MailerLite alternatives for newsletters and small businesses

Match the alternative to the limit you hit

The prices for MailerLite in this article come from its pricing page. Use it to set the subscriber selector to your own count, since MailerLite's price scales with active subscribers.

Where MailerLite’s limits actually bite

The free plan is ten sends per subscriber

MailerLite's free plan allows up to 250 subscribers, two user seats and 2,500 emails a month. That is exactly ten emails for each of 250 people. A weekly newsletter uses about 4.3 sends per subscriber a month (52 ÷ 12) and fits. A daily digest uses 30 and does not, even at 250. The pricing page calls the free plan a real taste of the full platform, so it is a good place to test; it is a poor place to run a growing list.

Comfort’s email cap, and what Power costs to lift it

Comfort's monthly email allowance is ten times the subscriber-tier ceiling, and Power has no monthly limit. The two plans' monthly prices at four list sizes show what lifting the cap costs.

The arithmetic decides who pays that premium. A 5,000-subscriber list mailed daily sends 150,000 emails a month (5,000 × 30), three times Comfort's 50,000 allowance, so it needs Power at $69. The same list mailed weekly sends about 21,700 (5,000 × 52 ÷ 12) and sits comfortably on Comfort at $49.

Transactional email is a second product and a second bill

MailerLite's pricing page says transactional email is provided by MailerSend. MailerSend's page lists a free plan of 500 emails a month (Email API and SMTP relay, with 100 daily API requests), Hobby at $6.30 a month for 5,000 emails ($75.60 billed yearly), Starter at $31.50 for 50,000 and Professional at $99. Consider a shop with 500 subscribers sending a weekly newsletter (about 2,167 emails a month) plus 1,500 order messages. MailerLite Comfort at $10.80 on annual billing plus MailerSend Hobby at $6.30 comes to $17.10 a month. Brevo's Standard plan, which covers campaigns and transactional email in one volume, shows $16.17 on its yearly view. The saving is 93 cents, so price is not the reason to consolidate; one vendor and one bill is.

Six alternatives, and what each fixes

Sender: ten times the free list

Sender's free plan covers 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, ten times MailerLite's list and six times its email allowance. Standard shows $6.30 a month for 500 subscribers and 6,000 emails, against Comfort's $12 at 500, though the page applies a 30% first-year discount to its displayed price, so the gap shrinks in year two. Professional shows $10.50 for 12,000 emails with 10 role-based seats. The question to settle in a trial is whether its automation features cover the ones you built in MailerLite.

GetResponse: unlimited sends at the same entry price

At a 1,000-person list GetResponse Starter is $19 a month ($15.58 billed annually), the same as MailerLite Comfort, and it lists unlimited monthly sends, a welcome series, landing pages, signup forms and one automation workflow. For a 1,000-subscriber list mailed daily, that is the swap that matters: Comfort's 10,000-email allowance would not cover 30,000 emails, and Power is $39, so GetResponse Starter saves $20 a month ($240 a year) as long as one workflow is enough. If you need more, Marketer is $59 ($48.38 annually) with unlimited workflows, advanced segmentation and abandoned-cart recovery.

Brevo: campaigns and order messages under one roof

Brevo's free plan includes transactional email and SMS alongside campaigns, capped at 300 emails a day (9,000 across a month). Starter is $9 and Standard $18, with the yearly view showing $8.08 and $16.17. The unit is monthly email volume across campaigns and transactional mail together, and each tier is paired with a contact ceiling: 5,000 emails with up to 500 contacts, 10,000 with up to 1,500, 15,000 with up to 2,500. See the Brevo alternatives page for how that plays out when the list grows.

EmailOctopus: the cheapest line for a large list

EmailOctopus shows Pro at $9 a month billed yearly with the selector at 10,000 subscribers, where MailerLite Comfort is $89 and Power $129. The difference, $80 a month ($960 a year) against Comfort, is only real if the email allowance fits: the page shows 10,000 emails a month at that setting, which is one send per subscriber, while Comfort at 10,000 subscribers allows 100,000. Weekly mailing would need about 43,300 emails (10,000 × 52 ÷ 12). The page also lists automatic plan upgrades, so read how they are triggered. The free plan allows 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails, with EmailOctopus branding.

Kit: more free list, but a pricier paid plan

Kit's free plan runs to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, forms and landing pages, and sales of digital products and subscriptions, which is 40 times MailerLite's free list. Automations and sequences start on Creator at $33 a month for 1,000 subscribers (billed yearly, about $39 monthly), which is more than Comfort's $19. Kit wins for a creator whose list is large and mostly broadcast, or who sells through the newsletter. It loses on price once automation is needed. The Kit alternatives page covers that side of the comparison.

Benchmark: a free plan with twice the contacts

Benchmark's free plan includes 500 contacts and up to 2,500 emails a month, with one user, one domain, two API keys and 150 AI credits a month. Pro starts at $19 a month for 1,000 to 100,000 contacts, with sends at ten times the contact limit and additional users at $15 a month, and the page notes that Pro pricing varies by region. The free contact count is double MailerLite's and the email allowance is identical, so it is the smallest upgrade from a free list that has just outgrown 250.

What the options cost at five list sizes

MailerLite stays well below Mailchimp's list prices at every size where both are quoted ($12 against $20 at 500, $49 against $100 at 5,000, $179 against $310 at 25,000), which is why most readers of this page are not choosing Mailchimp; the MailerLite vs Mailchimp comparison covers the few who still do. The decisions that remain are about limits: free-plan size, the Comfort email cap, and where transactional mail lives.

What you give up when you leave

MailerLite bundles more than email, and the extras are what an alternative has to match. Its pricing page lists email automation, landing pages and websites, digital products, an AI writing assistant, A/B testing and unlimited emails on Power. Here is where the alternatives on this page say they cover the same ground.

The pattern is that a newsletter writer who used MailerLite for the editor and a landing page loses little by moving, and someone who sold a digital product through MailerLite should plan the checkout move before the list move. Moving the list without the product page leaves buyers with a broken link.

Exporting from MailerLite

1. Check your role. MailerLite's export guide says only account administrators can export, so if the option is missing, ask the administrator. Classic (Legacy) accounts use a separate help center.
2. Open Subscribers. You can export all subscribers or choose by status: active, unconfirmed, unsubscribed, bounced and those who sent spam complaints. Export the non-active groups too, so the new tool starts with a suppression list.
3. Select the people to export. Choose a single subscriber, or use the dropdown arrow beside the Subscriber column to select everyone on the page or everyone in the list.
4. Set the columns first. The guide says the export includes only the columns visible in your subscriber overview, so click Set columns to add the fields you need before you export. To get group names, choose Groups in Set columns, and each subscriber's group names will appear in the file.
5. Pick the file type. Click Actions and choose CSV or CSV for Excel. Use the Excel variant if a spreadsheet is going to open the file, and the plain CSV if it is going straight into another tool.
6. Export results by campaign. Under Campaigns, Sent, click View report and open Subscriber activity. You can export people who opened, clicked, hard or soft bounced, unsubscribed, forwarded, did not open or sent a spam complaint, then use Actions, Export.
7. Export automation membership. Under Automations, open an automation's Overview, then the Activity tab, and choose whether to export those who completed it, those queued, or those canceled, using Export CSV or Export CSV for Excel. That tells you who sits mid-flow on the day you switch.

When MailerLite is still the right tool

If your list is under 250 and you mail weekly or less, the free plan covers the job and every alternative above is extra work for no gain. If your list is a few thousand, you mail weekly, and you send no transactional mail, Comfort at $49 for 5,000 subscribers is less than half of Mailchimp's $100 at the same size, and moving needs a reason beyond price. Look elsewhere when the ten-times cap, the 250-subscriber free ceiling or the missing transactional product is a recurring annoyance rather than a one-off.

FAQ

Is MailerLite free?

MailerLite's pricing page describes a free plan with up to 250 subscribers, two user seats and 2,500 emails a month. Paid Comfort starts at $12 a month at 500 subscribers ($10.80 billed annually) and Power at $25 ($22.50 annually), and both rise with the subscriber count.

How many emails can I send on MailerLite Comfort?

Ten times the subscriber-tier ceiling: 10,000 at the 1,000 tier and 50,000 at the 5,000 tier. Power has no monthly email limit. A list mailed weekly is well inside Comfort's allowance, while a list mailed daily is about three times over it.

Does MailerLite send transactional email?

Not itself. MailerLite's pricing page says transactional email is provided by MailerSend, a separate product with its own plans: 500 emails a month free, then Hobby at $6.30 a month for 5,000 emails with yearly billing.

Who can export subscribers from MailerLite?

Only account administrators can use the export feature, according to MailerLite's guide. You can choose CSV or CSV for Excel, and only the columns visible in your subscriber list at the moment of export are included, so set the columns first.

Which alternative has the largest free plan?

Kit's allows up to 10,000 subscribers but excludes automations and sequences. Sender allows 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails, EmailOctopus 2,500 and 10,000 emails, Benchmark 500 contacts and 2,500 emails, and Brevo 300 emails a day.

Is Sender really cheaper than MailerLite at 500 subscribers?

At the displayed prices, yes: Sender Standard is $6.30 against Comfort's $12. But Sender's page applies a 30% first-year discount to what it displays, so compare the second-year price too, and check that its automation tools cover what you rely on.