Email marketing and marketing automation

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All our comparisons, reviews and guides to email tools — in euros and dated.

Email is the only marketing channel whose audience you own: the list moves with you even if a social media algorithm changes overnight. That is why the tool is worth choosing properly once — switching later means moving lists, automations and forms.

All the tools compared

ToolFree plan500 contacts2,50010,000GDPR settingsData in the EUEnglish interface
Systeme.ioSee prices2,000 contacts, unlimited sending$17$17$47YesYesYesTry (ad)
EmailOctopusSee prices2,500 subscribers, 10,000 emails/month (EmailOctopus branding in the emails)€9€16€36YesYesYesTry (ad)
BrevoSee prices300 emails/day€7€21€28YesYesYesTry
MailerLiteSee prices250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/month€11€29€79YesYesYesTry
MailchimpSee prices250 contacts, 500 emails/month (daily limit 250)€11.30€39.11€95.59YesNoYesTry
GetResponseSee pricesNo free plan (14-day trial)€16€27€69YesYesYesTry
ActiveCampaignSee pricesNo free plan (14-day trial)€15€39€149YesPartlyYesTry

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 and ActiveCampaign: the price list only shows the monthly price on annual billing. Monthly billing costs more.
  • GetResponse and ActiveCampaign: the smallest list sold is 1,000 contacts, so the 500-contact column shows that price.

Full price lists by plan: Systeme.io · EmailOctopus · Brevo · MailerLite · Mailchimp · GetResponse · ActiveCampaign

Three questions that settle the choice

There are dozens of email tools, but in practice the choice comes down to three questions. Answer them before you read a single review — they rule out most of the options.

  1. How big is the list, and how often do you send? This decides the price, because the services bill in two different ways. In the contact-based model (MailerLite, Mailchimp, EmailOctopus, GetResponse, ActiveCampaign) you pay for list size regardless of sending pace. In the volume-based model (Brevo) you pay for emails, so a large but rarely emailed list is cheap. At a 10,000-contact list the difference runs from €28 to €149 a month.
  2. Do you need automation, or is a newsletter enough? A scheduled welcome series works on almost all of them. Conditional branches, lead scoring and paths that react to online shop events are a different product — and a different price. If you are not going to build them, you pay for features you never open.
  3. Is data location a buying criterion? Contrary to the common assumption, five of the seven tools we compare store the list in the EU. The exceptions are Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign. If you answer customers’ data protection questions or record processors in your own privacy documentation, data stored in the EU is the shorter explanation.

Once you have answered these, start with the main comparison. If the budget is zero, go straight to the comparison of free plans; if you are already on Mailchimp, to the alternatives and the savings.

What has been measured about these tools

Prices, free plan limits and data location have been read from the services’ own price lists and privacy policies, and every figure carries a check date. The price lists are sliders rather than static pages, so the figures are read in a browser the same way you would see them. The check is repeated every 90 days.

We give no numeric scores and do not assess usability. That is why you will not find sentences like “the clearest editor” or “the fastest support” on these pages — they are measurement results, and there is no measurement. The full method →

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