Despite the emergence of social media and digital marketing, email marketing is among the most preferred communication channels for brands.
With email marketing, you can automate email responses, build client relationships, and inform them about any newly launched products and services.
Today, MailerLite and Mailchimp are two of the most popular email marketing platforms.
They both offer a wide range of built-in templates – you can create professionally designed emails, webpages, and sign-up forms in no time.
Furthermore, you can track the performance of your email marketing campaigns from the dashboard itself.
But when comparing Mailerlite vs Mailchimp, which is a better choice?
This article compares MailerLite with Mailchimp and 10 other email marketing tools to help you find the best option for your business.
Table of Contents
Best MailerLite Competitors
One of the most important factors to remember before implementing email marketing software is pricing.
Below is a chart that shows the different pricing plans of MailerLite and its competitors, depending on the number of contacts available.
| Email Tool | No. of Contacts (pricing/user/month) | |||
| 1,000 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 50,000 | |
| MailerLite | $19 | $35 | $77 | $247 |
| Mailchimp | $18.25 | $46.85 | $70.58 | $243.38 |
| ConvertKit | $29 | $79 | $119 | $319 |
| ActiveCampaign | $9 | $49 | $149 | Customizable |
| Sendinblue (Brevo) | Free | $25 | $65 | Customizable |
| Constant Contact | $35 | $55 | $80 | Contact the sales team directly |
| Flodesk | Free | $35 | $35 | $59 |
| AWeber | $26.15 | $46.15 | $66.15 | Contact the sales team directly |
| Drip | $39 | 89 | $154 | $699 |
| Sendgrid | $15 | $15 | $25 | $120 |
| HubSpot | $45 | $216 | $396 | $1,836 |
| Klaviyo | $45 | $90 | $135 | $495 |
MailerLite vs Mailchimp
While both Mailchimp and MailerLite have a good set of robust functionalities, MailerLite is a lightweight tool compared to Mailchimp.
If you are looking for a comprehensive set of tools with more advanced features, Mailchimp is the best option.
It offers a wide range of tools, from marketing automation to audience management, reporting, and analytics.
Features
- Behavioral Targeting: It helps you send highly personalized emails to your customers based on their buying preferences, purchase history, app activity, etc.
- Creative Assistant: An AI-powered tool that helps you design creative and engaging email campaigns.
- A/B Testing: Allows you to test multiple versions of a single email to understand which content is most effective.
- Reports: This tool generates reports containing relevant metrics to help you visualize and track the performance of your email marketing campaigns.
Pros
Mailchimp’s pricing plan is such that even businesses with 10K contacts willing to send mass emails can find it ideal.
Cons
More email templates could be added. Further, it can become expensive when more contacts are added.
Pricing
MailerLite and Mailchimp have similar pricing except for Mailchimp’s Premium plan, which can go up to $279.44 with many advanced features.
Mailchimp’s Free Plan consists of up to 2,500 monthly email sends, pre-built email templates, in-built form, web pages, basic reporting and analytics functionalities, and email support for the first 30 days.
If you want to upgrade to 5,000 monthly emails a month, upgrade to its Essentials Plan. Unlike the free plan, it offers 24/7 email and chat support, A/B testing, email scheduling, and automated customer journeys for $9.37 per month.
Under the Standard Plan, you can get up to 6,000 monthly email sends, custom-coded templates, predictive segmentation, send time optimization, and dynamic content, for $13.99 per month.
For advanced tools such as multivariate testing, comparative reporting, and advanced segmentation, the Premium Plan works best. It costs $279.89 per month and comes with 150,000 monthly email sends and phone and priority customer support.
Want to switch from MailChimp? Our article on the best MailChimp alternatives provides all the information you need to make the right choice.
Read also: What is MailerLite? Reviews, Pricing, Pros and Cons, Alternatives
MailerLite vs ConvertKit
CovertKit is one of the best MailerLite alternatives if you are a creator looking to grow your audience.
It has created a dedicated platform for creators where they can easily nurture their audience and sell their digital products on the platform.
Features
- Creator Profile: Provides an online hub for all your social media channels, newsletters, and products, on a single dashboard.
- Referral Program: An integrated newsletter referral program helps expand your audience reach and automatically adds users to your mailing list.
- Spam Prevention: With an excellent deliverability service, ConvertKit ensures that your emails don’t get lost in the Spam folder.
- Customer Journey Tracking: Using ConvertKit, you can create an email series based on user actions such as placing an order, subscribing to your newsletter, etc.
Pros
ConvertKit has made it easy for businesses to segment their mailing list by tagging them based on their purchase history, enabling them to send targeted emails and increase the chance of conversions.
Cons
At present, ConvertKit only offers a limited number of third-party integrations compared to its competitors.
Pricing
MailerLite and ConvertKit both offer Free Plans. The difference is that MailerLite’s Free Plan limits you to 10 landing pages, whereas ConvertKit offers unlimited landing pages.
ConvertKit can be a bit expensive compared to MailerLite but that’s because it has designed a platform that also enables creators to sell digital products and subscriptions using their platform.
If you are a creator, you know what to opt for. Besides, you get access to all key features such as audience tagging, unlimited email broadcasts, segmentation, and community support with its Free Plan.
If you want additional features like live chat and email support, automated email sequences, visual automation builders, and third-party integrations, you can easily get it for $25 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers (Creator Plan).
With the Creator Pro Plan, advanced tools like free migration, advanced reporting, subscriber scoring, and a newsletter referral system can be availed, for $50 per month.
Read also: Constant Contact Pricing 101: Plans, User Reviews, and Comparison
MailerLite vs ActiveCampaign
Another strong MailerLite competitor is ActiveCampaign. They have been able to capture a market for themselves by offering robust functionalities like segmentation and dynamic content that allows businesses to send targeted emails, resulting in better ROI.
With its split testing feature, you can easily identify which email resonates with your audience and further improve your campaigns.
Features
- Subject Line Generator: Provides a list of free subject lines that are effective and help drive conversions.
- Broadcast Emails: Helps create and send one-time email campaigns to a large number of users on your mailing list.
- Email Scheduling: Allows you to schedule sending emails based on certain days and times, such as birthdays, holidays, and special events.
- Transactional Emails: Ensures that the emails get delivered to your customer’s inbox rather than landing in the Spam folder.
Pros
ActiveCampaign’s easy-to-use interface makes it an ideal platform for all types of businesses. Besides, their support team makes it easy to migrate all your data and train on the system.
Cons
Owing to its limited availability of advanced features, ActiveCampaign is more suited for small businesses.
Pricing
Contrary to MailerLite, ActiveCampaign is a full-fledged marketing automation platform that comes equipped with email marketing tools.
If you need access to features like lead scoring, abandon cart campaigns, etc., that can amp up your email marketing strategies, ActiveCampaign can be useful.
ActiveCampaign has four pricing types, Lite, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise.
The Lite Plan is ideal for individuals and small businesses and costs only $9 per month. Some of its features include email marketing and automation, 24/7 email and chat support, site and event tracking, and campaign reports.
Under the Plus Plan, you can avail of additional tools like landing page builders, lead scoring, Facebook Ad customization, and integrations with Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. The plan starts at $49 per month.
The Professional Plan is ActiveCampaign’s most popular plan. It starts from $149 per month and includes predictive scoring, split automation, site messaging, and attribution reporting as some of its key features.
For large and growing businesses, the Enterprise Plan works best. It is a customizable plan and boasts custom reporting, single sign-on, and unlimited email testing as some of its main tools.
How is EngageBay the best ActiveCampaign alternative?
MailerLite vs Sendinblue (Brevo)
The reason Sendinblue (Brevo) made it to the list of best MailerLite alternatives is its ability to send emails intelligently.
That means it offers a machine learning-powered send time optimization tool that ensures your email is sent at the perfect time to your audience.
Besides, if you are looking for visually appealing yet engaging emailers, Sendinblue (Brevo) has got you covered.
Features
- Shared Inbox: Helps teams create separate inboxes and track customer history and conversations.
- Segmentation: This enables you to segregate customers into various categories based on filters such as age, location, buying preferences, etc., and send personalized emails.
- Signup Forms: With Sendinblue (Brevo), you can embed signup forms on your webpage, helping you expand your customer list.
- A/B Testing: Allows users to determine which subject lines and email content drive conversions and optimize send time.
(Brevo)Pros
Sendinblue (Brevo) not only boasts a user-friendly interface but has a range of customizations that make it easy to create effective email marketing campaigns.
Cons
Despite its ease of use, clients can face issues while creating drip email marketing campaigns using Sendinblue (Brevo).
Pricing
Sendinblue (Brevo) has four types of plans, Free, Starter, Business, and Enterprise. You can even customize your plan as per your business requirements.
The Free Plan allows you to send up to 300 emails daily and includes customizable email templates, a drag-and-drop editor, transactional emails, and SMS marketing.
Under the Starter Plan, you can send up to 20,000 emails monthly and get basic reporting, analytics, and email support for $25 per month.
The Business Plan starts from $65 per month and has additional tools like marketing automation, A/B testing, multi-user access, send-time optimization, and phone support for $65 a month.
To purchase a customized plan, go for the Enterprise Plan. Here, you can get advanced integrations, tailored onboarding, personalized support, and sub-account management.
How Is EngageBay The Best Alternative to Sendinblue (Brevo)?
MailerLite vs Constant Contact
Constant Contact is another email and digital marketing platform that helps you create effective email campaigns with just a few simple clicks.
It can even auto-generate customer segments for targeting, saving you time and effort. Millions of brands have used ConstantContact to expand their business.
Features
- Campaign Tracking: Provides real-time data on the performance of your email marketing campaigns using relevant metrics.
- Built-In Templates: Branded templates allow you to send emails with content that drives sales.
- Social Media Marketing: Helps you track the performance of your social media campaigns across multiple platforms.
- List Growth Tools: Allows you to create marketing campaigns using SMS, social media, and other digital marketing tools, along with providing audience insights.
Pros
With its affordable pricing and user-friendly interface, Constant Contact is an excellent platform for beginners and small businesses.
Cons
Most users found their email support team sloppy with their late replies.
Pricing
Constant Contact has created a one-page website highlighting its core features.
If you look at their pricing plans, you will get a good idea of what it entails.
It has two pricing models – Core and Plus. The pricing for each of these plans depends upon the number of contacts you want.
The Core Plan starts from $9.99 per month and boasts in-built email templates, signup forms, engagement reporting, live chat, phone support, social media marketing, and integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, Canva, and Etsy.
The Plus Plan costs $45 per month and includes additional tools such as dynamic content personalization, automated customer segmentation, personalized consultation, in-depth reporting, and list growth tools.
The best part is that they have a 30-days money-back policy if you aren’t satisfied with the tool.
Constant Contact Competitors: Features, Pricing, Pros and Cons
Flodesk vs MailerLite
Are you big on designing while sending emails or newsletters?
If you spend a lot of time on Adobe or Photoshop to design your newsletter, you can save yourself some time and check out Flodesk.
Both beginners and experts can use this email marketing tool alike.
Features
- Web Forms: Flodesk helps you create fully responsive forms by embedding them on your website.
- Integrations: Flodesk is integrated with well-known platforms such as Shopify, WordPress, Zapier, Typeform, and Slack.
- Workflow Builder: You can design a workflow and automate the process of sending emails based on predefined criteria.
- Email Personalization: With Flodesk, you can send personalized email responses every time a customer makes a purchase.
Pros
Flodesk is quite popular for its attractive templates and its flat pricing system.
Cons
Users suggest that more email tracking features can be added.
Pricing
Flodesk has a flat pricing fee of $35 per month, and you get everything unlimited. Even if you are on the verge of scaling your business, you enjoy a flat fee regardless.
It also comes with another feature for your online store – Checkout. If you want, you can combine its Email and Checkout features and subscribe to its Everything Plan, which will cost you $59 per month.
Read also: Answered: 10 Questions About SendGrid Pricing
AWeber vs MailerLite
AWeber offers a robust set of email marketing tools required to run full-fledged email campaigns and generate high ROI for your business.
Besides, it offers free migration support, making it easy to switch to AWeber from any other marketing tool.
Features
- Built-In Templates: Using AWeber, you can choose from a wide range of email marketing templates, add images using Canva, and create email templates with website URLs or Facebook with a few simple clicks.
- Auto Newsletter: Allows you to create automated email sequences based on certain triggers or actions.
- Dynamic Content Personalization: Helps you segment users using filters and send targeted emails to drive sales.
- A/B Split Test: This enables you to understand which emails lead to higher open rates and which content is most effective.
Pros
AWeber’s affordable pricing and easy-to-use email templates make it a popular email marketing platform for businesses.
Cons
Some users feel that the customization of templates can be improved.
Read also: Sendinblue (Brevo) vs Mailchimp And Other Email Tools [Tables]
Pricing
AWeber has four pricing plans – catering to all sizes of businesses.
If you are new to email marketing, you can opt for its Free Plan. You can get started easily with up to 500 subscribers and one email list.
Once you start scaling and need to add more email automations and require advanced messages analytics, Lite Plan would work best. It starts at $12.50 per month.
For established businesses looking for unlimited subscriber options, unlimited email lists, and unlimited landing pages, Plus Plan would be ideal. It starts at $20 per month.
It even has a full-fledged plan for enterprise-grade companies with more than 100,000 subscribers. You need to contact their sales team to get a quote.
Aweber vs Mailchimp and Other Email Tools
Drip vs MailerLite
Drip is an email marketing tool that can help you drive more sales using its pre-built playbook that shares some of the best practices of successful marketing campaigns.
Besides, it shows your audience dynamically personalized content like birthday deals, abandoned cart reminders, product recommendations based on what they’ve browsed, and more.
Features
- Pre-Built Templates: With Drip, you can choose from a wide range of email templates or create your own using its HTML drag-and-drop editor.
- Workflow Builder: Helps you create automated email sequences based on user actions.
- Email Personalization: Allows you to send personalized email content based on the user’s browsing history and buying preferences.
- Revenue-Driving Automations: Helps you create automated email sequences for creating and sending invoices and tracking payments.
Pros
For those who want to create email marketing campaigns of similar types repeatedly, Drip is an excellent platform.
Cons
The learning curve can be steep for those new to email marketing.
Pricing
Drip keeps it simple by offering a single pricing model.
It starts at $39 per month for up to 2,500 contacts and includes unlimited email sends, email support, and free data migration.
If you compare it with MailerLite, which costs only $27 per month, it doesn’t offer some of the top features of Drip, such as pre-built playbooks, behavioral segmentation, etc.
Read also: A Complete Mailchimp Vs Drip Email Marketing Comparison
MailerLite vs Sendgrid
If you are having trouble with a low deliverability rate, instantly switch to Sendgrid.
Sendgrid, a MailerLite alternative, boasts of 7 billion emails on Cyber Monday with a 99% deliverability rate.
Features
- Email Testing: Helps you understand which subject lines and email content are most effective and increase revenue.
- Email Automation: Allows you to create automated email sequences that can be sent as and when customers take certain actions.
- Email Validation API: Provides real-time data on which emails lead to higher clickthrough rates, reduces bounce rates, and detects typos.
- Drag-and-Drop Editor: This enables you to customize email templates using Sendgrid’s drag-and-drop HTML editor.
Pros
Using Sendgrid, you can send mass emails easily. What’s more, the platform allows you to measure the performance of your email marketing campaign with just a few simple clicks.
Cons
Customer support can be slow and unresponsive at times.
Pricing
Sendgrid is unique in its pricing system. You can add the number of contacts and the number of emails you want to send per day, and it shows the pricing accordingly.
It has three pricing models – Free, Basic, and Advanced.
The Free Plan includes up to 2,000 contacts and 6,000 monthly email sends. Some features are segmentation, A/B testing, ticket support, and automation.
If you want to add more features or add more contacts to your plan, you can either go for its Basic Plan or the Advanced one.
You will get additional functionalities like ticket and chat support, up to 5 signup forms, a dedicated IP address, automation, guaranteed customer response times, and up to 60 email testing credits. It starts at $15 per month.
Read also: The Marketer’s Guide To The Top 10 SendGrid Alternatives
MailerLite vs HubSpot
HubSpot is an excellent alternative to MailerLite for large businesses looking for an all-in-one platform for their entire operations.
But at the same time, it also offers a free email marketing tool to help you get started.
Features
- CRM Platform: HubSpot’s CRM platform helps you access client data from the comforts of your email marketing dashboard itself.
- A/B Testing: Helps you optimize your email marketing campaign using A/B split testing and create dynamic and personalized email content.
- Email Personalization: This enables you to create customized emails according to the customers’ needs.
- Layout Customization: Allows you to create emails by choosing from a wide range of in-built templates or designing one using the drag-and-drop editor.
Pros
With HubSpot, measuring campaign performance across multiple channels in real-time is convenient.
Cons
Social media marketing tools need improvement.
Pricing
HubSpot’s email marketing tool is part of its Marketing Hub, which has three plans on offer – Free Tools, Starter, and Professional.
With its Free Tools, you can get started with its basic email automation tool. But if you are looking for advanced features to help automate and scale your marketing operations, you can go for its paid plans.
The Starter Plan costs $45 per month and includes up to 1,000 contacts. Here, you can get 10 reporting dashboards, custom user permissions, a shared inbox, and HubSpot mobile app.
With the Professional Plan, there are 2,000 marketing contacts, email reply tracking, mobile optimization, form automation, ad management, and custom properties for $800 per month.
HubSpot Pricing and Comparison with Affordable Alternatives
Klaviyo vs MailerLite
If you are looking for a platform that provides email and SMS marketing, choose Klaviyo.
Klaviyo is a powerful email marketing platform that is used by some of the top global brands like ColourPop, Living proof, etc.
Features
- Email Personalization: Helps you send emails based on user actions and triggers such as last purchase, browsing history, abandoned carts, recently viewed products, etc.
- Email Automation: Allows you to create automated email sequences based on customer behavior and engagement.
- Audience Segmentation: This enables you to divide your customers into multiple categories based on buying history and preferences.
- Integrated SMS: Helps you reach out to customers instantly using SMS marketing.
Pros
With its user-friendly interface, Klaviyo is ideal for beginners as well as advanced users.
Cons
At times, it can be difficult to understand setup options on the dashboard.
Pricing
Klaviyo has three types of plans, Free, Email, and Email and SMS.
The Free Plan offers up to 500 monthly email sends, email support for the first two months, and a built-in CDP.
With the Email Plan, you can get up to 15,000 monthly email sends, email and chat support, automated A/B testing, and multi-channel attribution for $45 per month.
Under the Email and SMS Plan, users can avail of built-in forms and pop-ups, drag-and-drop automation builder, and over 300+ integrations for $60 per month.
Read also: How Does Mailchimp’s Pricing Compare To Its Competitors?
Wrap Up
So, which is the best MailerLite alternative?
Clearly, MailerLite is an affordable option as compared to its competitors.
Its pricing is almost the same (or even lower) as some of its best alternatives (check the pricing comparison chart).
But pricing is not the only factor in play. These email tools offer more or less the same features and specialize in a few.
For instance, Constant Contact will work best for a small business, while HubSpot would be the perfect choice for a large enterprise looking for a full-fledged marketing automation platform, with an integrated CRM and Support suite.
If HubSpot seems expensive for an all-in-one package, EngageBay can be your best bet (it is an excellent alternative to HubSpot).
Similarly, MailerLite can be your best bet if you’re sending regular newsletters to your subscribers and you don’t need much more than that.
So, once you have defined your business plan, you can narrow down your options and make the right choice.
Want to know details about Mailerlite, check our article on what is MailerLite.
