MailerLite alternatives for 2026: 5 honest picks

We sell a product that competes with MailerLite, and we will say it anyway: at $17.10 a month for 1,000 subscribers on annual Comfort billing (verified August 7, 2026), MailerLite is the value pick in email marketing. People rarely leave it over the invoice. They leave over the account-approval gate, the feature ceilings, and a pricing history that has started moving in the wrong direction. Below are five alternatives, each priced against live pages the same day, sorted by what actually pushes people out.

Why people actually leave

The approval gate. MailerLite reviews every new account by hand before it is allowed to send. For most businesses that is a short delay. For anyone whose niche pattern-matches to risk (affiliate offers, crypto, purchased or rented lists), it can mean a rejection after the list is imported and the templates are built. The review exists to protect the shared sending reputation that keeps MailerLite's prices low, which is sound policy for them and cold comfort for the sender turned away at the door.

The ceilings. Comfort, the plan behind the headline prices, caps sending at 10 times your subscriber-tier ceiling per month and includes 3 user seats. Unlimited seats and unlimited sending require Power, at roughly double the price ($35.10/mo at 1,000 subscribers, annual effective). Crossing a subscriber or sending limit triggers an automatic paid upgrade rather than a warning. Billing also counts subscribers cumulatively within each cycle, so pruning your list mid-cycle does not lower that month's bill.

The direction of travel. On June 16, 2026, MailerLite renamed its plans (Growing Business became Comfort, Advanced became Power) and raised paid tiers roughly 10 to 30 percent, with existing accounts migrating at renewal from August 13, 2026. The free plan shrank from 1,000 subscribers to 500 in September 2025, then to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month in the 2026 update. None of this makes MailerLite expensive. It makes it less predictable, which for some senders amounts to the same thing. Full tier tables live on our MailerLite pricing page; the market-wide numbers are in our email pricing guide.

The five alternatives

1. LetterDuck (that's us)

LetterDuck swaps the per-subscriber meter for one flat number: $50 per domain, covering unlimited addresses on that domain, unlimited newsletter subscribers, and your whole team in a shared threaded inbox where anyone can reply as any address. There is no approval queue in the MailerLite sense; deliverability is enforced by the platform instead. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are configured on your own domain, a warm-up throttle ramps new domains from about 150 sends on day one to roughly 1,100 a day by day seven, the send path pauses itself at a 0.3 percent complaint rate or 2 percent bounce rate, and RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe is stamped on every campaign. The 0.3 percent complaint and 2 percent bounce pauses are gates in the code. The 0.1 percent line is the tighter target we hold ourselves to.

Do not pick us if you need marketing automation flows, landing pages, or a free tier: MailerLite has all three and we have none of them. We are also in waitlist mode, onboarding domains in batches. The full comparison is LetterDuck vs MailerLite, and the team math is on our small-teams page.

2. Brevo

Brevo bills by emails sent, not list size, which inverts MailerLite's math for large, quiet lists. Even the free plan stores 100,000 contacts; you pay for volume, from $9/mo ($8.08 effective annual) for 5,000 emails a month with no daily cap. A 10,000-subscriber list sending weekly runs about $41.42/mo effective annual, under most contact-billed tools at that size. Two catches, both verified August 2026: Brevo's logo stays on your emails unless you pay a $12/mo removal add-on on Starter, and marketing automation requires the Standard plan at an $18/mo base.

3. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is where MailerLite users land when they need depth: customer journeys up to 200 steps, multivariate testing, 300+ integrations, predictive segmentation. That depth compounds in price twice over. Essentials runs $13/mo at 500 contacts but $75 at 5,000 and $110 at 10,000 (monthly billing), and Mailchimp bills unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts until you archive them by hand, a policy MailerLite does not share. Its free plan was cut to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month in January 2026. We scored the pair directly in MailerLite vs Mailchimp.

4. Kit

Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is the creator-monetization pick: paid newsletters, digital products, tip jars, and the Creator Network recommendation engine, with only unique active subscribers billed. Its free Newsletter plan covers 10,000 subscribers, forty times MailerLite's current 250, though it holds back sequences and integrations. Paid Creator costs more than Comfort at every size we track: $32.50 versus $17.10 at 1,000 subscribers, both annual effective. Budget for movement here too; Kit raised that tier 34 percent in October 2025 with no grandfathering.

5. Buttondown

Buttondown is the small, sharp option: $9/mo flat up to 1,000 active subscribers, a Markdown-first editor, API and SMTP access on every plan including the free one (to 100 subscribers), and no percentage cut of paid-subscription revenue. Billing is monthly only; no annual discount exists to chase. Watch the cliffs: subscriber 1,001 takes the bill from $9 to $29, and 5,001 takes it to $79 (verified August 2026 from the pricing page's own tier-selection code). Published prices also assume at most one email a day to your full list.

The cost table

Public list prices, August 2026, annual billing where offered. MailerLite: Comfort plan (renamed from Growing Business in June 2026) on annual billing. On monthly billing the same sizes cost $12, $19, $49 and $89. Brevo: Brevo bills by emails sent rather than contacts stored, so these figures assume a weekly send to the whole list. Starter plan on annual billing. Mailchimp: Essentials on monthly billing, the cheapest paid tier. Standard runs $20 to $135 across the same contact counts. First-year promotional discounts are excluded. LetterDuck is $50 per domain, flat, unlimited addresses and subscribers.

Reading notes: MailerLite and Brevo columns use annual-billing effective prices (each discounts 10 percent); the Mailchimp column is monthly billing, because Mailchimp publishes no per-tier annual prices. Brevo's figures assume a weekly newsletter, since it bills on emails sent rather than subscribers stored. LetterDuck's column never moves because $50 per domain is the entire bill at every size, seats included.

When MailerLite is the right call

Keep MailerLite if you are price-first and living inside its ceilings. At 500 subscribers, $10.80/mo with automations and landing pages included is the best deal on this page; unsubscribed and bounced contacts cost nothing; Power buys unlimited seats plus unlimited sending at prices rivals charge for neither; and 24/7 human email support comes with every paid plan, at price points where competitors gate support behind higher tiers. Even the approval gate that frustrates gray-area senders is part of why its shared sending reputation, and therefore its pricing, holds up. If your niche is clean and your list is under 5,000, the honest advice from a competitor: stay, and recheck your tier price when the June 2026 repricing reaches your renewal date after August 13, 2026.