each email to yourself
- Change one thing at a time
A multi-step automation builder runs abandoned cart on every tier; browse abandonment fires when someone views a product, and split automations and predictive sending branch and time the series.
Standard runs abandoned-cart reminders, post-purchase follow-ups and win-back flows for any number of contacts, and web and event tracking triggers messages from site behavior.
Creators and course sellers: sequences driven by sign-ups and tags
A creator's flows start at the sign-up form, not the cart. Someone downloads a guide, joins a group or buys a course, and a sequence carries them from there. The core need is a welcome sequence plus a purchase trigger that starts onboarding.
Kit fits that funnel closely. A form or tag starts the welcome sequence, and a purchase tag starts a post-purchase automation. Our article on building a coaching welcome sequence in Kit shows the shape. Visual automations need Creator, though, not Free. MailerLite runs a welcome series whenever someone joins a group and suggests three emails: immediately, after two days, after five. Beehiiv suits newsletter writers: Free carries only the welcome email, and automations start on Lite.
A form or tag starts a welcome sequence, and a purchase tag starts a post-purchase automation for onboarding, care guides, review requests or a cross-sell.
A welcome series starts whenever someone joins a group; paid plans add abandoned-cart, purchase and win-back flows through store integrations, and auto-resend reaches non-openers.
Service businesses: a welcome, a reminder, a resend
A salon, a consultant or a contractor rarely needs branching logic. The usual job is a welcome email to new contacts, a short series after an inquiry, and a nudge to people who skipped the last newsletter. Simplicity beats depth here.
Constant Contact builds automations from templates rather than a free-form canvas. A welcome email is available on every plan, and resend to non-openers starts on Standard. Mailchimp also offers automation flows. Because flows send on triggers, monthly volume is harder to predict than a newsletter's, which matters when your plan's send allowance is tied to your contact count.
Automations are built from templates: a welcome email on every plan, automatic resend to non-openers, and abandoned-cart reminders on the top plan.
Automation flows send on triggers, from welcome automations to abandoned-cart flows that run once your store is connected.
Combining tools and testing a flow before it goes live
You do not have to buy the deepest tool on day one. One common path: start with a welcome series on a free plan (Klaviyo, Brevo and MailerLite all allow some automation on Free), then move up once cart or post-purchase flows matter. Another is a split: a creator platform like Kit or Beehiiv runs the newsletter and sign-up sequences, while cart reminders come from a store-focused tool.
Splitting has a cost. Two tools mean two lists to keep in sync, and an exit rule in one cannot see a purchase recorded in the other. Decide which tool owns the customer record.
Testing is the step most people skip. Before you switch a flow on:
- Send every email in the flow to yourself and read it on a phone.
- Shorten the waits to minutes, walk a test contact through, then restore them.
- Start a real checkout and leave it if the flow depends on store events, and place a real test order for post-purchase flows. A store flow is only proven with real store data.
- Buy partway through the series and confirm the exit rule removes you.
- Check the flow weekly for the first month.
One rule from our Klaviyo guide fits any tool: start from a pre-built flow and change one thing at a time. A flow built badly can run forever without warning you.
Set the waits to minutes, walk a test contact through the whole flow, then put the real delays back before you switch it on.
How to choose email automation software for your business
Start from your triggers, not the feature list. Write down the three events that should send an email in your business. Then check each against the tool.
- You sell physical products and carts matter: Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign or Brevo on Standard. Confirm Brevo's Shopify connection in writing first.
- You sell courses, coaching or digital products: Kit on Creator or MailerLite. Accept that Kit will not send cart reminders.
- You publish a newsletter and only need a welcome: Beehiiv Free, moving to Lite when you need a real series.
- You run a local service and want it simple: Constant Contact or Mailchimp.
- You need branching by behavior: ActiveCampaign, where split automations sit on Professional.
Watch the plan line, not just the feature. Several tools list automation on Free but cap who can enter it. A flow that stops sending when you outgrow a cap fails silently. That matters more than any feature comparison.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between email automation and a drip campaign?+
A drip campaign is one kind of automation: a fixed series sent on a schedule after a sign-up. Email automation also covers event-driven flows, like a cart reminder or a post-purchase email, that start when a person does something.
What email flows should I set up first?+
A welcome flow for every business. Stores should add abandoned cart next, then post-purchase and win-back. Creators should add a post-purchase onboarding sequence triggered by the purchase.
Can I send an abandoned cart email without a store integration?+
Not reliably. The email tool has to receive the cart event from your store, so the integration with your store platform is the part to confirm before you choose.
The bottom line
Email automation is a small machine with five parts: trigger, steps and waits, exit rule, store data and testing. The right email automation software is the one that hears your triggers. Stores need cart and order events, so Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign and Brevo on Standard fit best. Creators need sign-ups and purchase tags, where Kit and MailerLite are strong and carts are not the point. Local services need a welcome and a resend, which Constant Contact handles with templates; Mailchimp's automation flows are the other route. For the method behind the series, read our drip campaign guide; for the first flow you can build today, start with a welcome email.
- [1] Baymard Institute (Nov 2026) https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate
- [2] Rejoiner (Nov 2026) https://www.rejoiner.com/resources/abandoned-cart-email-timing