Email marketing and newsletters
Email marketing tools manage subscriber lists, campaigns and automated messages.
Use for: Newsletters, waitlists and product updates.
Marketing automation platform with a deep automation builder, CRM add-ons, SMS and WhatsApp, priced by contacts on four tiers from Starter to Enterprise.
Spanish email and SMS marketing platform with a free plan, prepaid email credits, landing pages, surveys and white-label accounts for agencies.
Newsletter publishing platform with websites, podcasts, an ad network and paid subscriptions at 0% take rate, free up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends.
Developer-friendly email marketing platform priced by active users, with unlimited marketing sends, automations and a usage-based transactional add-on.
French multichannel marketing platform, formerly Sendinblue, priced by monthly email volume rather than contacts, with transactional API and SMTP on every plan.
Independent, profitable newsletter service with a Markdown editor, a well-regarded API and a la carte add-ons, free for the first 100 subscribers.
Event-driven messaging platform for product teams, sending email, push, in-app and SMS from behavioural data, billed by profiles with a million emails included on the entry plan.
A low-cost email API and SMTP relay with a 3,000-email free plan and $19 for 50,000 emails, sold alongside Elastic Email's marketing and chat tools.
Low-cost, email-only marketing tool with a free plan for 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails, plus an Amazon SES edition that routes mail through your own account.
Behaviour-based marketing automation for SaaS, with a drag-and-drop flow builder, event segmentation and Stripe, HubSpot and Segment integrations, priced by subscribers.
All-in-one email marketing platform with unlimited sends on every paid plan, landing pages, webinars and course tools, priced by list size from $19 a month.
Open-source blog and newsletter platform with memberships and paid subscriptions and no payment fees; self-host for free or use the Ghost(Pro) managed service.
Open-source newsletter tool made in Germany and hosted in the EU, with Markdown, block and MJML editors and cloud plans priced by emails with unlimited contacts.
Creator-focused email platform, formerly ConvertKit, with a free plan up to 10,000 subscribers and paid plans that add visual automations and sequences.
Ecommerce-focused email, SMS and customer platform with deep store integrations and behaviour-based flows, billed by active profiles, free up to 250 profiles.
Merchant of record for digital products and SaaS, owned by Stripe since 2024, still selling at 5% + 50¢ while its team builds Stripe Managed Payments as the successor.
Free, open-source (AGPLv3) self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager shipped as a single Go binary with Postgres, known for low resource use at high volume.
Email platform for software companies that combines lifecycle workflows, campaigns and transactional sending, priced only by subscribed contacts with unlimited sends on paid plans.
The best-known email marketing suite, now owned by Intuit, with contact-based plans, a small free tier and multi-step automation flows from the Standard plan up.
Email marketing with campaigns, automations and transactional email, billed per email sent with unlimited contacts, and an optional bring-your-own-provider rate.
Lithuanian email marketing tool with a clean editor, websites and landing pages, where every paid plan has the full feature set and price follows list size.
A French email platform that combines a send API and SMTP relay with a drag-and-drop campaign editor, priced by monthly email volume with unlimited contacts from Essential.
Large open-source marketing automation platform with a campaign builder, email and landing page builders, lead scoring and a REST API, self-hosted for full data control.
Low-priced email marketing and automation platform with unlimited sends on its Pro plan, website tracking triggers and an SMTP server, but no permanent free plan.
Open-source, self-hostable newsletter and transactional email platform that sends through your own provider (SES, Postmark and others), with a paid cloud priced by active contacts.
An AGPL open-source email platform for transactional email, campaigns and workflow automations, EU-hosted in the cloud at $0.001 per email with unlimited free contacts.
A developer-focused email API with React Email support, a 3,000-email free tier and published volume pricing up to 2.5 million emails a month.
Budget email and SMS marketing platform with a free plan for 2,500 contacts and 15,000 emails a month that includes automation, landing pages and transactional email.
Self-hosted newsletter application sold for a one-time $69 fee that sends through Amazon SES, so ongoing cost is roughly $1 per 10,000 emails.
Twilio's long-running email API and SMTP relay, with volume plans from 50,000 to 2.5 million emails and a dedicated IP included from the Pro tier.
Small, bootstrapped lifecycle email platform for SaaS, with company-level data, visual workflows, in-app messages and transactional email, priced by tracked users.
An AGPL open-source alternative to Resend and SendGrid that sends through Amazon SES, adds a dashboard, contacts and campaigns, and can be self-hosted or used as a cheap cloud.
Zoho's email marketing app with a free plan for 2,000 contacts, unlimited emails on paid plans and tight links to Zoho CRM and other Zoho apps.
| Tool | Pricing | Free plan | 10k contacts/mo | Automations | Landing pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign activecampaign.com | Paid | No free plan (14-day trial) | Starter: 5 actions each; Plus and up: unlimited | Plus plan and up | |
| Acumbamail acumbamail.com · EU | Freemium | 250 subscribers, 2,000 emails/mo | Yes | ||
| beehiiv beehiiv.com | Freemium | 2,500 subscribers, unlimited sends | $109/mo (Scale) | Scale plan and up | Hosted website builder, all plans |
| Bento bentonow.com | Paid | No free plan | $79/mo (calculated from published rates) | Included (flows) | Forms and popups; no landing pages listed |
| Brevo brevo.com · EU | Freemium | 100,000 stored; 300 emails/day | Yes; Free/Starter capped at 2,000 contacts | Standard plan and up (1 page included) | |
| Buttondown buttondown.com | Freemium | 100 subscribers | Add-on, +$29/mo | Hosted archive and subscribe page | |
| Customer.io customer.io | Paid | No free plan | ~$145/mo (Essentials + profile overage) | Visual workflow builder, all plans | |
| Elastic Email API elasticemail.com | Freemium | ||||
| EmailOctopus emailoctopus.com | Freemium | 2,500 subscribers, 10,000 emails/mo | Free: 3 (5 steps); Pro: included | Free 1; Pro unlimited | |
| Encharge encharge.io | Paid | No free plan | Unlimited flows, all plans | ||
| GetResponse getresponse.com | Freemium | 500 contacts, 2,500 emails/mo | Starter: 1 workflow; Marketer and up: unlimited | Yes, all plans (1 on free) | |
| Ghost ghost.org · OSS · EU | Open source | Self-host free; Ghost(Pro) no free plan | Full website and themes | ||
| Keila keila.io · OSS · EU | Open source | Self-host free; cloud has no free plan | By emails: 15,000 emails = €32/mo | ||
| Kit kit.com | Freemium | 10,000 subscribers | Creator plan and up (unlimited) | Unlimited, all plans | |
| Klaviyo klaviyo.com | Freemium | 250 active profiles, 500 emails/mo | $150/mo (third-party figure) | Yes, all plans including free | |
| Lemon Squeezy lemonsqueezy.com | Paid | ||||
| listmonk listmonk.app · OSS · EU | Open source | Unlimited (self-hosted) | $0 software; server and SMTP costs | No drip builder; transactional API and webhooks | |
| Loops loops.so | Freemium | 1,000 subscribed contacts, 4,000 sends/mo | $99/mo | Yes, event-triggered workflows, all plans | |
| Mailchimp mailchimp.com | Freemium | 250 contacts, 500 sends/mo | Essentials: 4-step flows; Standard: up to 200 flows | Yes, all plans | |
| Mailcoach mailcoach.app | Paid | No free plan; unlimited contacts on paid | Per email: 10,000 emails = $25.99/mo | Unlimited, included | |
| MailerLite mailerlite.com · EU | Freemium | 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/mo | $89/mo (Comfort), $129/mo (Power) | Free 3, Comfort 50, Power unlimited | Free 1, Comfort 10, Power unlimited |
| Mailjet mailjet.com · EU | Freemium | ||||
| Mautic mautic.org · OSS · EU | Open source | Unlimited (self-hosted) | $0 software; hosting and sending extra | Yes, campaign builder | Yes, drag-and-drop builder |
| Moosend moosend.com | Paid | No free plan (30-day trial, 1,000 contacts) | Multi-step workflows on Pro | Yes, Pro | |
| Notifuse notifuse.com · OSS · EU | Open source | Self-host free; cloud has no free plan | $49/mo cloud, plus your ESP costs | Yes, all plans (10 node types) | Blog CMS; no landing page builder listed |
| Plunk useplunk.com · OSS · EU | Open source | ||||
| Resend resend.com | Freemium | ||||
| Sender sender.net · EU | Freemium | 2,500 subscribers, 15,000 emails/mo | Yes, all plans; advanced on Professional | Yes, all plans | |
| Sendy sendy.co · EU | Paid | Unlimited subscribers (self-hosted) | $0/mo after $69 licence; SES per email | Autoresponders (drip), rules and webhooks | |
| Twilio SendGrid Email API twilio.com · EU | Paid | ||||
| Userlist userlist.com | Paid | No free plan | $149/mo (Basic) | Visual workflows, all plans | Signup forms; no landing pages |
| useSend usesend.com · OSS | Open source | ||||
| Zoho Campaigns zoho.com | Freemium | 2,000 contacts, 6,000 emails/mo | Standard: basic workflows; Professional: advanced |
No tools match these filters.
How to choose a newsletter tool
- Price at the list size you expect in a year, not today: per-contact pricing grows quickly.
- Product teams sending event-triggered lifecycle email need an API and event data (Customer.io, Loops, Bento); creators need a good editor, landing pages and paid subscriptions (Kit, beehiiv, Buttondown).
- Check whether unsubscribed contacts count towards your bill.
- Self-hosted options such as listmonk cost almost nothing but need a sending service (such as Amazon SES) and your own maintenance.
Questions
What is the best free email marketing tool?
Free plans differ in contact limits, monthly sends and branding. The "Free plan" column lists each one's limits as published on its pricing page.
Should I use the same service for newsletters and transactional email?
It works at small scale, and some providers offer both. Many teams still separate them so a marketing complaint rate cannot affect password resets and receipts.
Pricing changes
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MailerLite renames plans and updates prices and limits
MailerLite · source ↗
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Mailchimp halves its free plan limits
Mailchimp · source ↗
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SendGrid retires its Free Email API plan
Twilio SendGrid Email API · source ↗
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New SendGrid accounts get a 60-day trial instead of a free plan
Twilio SendGrid Email API · source ↗
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Klaviyo enforces profile-based plan compliance
Klaviyo · source ↗