The most affordable email marketing software for small business in 2026

MailerLite gives a small business the most for each dollar once the free plans run out. The Comfort plan costs $12 a month for 500 subscribers, $19 for 1,000 and $33 for 2,500, and it includes up to 50 active automations, unlimited templates, multivariate testing, auto-resend to people who didn't open, and an AI writing assistant. Landing pages, signup forms and a small website builder come with every plan, so you don't need a separate tool to collect signups.

Power costs $25 a month for 500 subscribers and $39 for 1,000. It removes the automation and email limits and adds digital product sales, bookings, unlimited user seats and 24/7 live chat support. Paying yearly takes 10% off either plan.

The free plan covers 250 subscribers, two users and 2,500 emails a month with three active automations. Every new account also gets 14 days of the paid features without a card, which is long enough to build a welcome series and see how it works.

MailerLite gets less cheap as you grow: 10,000 subscribers cost $89 a month on Comfort. It also has no sales pipeline, so you'll need a separate CRM if you track deals.

Sender has the best free plan here if you want to send real campaigns without paying. It covers up to 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, and it includes email automation, landing pages, signup forms and popups, and transactional email. In return, your emails carry Sender branding and you get a single user seat. Every new account also starts with 14 days of the Professional plan, no card needed, and drops back to Free afterward.

Paid plans are cheap too. Standard lists at $9 a month for 500 subscribers with 6,000 emails, three user seats, text messages and no Sender branding. Professional lists at $15 a month for 500 subscribers with 12,000 emails, advanced automation across email and text, a countdown timer block and 10 seats. When we checked, Sender was running a Black Friday offer of 30% off yearly plans for everyone, and up to 60% off two-year plans for first-time customers.

The deepest discounts need 12 or 24 months paid upfront, so compare the list price with the deal before you commit, and check that Sender connects to your store or form tool before you move a list.

EmailOctopus keeps things simple and keeps the price low. Its free Starter plan covers 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with one landing page, one form and one user. Emails carry EmailOctopus branding and reports disappear after 30 days, but for a club, a local shop or a first newsletter, that's plenty.

The Pro plan was the cheapest paid plan we found at most list sizes. On monthly billing it costs $10 a month for up to 500 subscribers, $13.50 for 1,000, $20 for 2,500, $31.50 for 5,000 and $44.50 for 10,000, and yearly billing takes 10% off. Pro removes the branding and adds unlimited landing pages, forms and users, and keeps your reports forever. Nonprofits get 20% off for life.

EmailOctopus covers the basics well: a drag-and-drop editor, more than 100 templates, your own HTML and merge tags. Its pricing page lists fewer extras than MailerLite's, and the free plan's chat support only runs for your first 30 days. If you mostly send a regular newsletter and a welcome email, you won't miss much.

Brevo, formerly Sendinblue, prices its plans by how many emails you send each month rather than how many contacts you hold. That makes it the cheapest option here for a business with a long customer list that it emails a few times a month, such as a restaurant with a monthly offer or a shop that sends seasonal sales.

The free plan lets you send 300 emails a day with no card. Starter costs $9 a month, starts at 5,000 emails a month, and includes the drag-and-drop editor, templates, segmentation, forms with an automatic follow-up email, and transactional email. Standard, from $18 a month, adds unlimited multi-step workflows, A/B tests, send-time optimization, website and event tracking, one landing page and removal of the Brevo logo. Yearly billing takes 10% off, and pay-as-you-go email credits that never expire are an option if you send rarely.

Be careful with the next step up: Professional starts at $499 a month, so Brevo suits businesses that can stay on Starter or Standard.

Kit, which used to be ConvertKit, has the biggest free plan in this guide: up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited landing pages, forms and broadcasts, plus tagging, segmentation and the ability to sell digital products. For a writer, coach or podcaster who mostly sends one email a week, that can be free for years.

The limit is automation. The free plan has no visual automations or email sequences, so you can't send a welcome series without upgrading. Creator, which costs $390 a year for 1,000 subscribers, adds unlimited automations and sequences, two users, app integrations, text messages, removal of Kit branding, 24/7 email and chat support and free migration from your old tool.

That makes Kit a cheap place to start and a mid-priced place to grow. For a small business that needs automations from day one, MailerLite or Sender cost less. Kit's Pro plan, which had a first-year discount when we checked, is aimed at larger creator businesses and is more than most small businesses need.

If you sell products online, Omnisend is the affordable way to get store emails that earn money: cart abandonment, product abandonment, order and shipping confirmations, cross-sells and welcome series, all built from templates. Text messages and web push live in the same account.

The free plan covers 250 contacts and 500 emails a month. Standard is $16 a month for 500 contacts and 6,000 emails, and Pro is $59 a month for 2,500 contacts with unlimited emails and more text messaging. When we checked, the first three months were 30% off. Omnisend bills for subscribers plus any non-subscribers who received automated messages, and unsubscribed contacts aren't billed.

Every plan, including Free, comes with 24/7 live chat and email support, and Omnisend will migrate your automations, forms, segments and templates for you. That matters more on a small budget than any feature list, because you won't be paying someone to set things up.

Skip Omnisend if you don't run a store; its value comes from order data.

GetResponse doesn't cap how many emails you send on any plan. Its prices start at $19 a month for 1,000 subscribers with unlimited sends, and yearly billing takes 18% off. If you email the same list several times a week, that's a better deal than plans that limit monthly sends to a multiple of your list.

The entry Starter plan includes AI tools for writing emails and subject lines, a welcome email series, a landing page builder, signup forms and popups, and one custom automation workflow. Unlimited workflows, abandoned cart recovery and sales funnels start on Marketer, and webinars and course tools sit on Creator. GetResponse showed us Marketer and Creator prices only in euros, so check the US price on its site.

Every account starts with a 14-day trial with no card, and you can keep a limited free version afterward. GetResponse is a good fit for a business that sends often to a list that isn't growing fast. If you need several automations, MailerLite's Comfort plan gives you 50 for the same $19.

Benchmark's free plan covers twice as many contacts as MailerLite's: 500 contacts and 1,000 emails a month, with one user. Benchmark says every feature is on every plan, including Free, so you get the same email editor, signup and popup forms, automatic tagging of new subscribers, list verification and deliverability tools whether you pay or not. The forms embed on WordPress, Shopify, Wix and any site that accepts HTML, and Zapier connects it to thousands of other apps.

Pro costs $12 a month for 500 contacts on monthly billing, or $10 a month on yearly billing, with sends up to 10 times your contact count. Extra users cost $15 a month each.

Benchmark's current pricing and feature pages don't list automation workflows, so if you need a welcome series or a drip campaign, confirm it on a trial before moving your list, or pick MailerLite or Sender instead. For a monthly newsletter to a few hundred people, Benchmark's free plan is enough.