There is no single “best” email marketing platform for every membership site. The right choice depends on your business model, audience size, marketing strategy, budget, and long-term goals.The challenge is that there are hundreds of email marketing platforms to choose from, each promising better automation, deliverability, and results.
In this guide, we’ll narrow the field by highlighting the email marketing systems most commonly used by Paid Memberships Pro customers and explain how to evaluate them based on the needs of your specific membership business.
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Why is email so important?
Email is the only direct channel you actually own. A social followers list can be revoked. A Substack account can be deplatformed. Algorithms shift, and engaged followers stop seeing your posts. Nobody is randomly returning to your site to check what’s new.
Email puts you front and center in the member’s inbox, on your schedule, with your message. It also touches every stage of the member lifecycle:
- Lead generation: collecting email addresses from visitors who are not yet members.
- Onboarding and activation: getting members set up and to the moment they actually use their membership. At Paid Memberships Pro, activation is when you get your first paying member.
- Ongoing engagement: keeping members aware of new content, events, and value.
- Renewal reminders and win-back: nudging members before billing, and re-engaging anyone who lapses or cancels.
If we do nothing else for marketing, we send at least one email a week. Period.
—Jason Coleman, Co-Founder & CEO of PMPro
Jason has set that bar for our business, and it is the bar we suggest for yours.
Transactional Emails vs. Marketing Emails
This is where many membership site owners get confused. Both types of emails are important but they serve very different purposes and require different tools.
What is a Transactional Email?
A transactional email is sent automatically in response to a specific action taken by an individual user. Examples include:
- Membership checkout receipts
- Membership level confirmation emails
- Password reset emails
- Membership renewal reminders
- Account update notifications
- Support ticket updates
These emails are expected by the recipient because they are directly tied to something they just did or requested.
Related: PMPro Email Template Documentation
What Is a Marketing Email?
A marketing email is sent proactively to a group of subscribers as part of a communication or promotional strategy. Examples include:
- Newsletters
- Product announcements
- Promotional campaigns
- Event invitations
- Educational email series
- Automated nurture sequences
These emails are usually sent through an Email Marketing Service (EMS) such as Mailchimp, Kit, ActiveCampaign, or MailerLite.
Sending Services vs. EMS Platforms
An EMS handles the marketing message. A sending service is the actual mail server doing the delivery. Most EMS platforms use Amazon SES under the hood, including Kit.
For your transactional email from WordPress, you have a few options:
- Your host’s built-in mail: some hosts include a usable sending service (Bluehost, or Cloudways paired with Rackspace email). Others do not (SiteGround does not on its main plans).
- An SMTP plugin: connects WordPress to a transactional provider like Brevo, SendGrid, or Postmark.
- Google Workspace business email: about $20 a month for a real business email address mapped to your domain. Free for qualified nonprofits, and Microsoft 365 has a similar free nonprofit tier.
If you are a Paid Memberships Pro Hosting customer, transactional email is handled for you.
Related: Transactional Email Documentation
The DNS Foundation: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
Regardless of the EMS or sending service choosen, you will need to set up DNS authentication records for your domain. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are the three records that tell inbox providers (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) that email claiming to come from your domain is actually authorized.
This is not optional anymore. Gmail and Yahoo started rejecting unauthenticated bulk mail in 2024, and every sending service expects these records to be in place.
GDPR and Double Opt-In
GDPR requires explicit consent to send marketing email, and many EU site owners use double opt-in (a confirmation click before the subscriber is added to your list) to document that consent. Most major EMS platforms support double opt-in as a setting on the list or form. If your audience is in the EU, turn it on.
For US-based sites, signing up for a membership is generally considered consent to receive related communications, but you still need a clear way to unsubscribe and you still benefit from honoring engagement signals.
Choosing an Email Marketing System
Opinions matter less than fit. Answering the following questions will point you to the right tool.
- How big is your list today, and where will it be in two years? EMS pricing tiers are based on subscriber count, sends per month, or both. Migrating later is painful. Pick a platform that fits where you are growing to.
- Do you need automation, broadcasts, or both? A paid newsletter publisher who handwrites every send needs different tools than a course operator running welcome sequences and re-engagement drips. If you will never use automation, do not pay for it.
- Do you want your email tool to live inside WordPress? MailPoet and FluentCRM run entirely inside your WordPress dashboard. Kit, Mailchimp, and Keap live on their own platforms and connect via API.
- How important is tagging and segmentation? Tag every member by their membership level as a starting point. You may also want to tag on expiration, level changes, purchase amounts, or custom fields.
- How comfortable are you with technical setup? Hosted platforms are mostly plug-and-play once connected. WordPress-native tools give you more control but ask more of you.
- What is your budget? Some platforms have generous free tiers (MailPoet, Kit, Brevo). Cheaper is not better if it slows you down. The more painful a tool is to use, the less you will use it.
Answer those six and the field narrows quickly. There’s also a quick AI-powered quiz below to help you shortlist based on your answers. It does not give you a single answer. It narrows the choice from 200 platforms to maybe five.
Quiz: Which EMS Should I Choose?
Email Marketing Integrations for Paid Memberships Pro
These are the integrations we maintain or natively support. Each one keeps your member data in sync with your EMS so the right people get the right messages.
Kit Integration
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is built for creators and is what we use at PMPro for our own list of nearly 60,000 subscribers. We send around 650,000 to 800,000 emails per month through it. It is strong on tagging, sequences, and automation, and pricing is based on subscriber count rather than send volume.
The Kit Integration for Paid Memberships Pro subscribes and tags members based on their membership level. It also adds purchase data from checkout to each subscriber, so you can segment by what people have actually bought.
Best for: creators, course operators, and membership sites that depend on automation and sequences.
Mailchimp Integration
Mailchimp is one of the most recognized names in email marketing, with a free tier that works well for smaller lists.
If you use Mailchimp and want advanced segmentation on membership events (cancellations, expirations, level changes), the recommended path is to connect through WP Fusion. The Mailchimp Integration for Paid Memberships Pro syncs members to Mailchimp audiences by membership level and updates their audience status when levels change, but it does not provide advanced event-based tagging/segmentation..
Best for: small to mid-sized sites that want a familiar interface to get started.
MailPoet Integration
MailPoet is a WordPress-native email marketing plugin. Everything happens inside your WordPress dashboard, which makes it the closest thing to a one-stop shop for content and email if that is how you prefer to work.
The MailPoet Integration for Paid Memberships Pro automatically subscribes members to MailPoet lists by level. Members can also opt in to specific lists at checkout or from their profile page.
One thing to know before you commit: MailPoet does not support email attachments and does not let you CC or BCC individual sends. If your workflow depends on either of those, it is not the right fit.
Best for: small to mid-sized sites that want their email tool inside WordPress, paid newsletter publishers, anyone who prefers fewer external services.
Keap Integration
Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) is a CRM with email marketing built in. It is on the heavier end of the spectrum, designed for businesses that want to track leads and customers across a full sales pipeline.
The Keap Integration for Paid Memberships Pro creates or updates contacts in Keap when users register, check out, or cancel. The integration tags contacts based on the tags assigned to their membership level, or with an “All Users” tag for users without a membership.
Best for: small businesses already running on Keap, sites that need CRM features alongside email.
Omnisend Integration
Omnisend is an omnichannel marketing platform that adds SMS and web push notifications alongside email. If you want to reach members through more than their inbox, Omnisend is worth a look.
Best for: ecommerce-adjacent sites, anyone who wants SMS in the marketing mix.
WP Fusion: The Universal Bridge
If your EMS is not in the list above, the answer is almost always WP Fusion. WP Fusion connects Paid Memberships Pro to more than 100 platforms and CRMs, including ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, Constant Contact, HubSpot, Drip, FluentCRM, Brevo, and Klaviyo.
Paid Memberships Pro includes native support for WP Fusion Pro at no extra cost. Install the WP Fusion Lite plugin, connect it to your EMS, and PMPro syncs member data automatically. WP Fusion also lets you tag members on much more than just level changes. You can tag on cancellation, expiration, payment failures, and upgrades or downgrades.
Kim’s current favorite setup is WP Fusion combined with Brevo for marketing email, with PMPro handling transactional email. Brevo has a generous free tier, supports both email and SMS, and connects to WP Fusion cleanly even though there is no native PMPro Add On for it. If you are starting fresh and open to a recommendation, that combination is worth a look.
For sites operating at scale, Kit and ActiveCampaign are the two platforms Kim and the team put at the top of the list. Both support deep automation and pair with WP Fusion for event-level tagging that their native integrations do not cover on their own.
Best for: anyone whose EMS is not in our shortlist, anyone who wants deeper tagging than the native Add Ons offer, and sites that use Brevo, ActiveCampaign, or any platform without a dedicated PMPro Add On.
Zapier Webhook Automations
Zapier is the universal bridge between web applications. If you need a workflow like “when a new member signs up, add them to my Google Sheet, send a Slack notification, and create a contact in HubSpot,” Zapier can probably build it.
We support Zapier in two ways. The Zapier Webhook Automations Add On fires webhooks for PMPro events. There is also native Zapier compatibility for triggering common workflows.
Best for: sites that want to connect PMPro events to dozens of other apps without writing code.
Sell Paid Newsletters on WordPress
Maybe a newsletter is not just one channel for your membership business. Maybe a paid newsletter is the business. Paid Memberships Pro has all the tools to help you run a paid newsletter on a site you fully own and manage.
We always say, “Own the land your business is built on.” That phrase is never more true than with email. A list you own, on a site you own, sending through services you choose.
Learn exactly what you will get (the plugins, the support, and the training) when you sell paid newsletters on WordPress.
Frequently Asked Questions
Maybe. PMPro sends transactional emails (receipts, level confirmations, renewal warnings) from your WordPress site. An EMS is what you use to send marketing emails at scale.
In most cases, no. Marketing emails reported as spam hurt the sender reputation of your transactional emails too. Keep them on separate sending infrastructure.
Use WP Fusion. It connects to more than 100 platforms and WP Fusion Lite is supported natively in PMPro at no extra cost. Brevo is a practical first suggestion if you are starting fresh and want a free tier that covers both email and SMS.
Paid Memberships Pro 3.7 introduced an email log that records every email PMPro attempts to send and whether the handoff to the mail server succeeded. Your sending service can show you what happens after that, between the server and the inbox.
It depends on the platform. Some EMS providers count a subscriber once per list or segment they belong to, which inflates your subscriber count and your bill. WP Fusion avoids this problem by tagging contacts rather than duplicating them across lists.
Route it through WP Fusion. The same tagging logic applies to any of the 100-plus platforms WP Fusion supports.
Start with our practical guide to SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for membership sites. Without authentication, even the best EMS will land in the spam folder.
Join the Conversation
Email strategy is contextual. What works for a 200-member local quilting guild looks different from what works for a 50,000-subscriber newsletter. If you want to talk through your specific setup with other membership site owners, the PMPro Community on Slack is where those conversations happen.
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