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MailerLite
- Best for
- Small businesses that want a simple tool with automation, landing pages and a website builder in one plan
- Price from
- Free for up to 250 subscribers; paid plans listed as starting at $12 a month
MailerLite packs a drag-and-drop editor with more than 70 content blocks, visual automations, signup forms, landing pages and a basic website builder into plans that start low. Paid plans scale by subscriber count, so cost grows as your list does. Its free plan is small, so most real businesses will move to a paid plan quickly.
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Kit
- Best for
- Creators, coaches and newsletter writers who sell their own products
- Price from
- Free plan for up to 10,000 subscribers; Creator listed at $33 a month for 1,000 subscribers
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is built around people who sell to their own audience. It adds a digital store, paid newsletters and a recommendation network on top of visual automations and sequences. The free plan allows a large list, but the paid features that matter for growth, such as unlimited automations, sit on the Creator plan.
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Brevo
- Best for
- Businesses that send both marketing email and system messages, and want a free plan measured in daily sends
- Price from
- Free plan with up to 300 emails a day; Starter listed from 5,000 emails a month
Brevo limits its free plan by emails per day rather than by contacts, which suits a list that is large but mailed rarely. It also covers SMS and signup forms. We could not read a Starter price from the page when we checked, so confirm the figure for your list size before committing.
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GetResponse
- Best for
- Marketers who want funnels, automation and ecommerce tools alongside email
- Price from
- Starter $19 a month billed monthly, or $15.58 a month billed annually
GetResponse’s cheapest plan includes unlimited sends, a landing page builder and one custom automation workflow. Unlimited workflows, abandoned cart recovery and sales funnels start on the Marketer plan at $59 a month billed monthly. That gap matters if automation is why you are buying.
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ActiveCampaign
- Best for
- Teams that want deep automation and customer segmentation and can budget for it
- Price from
- Four paid plans (Starter, Plus, Pro, Enterprise); we could not read prices from the page; free 14-day trial, no card needed
ActiveCampaign puts unlimited automation actions on its Plus and Pro tiers and offers predictive and conditional content on Pro. We could not read plan prices from the pricing page, so use the free trial and the vendor’s calculator to get a figure for your list size. It is a better fit once email is a core channel rather than a side task.
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Mailchimp
- Best for
- Businesses already on Mailchimp, or those who want a widely used tool with many integrations
- Price from
- Free plan for 250 contacts; Essentials, Standard and Premium paid plans
Mailchimp’s free plan is the tightest of the six: 250 contacts, and a cap of 500 sends a month or 250 a day, with automations not included. Generative AI features arrive on Standard. It is a reasonable choice if your team already knows it. Starting fresh, the others here give you more room for the same money.
Email is still the channel a small business owns outright. You do not rent your list from a social network, and a good tool lets you send a welcome series, a monthly newsletter and a few automatic follow-ups without a marketing team.
This guide compares six tools that are popular with small businesses and freelancers. We chose them because each has a free plan or free trial, a pricing page you can check yourself, and a clear type of customer it serves best.
How we compared them
We read each vendor’s pricing page and feature pages on 12 October 2026 and recorded what they say. We have not run campaigns in every tool, so this page is labelled as researched rather than tested. Where a pricing page left a number blank, we say so instead of guessing. Read our testing standards for what that label means.
We looked at four things:
- What the free plan really allows. Subscriber caps, sending caps and which features are locked.
- What the first paid plan costs and adds. The step from free to paid is where most people feel the pinch.
- Automation limits. Some plans cap the number of automations or the steps inside one.
- Who the tool is built for. A tool aimed at creators can be awkward for a shop, and the reverse.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Free plan | Entry paid price (as listed) | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| MailerLite | Up to 250 subscribers | From $12 a month | Simple all-round use |
| Kit | Up to 10,000 subscribers | $33 a month at 1,000 subscribers | Creators who sell |
| Brevo | Up to 300 emails a day | Not readable on page when checked | Large, rarely mailed lists |
| GetResponse | Not confirmed | $19 a month monthly billing | Funnels and automation |
| ActiveCampaign | 14-day trial | Check vendor calculator | Deep automation |
| Mailchimp | 250 contacts | Promotional pricing shown | Existing users |
Things worth knowing before you choose
Subscriber count drives price. Almost every plan is priced by list size. A figure like “from $12 a month” describes the smallest tier, so always enter your own list size in the vendor’s calculator.
Promotions hide the ongoing price. Kit shows a discounted first-year price on its Pro plan, and Mailchimp’s page showed promotional pricing for its paid plans. Ask what the plan costs in month thirteen.
Moving later is possible but annoying. Most tools import a CSV of subscribers, and MailerLite lists a Mailchimp importer. Automations and templates usually need rebuilding by hand, so pick something you can live with for a year or two.
Consent matters more than features. Only email people who agreed to hear from you. Every tool here includes unsubscribe handling, but the responsibility for a clean list is yours.
Our recommendation
If you want one answer and have no strong preference, start with MailerLite. It combines the pieces most small businesses use, a sensible editor, automations, forms and landing pages, without pushing you into a high tier. If you are a creator selling courses, coaching or a paid newsletter, Kit’s commerce tools and recommendation network are built for that job. If your needs are automation-heavy, compare GetResponse and ActiveCampaign side by side with a free trial before paying.
Whatever you pick, use the free plan or trial first, import a small test list, and build one real automation. Ten minutes in the editor tells you more than any comparison table.
Common questions
What is the best free email marketing tool?
It depends on how you measure free. Kit lists a free plan for up to 10,000 subscribers. Brevo allows up to 300 emails a day. MailerLite’s free plan covers up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month. If your list is large but you send rarely, Brevo’s daily limit can work. If you want a big subscriber allowance, look at Kit.
Do I need an email marketing tool, or can I use a normal inbox?
Use a dedicated tool as soon as you email more than a handful of people at once. These tools handle unsubscribes, consent records and sending reputation, which a normal inbox does not. In many countries those are legal requirements for marketing email.
How often do these prices change?
Often. Several vendors show promotional prices, and plan names change. Treat the numbers on this page as a snapshot from 12 October 2026 and confirm on the vendor’s pricing page before you buy.