Best Email Sequence Tools for Small Business Lead Nurturing

The best email sequence tool for a small business that follows up on quote requests, bookings and lead magnets with one part-time marketer is Brevo. Its free plan lists marketing automation (up to 2,000 contacts), email and SMS campaigns and free sales features, and paid plans start at $9 a month, so you can build all three follow-ups below before you pay for anything. MailerLite is the tidier choice when email is all you need, and ActiveCampaign is the step up when the contact record and the pipeline should live in one account. Eleven tools are ranked below, with prices read from each vendor's own pricing page on 7 October 2026.

The page assumes a business like a local service firm, an agency of five, a shop with a booking form or a consultancy. Leads arrive through a contact form, a quote request, a booking page or a downloadable guide. One person does the marketing between other jobs, nobody writes code, and there is no CRM team. That changes the ranking: ease of setup, an exit you can control by hand and a plan that does not run out in the middle of a campaign count for more than a long feature list. If you want the strategy behind the sequences first, read nurture sequence strategies.

Which tool for which kind of small business

Four tests a part-time marketer should run before paying

Spend the first trial afternoon on these four checks, not on picking a template. They decide whether the sequences in the next sections will run unattended.

1. Submit your own contact form. Fill in the real form on your site with a test address and watch whether the contact appears in the tool with the right fields, the right tag and the right consent flag. Your form may be a website plugin, a booking page or a quote widget rather than the tool's own signup form, so this is where a sync gap shows up.
2. End a sequence by hand. Add a tag or change a field on a test contact and confirm the sequence stops before the next email. Most marketing tools cannot tell that someone replied in your inbox, so "replied" has to be something you record: a tag, a status or a deal stage. I did not find reply detection promised on any of the pricing pages used here.
3. Count your steps against the plan's automation limit. Several plans cap automation by action count or by number of automations. The table after the sequences below does that arithmetic for the three follow-ups on this page.
4. Find the ceiling. Know what happens when you pass the contact or send limit: an automatic upgrade, a daily cap that delays emails, or an overage bill. The plan descriptions below say which.

The 11 tools, ranked for small-business follow-up

1. Brevo: the best first tool when you have no CRM yet

On its free plan, Brevo's pricing help page lists multi-channel marketing automation for up to 2,000 contacts, email and SMS campaigns, transactional email and SMS, a drag-and-drop editor, outbound webhooks, free sales features and one user seat. For a quote request that means the acknowledgement, the chase emails and, where you hold phone consent, a text can all sit in one account. For a booking follow-up, the transactional email and SMS listing gives confirmations and reminders a home beside the nurture emails.

The free plan allows 300 email sends a day, and the same page says it stores up to 100,000 contacts. The plan is priced by email volume, not by list size: the same help page puts the Starter plan from $9 a month and Standard from $18 a month, and Brevo's pricing page carries the live selector. The help page maps its first volume tiers to contact storage: 5,000 sends a month stores up to 500 contacts, 10,000 stores up to 1,500 and 15,000 stores up to 2,500. Standard is the plan that lists marketing automation for unlimited contacts, plus A/B testing, one landing page and send-time optimization. The 2,000-contact automation limit also applies to Brevo's prepaid email credits, which carry the Starter feature set. Removing the "Sent by Brevo" sticker is an add-on, listed at $10.80 a month on the pricing page (the help page lists it at $9), so a logo-free Starter at the smallest tier is $9 + $10.80 = $19.80 a month before tax on the pricing-page figure.

Choose it if you want automation, SMS and a light sales view at zero or single-digit cost and fewer than 2,000 people need sequences. Skip it if your follow-up must branch on deal stages in a mature pipeline, or if volume-based pricing worries you: a chatty monthly newsletter raises the bill even when the list is small.

2. MailerLite: the easiest editor for email-only follow-up

MailerLite's pricing page lists email automation, landing pages and websites, digital products and A/B testing in one subscription, with Shopify, WooCommerce and Stripe among its integrations. That combination suits a consultancy or studio whose lead magnet, signup page and follow-up sequence can all be built in one place. Its feature list does not mention a CRM, a pipeline or SMS, so a quote-chasing sequence here ends on a tag you set yourself.

Billing follows active subscribers. The free plan is capped at 250 subscribers, 2 user seats and 2,500 emails a month: 2,500 divided by 250 is ten emails per subscriber, which is generous for a short list. Comfort starts at $12 a month at the 500-subscriber step, or $10.80 a month on annual billing, and sends ten times the tier's subscriber ceiling each month, so 5,000 emails at that step. Power starts at $25 a month ($22.50 on annual billing) and lists unlimited emails. Monthly-billing prices on the page: 1,000 subscribers Comfort $19 and Power $39; 5,000 subscribers Comfort $49 and Power $69; 10,000 subscribers Comfort $89 and Power $129. The page also states that MailerLite's data storage centre is in the European Union and has an ISO 27001 information-security certificate, which matters if your customers are in Europe.

Choose it if email is the whole job and you want the quickest build. Skip it if you want texts or a pipeline in the same account, or if your booking reminders need to key off an appointment date, which I could not confirm on the pricing page.

3. ActiveCampaign: the step up when leads need a pipeline

ActiveCampaign's pricing page lists email marketing, marketing automation, a standard CRM and ecommerce integrations from its Starter plan, so a quote request can create a deal, start the sequence and stop it when the deal moves. That is the strongest answer on this page to "stop the chase when the owner marks the quote as sent". What you get instead of a free plan is a trial.

Two limits shape the choice. Starter caps each automation at five actions and lists one user, and Plus also lists one user. Pro lists three users and Enterprise five, which matters for an agency of five that wants everyone to see the leads. The page lists prices billed annually, starting at 1,000 contacts: Starter $15 a month, Plus $49, Pro $79. At 2,500 contacts the selector shows Starter $39, Plus $95 and Pro $149. At 10,000 contacts it shows Starter $149, Plus $189 and Pro $375. Email sends are capped at ten times the contact limit on Starter and Plus. SMS and transactional email are add-ons, not part of the base plan.

Choose it if a person works the leads in a pipeline and you will keep the CRM tidy. Skip it if the marketer will not maintain tags, stages and fields, because a half-kept CRM makes exits unreliable. The Brevo vs ActiveCampaign comparison covers the cheaper alternative in more depth.

4. HubSpot Marketing Hub: stay on free tools if your contacts already live there

The HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing page lists free tools at no cost and prices the paid tiers per seat: Starter $7 a month, Professional $800 a month, Enterprise $3,600 a month. The email-automation row of its feature table is the line that matters here: the free column lists one automated action, Starter lists up to ten, and Professional and Enterprise list unlimited actions plus omni-channel automation.

In practice a one-person marketing team can send a single automated acknowledgement from the free tools, then move to Starter, where ten actions cover the shorter sequences on this page. If every email and every wait counts as an action, the five-email quote sequence below uses nine steps, which fits; the six-email lead-magnet sequence uses eleven and does not. The next published step after Starter is $800 a month, so plan to stay inside ten actions or choose a different tool. HubSpot's page prices per seat, and I did not read a per-contact figure at 500, 2,500 or 10,000, so check its contact selector before buying.

Choose it if your customer records, deals or sales email are already in HubSpot. Skip it if you are starting from nothing and want sequences longer than ten actions, because there is no mid-price tier between Starter and Professional. Compare the CRM-heavy alternative in HubSpot vs ActiveCampaign.

5. Mailchimp: a safe default if your list is already there

Mailchimp's pricing page lists audience segmentation, marketing automation, A/B and multivariate testing, SMS marketing and integrations including Shopify, WooCommerce, Square, Wix, Salesforce, WordPress and Zapier. For a shop with a booking form on Wix or Square, or a site that already feeds Mailchimp, that integration list is the main argument.

The free plan is the tightest on this page for a growing list: one seat, one audience, 250 contacts and 500 sends a month with a maximum of 250 a day. A five-email sequence to 100 new leads is 500 sends, so the plan is used up by a single month of that. Paid plans at the 500-contact selector are Essentials from $13 a month (3 seats, sends up to ten times your contacts), Standard from $20 a month (5 seats, twelve times your contacts, so 6,000 sends at 500 contacts, and custom-coded templates you can create and send) and Premium from $350 a month. Bigger lists move through contact bands: the 2,501 to 5,000 band starts at $100 a month, and the 5,001 to 10,000 band at $135 a month. Both bands carry a 12-month half-price offer, $50 and $67.50, so the 10,000-contact band costs 12 x $67.50 = $810 in year one and 12 x $135 = $1,620 in year two.

Choose it if your audience and templates already live in Mailchimp or your shop platform integrates with it. Skip it if you will pass 2,500 contacts soon and want a predictable bill, or if you need more than a free plan's 250 contacts to run any follow-up at all.

6. Kit: when the lead magnet is the business

Kit's pricing page offers a free plan for up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited landing pages and forms, unlimited email broadcasts, tagging and segmentation, and the ability to sell digital products. What it excludes is the thing this page is about: sequences and Visual Automations begin on the Creator plan. A consultant who collects emails through a guide and wants a seven-day follow-up has to pay.

Creator is quoted at $33 a month at 1,000 subscribers on yearly billing, which the page shows as $390 billed yearly and a saving of $78 a year. At 5,000 subscribers it shows $75 a month and at 10,000 subscribers $116 a month. Pro is $66 at the 1,000 step, with a first-year offer shown at $50, and $158 a month at 10,000 subscribers. Creator adds unlimited Visual Automations and sequences, subject-line A/B tests and branding removal, and the page lists a 14-day free trial without a card and free migrations.

Choose it if you are a coach, trainer or consultant whose leads come from content and who will use tags to separate topics. Skip it if you need appointment reminders, a pipeline or SMS, none of which the page lists.

7. Keap: one account for leads, bookings and payments, at a price

Keap's pricing page sells a single platform with the CRM, automation, email and text, pipeline, landing pages and payments together. For a local service firm that wants a quote request, a follow-up, a deposit and a text reminder under one login, it is the most complete package here, and the reason it ranks seventh rather than higher is cost and onboarding.

The price panel starts at 1,500 contacts and 2 users, billed monthly: $299 a month. It reads $335 at 2,500 contacts, $449 at 5,000 and $539 at 10,000. Additional users are $39 a month each. Text marketing tier 1, with 500 messages and 100 voice minutes, is included, and higher tiers start at $24 a month. The page also says implementation services are required (data import, migration and strategy calls) and does not publish their price, so that part is pricing on request (quote-based). Annual contracts carry a $299 early termination fee, and the free trial is limited to 25 emails with no payments or texts.

Choose it if you run a service business that takes payments and bookings and would rather pay once than stitch four tools together. Skip it if you are under 1,500 contacts or watching the budget, because the panel does not go lower. See Keap vs ActiveCampaign for the closest alternative.

8. Constant Contact: reliable for local firms, thin on automation at the low end

Constant Contact's pricing page splits automation by plan in a way that matters for sequences. Lite lists one automation template. Standard lists three automation templates, email scheduling, subject-line A/B testing, automatic resend to non-openers, 10 custom segments and three users. Premium lists unlimited custom automations and segments, dynamic content, unlimited users and 500 SMS messages a month. Lite and Standard can add SMS as a paid extra; the page says SMS marketing is available to paid-plan customers in the US only.

Starting prices are Lite $12 a month, Standard $35 and Premium $80, or $10.20, $29.75 and $68 a month with annual prepayment. The page says the exact price depends on the number of contacts and does not say which list size the "starting at" figure is for, so I give no price at 500, 2,500 or 10,000. The send allowance is ten, twelve and twenty-four times your contacts on Lite, Standard and Premium. Going over does not stop your emails; additional sends are billed. A free trial needs no card, and new plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Choose it if you are a US local business that wants phone support and does not mind three automation templates. Skip it if you want branching across all three sequences on this page: Standard lists three automation templates, which is one per sequence if the templates can be adapted to your steps (test that in the trial) and leaves no room to add a fourth.

9. Omnisend: the pick for a shop with a booking form and an online store

Omnisend's pricing page lists pre-built workflows for cart abandonment, welcome series, post-purchase and re-engagement, SMS inside automations, web push and automation splits. It is built for shops, so the lead-magnet and post-purchase flows are the strong ones; a quote request on a services site is a poorer fit. Billing counts subscribers and non-subscribers who received automated messages, and unsubscribed contacts are not billed, so every lead who receives an automated email counts toward your tier.

The free plan allows 250 contacts, 500 emails and 500 web push notifications a month. Standard lists 500 contacts and 6,000 emails a month and is shown at $11.20 a month, a 30% offer for the first three months: the page shows $48.00 over three months, which is $16 a month afterwards. Pro lists 2,500 contacts with unlimited emails, shown at $41.30 for the first three months and $177.00 in total, which is $59 a month afterwards. SMS starts at $0.007 per message for high-volume US sends, and the price varies by country and volume. The page offers free migration in up to five days.

Choose it if you sell products online and want SMS inside the same workflow. Skip it if your business sells appointments or quotes, because the templates assume an order.

10. GetResponse: capable, but Starter is a one-workflow plan

GetResponse's pricing page shows Starter at $19 a month for a 1,000-person list, or $15.58 a month paid annually. Starter lists unlimited monthly sends, a welcome email series, signup forms and popups, landing pages and exactly one custom automation workflow. Marketer is $59 a month, or $48.38 annually, and lists unlimited workflows, advanced audience segmentation, abandoned-cart recovery and sales funnels. Creator, at $69 a month or $56.58 annually, adds webinars, a website builder and course tools.

One workflow means one of the three sequences below fits on Starter and the other two need Marketer, which is $40 a month more at the same list size: $59 - $19 = $40. The page shows prices only for the 1,000-person default, so I give none at 500, 2,500 or 10,000, and a trial is offered but no ongoing free plan is listed.

Choose it if you plan webinars or funnels alongside the sequences and will pay for Marketer. Skip it if you only need to send follow-ups, because a cheaper plan elsewhere will give you more workflows.

11. Zoho Campaigns: the cheapest paid step, with the least automation

Zoho Campaigns' pricing page lists a Forever Free plan for up to 2,000 contacts with 6,000 emails a month, five users, templates and basic reporting. Its feature list for that plan does not mention automation workflows. Standard is US$3 a month billed annually at the 500-contact setting, with unlimited emails, ten users, basic segmentation, A/B testing and basic drag-and-drop workflows. Professional is US$4.50 at that setting and adds advanced segmentation, tags, contact scoring, dynamic content, abandonment-cart and purchase follow-up workflows and webhooks.

The page prices by contact tier, starting from 500, and SMS and WhatsApp are add-ons. The slider's steps beyond 500 are not labelled in the text I read, so I give no price at 2,500 or 10,000. Paid prices exclude local taxes.

Choose it if your budget is the first constraint and you can live with basic workflows. Skip it if you need to branch a sequence on behaviour, because the basic workflow label is on the plan that most small businesses would buy.

Three follow-up sequences, email by email

Each sequence below lists the trigger, the delay, the job the email does and the rule that removes someone from it. The subject lines are starting points. Replace brackets with your own details and write the emails in the voice of the person who will answer the replies.

Sequence A: a quote request that has not been answered

This sequence has two clocks. The first starts when the form is submitted and protects the lead while you prepare the quote. The second starts when you mark the quote as sent and chases the answer. The hand-off between them is a tag, for example quote-sent, that you add yourself.

A1: we have your request

• Trigger: quote form submitted. Delay: none.
• Job: confirm the request in plain text, say when a quote will arrive (for example within one working day), and ask for the one or two details that speed the quote up, such as a photo, an address or a date.
• Exit: the tag quote-sent is added, or the person replies.
• Subject ideas: "Got your request for [service]"; "Your quote: what we need from you".

A2: internal reminder to the owner

• Trigger: still no quote-sent tag one working day after A1. Delay: one working day.
• Job: this email goes to you, not to the lead. It lists the lead's name, request and age, so a request does not quietly age in the inbox. Tools differ on internal notifications, so test this step in the trial; if yours cannot send it, a recurring calendar task does the same job.
• Exit: the tag is added.

A3: did the quote arrive?

• Trigger: the quote-sent tag. Delay: two days.
• Job: a short, plain message asking whether the quote arrived and whether anything in it needs explaining. One question, no attachment.
• Exit: a reply, a booking, or a tag marking the quote accepted or declined.
• Subject ideas: "Did the quote reach you?"; "Quick check on your [service] quote".

A4: the usual objection

• Trigger: still no reply. Delay: three days after A3.
• Job: answer the question people most often ask before they say yes, in three or four sentences: what the price covers, what makes it change, how soon you can start. Link to a booking page for a 15-minute call.
• Exit: a reply, a booking, or a tag.

A5: closing the file

• Trigger: still no reply. Delay: five days after A4.
• Job: say that you will hold the quote until a date, and offer a reply with the word "later" to be contacted again in a month. It works as a closing email because the request is small: one word in reply is easier than a decision about the quote.
• Exit: the sequence ends. Leads who did not engage leave the follow-up; move them to a newsletter only if the consent they gave covers it.

Sequence B: appointment reminders and the review request

Many booking tools already send a confirmation and a reminder. If yours does, build only the review request in the email tool and avoid sending the same reminder twice. The reminder emails below assume that the booking date is stored on the contact, which is the thing to test first.

B1: booking confirmed

• Trigger: booking created. Delay: none.
• Job: date, time, address or video link, what to bring, how to change the booking.
• Exit: the booking is cancelled.

B2: two days before

• Trigger: two days before the booking date. Delay: relative to the date, not to B1.
• Job: repeat the logistics and put the change-or-cancel link first, so a person who cannot come has an easier option than simply not turning up.
• Exit: cancelled or rescheduled. A reschedule restarts the sequence from B1 with the new date.

B3: the morning of the appointment

• Trigger: the morning of the booking date, or two hours before. Channel: SMS only for people who agreed to texts, email for everyone else.
• Job: one line with the time, the address, parking or entry details and a phone number for lateness.
• Exit: the appointment time passes.

B4: thank you and review request

• Trigger: a tag such as visit-done, added by you or your booking tool after the appointment. Do not send on a timer alone, so that someone who did not attend does not get a thank-you.
• Delay: one day.
• Job: thank them, ask one question about how it went, and give one link to the review page you care about. With two links the reader has to choose, and one of your review sites will lose out.
• Exit: a reply with a complaint (take them out and answer personally), or a tag showing the review is done.

B5: one reminder for the review, and a no-show path

• Trigger: B4 sent and the review link not clicked. Delay: five days.
• Job: a two-line nudge, written to be skipped by those who already left a review. If the tool cannot tell who clicked, send it only to people who did not open B4.
• No-show branch: a no-show tag skips B4 and B5 and sends a short "we missed you, here is a link to rebook" email within two hours instead.
• Exit: the sequence ends. Rebooking prompts belong in a separate, later automation.

Sequence C: a cold lead from a lead magnet

Someone who downloaded a guide, a checklist or a price list is interested in the topic, not yet in you. This sequence gives value first and asks for a call near the end.

C1: here is your download

• Trigger: form submitted. Delay: none.
• Job: deliver the file, name the single action to take with it, and say how often you will write.
• Exit: unsubscribe only.

C2: the quick win

• Trigger: two days after C1.
• Job: one concrete tip from the guide, with the reason it works, in the voice of the owner.
• Exit: a quote request or booking, which moves the person to Sequence A or B.

C3: show the work

• Trigger: two days after C2.
• Job: a real example of a past job, with real details and permission if it names a customer. Do not write a fictional client story.
• Exit: as C2.

C4: the question people ask before they book

• Trigger: three days after C3.
• Job: answer the most common pre-sale question and link the booking page.
• Exit: a booking, a reply or a quote request.

C5: the invitation

• Trigger: four days after C4, for people who have not booked.
• Job: a plain invitation to a short call or a quote request, with a sentence on what you will need from them.
• Exit: as C4.

C6: should I keep writing?

• Trigger: seven days after C5.
• Job: ask whether they want more, offer two or three topics to choose from, and say that silence will end the emails.
• Exit: the sequence ends. People who picked a topic move to a monthly list; everyone else stops receiving mail.

Do the three sequences fit the plan's automation limit?

Each of the three sequences is one automation. Counting each email and each wait as one action, to be safe until you have tested how the builder counts, Sequence A has five messages and four waits, nine steps; Sequence B has five messages and four waits, nine steps; Sequence C has six messages and five waits, eleven steps.

Side-by-side monthly prices for 500, 2,500 and 10,000 leads on file

Billing units differ, so these are not like for like: Brevo prices by monthly sends, MailerLite by active subscribers, HubSpot by seat, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, Keap and Constant Contact by contacts. Where a vendor's page gives no figure at a size, the cell says so rather than guessing. Prices are US dollars a month, checked on 7 October 2026, and exclude tax.

Read the table for shape rather than rank. Keap is the most expensive row at every size it lists. At 10,000 contacts the lowest published price in the table is MailerLite Comfort at $89. Mailchimp's half-price offer makes its first twelve months at 10,000 contacts, $810, look cheaper than the second year at $1,620 will turn out to be.

What a year costs where the vendor publishes annual billing

Mailchimp, Keap, HubSpot and Omnisend are left out of this table because the pages read do not give an annual rate for the sizes above.

Where small-business follow-up usually breaks

Replies pile up in one person's inbox

The follow-ups above ask people to reply, and a reply to a marketing email goes to whatever reply-to address you set. If it is one person's mailbox, the quote sits unanswered during a holiday and the sequence keeps chasing a lead who already responded. Use a shared address such as quotes@ or hello@ that two people can read, and agree who sets the exit tag when a reply comes in. The tag is the only thing the sequence can see.

The form does not reach the tool

A quote form on a website plugin, a booking page and an email tool are three separate products, and the link between them is where leads vanish. Check three things after connecting them: the contact arrives within a few minutes, the fields map to the right places (a phone number in a name field kills the SMS step), and the consent checkbox state travels with it. Repeat the test every time you change the form. A broken sync does not announce itself; the symptom is a quiet inbox.

The sender is the owner's personal address

Sending nurture mail from a personal Gmail or Outlook address through a marketing tool tends to fail the sender checks that mailbox providers apply, so the emails land in spam or are rejected. Use an address on your own domain and complete the tool's domain authentication before the first live send. The email deliverability guide walks through the records.

Outgrowing a free plan in the middle of a campaign

Each free plan stops in a different way, and the behaviour at the limit matters more than the limit. Mailchimp's free plan allows 500 sends a month, so five emails to 100 new leads uses it all and anything after that waits or requires an upgrade. Brevo's free plan allows 300 sends a day, so if 400 people download your guide in a day after a promotion, 100 first emails slip to the next day. Brevo's paid tiers upgrade automatically when you pass the contact limit on the first three tiers, and its help page says the plan moves to the next tier and the price rises with it. Constant Contact bills sends over the allowance instead of stopping them. Know which of these you are buying.

Marketing consent and quote requests are not the same thing

A person who asks for a quote has asked for a quote. Whether that also lets you put them on a monthly newsletter depends on your country and on what your form said. Keep the transactional follow-up (the quote, the reminder) separate from marketing mail, and ask a lawyer before moving quote leads onto a promotional list.

Which sequence to build first

Build Sequence A first. It protects the most expensive moment in a small business, the lead who has already asked for a price, and it needs only five messages. Build the reminders and review request second if your booking tool does not already send them, and the lead-magnet sequence last, because it only matters once the page that collects the downloads gets traffic. For a team of two to five, the email tools for small teams page covers seats and shared inboxes in more detail.

Frequently asked questions

How many emails should a quote follow-up have before I give up?

Three to five messages over about two weeks is enough for most quotes, and the sequence should end on a human action rather than on a count: a reply, a booking, or a tag you set when the lead says yes or no. Past the fifth message you are mostly reminding people who already decided to ignore you. The closing email works best when it offers a way to be contacted later instead of a final push.

Do I need a CRM, or is an email tool enough for lead nurturing?

If the same person who sends the quotes also writes the emails and can set a tag by hand, an email tool is enough. A CRM becomes worth paying for when two or more people touch each lead and you need the sequence to stop automatically when a deal changes stage. ActiveCampaign, Keap and Brevo list CRM or sales features inside the plan, and HubSpot is the natural choice if your contacts already live there.

Can I run lead nurturing on a free plan?

For a small list, yes, but each free plan breaks in its own place. Mailchimp's free plan allows 500 sends a month, Omnisend's allows 500 emails, MailerLite's allows 250 subscribers, Brevo's allows 300 sends a day, and Kit's free plan has no sequences at all. Count your sequence length times your new leads per month before you commit, and use the cost table above to see what the first paid step costs.

Should reminders and review requests go out as email or SMS?

Use email by default and add SMS only for people who agreed to texts when they booked, because the rules on text consent are stricter than for email and differ by country, so ask a lawyer before you switch it on. Constant Contact's pricing page says its SMS marketing is available to paid-plan customers in the US only, so check your country before you pick a tool for texts. A short SMS two hours before an appointment is the one place where it clearly earns its cost.

Which address should the follow-up emails come from?

Send from an address on your own domain, such as hello@ or bookings@, and route replies to an inbox that more than one person can read. A personal Gmail address as the sender tends to fail authentication when a marketing tool sends on its behalf, and replies vanish into one person's mailbox when they are on holiday. Set up the tool's domain authentication before the first real send; the deliverability guide on this site covers the checks.