Best Free Email Marketing Tools: What You Actually Get

Several email marketing tools offer free plans that are genuinely useful, not just crippled trials. This page compares the four most relevant free plans — Mailchimp, Kit, MailerLite, and Brevo — based on their published limits as of October 2026.

The four best free plans at a glance

Kit free: up to 10,000 subscribers, unlimited emails, unlimited landing pages, no time limit. Best contact limit by far.

Brevo free: unlimited contacts, 300 emails per day (9,000/month). Best if you have a large list but send infrequently.

MailerLite free: up to 1,000 subscribers, 12,000 emails per month, automation and landing pages included. Good balance of contacts and features.

Mailchimp free: 250 contacts, 500 emails per month, no automation, limited support. The weakest free plan of the four.

All limits from vendor pricing pages, October 2026. Verify before signing up.

Kit free plan

Kit's free plan is the most generous contact-based plan available: up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited sends and no expiry. You also get unlimited landing pages and the ability to sell digital products (Kit takes an 8.5% transaction fee on free plans).

The automation builder and sequences are locked behind paid plans. But for a newsletter with up to 10,000 subscribers that doesn't need automations, this is unbeatable.

Brevo free plan

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) prices by emails sent rather than contacts stored. The free plan lets you store unlimited contacts and send up to 300 emails per day (roughly 9,000 per month). You get basic automation, transactional email, and SMS credits.

The daily sending cap is the main limitation. If you have a list of 5,000 and want to send a campaign to all of them at once, you'd hit the cap in two days. For businesses that send to large lists less frequently, this is a good fit.

MailerLite free plan

MailerLite's free plan covers 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month, with access to automation, landing pages, and the drag-and-drop email editor. It's the best-featured free plan for businesses under 1,000 subscribers who want automations.

Which free plan to start with

Start with Kit if you're building a newsletter or creator business and expect to grow past 500 subscribers. The 10,000-subscriber free tier means you won't need to upgrade for a long time.

Start with MailerLite if you have under 1,000 subscribers and want automations on the free plan.

Start with Brevo if you have a large existing list but send infrequently.

Mailchimp's free plan has the weakest limits of the four. There's no reason to start there unless you're specifically committed to the Mailchimp ecosystem.