Systeme.io vs MailerLite — which should you choose?

Systeme.io and MailerLite end up on the same shortlist because both are recommended to beginners. They are, however, products of different sizes: MailerLite does one thing, Systeme.io six. The choice comes down to whether you need the other five.

The short answer

Choose Systeme.io if you sell something: a course, coaching or a digital product. Funnels, landing pages, a course platform and email come in one price, and the free plan holds 2,000 contacts.

Choose MailerLite if you send a newsletter and sell nothing through it. Then you do not need funnels, and in return you get two things Systeme.io cannot give: list clean-up inside the app and a published rule on which contacts billing counts.

Comparison table

Our recommendation concerns this page’s most common reader: a beginner whose list is under 2,000 names. At that list size Systeme.io is free and MailerLite is not — that is a figure that has been read, not an assessment. The same recommendation flips the other way as soon as the question is a plain newsletter.

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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.

One thing should be said plainly: Systeme.io is the only one of these two that pays us a commission. That is why the basis of the recommendation is written out above as a figure you can check on the price list yourself — and why the next two sections of this page say where MailerLite is better. How ad links affect the content.

Free plans: an eightfold difference

This is the clearest difference in the comparison, and it can be read directly from both price lists. Systeme.io’s free plan holds 2,000 contacts and sending is not capped. On MailerLite’s free plan the limit is 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, and the emails show MailerLite’s logo, which goes away only on a paid plan.

In practice the difference means years. The 250-subscriber limit comes up within the first six months for almost anyone actively building a list; the 2,000-name limit never comes up for most. If you are just starting and do not know whether the list will grow, the difference matters more than any line on a feature list.

The flip side of Systeme.io’s free plan is the number of features, not the list size: it includes three sales funnels, one automation rule and one online course. One automation rule is enough for a welcome email, not for two parallel paths. The free plans in full, all seven tools side by side: free email marketing.

Prices: two currencies, not one figure

Here many comparisons make a mistake we do not make: converting dollars to euros and presenting the difference as one figure. The conversion would need an exchange rate, and a rate is exactly the kind of figure that goes stale faster than a price list and carries no date. So the figures are below side by side, each in its own currency, and the conclusion is drawn from what the price includes.

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Read from the services’ own price lists (Systeme.io, MailerLite) on 3 September 2026, monthly prices excluding VAT. Systeme.io does not bill in euros at all, so the exchange rate comes on top of the bill. MailerLite’s annual billing is 10 per cent cheaper; on Systeme.io’s annual billing two months are free.

Two things stand out from the tables. Systeme.io’s price steps are few and large: the $17 plan carries up to 5,000 contacts, while at MailerLite the same list size costs €44. On the other hand, in Systeme.io’s steps you also buy a funnel and course quota you may never use at all.

What the price includes

This is the real question of the choice. Both include forms and landing pages in the price, so the difference arises elsewhere:

• Only at Systeme.io: sales funnels, online courses and their payment handling, order management and your own affiliate programme. These are three separate products elsewhere.
• Only at MailerLite: a published counting rule for contacts, list clean-up inside the app (“Clean up inactive”) and over 130 stated connectors to other services.
• At neither: conditional automation branches on the scale of ActiveCampaign.

If you sell nothing through the email list, at Systeme.io you pay for funnels and a course platform that go unopened. If you do sell, MailerLite means a second subscription and a second bill on some course platform’s side — and between two tools one integration that can break.

How contacts are counted

When the price follows list size, the counting rule is part of the price. Both of these price by contact count, but only one states the rule.

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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.

• MailerLite. The limit counts subscribers in Active status; unsubscribed and bounced do not count. One trap in the billing period: the period is counted cumulatively, so an address that was active at any point in the period counts toward the limit until the end of the period, even if you delete it immediately. Cleaning the list shows on the bill only in the next period.
• 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.

The difference is in practice this: at MailerLite you know in advance that the unsubscribed do not count toward the limit and that cleaning affects the bill only in the next period. At Systeme.io you know neither, so the free plan’s 2,000-contact limit may fill faster than you expect if the unsubscribed stay on the counter. We do not claim that they stay — the help pages say neither, so it cannot be read anywhere. The rules for all seven services: how contacts are counted.

Deliverability: only one of them has the tools

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.

As history: in Tooltester’s series MailerLite’s average of 90.9% was the highest of the five we compare; Systeme.io was not in the series. The series ended in January 2024.

Read from the help pages, MailerLite offers three things Systeme.io does not. “Clean up inactive” picks out the inactive and removes them with one click; a dedicated IP and a deliverability team open up from 50,000 weekly emails. Systeme.io’s help page points cleaning to an external tool and does not mention a dedicated IP. One point the other way: Systeme.io gives a ready-made DMARC record, MailerLite shows an example and points to a consultant.

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

Data location: both in the EU

Here the comparison does not separate them. Systeme.io is operated by Irish ITACWT Limited, and according to the privacy policy the data is in AWS’s Irish data centre and is not transferred outside the EU. MailerLite’s contracting party for EEA customers is Irish MailerLite Limited, and the data centre is in the EU (ISO 27001). Both read from the services’ own privacy policies on 3 September 2026.

For both, the processor entry in your own documentation is therefore short, and no transfer bases outside the EU need recording. What this requires in practice: email marketing and GDPR.

A third option if only the list grows

If you landed on this page because of the free plan and do not need funnels, neither is the most generous in the comparison. EmailOctopus’s free plan holds 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, and the paid plan starts at €9 at 500 subscribers. In return the emails carry the service’s branding, and there are no conditional automation branches.

And if the list is already large but the newsletter goes out rarely, look at Brevo: it bills for emails sent, so a 10,000-name list costs €28 a month where MailerLite asks €79. The comparison between those two is opened up separately: MailerLite vs Brevo.

Which one for you