Best Email Marketing Software in 2026: 5 Tools Compared by Price and Fit

How to actually choose

Every one of these tools sends an email with a picture in it. Picking between them on the feature grid is a waste of an afternoon, because the grids are nearly identical. What separates them is how they charge you, and that splits cleanly into two camps.

Most of the market bills by how many contacts you store. Your list of 8,000 costs the same whether you email it once a month or every day. Mailchimp, MailerLite, beehiiv and GetResponse all work this way. Brevo is the outlier: it bills by how many emails you send, and lets you keep unlimited contacts for free. That single difference decides which tool is cheapest for you, and it flips depending on your habits. A 50,000-contact list you email twice a year is a fortune on Mailchimp and pocket change on Brevo. A 2,000-contact list you email daily is the reverse.

So before comparing features, answer two questions: how big is the list, and how often will you actually mail it. Then read the section that matches. All prices below were checked on each provider's pricing page in August 2026 and climb as your list grows, so treat the "from" figure as a floor, not a quote.

MailerLite: the best value for most people

MailerLite is where I send most people who ask, because it does the boring 90% of email marketing well and charges the least for it. The free plan carries 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, and unlike Mailchimp's free tier it still includes visual automations and A/B testing. You can run a real onboarding sequence without paying a cent.

Read our full MailerLite review →

One thing to know before you sign up: MailerLite is mid-rename. The old Growing Business and Advanced plans are now called Comfort (from $12/month for 500 subscribers) and Power (from $25/month), and the old names disappear for good after August 13, 2026, when existing accounts roll over at their next renewal. If you read an older review quoting a "$9 Growing Business plan," that number is gone. Comfort is the one to start on; Power mainly adds unlimited monthly sends and seats you will not need until you are big.

The catch is the approval process. MailerLite manually reviews new accounts before it lets you send, and it is fussier than its rivals about affiliate-heavy or list-bought content. Plan for a day's wait, and do not import a list you cannot prove you collected yourself. Its landing pages and forms are good but not GetResponse-deep, and there is no built-in webinar or funnel tooling. For a newsletter, a shop's broadcast list, or a small SaaS's lifecycle emails, none of that matters.

Brevo: the cheapest way to hold a huge list

Brevo (the tool that used to be Sendinblue) is the one to reach for when your list is large but quiet. Because it bills by send volume, its free plan gives you unlimited contacts and 300 emails a day forever. Store 40,000 people, email them a monthly update, and you can run close to free while the same list would cost real money everywhere else on this page.

Read our full Brevo review →

Paid volume is cheap too. The Starter plan opens at $9/month for 5,000 emails and steps up by tier: roughly $18 for 20,000 and $65 for 100,000, checked in August 2026. Note that Brevo retired the old "Business" plan in October 2025 and replaced it with Standard, from $18/month, which is where marketing automation, A/B testing and the landing-page builder now live. Brevo also bundles transactional email, SMS and a light CRM, so it doubles as the plumbing behind app notifications, not just newsletters.

Where it costs you is polish. The template editor is the least pleasant of the five, the daily-send cap on the free plan is easy to hit during a launch, and support on the cheaper tiers is slow. Brevo is a value and infrastructure play, not a design tool. If a beautiful template out of the box matters more than the bill, this is not your pick: MailerLite is.

beehiiv: built for people who write newsletters for a living

The other four tools treat "newsletter" as one use of a marketing platform. beehiiv is the whole platform. It was built by former Morning Brew operators, and it shows in the things it takes seriously: a growth-focused recommendation network, a built-in ad marketplace that pays you to run sponsorships, and paid subscriptions with a 0% platform take. Substack keeps 10% of your subscription revenue; beehiiv keeps none, which for a paid newsletter of any size is the entire argument.

Read our full beehiiv review →

The free Launch plan is generous on size, up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, but it deliberately holds back the money-making parts. Automations, the ad network and paid subscriptions all live behind Scale, which is $43/month billed monthly (or $517/year) and covers up to 100,000 subscribers. Max at $96/month adds white-label branding, multiple publications and unlimited seats. Checked August 2026.

beehiiv is a poor fit if email is a side channel for you. There is no serious CRM, the automations are simpler than GetResponse's, and you are paying for a content-business toolkit you will not touch if all you do is send a weekly store update. But if the newsletter is the business, nothing else here comes close.

GetResponse: one login for the whole funnel

GetResponse is the maximalist of the group. Alongside email and automation it ships a website builder, conversion funnels, live webinars and a full course-and-community creator. If your plan is to capture a lead, nurture it, run a webinar and sell a course without stitching four subscriptions together, this is the one tool on the list that can do all of it.

Read our full GetResponse review →

Pricing starts at $19/month for Starter, $59 for Marketer and $69 for Creator, quoted at 1,000 contacts on monthly billing in August 2026, with about 18% off for paying annually. Watch the contact scaling, because it is steep: the same Starter plan is around $79/month at 10,000 contacts and roughly $174 at 25,000. The webinar and course tools live on the higher Creator tier, so the all-in-one pitch only pays off if you actually use them. There is a free plan, but it is capped tightly and exists mainly to get you into a trial of the paid features.

The risk with GetResponse is paying for breadth you never use. If you only need to send campaigns and a couple of automations, you are buying a webinar platform and a course engine to get an email tool, and MailerLite does the email part for less. Choose GetResponse when the funnel is the point, not when email is.

Mailchimp: the default that stopped being the value pick

Mailchimp is still the name everyone knows, and for good reason: the deepest integration catalog on this list, a genuinely helpful set of AI writing and design tools on the Standard plan, and reporting that most competitors quietly copy. If your store, CRM or CMS has a one-click Mailchimp connector and you value that over the invoice, it remains a reasonable default.

Read our full Mailchimp review →

But Intuit-owned Mailchimp is now the expensive option, and its plans hide it well. The free tier is down to 250 contacts. Essentials opens at $15/month and Standard at $25, but both are quoted at just 500 contacts and rise sharply as your list grows, and the send limits (5,000 and 6,000 emails a month respectively) are lower than they look. Premium is $420/month. Checked August 2026. The old trick of Mailchimp counting unsubscribed and archived contacts toward your paid tier has been softened but still surprises people at renewal.

The honest read in 2026: Mailchimp is worth its premium only if a specific integration or its AI tooling saves you more than the price gap. For a plain newsletter or a growing list watching costs, MailerLite gives you 80% of Mailchimp for a fraction of the money, and Brevo undercuts it outright on large lists.

Pricing at a glance (August 2026)

Every "paid from" figure is the entry price at the smallest paid tier and rises with list size. Confirm the number for your own contact count on the provider's page before you commit.

Verdict: which one to pick

There is no single winner, but there is a right answer for each situation, and none of them is "it depends."

• Most people should start with MailerLite. It is the cheapest tool that still feels good to use, its free plan does real work, and Comfort at $12/month covers a serious list. Skip it only if you were manually declined at signup or you need webinars.
• Have a big list you rarely email? Use Brevo. Unlimited free contacts and send-based billing make a 40,000-name list you mail monthly almost free. Do not pick it if you want the prettiest templates with the least effort.
• Writing a newsletter as the business? Use beehiiv. The 0% take on paid subscriptions and the built-in ad network pay for themselves. Do not pick it if email is just a side channel for a shop or app; you will overpay for tools you never open.
• Selling through a funnel? Use GetResponse. One login for email, webinars and courses beats gluing three subscriptions together. Do not pick it purely to send campaigns, where MailerLite is cheaper and just as good.
• Mailchimp earns its premium only when a specific integration or its AI features save you more than the price gap. For a plain list watching costs, move to MailerLite or Brevo.

If you want one safe default and do not want to think about it further, try MailerLite's free plan first. You will know within an evening whether it does what you need, and you can graduate to a specialist later once your list tells you which corner you have grown into.