MailerLite

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.