Best Email Marketing Software in 2026: 6 Tools Compared

Brevo is the best email marketing software for most senders in 2026: it charges by emails sent rather than contacts, and paid plans start at $9 a month. MailerLite is best for beginners, Kit for creators, Klaviyo for online shops, and Beaconmail (our own product, disclosed below) for flat-price lists with unlimited subscribers.

Some links on this page may become affiliate links; it never changes our ranking. How we pick: see below. Prices checked 29 October 2026.

Disclosure: Beaconmail is our own product. It is built by the same team that runs Unfair AI Tools. We ranked it third, not first, and we say why in its section: its flat pricing is strong, but it is newer and less proven than the two tools above it. Weigh our judgement accordingly.

At a glance

Tool	Best for	Entry paid price	Standout	Watch out for
Brevo	Best overall value	$9/month (Starter, monthly billing)	Pays by emails sent, 300/day free	Logo removal costs extra on Starter
MailerLite	Beginners and small lists	From $12/month (Comfort)	Easy editor, 14-day trial of paid features	Free plan locks sending above 250 subscribers
Beaconmail (ours)	Flat price, big lists	$29/month (Pro), $290/year	Unlimited subscribers on one plan	New product, bring your own sending provider
Kit	Creators and newsletters	$39/month at 1,000 subscribers (Creator)	Free up to 10,000 subscribers	Cost climbs with list size
Mailchimp	Familiar all-rounder	From £9.82/month (Essentials, first 12 months)	300+ integrations	Contact-based billing, overages
Klaviyo	Online shops	Not published as a flat price	400+ integrations, ecommerce data	Price hidden behind a profile slider

1. Brevo: best all-round value for most senders

Brevo is an email, SMS and CRM platform that is our top pick because its paid plans are priced by how much you send, not how many contacts you hold. On its pricing page, Starter is $9 a month ($8.08 a month billed yearly) and covers "from 5,000 emails per month". Standard is $18 a month ($16.17 billed yearly) and adds unlimited multi-step automation, A/B testing, send-time optimisation and one landing page.

The free plan needs no card and sends up to 300 emails a day once approved. Brevo says it was founded in 2012 in India and France (about page) and prices in euros too. Professional is listed at $499 a month; a price tracker says it was far lower before March 2026 (CostBench), which we could not confirm with Brevo.

Pros

• Pricing follows send volume, so large, rarely mailed lists cost little
• Free plan sends 300 emails a day with no card
• Automation and A/B testing arrive at $18 a month

Cons

• The "Sent with Brevo" footer removal is a paid line item on Starter
• Starter has no automation or A/B testing; those start at Standard
• Professional at $499 a month is a steep jump from Standard

Pricing: Free (300 emails/day); Starter $9/month monthly or $8.08/month billed yearly; Standard $18/month or $16.17 yearly; Professional $499/month; Enterprise custom. USD, as of 29 October 2026.

Best for: Most small businesses, shops that also need transactional email, and UK/EU senders who want predictable cost. Visit Brevo.

2. MailerLite: best for beginners and small lists

MailerLite is a simple email and website platform and our pick for people sending their first campaigns. Its pricing page shows a free plan for up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, including three editors, one landing page, one website and three active forms. Sending locks once you pass 250 active subscribers, so the free plan is for testing, not growing.

Paid plans are Comfort (from $12 a month) and Power (from $25 a month), both scaling with subscriber count, with yearly billing saving 10%. Comfort lifts limits to 50 automations and 10 forms and adds multivariate testing and logo removal; Power adds unlimited emails, seats and automations plus live chat. A 14-day trial of premium features needs no card.

Pros

• Clean editor and quick setup for newcomers
• Free plan includes automations and a landing page
• 14-day trial of paid features, no card required
• USD or EUR pricing toggle

Cons

• Free plan stopped at 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails, lower than older reviews claim
• Prices shown are "starting" figures
• Logo removal sits on paid plans

Pricing: Free (250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/month); Comfort from $12/month; Power from $25/month; Enterprise custom. USD or EUR; yearly billing saves 10%. As of 29 October 2026.

Best for: First-time senders, bloggers and small shops with lists under a few thousand. Visit MailerLite.

3. Beaconmail: best flat-price option (our own product)

Beaconmail, shown on its own site as Beacon, is an email marketing platform built by the same team as this directory, so treat this section as an openly interested party. Its pricing page lists three plans: Free (up to 500 subscribers, core campaigns and automations), Pro ($29 a month or $290 a year, unlimited subscribers, advanced automations, priority sending and support) and Enterprise (custom, run on your own servers and managed by the Beacon team).

Why third: a flat price with unlimited subscribers is unusual when Mailchimp, MailerLite, Kit and Klaviyo all scale with list size, and its free tier allows 500 subscribers, twice the 250 that Mailchimp, MailerLite and Klaviyo give. The product has a drag-and-drop studio with an AI copilot, automations with branching, a segment builder, A/B testing, and plain-language SPF, DKIM and DMARC checks with a 0 to 100 reputation score and warmup schedules. It also offers a transactional REST API and an MCP server so Claude or ChatGPT can draft campaigns for you to approve.

Why not higher: it is new (its public blog starts in August 2026), names no customers, and we found no independent reviews. Sending runs through a provider you connect (Amazon SES, Postmark, SendGrid, Mailgun, Resend or your own SMTP), so you pay that provider separately. The pricing page shows no free trial, and its integrations cover sending and DNS providers, not CRMs or shops. We know this product from the inside and the others only from public pages, another reason to rank it modestly.

Pros

• Unlimited subscribers on Pro for one flat $29 a month
• Free plan allows 500 subscribers, no card needed
• Plain-language SPF, DKIM and DMARC checks plus warmup guidance
• Automatic DNS setup on Cloudflare and GoDaddy
• Optional self-hosted Enterprise deployment, data stays in your environment

Cons

• Young product, no named customers or independent reviews yet
• You bring and pay for your own sending provider
• No ecommerce or CRM integrations listed on the site
• Single paid tier below Enterprise, no free trial shown

Pricing: Free (up to 500 subscribers); Pro $29/month or $290/year (the yearly toggle advertises 17% off); Enterprise custom. Priced in USD. Sending-provider costs are extra. As of 29 October 2026.

Best for: Senders with large or fast-growing lists who want a predictable bill and are comfortable connecting their own sending provider. Visit Beaconmail.

4. Kit: best for creators and paid newsletters

Kit, formerly ConvertKit, is an email platform for creators who sell newsletters, courses and digital products. Its Free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited forms, landing pages and broadcasts, tagging, segmentation, A/B testing and the ability to sell digital products. Automations and sequences need a paid plan.

Per its help centre, Creator starts at $39 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers and Creator Pro at $79, both with two months free on annual billing and a 14-day trial with no card. Price scales with subscriber count, and Creator is limited to two users while Pro offers unlimited seats. Kit states there are no sending limits on any plan. (kit.com/pricing was blocked for us, so figures come from Kit's help articles.)

Pros

• Free plan supports up to 10,000 subscribers
• Built around selling digital products and subscriptions
• No sending limits stated on any plan
• 14-day trial on paid plans with no card

Cons

• Creator at $39 for 1,000 subscribers is the priciest entry here
• Automations and sequences are paid only
• Cost rises with every subscriber tier
• Creator caps at two users

Pricing: Free up to 10,000 subscribers; Creator from $39/month and Creator Pro from $79/month at up to 1,000 subscribers; annual billing gives 2 months free. USD, as of 29 October 2026.

Best for: Solo creators, newsletter writers and course sellers. Visit Kit (ConvertKit).

5. Mailchimp: best-known all-rounder, with caveats

Mailchimp is the best-known email marketing platform, with 300+ integrations and a broad toolset. Its pricing page (shown in GBP to us) lists Free at up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month (or 250 a day), Essentials from £9.82 a month and Standard from £15.11 a month, both described as the price for the first 12 months, and Premium from £264.50 a month. Essentials allows 10 times your contact count in monthly sends, Standard 12 times.

Paid plans carry a 14-day trial and 24/7 email and chat support; Standard adds generative AI and dynamic content. The catch is contact-based billing with automatic overages. We could not see the price after the 12-month promotion, so budget for more in year two.

Pros

• 300+ integrations and a familiar interface
• 24/7 chat and email support on paid plans
• Standard bundles AI tools and dynamic content
• 14-day trial on Essentials and Standard

Cons

• Billing follows contacts and bills overages automatically
• Promotional first-year pricing hides the real ongoing cost
• Free plan pauses sending at its limits
• Premium jumps to £264.50 a month

Pricing: Free (250 contacts); Essentials from £9.82/month and Standard from £15.11/month for the first 12 months; Premium from £264.50/month. GBP as shown to us, as of 29 October 2026.

Best for: Teams already on Mailchimp, or anyone who needs its wide integration list. Visit Mailchimp.

6. Klaviyo: best for online shops

Klaviyo is a marketing platform for online retailers that combines email, SMS and customer data. Its pricing page verifies a free plan of up to 250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messages and $5 of its Composer AI each month. It lists integrations with 400+ apps, including Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Wix.

Paid prices are not published as a flat list: the page uses a profile-based calculator that did not render usable figures for us, so we give no number. Billing follows active profiles, not emails, which suits stores whose lists convert but gets expensive for newsletters.

Pros

• Deep ecommerce integrations and revenue attribution
• Free plan includes SMS credit and segmentation

Cons

• No flat entry price on the page
• Overkill and costly for plain newsletters
• Free plan caps at 250 profiles and 500 sends

Pricing: Free (250 active profiles, 500 emails/month); paid email pricing is profile-based and shown through a calculator, not verified here. As of 29 October 2026.

Best for: Shopify and WooCommerce stores that want email and SMS driven by purchase data. Visit Klaviyo.

How we compared these tools

This is desk research, not a lab test. We read each vendor's live pricing page on 29 October 2026, cross-checked gaps with search, and ran no deliverability or open-rate benchmarks. For Beaconmail we also read its public site and product code.

We weighed price transparency and value after year one most heavily (about 35%), then limits and what the free plan really allows (25%), ease of use and support (20%), integrations (10%) and lock-in (10%). Where a page hid a price or renewal rate we said so and gave no number. More in our marketing tools category.

How to choose

• If you want the cheapest sensible paid plan, pick Brevo and send by volume.
• If this is your first newsletter, pick MailerLite.
• If your list is huge and you want a flat bill, try Beaconmail (ours).
• If you sell digital products or a paid newsletter, pick Kit.
• If you run a Shopify store, pick Klaviyo.
• If you need Mailchimp for integrations, price your list at year-two rates.
• To promote your list, see our social media scheduling guide; to track replies, our CRM guide.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best email marketing software in 2026?

Brevo is our top pick for most senders because its paid plans start at $9 a month and are priced on emails sent, not contacts. MailerLite is easier for beginners, Kit suits creators, Klaviyo suits online shops, and Beaconmail (our own product) offers flat pricing for unlimited subscribers.

Which email marketing tool is cheapest?

Brevo Starter at $9 a month and MailerLite Comfort from $12 a month are the cheapest paid entry points we verified. Kit is free up to 10,000 subscribers but its paid plans start at $39 a month for 1,000 subscribers. Beaconmail costs $29 a month with unlimited subscribers, which wins as a list grows.

Why is Beaconmail in this list if you built it?

Beaconmail is built by the same team as Unfair AI Tools, so we disclose it openly. We ranked it third because its flat $29 plan and 500-subscriber free tier are strong, but it is new, has no named customers and needs your own sending provider. Brevo and MailerLite have longer track records.

Is there a free email marketing plan worth using?

Yes, but limits differ widely. Kit allows up to 10,000 subscribers free, Brevo sends 300 emails a day, Beaconmail allows 500 subscribers, and MailerLite, Mailchimp and Klaviyo stop at 250 contacts or profiles. Mailchimp, Klaviyo and MailerLite pause sending past the limit.

Which email marketing software suits UK and EU buyers?

Brevo, founded in India and France, offers euro pricing, and MailerLite offers a EUR toggle. Mailchimp displayed GBP prices to us. Whichever you pick, check data location and the data processing agreement; the tool does not make a list compliant.

Do I need a separate sending provider for email marketing?

Not with Brevo, MailerLite, Kit, Mailchimp or Klaviyo, which send through their own infrastructure. Beaconmail connects to your own provider, such as Amazon SES, Postmark, SendGrid, Mailgun, Resend or your own SMTP, so you pay that provider separately and authenticate your domain. That gives control but adds setup.

More from the directory: Marketing and SEO tools, compare tools side by side, best social media scheduling tools and best CRM software.