Home › Guides › Best MailerLite alternatives
Updated September 23, 2026 · Prices verified from vendor pricing pages, September 2026 · Affiliate disclosure
MailerLite's pricing page is unusually frank — it says out loud that every paid plan carries the same feature set and that you only pay more for a bigger list or more sending. The catches are in the plan terms rather than the price table, and four of them decide whether leaving is worth it.
Note what is not on that list: a send allowance that shrinks as your list grows. MailerLite's monthly email limit is ten times the ceiling of your band, so an 800-name list on the 1,000 band gets 10,000 emails a month. That is a real advantage and we count it in the tables below.
Here is MailerLite's Comfort plan across all ten published bands, read from its pricing page in September 2026. Comfort and Power share the same ladder — Power sits at roughly double, and the 10% yearly discount applies to both.
| Band (up to) | Comfort, monthly | Comfort, billed yearly | Power, monthly | Per 1,000 subscribers | Monthly emails included |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | $12 | $10.80 | $25 | $24.00 | 5,000 |
| 1,000 | $19 | $17.10 | $39 | $19.00 | 10,000 |
| 2,500 | $33 | $29.70 | $49 | $13.20 | 25,000 |
| 5,000 | $49 | $44.10 | $69 | $9.80 | 50,000 |
| 8,000 | $69 | $62.10 | $99 | $8.63 | 80,000 |
| 10,000 | $89 | $80.10 | $129 | $8.90 | 100,000 |
| 15,000 | $129 | $116.10 | $179 | $8.60 | 150,000 |
| 20,000 | $159 | $143.10 | $219 | $7.95 | 200,000 |
| 25,000 | $179 | $161.10 | $239 | $7.16 | 250,000 |
| 30,000 | $229 | $206.10 | $279 | $7.63 | 300,000 |
USD, billed in the United States. Billed yearly prices are the per-month equivalent of the annual total; the yearly figure is exactly 10% below the monthly one at every band. MailerLite also publishes EUR prices, where the 1,000 band is €17 a month — a narrower regional gap than Brevo's, which prices the same tier at $9, €7, £6, CA$10 or ₹625 depending on where you buy. Above 200,000 subscribers the ladder ends and pricing becomes a custom Enterprise quote.
Now the other side. These are the published figures at 500, 2,500 and 10,000 subscribers from each vendor's own pricing page in September 2026 — and where a vendor publishes nothing at that size, the cell says so instead of carrying an estimate.
| List size | MailerLite Comfort | Brevo | Kit | Mailchimp | GetResponse | ActiveCampaign |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | $12/mo · $10.80 yearly | No contact-band price — entry tier $9/mo priced by email volume | $0 — free plan covers it | $20/mo list, $10/mo promotional (0–500 band, US) | Not published | Not published |
| 2,500 | $33/mo · $29.70 yearly | Volume-priced tier; contact × volume matrix is not published | $0 — free plan covers it | Not published per band | Not published | Not published |
| 10,000 | $89/mo · $80.10 yearly | Volume-priced tier; matrix not published | $0 free plan up to 10,000; paid Creator $33/mo or $390/yr | Not published per band; no annual billing below 10,000 contacts | Not published | Not published |
Six vendors, three list sizes, eighteen cells. MailerLite fills three of them from a published table, Mailchimp fills one from its smallest band, Brevo prices a different unit entirely (email volume rather than contacts), and eight cells are empty because the figure sits behind a slider, a calculator or a sales conversation. Kit's row reads $0 because its free plan is published as covering up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, landing pages and forms — on one user seat, where MailerLite's free plan (250 subscribers, 2,500 emails a month) includes two. What the paid tiers add is a separate question, and it is the reason a $0 row is not automatically the answer.
Brevo's entry tier is $9 a month, or $96.96 a year — about 10% off for paying up front, the same shape as MailerLite's discount. Read the tiers properly, though, and the $9 buys marketing automation's absence: automation, A/B testing, advanced reporting and web tracking start at Standard, $18 a month or $194.04 a year, which is what a MailerLite Comfort customer is actually comparing against. The structural difference is the unit: Brevo prices sending volume, so a growing contact list does not automatically move your plan. And what MailerLite charges separately, Brevo includes — transactional email is part of every Brevo plan including free, officially documented on its own pricing page. Where Brevo hides things is not in the plan price: the contact-by-volume matrix lives in an on-page calculator with no published table, so a 2,500-subscriber quote from Brevo is a conversation with a form, not a number you can check on a page.
Kit's free plan is published as covering up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited landing pages, forms and broadcasts. At 10,000 subscribers, that is a $0 row against MailerLite's $89 a month — $1,068 a year — and it is the single largest price difference on this page. Two things keep it from being a straight answer. Kit's free plan includes one user seat against MailerLite's two, and the paid tiers exist for what the free tier does not do, which Kit sells on its own terms: Creator from $33 a month at 1,000 subscribers (a 74% step up from MailerLite's $19 at the same band) and Pro from $66. Note also what buying a year gets you at Kit: $390 against twelve monthly payments of $33 is a saving of about $6, not a double-digit discount.
If the reason you are leaving MailerLite is that the free plan is too small, be aware that Mailchimp's is the same size: 250 contacts, per its own pricing page. Its cheapest published paid figure is Standard on the 0–500 band at $20 a month, or $10 a month promotional for twelve months on the US page, with Essentials starting at €11.41 and Standard at €17.55 on the EU page. What Mailchimp does not do is publish a per-band price for 2,500 or 10,000 subscribers — its US page renders one plan at a time — and its own footnote confirms annual billing is only available at 10,000 contacts and above, so the discount on offer to small lists is that twelve-month promotion rather than a yearly rate. The charges that follow you are the platform's real pricing risk: overages bill automatically on paid plans, and SMS credits are issued monthly and expire at month end. Our separate read of Mailchimp's pricing and hidden costs works through all six post-checkout charges, and our Mailchimp alternatives guide prices five of them from official pages.
GetResponse lists $19 a month for 1,000 subscribers with unlimited sending — exactly level with MailerLite's Comfort at the same band, but with no sending ceiling tied to the band. Its 12-month prepay takes 18% off, the steepest published annual discount of the six vendors here, and its promotional pages advertise "from $13.30/mo", which is that prepaid rate rather than the monthly bill. The trap is the number you will keep seeing in comparison tables: $13.30 is a prepay figure, and if you pay monthly your bill starts at $19. As at MailerLite, every band above 1,000 subscribers is behind a slider rather than in the page, so we leave 2,500 and 10,000 blank.
ActiveCampaign's plan summary lists Starter from $15, Plus from $49, Pro from $79 and Enterprise from $145 per month at 1,000 contacts — and those are the billed-annually rates. We rendered the page to check: it carries no monthly price at all, so the ~20% surcharge for paying monthly only appears at checkout. Starter also caps each automation at five actions with a single user, so the moment a workflow branches or a second person needs access you are on Plus at more than triple the entry price, with add-ons — an AI suite around $50 a month, SMS credits, extra users — sitting outside the plan. It is the strongest automation platform on this page and the one whose published number tells you least about your bill.
Annual billing is where the vendor comparison pages get sloppy, so here is what each one gives you for paying twelve months up front, from the same September 2026 pages.
| Vendor | What the yearly option is worth |
|---|---|
| MailerLite | A flat 10% at every band and on both plans — $12 becomes $10.80 a month, $89 becomes $80.10 |
| Brevo | About 10% at the entry tier — $9 a month becomes $96.96 a year; $18 becomes $194.04 |
| GetResponse | 18% off for a 12-month prepay, the largest discount of the six |
| Kit | $390 a year against $33 a month works out at $32.50 a month — about $6 saved a year |
| Mailchimp | Nothing below 10,000 contacts: annual billing only starts there, so the discount offered to small lists is a twelve-month promotion instead (50% off Standard on the US page, about 15% on the EU page) |
| ActiveCampaign | The published rates are the annual ones; monthly billing runs roughly 20% higher and is not published anywhere |
Two conclusions fall out of that table. A "save 17%" badge is worth reading as an absolute number before it is worth trusting as a percentage — Kit's annual option is real, and it is worth about six dollars. And for a list under 10,000 contacts, Mailchimp's annual discount does not exist; the discount you see is a promotion with an end date.
Every figure comes from the vendor's own pricing page, checked in September 2026 and dated on the page. MailerLite's ladder was re-read on September 23, 2026 and matched the values first recorded on September 21. Where a vendor publishes no per-band price we say so rather than estimate, which is why eight cells in the table above are empty. If you have already narrowed the choice to the two cheapest platforms, our Brevo vs MailerLite comparison reads both pricing models band by band, and our Mailchimp guide covers the platform you are most likely to be leaving behind. To run your own subscriber count through every plan we can price — including MailerLite's ten bands and the plans that publish nothing — use the list-size cost calculator. Our methodology and affiliate disclosure explain how prices are verified and how the site earns.
It publishes the lowest contact-band prices we could verify at the small end: $12 a month up to 500 subscribers and $19 up to 1,000 on Comfort (September 2026). GetResponse matches the $19 at 1,000 subscribers. Brevo's $9 Starter is cheaper on sticker but is priced by email volume rather than contacts, and marketing automation starts at its $18 Standard plan. Above roughly 10,000 subscribers the cheapest option depends on send volume as much as list size.
Four, all in the plan terms: the subscriber count is cumulative inside each billing cycle and resets only on your billing anniversary; price follows the ceiling of your band rather than your exact count; an annual plan cannot move to monthly until it expires, and downgrades start at the next cycle; and only one discount applies at a time, so annual and promotional rates do not stack.
One subscriber past 1,000 puts the account in the up-to-2,500 band, priced at $33 a month on Comfort — $14 more a month, $168 a year, for one name. The ladder does get more efficient as it climbs: monthly cost per 1,000 subscribers falls from $24.00 at the 500 band to $13.20 at 2,500 and $8.90 at 10,000. Deleting the subscriber does not undo the step mid-cycle.
MailerLite is the only vendor here that publishes a price at that size: $89 a month, or $80.10 a month equivalent billed yearly, with 100,000 emails included. Kit's free plan covers a 10,000-subscriber list on its own terms at one user seat. Brevo, GetResponse and ActiveCampaign all route that size through a calculator, a slider or a quote, so we leave those cells blank rather than estimating them.
Transactional email is the one most people miss: MailerLite sells it as a separate product from its marketing plans, while Brevo includes transactional sending on every plan including free. Seat count is the other: MailerLite's free plan includes two user seats at 250 subscribers, where Kit's free plan covers 10,000 subscribers on one seat. And if you are mid-annual, plan the exit for the end of the term — an annual plan cannot be switched to monthly early.