Simple, affordable email marketing with a generous free plan and clean interface
MailerLite is a Lithuanian email marketing platform known for its clean interface, generous free plan, and competitive pricing at every subscriber tier. Its drag-and-drop builder, landing page creator, pop-up forms, and website builder are all included at no extra cost, making it the most cost-effective full-featured email marketing tool for small businesses and solopreneurs.
MailerLite is a strong fit if its core strengths match your workflow, budget, and support needs. Use the quick signals below before opening the full review.
MailerLite is the strongest answer to the question "what is the best email marketing tool for someone who has outgrown Mailchimp's free plan but does not want to pay Mailchimp prices?" Its combination of a genuinely generous free tier, the lowest paid plan pricing in the full-featured email marketing category, and a clean interface that matches or exceeds Mailchimp's usability has driven significant user migration from legacy platforms.
MailerLite's pricing is materially lower than Mailchimp at every subscriber tier:
The pricing difference grows at scale, making MailerLite particularly compelling for established lists where paying Mailchimp's historical rate has become the default.
MailerLite's free plan provides 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 email sends per month — more sends than Mailchimp's reduced free tier — with access to automation workflows, landing pages, and pop-up forms. The inclusion of automation on the free plan is unusual in the category; most platforms (including Mailchimp) restrict automation to paid tiers.
For a solopreneur with a newsletter up to 1,000 subscribers, MailerLite's free plan covers the complete email marketing workflow without any paid upgrade requirement.
MailerLite's drag-and-drop email builder is consistently rated the most intuitive in the category — cleaner than Mailchimp's, faster to navigate than Brevo's, and with a visual hierarchy that guides new users to the right tools without hunting through menus. Blocks are added with a single click, content columns resize via drag, and the preview functionality accurately represents mobile and desktop rendering.
The automation builder uses a visual flow canvas where trigger nodes connect to action nodes through path lines. For standard creator automations (welcome sequence, content upgrade delivery, course access), the builder provides the visual clarity needed without the complexity of enterprise-grade tools.
MailerLite's paid plans include landing page builder, pop-up forms, embedded forms, website builder, and paid newsletter subscriptions — all at the base $10/month price. In Mailchimp, the landing page builder requires an Essentials tier; in most tools, newsletter subscriptions require a separate platform. MailerLite's inclusive pricing removes the tool-stack complexity decisions that otherwise burden small creators and business owners.
MailerLite's most-cited negative is its manual account review process. Unlike Mailchimp's instant account creation, MailerLite reviews each new account (typically within 24–48 hours on business days) before approving email sending. This delay frustrates users expecting to send immediately after signing up. The review exists to maintain MailerLite's sender reputation and deliverability rates — a tradeoff that benefits the existing user base at the cost of new-user experience.
MailerLite is the best value email marketing platform in the category for small businesses, solopreneurs, and bloggers. The pricing advantage over Mailchimp is material, the interface is excellent, and the free tier is generous. Account approval delay is the honest friction point.
Score: 8.0/10 — Best price-to-feature ratio in the category; account approval delay and less sophisticated automation depth are trade-offs.
Free
Free billed annually
$10/mo
$108/mo billed annually
$21/mo
$228/mo billed annually
MailerLite is best for Solopreneurs and small businesses that want professional email marketing at the lowest cost in the category, Bloggers and content creators who want Mailchimp-equivalent features at 30–50% lower cost after the free limit is reached, Non-profits and educational organisations with budget constraints that need full automation and landing page capabilities.
Yes. MailerLite currently lists a free plan in ToolRankr data.
It has a free plan.
MailerLite is reviewed using ToolRankr's scoring model for ease of use, value, features, support, and overall quality. Affiliate links may earn a commission, but sponsored labels do not change editorial scoring.
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