EmailOctopus vs Systeme.io — which should you choose?

If you are looking for a tool you can manage on without paying anything, these two are the top of our comparison. The others’ free plans are 250 contacts or do not exist; these give thousands. They run out at different points, though, and understanding that settles the choice entirely.

The short answer

Choose EmailOctopus if the list is 2,000–2,500 names and you write to it at most four times a month. Its free plan carries the larger list.

Choose Systeme.io if you write often or sell a course. Its free plan has no sending limit at all, and funnels and a course platform come with it.

Note about both: on deliverability features the help pages do not differ — neither has a meter, built-in cleaning or a dedicated IP; the basics are at both.

Comparison table

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Prices exclude VAT, billed monthly unless stated otherwise.(ad) = ad link

• The price is the monthly price of the cheapest paid plan at that list size. The Free plan column shows when you do not have to pay.
• EmailOctopus: the price list only shows the monthly price on annual billing. Monthly billing costs more.

Which free plan carries further

A free plan limits from two directions: how many addresses the list may hold and how many emails may go out from it. At these two the limit is in different directions, so the answer depends on sending pace.

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Free plan limits read from the services’ own price lists (EmailOctopus, Systeme.io) on 3 September 2026. EmailOctopus’s free plan: 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month. Systeme.io’s free plan: 2,000 contacts, sending not capped. Email volume calculated at four weeks a month. “Just barely” means the figure lands exactly on the ceiling and leaves no room for reminder emails.

So the rule is short: list size favours EmailOctopus, sending pace Systeme.io. The boundary runs at about four newsletters a month at a 2,000-name list — below it EmailOctopus carries the larger list, above it Systeme.io is the only one that does not cut off.

The flip side of the free plan is the same at both: the emails carry the service’s own mark. At EmailOctopus it is branding in the email. All seven free plans side by side: free email marketing.

Paid plans — we give no price difference

Systeme.io’s price list is in dollars and EmailOctopus’s in euros. Giving a single difference figure would need an exchange rate, which is on neither price list and changes daily. So the figures sit side by side in their own currencies.

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Read from the price lists on 3 September 2026, monthly prices excluding VAT. The currencies differ, so the columns are not added together and no difference is given. EmailOctopus’s price list shows monthly prices on annual billing, and on its paid plans the email volume is capped: 25,000 emails a month on the 2,500-subscriber tier and 100,000 on the 10,000-subscriber tier.

Without a rate, what is comparable is the shape of the tiers: EmailOctopus’s tiers are denser and start smaller, Systeme.io’s sparser and carry further at once.

A plain newsletter against the whole package

EmailOctopus is deliberately narrow. No CRM, no e-commerce integrations on the same scale, no conditional automation branches. It does one thing and is therefore cheap and fast.

Systeme.io has sales funnels, landing pages, online courses and payment handling in the same price — three funnels and one course already on the free plan. If you sell a course, it replaces a separate course platform and payment handling.

So the question is the same as always with all-in-one tools: do you use the extras? If not, you pay for them anyway — and EmailOctopus does the same newsletter cheaper and for a larger list.

Data location: both in the EU

Systeme.io is operated by Irish ITACWT Limited, and the data is in AWS’s Irish data centre. EmailOctopus is a British company, but the lists are stored in AWS’s Irish data centre inside the EEA. Both read from the services’ own privacy policies on 3 September 2026.

At neither is a transfer basis outside the EU needed. What still belongs in the policy: email marketing and GDPR.

What is unknown about both — and what can be read from the help pages

We do not test deliverability ourselves. Below are two things: Tooltester’s 2017–2024 series as history — it ended in January 2024, and the source no longer stands behind its method — and eight points from the services’ own help pages, which are the current basis of this comparison.

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Tooltester ended the series with the January 2024 round and explained why in August 2026: seed lists proved unreliable and providers started optimising for them. The figures are therefore history, not a measurement of current deliverability.

Source: Tooltester deliverability test, 12 rounds 8/2017–1/2024. About 80 seed addresses, 28 providers, shared IP addresses. Average across all platforms in the latest round 83.1%. Average and range calculated from the published rounds.

Deliverability features from the help docs

Eight points read from each provider’s own help pages on 13 September 2026. This replaces percentages as a buying basis: a feature can be checked and dated, a seed-list result no longer can. Every cell links to the article it was read from.

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Yes = the help page describes the feature. No = the help page says it is absent or points to an external tool. — = not found in the help pages; that does not mean the feature is absent.

This is the only pair in our comparison where neither was in Tooltester’s series — and the series has since ended, so the gap no longer separates these from the others.

Read from the help pages, the pair is level on all eight points: authentication from the app, DMARC guidance, bounces and complaints removed automatically, purchased lists banned — and neither help page describes a deliverability meter, a built-in cleaning tool, a dedicated IP or a deliverability team. One nuance: Systeme.io points record checking to external tools, EmailOctopus checks them in the app.

Most of deliverability is still the sender’s own responsibility — authentication, list quality and sending pace: what Gmail and Yahoo require of senders.

The other gap concerns only Systeme.io: its contact counting rule has not been published. The plan limits are contact counts, but none of the help centre’s nine contact-management articles says which statuses count toward the limit. EmailOctopus’s rule can be read: the unsubscribed, hard bounces and spam complaints do not count.

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The rules are read from the providers’ own help pages. “Not read” means the rule could not be opened in the original source — we do not guess it in either direction.

• EmailOctopus. Unsubscribed contacts do not count toward the limit, nor do hard bounces and spam complaints, which are marked as unsubscribed automatically. Contacts awaiting double opt-in do not count either. One trap: the same address is counted separately for every list — an address on six lists is six contacts.
• Systeme.io. The plan limits are contact counts (free plan 2,000, Startup 5,000, Webinar 10,000). All nine contact-management articles in the help centre were read on 5 September 2026: none of them says which contact statuses count toward the plan limit. The guides advise cleaning the list, but the counting rule is not published. So we claim nothing either way until it can be read or has been asked from support.

Which one for you