Free email marketing software — what is actually enough

A free plan is not a marketing gimmick but a sensible way to start: the problem in the first months is not the tool’s shortcomings but not finding time to write the newsletter. Free plans differ from each other more than paid plans do, though — and they have shrunk in recent years, so older comparisons go stale fast.

The short answer

• Most subscribers

  EmailOctopus

  2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month — in return the emails carry the service’s branding.

  Start free — 2,500 subscribers (ad)

• Unlimited sending

  Systeme.io

  2,000 contacts, unlimited emails, and funnels, a course and a blog included too.

  Start free — 2,000 contacts (ad)

• Large list, few sends

  Brevo

  The sending limit is 300 emails a day, so list size is not what runs out first.

  Start free — 300 emails/day

Free plans compared

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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.

What the free plans actually give you

• EmailOctopus: 2,500 subscribers, 10,000 emails a month, one landing page and one form. Reports are kept for 30 days, and the emails carry EmailOctopus branding.
• Systeme.io: 2,000 contacts and unlimited sending. Includes three sales funnels, one online course and a blog — the free plan is the widest in this comparison in other respects than email too.
• Brevo: 300 emails a day, about 9,000 a month. Contact count is not the first limit, but a campaign sent to the whole list at once does not fit within the daily limit.
• MailerLite: 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month. The free plan shrank clearly from before, and MailerLite’s logo leaves the emails only on a paid plan.
• Mailchimp: 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, daily limit 250. In practice a trial plan, not a working free plan.

Where the free plan runs out

Three limits come up in this order:

• Contact count. The most common. At MailerLite and Mailchimp the limit is 250 names, at Systeme.io 2,000 and at EmailOctopus 2,500.
• Sending volume. Brevo’s 300 emails a day is enough for one newsletter a day to a 300-subscriber list — but not for a campaign where you send to the whole list at once. Mailchimp’s monthly limit of 500 emails comes up with the second newsletter.
• Automation. A simple welcome email works for free at almost all of them. Multi-step, conditional automation is practically always a paid feature.

A fourth limit is hidden: the services count contacts differently, so the same list fills the free plan at a different point. According to EmailOctopus’s help page, unsubscribed, hard-bounced and double-opt-in-pending contacts do not count toward the limit — but the same address is counted separately for every list, so a subscriber on six lists is six contacts. That is a concrete instruction for a beginner: keep one list and separate readers with groups or tags, not separate lists. At MailerLite unsubscribes do not count, but the billing period is cumulative, and at Mailchimp unsubscribes count toward the limit until you archive them. Help pages read 5 September 2026; the full table: how contacts are counted.

A free tool is not enough on its own: you need your own domain

A free plan can be set up in minutes, but one thing has to be sorted before the first newsletter, and it does not depend on the tool. The sender address has to be on your own domain, and you need access to its DNS records.

The reason is the sender requirements that came into force in February 2024. Google and Yahoo require SPF, DKIM and DMARC authentication, one-click unsubscribe and a spam complaint rate below 0.30 per cent from anyone sending at least 5,000 emails a day. A small sender does not hit that threshold, but authentication is still not optional in practice: MailerLite’s guide says plainly that emails sent from a free email service’s domain cannot be authenticated, which significantly affects deliverability and sender reputation.

In practice this means a newsletter should not go out in the name of your gmail.com or hotmail.com address, even if the tool allows it. The domain is therefore the free plan’s only unavoidable cost, and it is the same whichever service you choose. Authentication is done the same way at every service: the service gives you DNS records, you add them to your domain’s management. Guides read 5 September 2026.

Branding: the real price of a free plan

Most free plans add the service’s own logo to the bottom of the email. It shows on the price lists in that logo removal is a paid feature: at MailerLite it comes with the Comfort plan, at Brevo it is a separate add-on at €8.10 a month, and EmailOctopus states on its price list that it marks free plan emails with its own brand. Mailchimp’s and Systeme.io’s price lists take no position either way.

Someone else’s logo is not fatal for a newsletter whose readers know you, but in a sales email it tells the reader that the sender does not pay for their tool.

Five free plans side by side

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From the price lists on 3 September 2026. GetResponse and ActiveCampaign have no free plan at all, only a 14-day trial. Systeme.io’s and Mailchimp’s price lists do not mention free plan branding either way, so we make no claim about it for either.

The table shows why “free” is not one thing but five different things. Three limits move independently: how many names the list may hold, how many emails go out a month and how many of them on the same day. At Mailchimp all three are the tightest; at EmailOctopus two of the three are the loosest.

What happens when the limit hits

Exceeding a limit does not behave the same way at all of them, and this is where the choice of free plan either bites or does not.

• The contact limit usually blocks adding new subscribers. The form quietly stops working, and you notice only when the subscriber count no longer grows. Check this after the first campaign.
• The sending limit cuts a campaign short. Part of the list gets the newsletter, part does not — and next time the same people get it twice if the send is run again.
• The daily limit (Brevo, Mailchimp) spreads the send over several days. In an offer campaign that means part of the list reads the offer only after it has ended.

The practical conclusion: choose a free plan whose limit is far away, not the one that just barely suffices today. Moving a list at 300 names is an hour’s job, at 3,000 names a weekend — and the move has to be done exactly when the list is in highest demand.

Two calculated cases: email tool for an association (limits for four membership sizes) and cheapest email marketing tool (the cheapest at three list sizes, free plans included).

When a paid plan pays

When the list makes money. If a 500-subscriber list brings no sales at all, a pricier tool will not fix that. If, on the other hand, the list earns regularly, a €16–29 monthly price pays for itself with the first automation that sends a reminder without anyone pressing a button.

If you are coming from Mailchimp, compare the alternatives first: Mailchimp alternatives and what switching saves.

The cheapest step from free to paid is at EmailOctopus, but read the figure carefully: the free plan already covers 2,500 subscribers, so when the limit is exceeded the next step is 5,000 subscribers at €26 a month. For reference: at Mailchimp a 2,500-contact list costs €39.11 a month — more than EmailOctopus charges for twice that list size.