8 Best Mailchimp Alternatives in 2026 (Free & Paid, Verified Prices)

Beehiiv is the newsletter platform Mailchimp should have built.

The free Launch plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends and a custom domain. Compare that to Mailchimp's 250 contacts. Beehiiv gives you 10x the headroom for nothing.

But the real reason creators move here is monetization. Beehiiv takes a 0% cut on paid subscriptions, where Substack takes 10%. At $5K/month in subscriptions, that is $500 a month staying in your pocket. It also runs an Ad Network and a Boosts cross-promo system so your list can earn once it grows.

Paid Scale starts at $43/month (annual, up to 1,000 subscribers), which unlocks the Ad Network, deeper automations, and removes branding.

The catch: the Scale price scales up fast with your subscriber count, so budget for growth. And the eye-catching "$1.63 per subscriber" and "89% inbox" numbers you see quoted are a Boosts acquisition cost and a single case study, not guaranteed monthly earnings, treat them as marketing, not a promise.

Verdict: the best pick for most newsletter creators. Free to test properly, and the 0% paid-sub cut alone beats Substack from day one of monetizing.

Kit is the pro blogger's pick, and the rebrand actually meant something.

ConvertKit rebranded to Kit in mid-2024, spending a reported ~$360K (largely on the kit.com domain) and repositioning as "the operating system for the creator economy." Kit says its roster now includes James Clear, Tim Ferriss, Tom Brady, Dua Lipa and Matthew McConaughey, its own marketing claim, but a real signal of where it is aimed.

The free Newsletter plan covers up to 1,000 subscribers with one automation, unlimited landing pages, and digital-product selling built in. The paid Creator tier ($33/month at 1K subs) unlocks unlimited automations, A/B testing, and the Creator Network recommendation system. Pro is $66/month.

The catch: it gets expensive at scale. At 25K subscribers Kit Creator runs around $179/month (annual), roughly double MailerLite for similar functionality. Prices also rose about 35% in September 2025. And the templates feel dated next to Flodesk.

Verdict: the pick for serious bloggers who live on their list and want the creator-economy tooling. Just know the bill climbs as you grow.

MailerLite has the cleanest UX in the budget tier... though its free plan just took a hit.

Here is the honest 2026 update the old lists miss: MailerLite cut its free tier in June 2026 to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails/month (one landing page, three forms). That used to be 500 subs and 12,000 emails. So the free plan now matches Mailchimp, it is no longer the free-tier win it once was.

Where MailerLite still wins is the paid experience. The Comfort plan starts at $12/month, and at 10,000 subscribers you pay about $73/month, less than half what Mailchimp costs at the same size. Unlimited sends live on the Power plan ($25/month). The interface remains the friendliest here.

The catch: the free tier is no longer a reason to choose it, and Comfort caps monthly emails at 10x your subscriber tier (you need Power for unlimited). Read the send limits before you commit.

Verdict: still the budget winner on paid plans and the nicest UX, just do not pick it for the free tier anymore. Pick it for cheap, clean paid email.

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is the multichannel pick, email, SMS, WhatsApp and a CRM under one login.

Brevo prices by emails sent, not contacts, which is a big deal if you have a large list you email occasionally. It starts at $9/month for 5,000 emails, with a free plan doing 300 emails a day and unlimited contacts. Business plans ($18-129/month) add automation, A/B testing and send-time AI.

The pitch is genuine multichannel: email, SMS, WhatsApp, a sales CRM and live chat, all in one place.

The catch: the UI feels like a few products bolted together, the email, SMS, CRM and chat sections do not always flow perfectly. And Brevo charges around $10-12/month to remove its logo on the Starter plan, which feels nickel-and-dimey at that price.

Verdict: the pick if you want email plus SMS and WhatsApp without paying for three tools. Great value for large, low-frequency lists.

GetResponse is the pick if your email needs to sit next to webinars and courses.

The Creator tier (~$56/month on annual billing, $69 monthly) bundles email marketing with built-in webinars (up to 100 attendees) and a course platform (up to 500 students). For someone running a paid course, that replaces Zoom Webinars plus Teachable plus an email tool, typically $50-150/month of separate software, with one bill.

The catch: there is no true free plan anymore, just a 14-day trial. And you are buying the bundle, if you do not run webinars or courses, a plain email tool is cheaper. The current tiers are Starter, Marketer, Creator and Enterprise.

Verdict: genuinely good value if you teach, the webinar-plus-course bundle earns its price. Overkill if you just want to send newsletters.

ActiveCampaign is the automation upgrade, the tool you graduate to when you outgrow simple broadcasts.

Its strength is depth: behavioural automations, predictive content, send-time AI and segmentation that nothing else here matches. Tiers run Starter (~$15/month at 1K contacts), Plus, Pro, and Enterprise (custom). The 14-day trial needs no credit card, which is genuinely rare in 2026.

The catch: the hidden costs stack fast. Extra users are $12/seat, custom reporting $159/month, CRM pipelines $68/month, and SMS is extra, a Pro plan that looks like $375 often ends up over $500 once you switch everything on. And since November 2025, ActiveCampaign bills you for all contacts, including unsubscribed and bounced ones. Build the real total before committing.

Verdict: the right upgrade when automation is your bottleneck. Just model the true cost with add-ons, the sticker price is not the real price.

Flodesk makes the best-looking emails in the category, by a wide margin.

If visual polish matters, Flodesk wins. Its templates look designed, not stitched from blocks, and it claims emails get seen 17% more than the industry average.

Here is the big 2026 change: Flodesk retired its famous flat-rate "unlimited" plan for new accounts in December 2025 and moved to subscriber-based tiers. At 1,000 subscribers, that is roughly Lite $20/month, Pro $22.40, and Everything $43.20 (annual billing). It now also has a genuine free plan. Accounts that signed up before 2 December 2025 keep the old unlimited pricing.

The catch: the flat-rate era is over for new users, so the "one price, unlimited subscribers" pitch no longer applies. And the automation is lighter than ActiveCampaign or Kit, you are buying design, not depth.

Verdict: the pick when the look of the email is the point. Just know the pricing is subscriber-based now, not the old flat rate.

Substack is the cultural pick, the platform readers actually expect to pay on.

Substack passed 5 million paying subscribers in March 2025, with 35M+ active readers total. Its real edge is discovery, the Notes feed (its Twitter-like internal feed) drove a reported 32 million new free subscriptions in three months of 2025. No standalone newsletter tool has built-in reach like this. And there is no monthly fee, you only pay when you earn.

The catch: the price is the 10% cut. Substack takes 10% of all paid subscription revenue, plus Stripe fees, so all-in you hand over roughly 13-16% of every dollar. At $5,000/month in subscriptions, that is $650+/month, versus a flat $43-96 on Beehiiv. The math does not favour Substack at scale.

Verdict: worth it for the discovery and cultural cachet if you're building a writing brand. But once you're earning real money, the 10% cut makes Beehiiv the cheaper home.