Best Free Email Marketing Software for Small Businesses

The short answer: for most small businesses starting from zero, the best free email marketing software is MailerLite — 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month with a proper editor and basic automation. If you already hold a big list you mail rarely, Brevo is the better free home (up to 100,000 stored contacts, 300 emails a day). If your only goal is to stay free as long as possible, Sender is the most generous (2,500 subscribers, 15,000 emails a month). Mailchimp, the default most people reach for first, now has the weakest free tier of the group and is hard to recommend at $0. The rest of this guide explains why — because “free” in this market is not one thing, and the cap you hit first is what actually decides.

Affiliate disclosure. We don’t have affiliate partnerships with any vendor yet, so every link below is a plain link to the vendor’s own site — nobody pays us for clicks or signups, and that won’t change what we recommend. If we add affiliate programs later, this article will say so.

How free tiers actually work: the four caps

Every email platform has two real costs: storing your contacts and delivering your messages. A free tier is where the vendor gives you a small allowance of both and charges you in constraints instead of cash. There are exactly four constraints, and every free plan uses some mix of them. Understand the four and you can read any free plan in this market in about ten seconds.

1. The contact cap. How many subscribers you may store. This is the binding constraint for most businesses, because lists grow even when you do nothing — every signup form, checkout, and lead magnet adds names. MailerLite and Mailchimp both cap free accounts at 250 contacts; Sender and EmailOctopus allow 2,500; Brevo allows up to 100,000 because it barely charges for storage at all.

2. The send cap. How many emails you may deliver, per month or per day. Brevo’s 300 emails per day (about 9,000 a month) is the trap here: it is a daily cap that does not pool, so one newsletter to 500 people breaks it even in a month where you send nothing else. Mailchimp pairs its 500 monthly sends with a 250-per-day cap. MailerLite’s 2,500 monthly sends have no daily limit but stop entirely once you cross 250 subscribers.

3. Gated features. The tools that make email profitable — a welcome sequence for new subscribers, abandoned-cart recovery, re-engagement campaigns — are exactly what vendors gate. Mailchimp removed automation from its free tier entirely in 2025; you can look at the automation builder but cannot switch anything on. MailerLite allows 3 active automations free, Brevo allows automations covering up to 2,000 contacts, and Sender includes automation on its free plan.

4. Branding and support. Every free plan puts the vendor’s logo in your footer, and support is thin: Mailchimp gives email support for the first 30 days and then community help only, and MailerLite’s free tier is knowledge-base self-serve. The logo sounds cosmetic until the email asks a customer to trust a payment link — it is a small but real credibility tax.

The first-principles consequence: a free plan is not a smaller version of the product; it is a priced on-ramp, and the price is whichever cap you hit first. So the right question is never “which free plan is biggest?” It is “which cap binds first for my shape — and what does the first paid tier behind it cost?” We mapped that full cost curve in our guide to how much email marketing software costs.

When free stops being enough

Three moments end most free-plan runs, usually within the first year:

• Your list crosses the contact cap. At 250 contacts (MailerLite, Mailchimp), a business collecting even 10 signups a week is done in about six months. Sending locks or billing starts — there is no grace period worth planning around.
• You need automation that earns. The highest-return emails in a small business are not newsletters; they are the welcome email, the abandoned-cart nudge, and the win-back message. If your free tier cannot run them (Mailchimp) or caps them hard, “free” is costing you revenue, not saving you money.
• The branding starts to matter. A vendor logo on a coupon email is nothing. The same logo on the email that confirms a booking or asks for card details reads as “this business is on a free tool” — the cheapest possible signal in the worst possible place.

When any of these arrives, the first paid tiers cluster tightly: Brevo Starter from $9/month, MailerLite Comfort from $12/month, Mailchimp Essentials from $13/month (researched 2026-10-03). That is the real price of admission, and it is why the verdicts below weigh the paid tier behind each free plan, not just the free plan itself. We compared the cheapest paid end of this same market in our guide to the cheapest email marketing software for small businesses.

The contenders, cap by cap

MailerLite — best free plan for most starting lists

MailerLite is the free plan we would hand a new business by default. The free tier (researched 2026-10-03) covers 250 active subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, with 3 active automations, 3 signup forms, 1 landing page, 1 website, and 2 account seats. Two details matter more than the headline numbers. First, only active subscribers count — unsubscribed and bounced contacts do not eat your 250, which quietly makes the cap roomier than Mailchimp’s identical number. Second, the editor is genuinely good: this is the one free plan where a beginner produces a professional-looking email without fighting the tool.

The catch is growth. MailerLite cut this free tier in mid-2026 (it was 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails before), and 250 subscribers arrives fast. The exit is painless, though: Comfort starts at $12/month for 500 subscribers and removes the branding, and Power (from $25/month) removes the send cap. Best for: a business starting a list this month that expects to pay a small bill within the year and wants the smoothest tool while it grows. We compared it head-to-head with Brevo in MailerLite vs Brevo.

Brevo — best if you hold a big list you mail rarely

Brevo inverts the model: it charges for emails sent, not contacts stored, so the free plan holds up to 100,000 contacts and gives you 300 emails a day (about 9,000 a month). It also includes things nobody else gives away free — a basic CRM, transactional email sending, and marketing automation (capped at 2,000 contacts in your workflows). If you have 8,000 past customers and mail them four times a year, Brevo free is not a compromise; it is the correct tool.

The daily cap is the real constraint and it does not negotiate. A single send to 400 people exceeds 300/day, and the overflow is not queued for tomorrow — you split and resend by hand. Branding sits in every footer, and removing it requires a paid plan (Standard, from $18/month, is the first tier that includes removal; Starter from $9/month sends 5,000 emails but caps stored contacts at 500, which surprises people arriving from the 100,000-contact free plan). Best for: an established business with a large, quiet list, or anyone who wants email, CRM, and transactional mail in one free account.

Sender — the most generous free plan outright

Sender is the least famous name here and, on paper, the most generous free tier: 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, with automation included and 24/7 support channels that the bigger names restrict on free accounts. For a business whose plan is “send a weekly newsletter to a growing list and pay nothing for as long as possible,” nothing else free comes close on raw allowances.

The trade-offs are polish and ecosystem. Sender’s template library and editor are serviceable rather than delightful, its integration catalog is thinner than Mailchimp’s or MailerLite’s, and its brand carries less recognition with the freelancers and tools you may connect later. Best for: a newsletter-first business optimizing for maximum free runway over refinement.

EmailOctopus — the simple, quiet alternative

EmailOctopus offers 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month free, with landing pages, forms, and basic automations, running on Amazon’s sending infrastructure. It deliberately does email only — no CRM, no SMS, no adjacent tools — which keeps the interface the simplest on this list.

Reports only go back 30 days on the free tier, support is limited after the first 30 days, and automation stays basic (welcome and simple drip sequences, no branching behavior-based flows). Best for: a blogger, club, or solo business that wants to send a good-looking newsletter reliably and values simplicity over features.

Mailchimp — the baseline, and why it now finishes last

Mailchimp is the name most small businesses start with, so it is the right baseline — and in 2026 the baseline is low. The free plan (researched 2026-10-03) is 250 contacts and 500 emails a month with a 250-per-day cap, Mailchimp branding on every email, email support for 30 days only, and no automation: multi-step journeys were removed from the free tier in 2025 and the limits were cut again in February 2026, down from the 2,000 contacts the free plan offered in 2022. It also counts unsubscribed contacts toward your 250 until you archive them manually, so the usable list is smaller than the headline.

What Mailchimp still has is the deepest integration catalog in the market and an editor and reporting suite that feel finished — but on the free tier you cannot schedule sends freely, cannot automate, and cannot mail 250 people twice in a month. Essentials (from $13/month) restores basic single-step automation, which tells you where the free plan’s ceiling sits. Best for: almost nobody at $0 in 2026 — it remains a reasonable paid choice for integration-heavy businesses, but its free plan is now a demo, not a home.

Comparison table (researched 2026-10-03)

One row deserves a second look: Brevo’s “first paid tier” is cheaper than its free plan is generous, because Starter’s 500-contact storage cap can be smaller than what free allowed. Read the paid tier behind any free plan before you build on it.

Verdict: the best-for picks

• Best overall free start: MailerLite. The only free plan that pairs a real editor, a website builder, and working automation at $0. Pick it if you are starting a list now and can accept a $12/month bill when you pass 250 subscribers — which you should hope to.
• Best for a big list, low send frequency: Brevo. 100,000 stored contacts free is unmatched, as long as your sends fit inside 300 a day.
• Best for staying free longest: Sender. 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month buys most small businesses a year or more at $0.
• Best for pure simplicity: EmailOctopus. Email only, done cleanly.
• Mailchimp: skip the free tier; reconsider only as a paid plan if its integrations are the deciding factor for you.

The through-line is the mechanism from the top of this guide: every free plan is a cap waiting to bind. Choose the tool whose binding cap is the one your business reaches last — and whose first paid tier you would still pick on purpose. If you are still deciding whether email is worth doing at all before choosing a tool, start with how to choose email marketing software, then come back here with your list size and send frequency in hand.