Every price below was checked in July 2026 against each vendor's published pricing pages and documentation, and this list has been a moving target lately: four of the six tools changed their plans or prices within the last ten months. Every verdict here is research-based, built from published pricing, documentation, and feature lists rather than first-hand use.
| Tool | Entry paid price | Free plan | Strongest case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | Starter from $9/mo (5,000 emails a month) | 300 emails/day, 100,000 contacts | Big lists, multichannel, transactional email |
| Mailchimp | Essentials from $13/mo (500 contacts) | 250 contacts, 500 emails/mo | Integrations and e-commerce intelligence |
| Kit | Creator from $39/mo (1,000 subscribers) | Up to 10,000 subscribers | Creators who monetize their list |
| GetResponse | Starter from $19/mo (1,000 contacts) | 500 contacts | All-in-one with webinars |
| ActiveCampaign | Starter from $15/mo annual (1,000 contacts) | None, 14-day trial | Deep automation and CRM |
| Omnisend | Standard from $16/mo (500 contacts) | 250 contacts, 500 emails/mo | Shopify and e-commerce stores |
Why people leave MailerLite in the first place
MailerLite is a genuinely good tool, our MailerLite review covers why, so the reasons to switch are specific rather than general. The 2026 plan restructure shrank the free tier to 250 subscribers and 2,500 monthly emails and introduced the Comfort plan's send ceiling of ten times your subscriber tier, which pinches high-frequency senders who don't want to step up to Power. It has no built-in CRM and no SMS. Transactional email lives in MailerSend, a separate product with separate billing. And a business that stores a big list but mails it rarely pays MailerLite for every stored subscriber, whether or not they hear from you.
Each of those complaints points at a different alternative, so the honest way to rank these tools is by which complaint is yours.
1. Brevo: the best overall alternative
Brevo attacks MailerLite's pricing model from the opposite direction: it charges for emails sent, not subscribers stored. The free plan holds up to 100,000 contacts and sends 300 emails a day. Paid plans start at $9 a month for 5,000 emails a month on Starter, and $18 a month on Standard brings unlimited automation, A/B testing, and a logo-free footer. Alongside email you get SMS, a sales CRM with pipelines, live chat, and transactional email included on every plan, the exact list of things MailerLite doesn't do.
The trade-offs are real, though. Since a 2025 pricing change, each Brevo email tier also caps contact storage, and the three cheapest Starter and Standard tiers hold just 500, 1,500, and 2,500 contacts, with an automatic upgrade to a pricier tier when you cross the cap. Frequent senders with busy automations climb the volume tiers fast. Our Brevo vs MailerLite comparison runs the full head-to-head, and the Brevo review covers the plans in detail.
Pick Brevo if your list is large relative to how often you mail it, or if SMS, a CRM, or transactional email would otherwise mean a second subscription.
2. Mailchimp: the integrations heavyweight
Mailchimp is the alternative people already know, and in 2026 it's a tool you choose for specific strengths rather than by default. Essentials starts at $13 a month for 500 contacts with sends capped at ten times your contact count, and multi-step automation only arrives with Standard at $20. The free plan was cut in February 2026 to 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends with no automation at all. Mailchimp also counts unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts toward your bill until you archive them, the opposite of MailerLite's active-subscribers-only billing.
What justifies the meter is the machinery: one of the largest integration directories in the industry, and on Standard and up, predictive segmentation, customer lifetime value estimates, and retargeting ads that a revenue-generating store can actually convert into money. Our MailerLite vs Mailchimp comparison covers the full matchup.
Pick Mailchimp if a niche integration is load-bearing for your stack or your e-commerce revenue can exploit its intelligence features. Skip it if you're leaving MailerLite to save money; you won't.
3. Kit: the creator specialist
Kit, formerly ConvertKit, offers the most generous free subscriber ceiling in this roundup: up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited sends, though the free tier allows only one automation and one sequence, keeps Kit branding on everything, and requires joining its Creator Network recommendations. The paid Creator plan starts at $39 a month for 1,000 subscribers ($33 annual) after a roughly 35% price increase in September 2025, which makes Kit the most expensive entry price on this page.
What you're paying for is the creator stack: visual automations, tag-based subscriber management, paid newsletter subscriptions, digital product sales, and a recommendations network that grows lists between newsletters. For a writer or course seller who monetizes through email, those tools replace two or three other subscriptions. For anyone else, the price is hard to defend against MailerLite's own creator features at a third of the cost.
Pick Kit if you're a creator whose income runs through your list and the free plan's 10,000-subscriber runway lets you grow before paying. Skip it if you just need solid email marketing.
4. GetResponse: the all-in-one with webinars
GetResponse quotes its plans at 1,000 contacts and allows unlimited sends on every paid tier, no multiplier caps anywhere, which is rarer than it should be. Starter runs $19 a month, Marketer at $59 adds unlimited automation, and Creator at $69 bundles webinars and online courses, the feature no one else on this page offers natively. The free plan covers 500 contacts. Annual billing takes 18% off, dropping Starter to $15.58 a month.
The webinar and course bundle is the reason to be here. If your funnel runs on live sessions or paid teaching, GetResponse consolidates what would otherwise be a webinar platform plus a course host plus an email tool. If it doesn't, Starter is a fine but unremarkable MailerLite substitute at a higher price. Our GetResponse vs Mailchimp guide and ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse comparison give it the longer treatment.
Pick GetResponse if webinars or courses are part of how you sell. The unlimited sends are a genuine bonus for high-frequency senders.
5. ActiveCampaign: the automation upgrade
ActiveCampaign is what you graduate to when MailerLite's automation builder stops being enough. Its workflow engine, branching logic, lead scoring, and CRM integration sit a class above everything else here, which is why it appears in serious automation comparisons that the other five don't enter. Starter runs from $15 a month billed annually for 1,000 contacts, but read that price carefully: it caps automations at five actions and one user, and the plan most buyers actually need is Plus at $49. There's no free plan, only a 14-day trial. Accounts opened since November 2025 are billed for every contact, including unsubscribes and bounces, unlike MailerLite's active-subscribers-only billing, so archive dead contacts to keep the bill down.
Monthly sends are capped by multiplier, ten times contacts on Starter and Plus, twelve on Pro, and the tool's depth comes with a learning curve MailerLite users will feel in the first week.
Pick ActiveCampaign if your growth genuinely depends on behavior-driven automation and CRM handoffs, and budget for Plus, not Starter. Skip it if you'd only use a tenth of it.
6. Omnisend: the Shopify pick
Omnisend is built for e-commerce, and its free plan is the most functional at $0 in this roundup: 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, but with the same automations, segmentation, and pre-built abandoned-cart and welcome workflows the paid tiers get. Standard starts at $16 a month for 500 contacts with monthly sends capped at twelve times your billable contacts; Pro, from $59 a month at 2,500 contacts, removes the email cap entirely. One 2026 change to know: for accounts created on or after 4 May 2026, SMS is available only on Pro, with volume-based pricing from $0.007 per message.
Two billing details deserve attention. Omnisend counts billable contacts, which includes non-subscribers your automations can reach on top of opted-in subscribers. And there's no annual discount, only a first-three-months promotion, so the sticker price is the real price.
Pick Omnisend if you run a Shopify or similar store and want revenue-driving flows working before you pay anything. It's the wrong tool for content creators and service businesses; the whole product assumes a storefront.
How to actually choose
Match the tool to the complaint that's pushing you off MailerLite. Storing a big list you rarely mail: Brevo. Needing an integration or store intelligence: Mailchimp. Monetizing a creator audience: Kit. Selling through webinars or courses: GetResponse. Outgrowing the automation builder: ActiveCampaign. Running an online store: Omnisend.
And it's worth saying directly: if none of those complaints is yours, staying put is a legitimate answer. MailerLite's Comfort plan at $12 remains one of the best-value entry tiers in email marketing, and switching platforms costs time, deliverability warm-up, and rebuilt automations that no feature list shows. Our email automation guide covers what actually transfers between platforms and what has to be rebuilt.
If Brevo's model fits your sending pattern, its free plan is the cheapest possible test: import your list, nothing expires, and you'll know within a month whether send-based billing suits you. And if this page talked you out of switching, MailerLite's 14-day premium trial is the better experiment.