Email tool for coaches — list, online course and booking in one package

Coaches, trainers and online course sellers use an email list differently from a newsletter writer. The list is where the sale starts: a free guide or webinar brings in the subscriber, an email sequence takes them to the sales page for the course or coaching, and after payment they need access to the course. If each step lives in a different tool, there are several monthly fees. This page compares which email tools cover the chain themselves, according to the providers’ own pricing pages on 23 October 2026.

Short answer

Of the seven email tools we compare, only two include online courses according to their pricing pages: Systeme.io on every plan and GetResponse from the Creator plan. Systeme.io’s free plan includes one course for 500 students, three sales funnels and 2,000 contacts, so you can publish a first course without paying anything. MailerLite sells digital products and bookings, but not courses.

• A course and a list for free

  Systeme.io

  1 online course for 500 students, 3 sales funnels and 2,000 contacts on the free plan; 0% transaction fee on every plan.

  Start free — 2,000 contacts (ad)

• When you need webinars and courses together

  GetResponse

  The Creator plan has a course creator for up to 500 students, webinars and paid newsletters.

  Try 14 days without a card

• When you sell single products or time slots

  MailerLite

  1 digital product or booking on the free plan; 5 and paid newsletters on Comfort.

  Start free — 250 subscribers

Online courses, funnels and payments by plan

Every Systeme.io plan has the same set of features; only the quantities grow. Besides courses and funnels, the table has two rows that matter to a coach: number of students and booking calendar.

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Read from the comparison table on Systeme.io’s pricing page in a browser on 23 October 2026; monthly prices in dollars excluding VAT. Every plan has unlimited sending and a 0% transaction fee. The Webinar plan also includes 10 evergreen webinars.

Two things are worth noting. The free plan’s limit is in the number of courses and students, not in the features: sales funnels, payments, a course and your own affiliate programme are included. And the student limit disappears on the cheapest paid plan, so after 500 students the next step is $17 a month, not a more expensive course platform.

GetResponse: courses and webinars on the Creator plan

According to GetResponse’s pricing page, the course creator, webinars, website builder and paid newsletters are on the Creator plan. The course creator allows up to 500 students. The cheapest Starter plan includes a welcome series, one custom automation and the landing page builder, but no courses or webinars.

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Monthly billing prices excluding VAT, read from GetResponse’s pricing page on 3 September 2026 and checked for 1,000 contacts on 23 October 2026. Annual billing is 18% cheaper. The smallest list sold is 1,000 contacts.

GetResponse suits you when webinars are the core of your sales. The price is in a different class from Systeme.io’s, and the comparison is hard to make in one figure because Systeme.io bills in dollars. The same comparison in full: Systeme.io vs GetResponse.

MailerLite: digital products and bookings, no courses

According to MailerLite’s pricing page, the free plan lets you sell one digital product or booking, Comfort five and Power unlimited. Paid newsletters and recurring subscriptions start on Comfort. The pricing page has no course platform.

For a coach that is enough if what you sell is a single product, such as an e-book, a template or a coaching session, rather than a multi-lesson course. MailerLite’s free plan fits only 250 subscribers, though, so the list runs out before sales have time to start. Prices for Systeme.io, MailerLite and EmailOctopus at the same list sizes:

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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.

How to build the chain in one tool

A coach’s typical sales chain has four steps, and Systeme.io’s free plan has a part for each:

1. Signup page and free guide. The first step of a sales funnel; the free plan has three funnels, so you do not need a website of your own.
2. Email sequence. A few emails that take the subscriber from the guide to the course. The free plan has one email sequence and one automation rule.
3. Sales page and payment. Payment goes through a payment processor, and the pricing page lists Stripe and PayPal among them. Systeme.io takes no transaction fee of its own.
4. Course. The buyer gets access to the course automatically. The free plan has one course and up to 500 students.

If the course already lives on another platform, there is no point paying for course features in the email tool as well. A light newsletter tool is then enough, and the largest free list is EmailOctopus’s: free email marketing.

Which suits whom

• A first online course on a zero budget → Systeme.io: the free plan includes one course for 500 students, sales funnels and payments with no transaction fee. Try it free (ad)
• Several courses and a growing list → Systeme.io: Startup plan: 5 courses, no student limit, 5,000 contacts. Try it free (ad)
• Webinars are the core of your sales → GetResponse: the Creator plan has webinars and the course creator at one price. Try it free
• You sell an e-book, templates or coaching sessions, not a course → MailerLite: digital products and bookings are on the free plan already, one at a time. Try it free
• Just a newsletter; the course lives on another platform → EmailOctopus: 2,500 subscribers for free; no paying twice for a course platform. Try it free (ad)

Who Systeme.io does not suit: if you need fine-grained segmentation or extensive reporting, or need billing in euros. Systeme.io bills in dollars, and its pricing page also limits tags to one on the free plan. All the known limits: Systeme.io review.

Client data and privacy

A coach’s list is a register of personal data, and course buyers add payment details. Systeme.io is the Irish ITACWT Limited with data in AWS’s Irish data centre, and MailerLite’s contracting party for EEA customers is the Irish MailerLite Limited with data in the EU; both were read from their privacy policies on 3 September 2026. GetResponse is a Polish company, but its privacy policy, data processing agreement and security page do not say where its data centre is. What subscribers must be told: newsletter privacy notice.

What we have not checked

Quantities and prices were read from the pricing pages. We have not built courses or sales funnels ourselves, so we do not assess how usable the course platforms are, how videos play or how smoothly payments are handled: those would be measurement results, and there is no measurement. Payment processors’ own fees are not part of this comparison. How we compare.