Best Free Email Marketing Tools in 2026: Every Free Plan Compared

Free email plans got smaller in 2026. MailerLite and Mailchimp both cap their free tiers at 250 subscribers now, and Kit’s free plan no longer runs automations or email sequences. A ranking from last year is mostly wrong today.

The good news: a few vendors went the other way. Sender and EmailOctopus still give you 2,500 subscribers on a free plan, and EmailOctopus has publicly committed to keeping it. Kit still lets you hold 10,000 subscribers for free, as long as you only send broadcasts.

We rechecked every free plan below against the vendor’s own pricing page and help docs on October 5, 2026. For each one we list what it includes, where it breaks, and when a free trial is the better way to start.

How we tested 9 tools

Every limit in this article was checked on October 5, 2026 against the vendor’s official pricing page, plan comparison table or help center article (linked in Sources at the end). Prices are monthly-billing list prices unless we say otherwise. Where a vendor’s own pages disagree, or a limit isn’t published, we say so instead of guessing.

The Quick Version

• Most subscribers for free: Kit, at 10,000, but broadcasts only. No automations, no sequences.
• Most sending on a free plan with automation: Sender, with 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month.
• Best public commitment to its free plan: EmailOctopus, with 2,500 subscribers, 10,000 emails and 3 automations.
• Biggest contact storage: Brevo, which stores up to 100,000 contacts but sends only 300 emails a day.
• Smallest free tiers: Mailchimp (250 contacts, 500 sends a month) and MailerLite (250 subscribers, 2,500 sends).

Every plan on this list puts the vendor’s branding in your emails. That is the one cost of free that none of them waive.

Every Free Plan at a Glance

Tool	Free subscribers	Monthly sends	Automation on free	Main catch
Kit	10,000	Unlimited broadcasts	None	No automations or sequences, 1 user
Sender	2,500	15,000	Yes	1 seat, no A/B testing or custom domain
EmailOctopus	2,500	10,000	Up to 3, 5 steps each	Reports kept 30 days, 1 landing page and 1 form
Brevo	Up to 100,000 contacts	300 per day	Yes, up to 2,000 contacts	Daily cap, 1 user
AWeber	500	3,000	1 workflow	1 list profile
GetResponse	500	2,500	First 14 days; unclear after	Removed contacts count toward the 500
Benchmark Email	500	2,500	Not offered	1 user, 1 domain
MailerLite	250	2,500	Up to 3, 5 steps each	Community support only
Mailchimp	250	500 (max 250 per day)	None	Email support for 30 days only

Kit: 10,000 Subscribers, Broadcasts Only

Kit’s free Newsletter plan still has the highest subscriber limit we track: up to 10,000 subscribers, unlimited broadcasts, and unlimited forms and landing pages. Tagging, segmentation, selling digital products and subscriptions, and A/B testing on broadcast subject lines (2 variants) are all included.

What changed in 2026 is automation. Kit’s help center now lists visual automations, the automation template library, email sequences, rules, RSS campaigns, AI Connectors and paid App Store apps as paid-only features. Kit’s free plan now handles broadcasts to a big list, and it won’t run a welcome sequence.

The other limits: one user, Kit branding you can’t remove, and enrollment in the Creator Network recommendations (you can switch your own recommendations off). Support answers free accounts within 24 hours, in the order requests arrive.

Best for: creators building a list now and planning to sell later, who are happy sending each email by hand.

Upgrade trigger: the moment you want anything to send automatically. Creator costs $39/month on monthly billing for 1,000 subscribers, or $33/month on annual billing ($390 a year).

If your Kit automations went quiet

If you built automations on Kit’s free plan and they stopped, the help center explains it: on the free plan, visual automations and sequences stop running, and they come back when you upgrade. Nothing is deleted. Your forms still add subscribers, so the list keeps growing while the follow-up emails don’t send.

Three ways out:

1. Pay for Creator if those automations sell something. If a welcome sequence turns two new subscribers a month into a $30 sale, it covers the $39 plan with room to spare.
2. Stay free and simplify if you mainly send weekly broadcasts. Put your welcome message in the form’s incentive email and write one “start here” broadcast you resend each month.
3. Move to a tool with free automation (Sender, EmailOctopus, Brevo or MailerLite below). Export subscribers with their tags first, because tags are how you rebuild segments. Our platform switching guide covers the export and warm-up steps, and our Kit alternatives guide compares the options in more depth.

Sender: The Most Sending on a Free Plan With Automation

Sender’s Free Forever plan covers 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month. Email automation, landing pages, signup forms and popups, and transactional emails are all included. Sender’s FAQ says the free plan never expires, and every new account also gets a 14-day trial of the Professional plan.

The limits are one seat and Sender branding on emails, forms and popups. A/B testing, a custom domain and unlimited landing pages start on the Standard plan, which also removes branding. Advanced automation, meaning multichannel scenarios, is a Professional feature.

Best for: small businesses that send several campaigns a month and want a working welcome flow without paying.

Upgrade trigger: passing 2,500 subscribers, or needing A/B tests. Paid plans are priced by list size, and new customers get 30% off the first year on annual billing, so check the renewal price on Sender’s pricing page before you commit.

EmailOctopus: 2,500 Subscribers and a Public Promise

EmailOctopus’s free plan covers 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month. It includes the visual automation builder, with up to 3 automations of up to 5 steps each. That is enough for a welcome series and a lead magnet delivery.

On July 22, 2026, EmailOctopus published an open letter from COO Tom Evans saying the free plan “isn’t going anywhere.” He gave two reasons: email should be within reach of people starting out, and the free plan brings in future paying customers. He also noted that the company is independent and profitable. A blog post isn’t a contract, but it is a public statement from the person who owns pricing decisions, which is more than most vendors offer.

The restrictions are worth knowing before you commit:

• Reports are kept for 30 days, so you can’t look back at last quarter’s campaigns.
• One landing page and one form.
• One user.
• EmailOctopus branding on every email.

EmailOctopus is deliberately simple. It suits newsletters, authors, nonprofits and small businesses sending on a schedule. It is the wrong pick for an online store that wants cart-abandonment flows tied to order data.

Best for: newsletters and small organizations that want a free plan they can stay on.

Upgrade trigger: a fourth automation, longer reporting, or a second user. Pro starts at $10/month on monthly billing ($9/month billed yearly), and nonprofits get a 20% lifetime discount.

Brevo: Large Contact Storage, Capped Daily Sends

Brevo prices by sends rather than contacts. Its free plan stores up to 100,000 contacts but sends at most 300 emails a day. You get the drag-and-drop editor, templates, and marketing automation for up to 2,000 contacts.

The daily cap is the whole decision. Brevo works well for someone sending a steady trickle: transactional emails, triggered messages, or a newsletter to a few hundred people. It does not work for a weekly newsletter to 5,000 people, because each send would take more than two weeks to go out. The free plan has one user, and A/B testing and landing pages start on the paid Standard plan.

Best for: businesses with a large contact database that send little, or anyone who needs transactional email alongside marketing.

Upgrade trigger: the daily limit. Any paid plan removes it. Starter is $9/month for 5,000 emails a month.

AWeber: Small, but It Includes a Workflow

AWeber’s free plan covers 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails a month, with one list profile and one workflow automation (or autoresponder). One automation is enough for a welcome email, so the plan is more useful than the subscriber count suggests. AWeber says the free plan includes all of its email design tools, signup forms, landing pages, integrations, and 24/7 support by phone, email and chat.

The catch is how hard the plan is to find. AWeber’s main pricing page now shows only a 14-day trial of its paid plans. The free plan is documented on a separate page and in the help center.

Upgrade trigger: 500 subscribers. Lite is $15/month on monthly billing for 500 subscribers and includes 3 automations.

GetResponse and Benchmark Email: 500 Contacts

GetResponse’s free account allows 500 contacts and 2,500 emails a month. Unconfirmed and removed contacts count toward the 500, and the count can’t be reset. For the first 14 days you also get premium features, including publishing automation workflows and sending autoresponders. After that, A/B testing is off and landing pages are capped at 1,000 unique visits a month in total. Automation is murky: the same help article lists publishing workflows as a 14-day premium feature in one section and says free accounts can publish workflows in another. Test it in your own account before you rely on it.

Benchmark Email’s free plan covers 500 contacts and 2,500 emails a month, with one user and one domain. Benchmark says every feature is in every plan, including the drag-and-drop editor, but its current feature list doesn’t include email automation. Benchmark branding shows on emails and forms.

Both are small starter plans. Neither suits a growing list for long without paying.

MailerLite and Mailchimp: The Smallest Free Tiers

MailerLite now gives you 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails a month and 2 user seats on free. The plan includes all three editors (drag-and-drop, custom HTML and simple), 3 automations of up to 5 steps each, 1 website, 1 landing page, 3 signup forms and community support. The editors are good, and free is a reasonable way to try the paid product. But at 250 subscribers, you won’t stay on free for long. Our MailerLite free plan audit covers how the caps behave in practice.

Upgrade trigger: subscriber 251. Comfort costs $12/month and Power $25/month on monthly billing, both at 500 subscribers.

Mailchimp’s free plan covers 250 contacts and at most 500 sends a month, or 250 a day. It includes one seat and one audience, with no automation flows, no email scheduling and Mailchimp branding. Email support lasts only your first 30 days. If you hit the contact or send limit, Mailchimp pauses sending rather than charging you, which at least makes it predictable. Unless you specifically need something only Mailchimp has, every other plan in this article gives you more. Our Mailchimp alternatives page compares the options.

What Every Free Plan Takes Away

Beyond subscriber and send caps, free plans restrict the same few things:

• Branding. Every plan in this article adds the vendor’s logo or footer to your emails. Removing it is usually the main thing the cheapest paid tier buys you.
• Automation depth. Free automation, where it exists, is capped (EmailOctopus and MailerLite: 3 automations of 5 steps) or limited to one workflow (AWeber).
• Testing. A/B testing is paid-only at Sender, Brevo, MailerLite and GetResponse. Kit is the exception, with 2-variant subject line tests on free.
• Seats. Most free plans give you one user. MailerLite gives you two.
• Support and history. Mailchimp cuts email support after 30 days, MailerLite offers community support only, and EmailOctopus deletes reports after 30 days.

How to Tell Whether a Free Plan Will Last

Free plans change when vendors change course. Three checks before you build on one:

1. Who owns the company. An independent, profitable vendor that says publicly it will keep its free plan (as EmailOctopus has) is a different bet from one that has just been acquired or raised a large round.
2. Whether the free plan is on the main pricing page. AWeber’s free plan no longer appears there. It’s still offered, but a plan that has been moved off the pricing page is a plan the vendor isn’t promoting.
3. What happens at the ceiling. Mailchimp pauses sending. Kit asks you to upgrade before you can keep sending past 10,000 subscribers. Know which behavior you’re signing up for.

None of this guarantees anything. The cheap insurance is to export your list as a CSV every month or two. Every platform here lets you export subscribers, and a recent copy turns a surprise policy change into an afternoon of migration work.

Free Trial vs Free Plan

A free plan tells you whether a tool works for a small list forever. A free trial tells you whether the paid product is worth paying for. If you already know you need paid features, such as full automation, A/B testing, a CRM or ecommerce flows, a trial of the paid plan is the better test.

These trial terms are listed on each vendor’s site:

Tool	Trial length	Card required	What to know
Moosend	30 days	No	All core features, unlimited sends for up to 1,000 contacts. Afterward you subscribe or buy email credits, and your data stays.
ActiveCampaign	14 days	No	No free plan afterward.
Drip	14 days	No	All features except unlimited email sends. Account becomes inactive if you don’t upgrade. Paid plans start at $39/month for up to 2,500 people.
Kit	14 days	No	Trial of Creator or Pro. Switching to Free mid-trial ends paid features at once.
MailerLite	14 days	No	Every feature for 14 days.
Sender	14 days	No	Every new free account gets 14 days of Professional, then stays on Free Forever.
GetResponse	14 days	No	Premium features on a free account, which then keeps the 500-contact free plan.
Mailchimp	14 days	No, for the first 100 emails	Trial of Standard or Essentials. Save a payment method to keep sending during the trial.

How to get the most from a trial:

• Have your test ready before day one. Draft the welcome sequence and one campaign in advance so you don’t spend the trial on setup.
• Build the automation you actually need, not a demo. If it’s a cart-abandonment flow, connect the store on the first day.
• Contact support once. How quickly and how well they answer on a trial is a fair preview of what you’ll get as a customer.
• Authenticate your sending domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) during setup, so the trial’s deliverability results mean something.

When to Upgrade

You’ve outgrown a free plan when:

• Your list is close to the subscriber cap, or you run out of sends before the month resets.
• You want a welcome sequence or behavior-based follow-up that free doesn’t run.
• The vendor’s branding in your footer looks wrong for your business.
• You need A/B tests, longer reporting, or a second person on the account.

When you do upgrade, don’t assume you should stay where you started. Paid prices differ a lot at the same list size, so compare Sender, EmailOctopus, MailerLite, Brevo and Kit at your actual subscriber count.

Which Free Plan to Choose

• Building an audience to monetize later, sending by hand: Kit, for the 10,000-subscriber ceiling.
• Running a newsletter or small business with a welcome flow: Sender for more sends, EmailOctopus for the clearer commitment to its free plan.
• Large contact database, light sending: Brevo.
• Fewer than 250 subscribers and planning to pay soon: MailerLite, as a trial run of a good paid product.

To put two tools side by side, try Kit vs MailerLite or EmailOctopus vs Sender, or take the quiz.

Sources

1. Kit — Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
2. Kit Help Center — The Kit Free plan — accessed 2026-10-05
3. Sender — Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
4. EmailOctopus — Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
5. EmailOctopus — An open letter: why our free plan isn't going anywhere — accessed 2026-10-05
6. Brevo — Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
7. Brevo — All plan features — accessed 2026-10-05
8. AWeber — Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
9. AWeber — Free email marketing — accessed 2026-10-05
10. AWeber Help — How much does AWeber cost? — accessed 2026-10-05
11. GetResponse — Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
12. GetResponse Help — Can I try GetResponse before I buy? — accessed 2026-10-05
13. Benchmark Email — Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
14. MailerLite — Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
15. Mailchimp — Marketing plans pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
16. Moosend — Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
17. ActiveCampaign — Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
18. Drip — Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05