The best free email marketing software of 2026

Sender's Free Forever plan covers 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, which is enough to send a weekly newsletter to a full list with sends left over. Unlike Kit's and Mailjet's free plans, it includes email automation, so you can set up a welcome series or a birthday email without paying. The one automation feature missing is auto-resend to people who didn't open.

You also get signup forms, popups and up to 10 landing pages. All of them, and your emails, carry Sender branding on the free plan. Support is by email and live chat around the clock; MailerLite's free plan, by comparison, offers only its knowledge base. The free plan has one user seat and no SMS.

New accounts get a 14-day trial of the Professional plan with no card, so you can see what the paid features add before you decide. Standard, the cheapest paid plan, lists at $9 a month for up to 500 subscribers. On November 4, 2026, Sender was running a Black Friday offer of up to 60% off a 24-month plan, so expect a lower price than that at checkout for a few weeks.

The catch is the branding: if a Sender logo on your emails bothers you, you'll need to upgrade.

Kit, which used to be called ConvertKit, has the largest subscriber limit of any free plan here: up to 10,000 subscribers, with unlimited broadcasts. If you write a newsletter and your list will grow faster than your budget, Kit lets you stay free for much longer than Sender or MailerLite.

The free plan gives you unlimited landing pages and opt-in forms, and you can sell digital products, paid newsletters and subscriptions from it. Kit takes 3.5% plus 30 cents of each sale. Kit branding stays on, and you get one user.

What you give up is automation. The visual automation builder and email sequences are paid features, so you can't send an automatic welcome series on the free plan. For a newsletter writer who sends each issue by hand, that's fine. For a business that wants new subscribers to get three emails over their first week, it's a dealbreaker.

The Creator plan adds automations and sequences, at $39 a month or $390 a year for 1,000 subscribers. MailerLite's Comfort plan starts at $12 a month, so Kit's free plan makes most sense for people who plan to stay on it for a while.

MailerLite's free plan is small: 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month. It earns its place because the tools inside it are good, and because the step up to paid is cheap.

On the free plan you get up to three active automations with five steps each, enough for a welcome email and a short follow-up. You also get one landing page, three signup forms and two user seats, where Sender, Kit and EmailOctopus give you one. Templates are limited, the MailerLite logo stays in your emails, and support is the knowledge base only.

Every new account also gets 14 days of premium features without a card. When your list passes 250, the Comfort plan starts at $12 a month and raises the limits to 50 automations, 10 forms, 10 sites, three users, and it removes the logo.

Choose MailerLite if you expect to pass 250 subscribers within a few months and would rather learn one tool than move your list later. If you want to stay free for as long as possible, Sender's 2,500-subscriber limit goes ten times further.

EmailOctopus gives you 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month on its free Starter plan. That's the same subscriber limit as Sender, with fewer emails: enough for four sends a month to a full list.

The free plan is kept simple. You get one landing page, one form and one user, and EmailOctopus branding appears on your emails. Reports stay available for 30 days, so if you want to compare this month's open rate with last spring's, write it down or upgrade. We couldn't confirm from the pricing page whether the free plan includes automations, so test that on a new account if you need a welcome series.

The Pro plan starts at $9 a month billed yearly, with 10,000 emails a month. It keeps reports forever and gives you unlimited landing pages, forms and users. On monthly billing it costs $10 at 500 subscribers, $13.50 at 1,000 and $20 at 2,500.

EmailOctopus suits a club, a local business or a side project that sends a regular campaign and doesn't need much else. If you want popups, more landing pages or round-the-clock chat support for free, Sender gives you more.

Zoho Campaigns' Forever Free plan covers up to 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month. Zoho's own explanation of that figure is 2,000 contacts times three campaigns, so think of it as three sends a month to a full list.

What sets it apart is seats. The free plan allows five users (an administrator plus four others), when most free plans in this guide give you one. If three people at a small company write, check and send the newsletter, Zoho lets them all log in without paying.

It does not include automation. Drag-and-drop workflows start on the paid Standard plan, which also removes the monthly email cap and raises the user count to 10. Zoho's pricing page offers dollar pricing, but no figures appeared when we checked, so get the current price from the page before you plan to upgrade. Paying yearly saves 25%.

If your company already runs Zoho CRM or other Zoho apps, Campaigns is the natural free pick. If you're a solo sender, Sender's free plan does more.

Mailjet's free plan sends 6,000 emails a month to up to 1,000 contacts, with a cap of 200 emails a day. That daily cap is the thing to notice: a newsletter to 1,000 people would take five days to go out, so the free plan suits small lists or steady trickles of email.

Mailjet earns its spot because the free plan includes its API, SMTP relay and webhooks alongside the campaign editor and form builder. If you run an app or a store that sends receipts and password resets, you can send those and your marketing emails from one account. Few free plans here give a developer that.

Automation isn't included; it starts on the Premium plan at $29 a month. The free plan also carries a Mailjet logo, which goes away on Essential at $19 a month for 15,000 emails.

The cheapest upgrade is Starter, at $9 a month for 8,000 emails with no daily limit. That's the plan to move to when the 200-a-day cap starts delaying your sends.

SendPulse's free plan pairs a small list with a lot of sends: up to 500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month. That means you can email a full list 30 times a month, far more than any small sender needs, so the subscriber count is the real limit.

The free plan includes basic automation: five automated flows, each with up to 50 elements and one trigger event. That's more automation than MailerLite gives you free, and the list limit is twice MailerLite's.

SendPulse branding appears on free emails. Chat support is available for the first 30 days after you register; after that you're on your own unless you pay.

When we checked, the pricing page showed paid plans only in euros, with Standard from €8.80 a month for 500 subscribers billed yearly. We couldn't confirm a dollar price, so check the page from the US before you budget.

Pick SendPulse if you want several automated flows on a list that will stay under 500 for a while. If you expect a larger list, Sender's 2,500-subscriber limit gives you more room.

Omnisend's free plan is small, at 250 contacts and 500 emails a month. It belongs here because it's built for online stores, and its free plan includes ready-made store automations.

You get pre-built workflows for cart abandonment, a welcome series and post-purchase emails, plus segmentation and A/B testing. Custom workflows are paid. You also get 500 web push notifications a month. SMS isn't included; it starts on the Pro plan. Omnisend branding is required on emails and forms.

The Standard plan costs $16 a month for 500 contacts and 6,000 emails, and on November 4, 2026, Omnisend was offering 30% off the first three months ($11.20 a month).

Use the free plan to see whether a cart reminder brings back sales for your store. With 500 emails a month you'll outgrow it quickly, so treat it as a trial with no time limit. If you run a blog or a service business rather than a shop, Sender or MailerLite will serve you better.