Email review
MailerLite
A no-frills email marketing tool that does the boring 80 percent well for a fraction of what Kit or Mailchimp charge. Automation, landing pages, and forms in one place without the upsell pressure.
Last hands-on test:
A real 1,400-subscriber list moved from Kit for a week. Compared deliverability, builder ergonomics, and automation depth against the previous month on Kit.
At a glance
- Pricing
- Free for up to 1,000 subscribers and 12k emails/mo. Growing Business from $9/mo
- Category
- Last hands-on test
- Best for
- Newsletter writers, content creators, and small course or digital product businesses building an email list under 10k.
Disclosure: Some links on this page are affiliate links. I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I've used and would happily suggest to a friend.
Benchmarks
How MailerLite actually scores.
Five axes that matter for a one-person business. Each score is editorial, 1–10, higher is better. A tool that maxes every axis doesn't exist; the shape of the chart is the signal.
- Price
- Value for a one-person budget
- Solo fit
- Built with solo operators in mind
- Learning curve
- How fast a beginner gets useful work done
- Lock-in
- How easy it is to leave (high = easy)
- Support
- Quality and responsiveness of help
Scores are set by the editor after hands-on use and revised as the tool evolves. They're not paid for and don't change based on affiliate partnerships.
The case for
- Generous free tier covers the first 1,000 subscribers, which is most solos' first year
- Drag-and-drop builder for emails and landing pages is the cleanest in this price band
- Automation flows handle welcome sequences and re-engagement without complexity tax
- No upsell pressure to a more expensive tier compared to Mailchimp
The case against
- Reporting is shallower than ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign
- Audience segmentation is fine for solos but limits growth into more complex marketing
- Customer support response time can be slow on the free tier
Why MailerLite over the big names
Mailchimp prices like it thinks you have a marketing team. Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is excellent but starts at $25/mo for the features most solos actually want. MailerLite's free tier covers up to 1,000 subscribers with no asterisks: full automation, multiple lists, landing pages, the builder. For a solo starting an email list, that means roughly twelve months of free service before you have to pay anything.
The paid tier is also priced sensibly. $9/mo for the same set of features Mailchimp charges $20+ for. The cost difference compounds over years and frees that budget for something that actually moves the needle.
What it does well
The drag-and-drop builder is the cleanest in this price band. You can build a newsletter that looks designed in 15 minutes without templates fighting you. The landing-page builder is the same engine, so you can publish a launch page or a lead-magnet page without spinning up another tool.
Automation handles the basic flows every solo needs: welcome sequences, re-engagement, post-purchase. The UI for building these is approachable in a way that ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp are not. You can build a five-step welcome sequence in an evening without watching a tutorial.
Form embeds are flexible enough to drop into any site, including custom Next.js or static builds, without iframe ugliness.
Where it falls short
Reporting is the weakest area. You get opens, clicks, and unsubscribes, but the deeper analytics (cohort behaviour, link-click attribution across a sequence, segment performance) are shallow compared to ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign. For most solos this is fine. If your business is high-volume email marketing, you will outgrow it.
Segmentation is functional but flat. Tags work, lists work, but the segment-of-segments composition that Kit handles cleanly is more work in MailerLite.
Support on the free tier is slow. If you hit a deliverability issue mid-launch, expect to wait 24-48 hours for a response. Upgrading to Growing Business gets priority support, which is worth it if email is core to your business.
When to upgrade or switch
MailerLite is the right tool until you hit one of three triggers: 10k+ subscribers (the pricing starts catching up to Kit), email is your primary business and you need real cohort analytics, or you need fine-grained automation that branches on contact behaviour rather than just tags. Until then, the case for paying more is weak.
Verdict
The default email tool for solos in the first 5k subscribers. Free tier is honestly free; the upgrade to Growing Business at $9/mo is the cheapest credible email setup on the market.
Related reading: our complete email marketing setup guide for one-person businesses.
Bottom line
Ready to try MailerLite?
Newsletter writers, content creators, and small course or digital product businesses building an email list under 10k.
Disclosure: Some links on this page are affiliate links. I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I've used and would happily suggest to a friend.
Compare MailerLite with the alternatives
Side-by-side reviews of the other Email tools we've covered.
3.5/5 vs 3.5/5 · Free up to 2,500 subscribers; paid plans from $39/mo
MailerLite vs Kit (formerly ConvertKit)
3.5/5 vs 3.5/5 · Free up to 10,000 subscribers; Creator $25/mo; Creator Pro $50/mo
3.5/5 vs 3.5/5 · Free to start. Substack takes 10% of paid subscription revenue + Stripe fees
3.5/5 vs 2.5/5 · Free up to 500 contacts; Essentials from $13/mo; Standard from $20/mo
Living document
What did we miss about MailerLite?
Every review evolves. Spot something wrong, missing, or out of date — drop a note. The most useful ones land in our monthly "Reader corrections" post, with credit if you're up for it.
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