# Best Email Marketing Software for Small Business 2026

Fourteen email marketing platforms compared for a small business budget, with verified G2 ratings, 2026 pricing, and where each free tier actually stops.
Comparing the best Email Marketing Software for Small Business 2026 of 2026 includes 1. MailerLite 2. Brevo 3. ActiveCampaign 4. Omnisend 5. GetResponse 6. Klaviyo 7. Mailchimp 8. Constant Contact 9. Zoho Campaigns 10. HubSpot Marketing Hub 11. Drip 12. Encharge 13. Campaign Monitor 14. Kit (formerly ConvertKit).

Fourteen email marketing platforms scored for the owner or one-person marketing team paying the bill. Where each free tier stops, what the list actually costs at 1,000 and 10,000 contacts, whether unsubscribed contacts still get billed, and which editor a non-designer can live with.

## Quick summary

- Best overall for a small business: MailerLite, 1,000 subscribers free, $10/mo after that, and the highest small-business satisfaction score in the category at 4.6/5 on G2.
- Best when the list is big and you send rarely: Brevo, billing is per email sent instead of per contact stored, and the free plan holds unlimited contacts at 300 emails a day.
- Best automation depth as you grow: ActiveCampaign, the strongest visual builder at SMB money, though contact-based pricing climbs to $174/mo at 10,000 contacts.
- Best for a small online store: Omnisend, email and SMS on every paid plan with cart-abandonment flows that deploy the same afternoon.
- Best free tier for unlimited contacts: HubSpot, though the automation you will want sits behind the paid tiers.

## How we chose

This is a research-led roundup, not a hands-on bench test, and we say so up front. Every G2 rating and review count cited here was pulled from the live source on July 25, 2026. Pricing tiers were verified directly on vendor pricing pages in May 2026, except Kit, whose plans were read from kit.com/pricing on July 25, 2026. We scored each platform on five things a small business feels immediately, what the free plan really allows before it forces an upgrade, entry price and the size of the next jump, whether billing counts contacts or sends, editor and template quality for someone with no design help, and automation depth an owner will actually switch on. Where we could not verify a number, we left it out rather than estimate it. See our full [research approach](/about/methodology/).

## Tools compared

### MailerLite: The best all-round pick for a small business list

**Best overall**  Score: 9.3/10  Rating: 4.6/5 (G2 · 1,104 reviews)

**Starting price:** $10/mo

MailerLite is the tool we would hand a small business owner who has never sent a campaign and does not want to think about email software again for two years. The free plan holds 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails a month, which covers the entire first year for most local businesses, consultancies, and small stores. [1,104 G2 reviews at 4.6/5](https://www.g2.com/products/mailerlite/reviews) carry more weight here than on any other tool in this guide because 92% of those reviewers are small businesses rating it against the same constraints you have. The interface is the other reason it wins. A non-designer can build a decent-looking campaign in about twenty minutes without touching a template setting they do not understand. [EmailVendorSelection's MailerLite review](https://www.emailvendorselection.com/mailerlite-review/) names it one of the best free email marketing tools in the market, while flagging that Sender and EmailOctopus push raw free-tier limits even further. The honest limit is automation. Once you need conditional branching across five segments with scoring attached, you have outgrown it and ActiveCampaign is the next stop.

**Pros:**
- Free forever plan covers 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails a month, four times the list size Mailchimp allows at $0
- 4.6/5 on G2 across 1,104 reviews, and 92% of those reviewers are small businesses, which makes it the most like-for-like rating signal on this list
- Newsletter and website builder are included on every paid plan, so one $10/mo subscription covers a landing page and a welcome sequence

**Cons:**
- Automation branching is lighter than ActiveCampaign at similar money; complex multi-branch flows hit a ceiling faster
- Every email on the free plan carries a MailerLite footer; removing the branding means moving to the $10 Growing Business tier
- The custom HTML editor and auto-resend to non-openers sit behind the $20 Advanced plan, which feels like a $10-tier feature


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1K subscribers |
| Growing Business | $10/mo | 500 subscribers |
| Advanced | $20/mo | 500 subscribers + custom HTML + AI writing |
| Enterprise | Custom | 100K+ subscribers |


### Brevo: Pay for emails sent, not contacts stored

**Best value**  Score: 9.1/10  Rating: 4.5/5 (G2 · 2,637 reviews)

**Starting price:** $18/mo

Brevo is the answer to a specific small-business shape: a list that grew past 10,000 names from years of walk-ins, form fills, or event badges, and a habit of emailing it once or twice a month. Contact-based tools bill you for all 10,000 every month whether you write to them or not. Brevo bills you for the sends. [2,637 G2 reviews at 4.5/5](https://www.g2.com/products/brevo-marketing-platform/reviews) back the value story, with affordability and setup speed as the recurring praise. The free plan is the other reason it lands this high. Up to 100,000 stored contacts at 300 emails a day is enough for a business that sends one campaign a week to a few thousand people. [EmailVendorSelection's Brevo pricing analysis](https://www.emailvendorselection.com/brevo-pricing/) flags the Professional tier at $499/mo as the sticker-shock moment, so plan around Starter and Business. Skip it if your growth plan depends on branching automation; the workflow builder runs out well before ActiveCampaign does.

**Pros:**
- Send-volume pricing charges for emails sent rather than contacts stored, which is the cheaper model for any business with a big list and a monthly newsletter habit
- Free tier allows 300 emails per day and up to 100,000 stored contacts; nothing else here comes close on the list-size dimension
- Email, SMS, WhatsApp, transactional sends, and a basic CRM sit under one subscription with no per-channel add-on fee

**Cons:**
- Advanced automation logic (multi-branch, conditional splits, lead scoring) is limited next to ActiveCampaign at the same price
- The Professional tier jumps to $499/mo, a steep step up from the $18 to $129 range below it, so the mid-size gap is real
- Analytics and social features are thinner than the email execution; Brevo is strong at sending and weaker at explaining what happened


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Up to 300 emails/day |
| Starter | $18/mo | 20K emails/mo; scales by send volume |
| Business | $65/mo | 20K emails/mo + A/B testing + advanced reporting |
| Professional | $499/mo | Unlimited emails + priority support |


### ActiveCampaign: The automation you grow into, at a price that grows too

**Best automation depth**  Score: 9.0/10  Rating: 4.5/5 (G2 · 14,615 reviews)

**Starting price:** $49/mo

ActiveCampaign is where a small business goes when the newsletter turns into a system. Welcome series, re-engagement, a birthday email, a lapsed-customer sequence, all branching off each other. The builder handles that without a consultant, and nothing else at $49/mo really does. [14,615 G2 reviews at 4.5/5](https://www.g2.com/products/activecampaign/reviews) make it the most-reviewed tool here, and the praise clusters almost entirely on the automation canvas. Watch the money. Contact-based billing means the price is a function of list size, not usage, so the same 10,000 names cost $174/mo on Plus whether you email them daily or twice a year. [ActiveCampaign's pricing page](https://www.activecampaign.com/pricing) shows the base tiers, and the per-contact scaling is where small businesses get surprised between 5,000 and 10,000 contacts. Buy it when automation is the reason you are switching. If you just want to send a good-looking newsletter, you are overpaying by $39/mo.

**Pros:**
- The strongest visual automation builder at small-business money; conditional branching, split testing, and goal-based routing all live on one drag-and-drop canvas
- A native CRM is baked into the $49 Plus tier, so a small sales team gets a pipeline without a second subscription
- 14,615 G2 reviews at 4.5/5, the largest review base of any dedicated email tool in this guide

**Cons:**
- Contact-based pricing escalates fast; a 10,000-contact list pushes Plus to $174/mo and Professional to $286/mo, which stings after a flat-fee tool
- Support quality has slipped in recent Reddit threads, with longer response times reported on standard plans than the 2022-era reputation suggests
- The Starter plan caps automation at five actions per workflow with no branching, which catches solo operators off guard within a month


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $15/mo | Soloists |
| Plus | $49/mo | 5-20 person teams |
| Professional | $79/mo | 20-100 person teams |
| Enterprise | $145/mo | 100+ person teams |


### Omnisend: Cart abandonment and SMS for a small online store

**Best for small ecommerce**  Score: 8.8/10  Rating: 4.6/5 (G2 · 1,185 reviews)

**Starting price:** $16/mo

Omnisend is the pick for a small store doing real revenue on Shopify or WooCommerce, where the money in email is not the newsletter, it is the three automations that recover carts and bring buyers back. Those flows ship pre-built and connect to your store catalogue in an afternoon. [1,185 G2 reviews at 4.6/5](https://www.g2.com/products/omnisend/reviews) come almost entirely from ecommerce operators, and the cart-abandonment flows are the single most-praised thing in them. [EmailToolTester named Omnisend its 2026 Best Email Marketing Tool for Ecommerce](https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/reviews/omnisend/), citing the unified email and SMS workflow plus free-plan feature parity as the deciding factors. Free-plan feature parity matters more than it sounds. You get the same automations at 250 contacts that a paying store gets, so you can prove the flows work before the credit card comes out. No store, no reason to buy this.

**Pros:**
- Pre-built cart abandonment, browse abandonment, and post-purchase flows deploy in under 30 minutes, which is the fastest revenue a small store gets from email
- Email and SMS come on every paid plan with no separate SMS add-on and no per-message cliff at low volume
- 4.6/5 on G2 across 1,185 reviews and 4.7/5 in the Shopify App Store, a reputation built almost entirely inside small ecommerce

**Cons:**
- Built for Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce; a service business with no store gets little from the ecommerce half of the product
- Pro at $59/mo for 500 contacts is not cheap when Brevo charges $18/mo for 20K sends with no contact limit
- Advanced segmentation and reporting need the Pro tier; Standard analytics stay basic


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Up to 250 contacts |
| Standard | $16/mo | 500 contacts |
| Pro | $59/mo | 500 contacts + unlimited SMS + advanced reporting |
| Enterprise | Custom | 50K+ contacts |


### GetResponse: Email, landing pages, and webinars on one small-business bill

**Best all-in-one**  Score: 8.6/10  Rating: 4.3/5 (G2 · 1,116 reviews)

**Starting price:** $19/mo

GetResponse suits the small business that is quietly paying for three tools. An email platform, a landing page builder, and a webinar license. One $19 to $69/mo subscription replaces all three, and the landing pages are good enough that a consultant or course seller will not miss a dedicated builder. [1,116 G2 reviews at 4.3/5](https://www.g2.com/products/getresponse/reviews) reflect a long-running product with a broad small-business base. The webinar bundle at the $69 Creator tier is the specific reason to pick GetResponse over MailerLite. If you run a monthly training, a demo session, or a paid workshop, that one line item pays for the subscription. [EmailToolTester's GetResponse 2026 review](https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/reviews/getresponse/pricing/) notes that teams with complex branching logic outgrow the builder and move to ActiveCampaign, which matches what we see. Right when the motion is email plus events.

**Pros:**
- Webinar hosting is native at the Creator tier ($69/mo), which replaces a separate $100 to $200/mo webinar license for anyone running monthly sessions
- Starter at $19/mo includes unlimited emails, autoresponders, landing pages, and 24/7 chat support, a better feature-to-price ratio than Mailchimp Standard at the same money
- Annual billing saves 18% with no feature lock-in, and every tier scales from 1K to 100K contacts without switching products

**Cons:**
- 4.3/5 on G2 across 1,116 reviews; the automation builder lags ActiveCampaign on multi-branch conditional flows
- Starter caps AI features at three uses and allows a single workflow, so real automation means the $59 Marketer plan
- Support quality varies, and trial users consistently report slower responses than paying customers on the same channel


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 500 contacts |
| Starter | $19/mo | 1K contacts |
| Marketer | $59/mo | Full automation + ecommerce + segmentation |
| Creator | $69/mo | Webinars + course creator + paid newsletters |


### Klaviyo: For a store that has outgrown basic ecommerce email

**Best for a growing store**  Score: 8.5/10  Rating: 4.6/5 (G2 · 1,325 reviews)

**Starting price:** $20/mo

Klaviyo is the upgrade path for a store that started on Omnisend or Mailchimp and now has enough order history to segment properly. The difference shows up in the segments, not the emails. Purchase frequency, product category, average order value, and predicted next order all sit in the same builder. [1,325 G2 reviews at 4.6/5](https://www.g2.com/products/klaviyo/reviews) back that up, and the active-profile billing change in 2025 fixed the most common complaint about the old pricing model. The honest caveat for a small business is that Klaviyo assumes a store. If you sell services, run a clinic, or email a membership list, the product is shaped around data you do not have and you will pay for depth you cannot use. [Klaviyo's pricing page](https://www.klaviyo.com/pricing) keeps it simple otherwise, with identical features across tiers and price scaling only with list size.

**Pros:**
- 4.6/5 on G2 across 1,325 reviews, the joint-highest G2 score among the deep picks in this guide
- Segmentation on purchase history and browsing behaviour is the best available at small-business prices; you can build a segment of people who bought twice and have not opened in 60 days without help
- The 2025 shift to active-profile billing means you pay only for profiles you actually email, which is the fairest model in this list for a store with a lot of dormant buyers

**Cons:**
- Built for ecommerce and consumer sends; a services business or B2B list gets a tool shaped around orders it does not have
- The free tier stops at 250 profiles and 500 sends, which is thin for a real evaluation
- No annual billing discount on self-serve plans, so budgeting is month to month until you reach enterprise volumes


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Up to 250 active profiles |
| Email | $20/mo | 251-500 profiles |
| Email + SMS | $35/mo | 251-500 profiles |
| Enterprise | Custom | 50K+ profiles |


### Mailchimp: The name everyone knows, on a free plan that keeps shrinking

**Best-known starting point**  Score: 8.2/10  Rating: 4.4/5 (G2 · 12,500 reviews)

**Starting price:** $20/mo

Mailchimp is where most small businesses start, and there is nothing wrong with starting there. The builder is genuinely the friendliest in the category and the first campaign takes an hour, not an afternoon. [12,500+ G2 reviews at 4.4/5](https://www.g2.com/products/intuit-mailchimp-all-in-one-marketing-platform/reviews) reflect that dominant mind share. The problem is the direction of travel. The free plan went from 2,000 contacts to 250 across four years, and the Premium tier at $350/mo puts real automation out of reach for a small business that grows into needing it. [EmailToolTester's Mailchimp 2026 pricing guide](https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/reviews/mailchimp/pricing/) documents every hidden cost, including the billing-for-unsubscribed-contacts gotcha. Use it for your first 250 contacts if the brand familiarity helps you get started. Plan the move to MailerLite or Brevo before you cross 1,000, because switching at 5,000 is a much worse week.

**Pros:**
- The best template library and drag-and-drop builder for a first-time sender; fastest route from signup to a campaign that does not look homemade
- 300+ integrations including Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce, and Zapier, so whatever your business already runs on, a connector exists
- 12,500+ G2 reviews at 4.4/5, the deepest pool of small-business feedback of any tool here

**Cons:**
- The free plan dropped to 250 contacts in 2026, down from 2,000 in 2022, continuing the annual limit reductions since the Intuit acquisition
- Standard caps automation at 200 journey points, and multivariate testing plus advanced branching need Premium at $350/mo, a jump no small business can absorb
- Billing counts contacts you no longer email, including unsubscribes on some plans, which is the most common surprise on a Mailchimp invoice


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Up to 250 contacts |
| Essentials | $13/mo | 500 contacts |
| Standard | $20/mo | 500 contacts + multi-step automation |
| Premium | $350/mo | All-area access + multivariate testing |


### Constant Contact: Newsletters and event registration for a local business or nonprofit

**Best for events and nonprofits**  Score: 8.0/10  Rating: 4.0/5 (G2 · 7,200 reviews)

**Starting price:** $12/mo

Constant Contact holds its place for one specific small business: the local one that runs events. A community theatre, a gym with workshops, a chamber of commerce, a church. Registration, ticketing, and the reminder emails live in the same subscription instead of a Eventbrite and Mailchimp pairing. [7,200+ G2 reviews at 4.0/5](https://www.g2.com/products/constant-contact/reviews) tell the honest story. People trust it for reliability and deliverability, and they complain about the price as their list grows. The 4.0 is not a broken product, it is two decades of customers watching an invoice climb. Removing the free plan in 2025 hurt its case against MailerLite for anyone starting from zero. Pick it for events and the phone support, not for automation.

**Pros:**
- Event management and registration are native, so a nonprofit or association gets email plus event pages on one subscription
- 7,200+ G2 reviews, the third-largest review base in this guide, built over two decades in the small-business and nonprofit segments
- G2 named Constant Contact a 2026 Best Software Awards winner after it climbed 71 spots, crediting recent AI and automation work

**Cons:**
- 4.0/5 on G2 is the lowest score in this guide, and the recurring complaint is price climbing steeply with list size
- The free plan was eliminated in June 2025 and replaced with a 14-day trial, so meaningful testing now needs a card on file
- Automation depth lags Brevo, GetResponse, and MailerLite at the same price; this is a newsletter tool with sequences attached


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Lite | $12/mo | 500 contacts |
| Standard | $35/mo | 500 contacts + automation + scheduling |
| Premium | $80/mo | Advanced automation + custom code blocks |
| Enterprise | Custom | 50K+ contacts |


### Zoho Campaigns: The cheapest real email tool, free to 2,000 contacts

**Cheapest paid plan**  Score: 7.9/10  Rating: 4.4/5 (G2 · 974 reviews)

**Starting price:** $3/mo

Zoho Campaigns is the right answer in exactly two situations: the business already runs Zoho CRM or Zoho One, or the budget is genuinely $5 a month and the list is under 2,000. [974 G2 reviews at 4.4/5](https://www.g2.com/products/zoho-campaigns/reviews) reflect satisfaction that depends heavily on which of those two you are. [Sender's Zoho Campaigns pricing analysis](https://www.sender.net/reviews/zoho-campaigns/pricing/) confirms the $3/mo Standard plan as the cheapest real option in the market. Outside the Zoho stack, MailerLite at $10 gives a small business a better editor and better support for the difference.

**Pros:**
- Free plan supports 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month, the most generous contact-to-send ratio in this guide
- Standard at $3/mo per 500 subscribers is the cheapest paid email plan here by a wide margin
- Native two-way Zoho CRM sync at no extra cost, which matters if the business already runs Zoho One

**Cons:**
- The interface feels dated next to MailerLite or Klaviyo, and reviewers say so consistently
- AI features lag competitors; no predictive sending and no AI content generation at Standard
- Most of the value is tied to the Zoho ecosystem; standalone it is a budget tool, not a better tool


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 2K contacts |
| Standard | $3/mo | 500 subscribers |
| Professional | $4.50/mo | 500 subscribers + ecommerce + A/B testing |
| Pay-as-you-go | $14 flat | Occasional senders |


### HubSpot Marketing Hub: Free email attached to a free CRM, with a paid cliff later

**Best free CRM pairing**  Score: 7.9/10  Rating: 4.4/5 (G2 · 14,742 reviews)

**Starting price:** Free + $20/seat/mo

HubSpot earns a place on a small-business list for the free tier alone. Unlimited contacts, working email, forms, and a CRM under them at $0 is a better starting position than Mailchimp's 250-contact ceiling. [14,742 G2 reviews at 4.4/5](https://www.g2.com/products/hubspot-marketing-hub/reviews) come mostly from bigger teams, so read them with that in mind. The trap is the ladder. Starter automation is capped at 10 actions and the next real tier is $890/mo flat plus $3,000 of mandatory onboarding, which no small business should walk into by accident. [Docket's 2026 pricing breakdown](https://docket.io/resources/research/hubspot-marketing-hub-pricing) maps every contact tier and where the cliffs land. Use the free plan for as long as it holds, then decide deliberately between paying HubSpot's ladder or moving the list to MailerLite.

**Pros:**
- The free tier is genuinely usable for an early-stage business, with unlimited contacts plus basic forms, email, and 5 landing pages
- Email sits on the same contact record as the free CRM, so a small sales team sees every send without a sync
- 1,500+ App Marketplace integrations, the broadest ecosystem in this comparison

**Cons:**
- Workflow automation at Starter is capped at 10 actions with no branching, and most teams hit that wall by month three
- The contact-tier escalator upgrades your bill automatically when you cross a tier, with no automatic downgrade when the list shrinks
- The Professional tier at $890/mo plus a $3,000 onboarding fee is the point where HubSpot stops being a small-business tool


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Under-5-person teams |
| Starter | $20/seat/mo | 1-10 person teams |
| Professional | $890/mo flat + $3K onboarding | 10-50 person teams |
| Enterprise | $3 | 50+ person orgs |


### Drip: One flat rate, every feature, priced by list size only

**Best flat-rate pricing**  Score: 7.8/10  Rating: 4.4/5 (G2 · 473 reviews)

**Starting price:** $39/mo

Drip is the small-store answer to feature gating. There are no tiers to compare, just a slider for list size, and every feature is switched on at $39/mo for 2,500 subscribers. [473 G2 reviews at 4.4/5](https://www.g2.com/products/drip/reviews) skew heavily ecommerce and reflect genuine satisfaction with the purchase-history automation. [Drip's pricing page](https://www.drip.com/pricing) shows the slider plainly, with no feature lock-ins anywhere on it. Worth a look if comparing plan tables is the part of this decision you hate most.

**Pros:**
- Single pricing tier: every feature is included at every subscriber count, so nothing you need is hidden one plan above you
- Deep Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento integrations with purchase-history segmentation available from day one
- The revenue attribution dashboard ties sends to actual orders, which most tools at this price leave to a third-party tool

**Cons:**
- 473 G2 reviews is thin for a tool this established, so the review signal is weaker than the rest of this list
- Pricing climbs quickly past 10K subscribers ($154/mo) and 50K subscribers ($699/mo)
- The whole product assumes a store; a services business gets an expensive newsletter tool


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| All-features | $39/mo | 2.5K subscribers |
| All-features | $89/mo | 5K subscribers |
| All-features | $154/mo | 10K subscribers |
| All-features | $699/mo | 50K subscribers |


### Encharge: For a small software business converting trials to paid

**Best for small SaaS**  Score: 7.8/10  Rating: 4.7/5 (G2 · 294 reviews)

**Starting price:** $79/mo

Encharge is a niche pick and an easy call inside that niche. If the small business is a software product with Stripe or Paddle behind it, Encharge fires the win-back email the moment a payment fails, with no engineer wiring a webhook. [294 G2 reviews at 4.7/5](https://www.g2.com/products/encharge/reviews) reflect strong fit in a narrow lane. Everyone else should skip it; without billing infrastructure to trigger on, you are paying $79/mo for a tool doing MailerLite's job.

**Pros:**
- Native Stripe, Chargebee, and Paddle integrations trigger emails on subscription status, failed payments, or plan upgrades with no code
- Segmentation scores 9.1/10 on G2 against ActiveCampaign at 8.5, and behavioural depth is the whole reason to buy it
- 4.7/5 on G2 from 87% five-star reviews, the highest satisfaction ratio anywhere in this guide

**Cons:**
- No landing page builder; 192+ G2 users have logged this as the top missing feature
- $79/mo with no free plan is a hard entry point for a bootstrapped business
- 294 G2 reviews is a narrow signal next to ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Growth | $79/mo | 2K subscribers |
| Premium | $159/mo | 2K subscribers + priority support + onboarding |
| Enterprise | Custom | 10K+ subscribers |
| 14-day trial | Free | Full feature access |


### Campaign Monitor: For a freelancer or small agency sending on behalf of clients

**Best for client work**  Score: 7.7/10  Rating: 4.1/5 (G2 · 717 reviews)

**Starting price:** $12/mo

Campaign Monitor earns its spot for one small-business shape: the freelancer or two-person agency sending email for five to twenty clients. Per-client branding, billing, and reporting in one login is the feature, and most cheaper tools make you juggle separate accounts. [717 G2 reviews at 4.1/5](https://www.g2.com/products/campaign-monitor-by-marigold/reviews) show a split user base, with agencies happy and solo marketers finding it expensive for the automation on offer. [Campaign Monitor's pricing page](https://www.campaignmonitor.com/pricing/) confirms the agency plan scales with monthly send volume. Sending only for yourself? MailerLite or Brevo gives you more at the same price.

**Pros:**
- Multi-client management with separate branding, billing, and access per client, which is the reason freelancers stay on it
- The template library and editor get consistent praise in G2 reviews for producing client-presentable designs quickly
- A 30-day free trial, the longest here, which is enough runway to run a real client campaign before committing

**Cons:**
- 4.1/5 on G2 across 717 reviews, with automation depth as the most consistent complaint
- The $12 Lite plan has no automation at all; anything beyond a broadcast needs Essentials at $29/mo
- Part of the Marigold portfolio since the 2023 rebrand, and some reviewers flag a slower product pace since


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Lite | $12/mo | 500 contacts |
| Essentials | $29/mo | 2.5K sends/mo + automation + real-time analytics |
| Premier | $149/mo | Advanced segmentation + priority support |
| Enterprise | Custom | High-volume senders + dedicated IP + SLA |


### Kit (formerly ConvertKit): For a solo operator whose business is the audience

**Best for creators and solo operators**  Score: 7.7/10  

**Starting price:** $33/mo

Kit is the pick when the business is the person. Consultants, coaches, course sellers, and newsletter operators write plain-text emails to an audience that subscribed for them specifically, and Kit is built around exactly that motion rather than around campaigns and templates. Pricing on [kit.com/pricing](https://kit.com/pricing) reads simply: the Newsletter plan is $0 up to 1,000 subscribers, Creator is $33/mo, and Pro is $66/mo, all quoted at 1,000 subscribers with 17% off for yearly billing. We are not showing a rating for Kit because we could not verify a current review count from a live source on the day this guide was written, and we would rather show nothing than a number we cannot stand behind. Judge it on the free plan, which is enough to run the first year.

**Pros:**
- The Newsletter plan is free up to 1,000 email subscribers, which covers the entire first stretch for a consultant, coach, or newsletter business
- Plain-text-first sending suits a solo operator writing to an audience rather than designing campaigns
- Paid plans carry a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, and yearly billing saves 17%

**Cons:**
- We could not verify a current G2 rating or review count for Kit from a live source, so no rating is shown here
- Creator at $33/mo for 1,000 subscribers is roughly three times MailerLite for a similar list size
- Built around creators and paid newsletters; a local services business gets little from the monetization half of the product


Pricing breakdown:

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Newsletter | $0 | Up to 1K email subscribers |
| Creator | $33/mo | 1K subscribers |
| Pro | $66/mo | 1K subscribers |
| Free trial | $0 | 14 days on paid plans |



## More


## The four kinds of email marketing software a small business can actually buy

Most "best email marketing" lists rank tools designed for marketing departments with headcount. A small business is buying something different, so the fourteen tools here split into four practical groups.

**Simple senders with real free tiers.** MailerLite, Zoho Campaigns, Brevo, HubSpot. Start at $0, hold a real list, and stay usable long enough to matter. This is where most small businesses should begin, and a lot of them never need to leave.

**Ecommerce email.** Omnisend, Klaviyo, Drip. Built around a store, an order history, and a cart. The value is not the newsletter, it is the three automations that recover abandoned carts and bring buyers back.

**All-in-one small-business marketing.** GetResponse, Constant Contact, Mailchimp. Email plus landing pages, events, or webinars on one subscription instead of three. The right call when you are stitching together tools you do not want to manage.

**Specialists.** ActiveCampaign for automation depth, Encharge for a small software business, Kit for a solo operator with an audience, Campaign Monitor for a freelancer sending on behalf of clients.

{{< infographic-stat
  number="8 of 14"
  label="email marketing platforms in this guide ship a genuinely free plan rather than a time-limited trial"
  sub="Topickz research, July 2026" >}}

## Free tiers, and exactly where each one stops

The most common small-business question about email software is the same one every time. How far does the free plan go before it makes me pay? Here is the ceiling on each, from the vendor pricing pages.

| Tool | Free plan ceiling | First paid plan | What triggers the upgrade |
|---|---|---|---|
| MailerLite | 1,000 subscribers, 12,000 emails/mo | $10/mo | Branding removal, list past 1,000 |
| Zoho Campaigns | 2,000 contacts, 6,000 emails/mo | $3/mo per 500 subs | List past 2,000 |
| HubSpot | Unlimited contacts, basic email + 5 landing pages | $20/seat/mo | Any real automation |
| Brevo | Unlimited contacts, 300 emails/day | $18/mo | Send volume, not list size |
| GetResponse | 500 contacts, 2,500 emails/mo | $19/mo | List past 500 |
| Mailchimp | 250 contacts, 500 emails/mo | $13/mo | List past 250 |
| Omnisend | 250 contacts, 500 emails/mo | $16/mo | List past 250 |
| Klaviyo | 250 profiles, 500 sends/mo | $20/mo | Profiles past 250 |
| Kit | 1,000 email subscribers | $33/mo | List past 1,000, or paid-newsletter features |
| Constant Contact | None, 14-day trial | $12/mo | Trial expiry |

Two patterns matter here. MailerLite and Zoho give you a list ceiling generous enough to run a real business on for a year. Mailchimp, Omnisend, and Klaviyo give you 250 contacts, which is a demo, not a plan.

HubSpot and Brevo are the odd ones. Both hold unlimited contacts free, and both make you pay for something else instead. HubSpot gates the automation, Brevo caps the daily send.

## Per-contact versus per-send, and why the difference shows up on the invoice

This is the single decision that determines what email costs a small business over three years, and almost nobody looks at it before signing up.

Most tools bill on contacts stored. ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Drip, GetResponse, Constant Contact. Your list size sets the price whether you email daily or twice a year. At 10,000 contacts, ActiveCampaign Plus is $174/mo and Drip is $154/mo.

Brevo bills on emails sent. The same 10,000 names cost nothing to store, and a monthly newsletter to all of them is 10,000 sends against a 20,000-send allowance at $18/mo.

The rule of thumb: if you email your whole list more than weekly, contact-based pricing usually works out fine. If you email monthly or less, per-send pricing saves real money.

{{< infographic-compare
  left-tag="Per contact stored" left-title="ActiveCampaign" left-num="$174" left-label="per month at 10,000 contacts, regardless of send volume"
  right-tag="Per email sent" right-title="Brevo" right-num="$18" right-label="per month for 20,000 sends, unlimited stored contacts"
  winner="none" winner-text="Brevo if you email a large list occasionally; ActiveCampaign if you send often and need branching automation" >}}

## The billed-contact rule that surprises small businesses

Ask this question during the trial, in writing: does an unsubscribed or bounced contact still count toward my billed total?

On several contact-priced tools the answer is yes, or yes until you manually clean the list. [EmailToolTester's Mailchimp pricing guide](https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/reviews/mailchimp/pricing/) documents the billing-for-unsubscribed-contacts behaviour specifically, and it is the most common complaint on a Mailchimp invoice.

Two platforms sidestep it structurally. Brevo bills on sends, so a dead contact costs nothing. Klaviyo moved to active-profile billing in 2025, charging only for profiles you actually email.

Everyone else, put a calendar reminder on the first of each quarter to purge unsubscribes and hard bounces. Ten minutes of list hygiene is worth more than any discount you will negotiate.

## Deliverability for a small sender

Small businesses worry about deliverability and then fix the wrong thing. The platform matters less than three items on your own domain.

Authenticate the domain properly. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records need to be live before your first campaign, and every tool here walks you through it during setup. Skipping this is the single biggest cause of small-business email landing in spam.

Send from your own domain, not a Gmail or Yahoo address. Gmail and Yahoo tightened bulk-sender requirements through 2024 and 2025, and a from-address on a free mailbox provider is the fastest route to the promotions tab or worse.

Warm up gradually. A brand-new list of 5,000 addresses blasted on day one looks exactly like a purchased list to a spam filter, because usually it is one.

Dedicated IPs come up in every deliverability conversation and almost never apply to a small business. They show up at MailerLite Enterprise and Campaign Monitor Enterprise for a reason. Below serious volume, a shared IP with an established sending reputation performs better than a cold dedicated one you have to warm up alone.

## Editor quality when nobody on the team is a designer

This decides whether the second campaign ever gets sent. If building an email is annoying, the newsletter quietly dies in month three.

Mailchimp still has the friendliest template library for a complete beginner, and Campaign Monitor's templates are the ones freelancers use when the output has to look client-ready. Both get consistent praise for visual quality in their reviews.

MailerLite sits in a different spot. Fewer templates, but the cleanest editor, and a non-designer tends to get a tidy result faster because there are fewer ways to make it ugly.

Kit goes the other way entirely and leans plain text. For a consultant or a newsletter writer emailing people who subscribed for their thinking, a plain email outperforms a designed one often enough that this is a feature.

The practical test during a trial: build one real campaign, from your actual content, on your phone-sized preview. If it takes more than 30 minutes or looks broken on mobile, move on.

## Automation a small business will actually switch on

Enterprise journey builders sell demos. A small business realistically runs four automations, and most never build the fourth.

**Welcome series.** Two to four emails after signup. This is the highest-return automation in small business email and the one most owners never set up. Every tool here does it, including the free plans.

**Abandoned cart.** For stores only, and the reason to buy Omnisend or Klaviyo rather than a general tool. One recovery email at one hour and another at 24 hours covers most of the available revenue.

**Re-engagement.** A single email to people who have not opened anything in six months, followed by removing them. This protects deliverability and cuts the bill on contact-priced plans at the same time.

**Birthday or anniversary.** Nice to have, rarely worth the setup unless you are a restaurant, salon, or membership business where it converts.

If your list is under 2,000 and you run those four, MailerLite or Brevo covers you at $10 to $18/mo. ActiveCampaign at $49/mo only earns its money once flows branch on behaviour, and that is a real threshold, not a marketing one. For lead scoring, CRM sync, and multi-branch journeys, you have crossed into [marketing automation platforms](/list/best-marketing-automation/), which is a different budget.

## Ecommerce integration for a small store

If you sell online, the integration is the product. Everything else is a newsletter tool with a logo attached.

Omnisend, Klaviyo, and Drip all connect natively to Shopify, and Omnisend and Drip cover WooCommerce and BigCommerce properly. That native connection is what makes product data, order history, and cart contents available inside the email builder.

Mailchimp, Brevo, and MailerLite all have Shopify connectors too, but the data they pull is thinner. You can send a broadcast to buyers. Building a segment of people who bought a specific category twice and have not returned in 90 days is where the difference appears.

The honest split for a small store: under a few thousand customers, Omnisend does everything you need at $16 to $59/mo. Past that, when order history is deep enough that segmentation actually changes revenue, Klaviyo is the upgrade.

## Migration in, and getting your list back out

Two things to check before you commit, both of which take ten minutes during a trial.

Import your real list on day one. Not a sample. Run your actual export from whatever you use now, with all its messy fields and duplicates, and see what breaks. Tag structure is where imports usually go wrong, and finding that out at 500 contacts is much better than at 5,000.

Then export everything back out. Contacts, tags, and campaign history to CSV, without opening a support ticket. If a tool makes the export hard, that is a deliberate choice about your data, and it tells you what renewal negotiations will feel like.

Automations never migrate. Every platform builds them differently, and moving from Mailchimp to MailerLite or ActiveCampaign means rebuilding each flow by hand. This is the real cost of switching, and it is the reason to think about your 12-month list size before picking, not after.

## What changed for small-business email buyers in 2026

**Free tiers kept shrinking at the top of the market.** Mailchimp's free plan went from 2,000 contacts in 2022 to 250 in 2026, and Constant Contact removed its free plan entirely in June 2025. The generous free tiers moved to MailerLite, Zoho, and Brevo.

**Per-send pricing spread.** Brevo's model of charging for emails sent rather than contacts stored is being copied by newer entrants, and it is the better deal for the many small businesses sitting on a big old list they email monthly.

**Active-profile billing became a selling point.** Klaviyo's 2025 shift to charging only for profiles you actually email answered the loudest complaint about contact-based pricing. Expect more vendors to follow, because the alternative is defending an invoice full of people you never write to.

**AI drafting arrived at small-business prices.** GetResponse, Constant Contact, MailerLite Advanced, and Mailchimp all ship AI content tools on plans a small business can afford. The draft gets you partway; the editing pass is still what separates an email people read from one they delete.

## The pick for each kind of small business

- **Just starting, no budget, no list yet:** MailerLite Free. 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails a month costs nothing and covers your first year.
- **Old list of 10,000+ names, one email a month:** Brevo. Per-send billing turns a $174/mo problem into an $18/mo line item.
- **Local business running events or classes:** Constant Contact. Registration and reminders live in the same subscription.
- **Small Shopify or WooCommerce store:** Omnisend. Cart recovery flows live the same afternoon, email and SMS on every paid plan.
- **Store with real order history and repeat buyers:** Klaviyo. The segmentation is what justifies the move up.
- **Consultant, coach, or newsletter operator:** Kit. Free to 1,000 subscribers and built for plain-text writing to an audience.
- **Freelancer or two-person agency sending for clients:** Campaign Monitor. Per-client branding, billing, and reporting in one login.
- **Small software business converting trials:** Encharge. Stripe and Paddle triggers without an engineer.
- **Already on Zoho One:** Zoho Campaigns. Free to 2,000 contacts, $3/mo after, native CRM sync.
- **Growing past the newsletter into real automation:** ActiveCampaign Plus at $49/mo. Buy it when flows need to branch, not before.

If two tools are still standing, sign up for both free plans and send the same campaign from each to your own list of 50. Decide on how long the second email took to build, not on the feature table.

For corrections or a pricing change we have missed, email [hello@topickz.com](mailto:hello@topickz.com). We re-verify this shortlist every six months; the next refresh ships in January 2027.

## FAQs

### What is the best free email marketing software for small business?

MailerLite. The free plan covers 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails a month with real automation included. Zoho Campaigns is next at 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails.

### How much does email marketing software cost for a small business?

Entry paid plans run $10 to $20/mo at 500 to 1,000 contacts. The number that matters is the price at your list size in a year; ActiveCampaign at 10,000 contacts is $174/mo on Plus.

### What are the best email marketing platforms for small business in 2026?

MailerLite for most, Brevo when the list is large and sends are occasional, ActiveCampaign when automation is the reason you are switching, Omnisend or Klaviyo for a store.

### Do unsubscribed contacts still count toward my bill?

On contact-based plans they often do. EmailToolTester documents this on Mailchimp specifically. Brevo bills on emails sent, and Klaviyo bills only active profiles, so both sidestep it.

### Which email marketing services work for a small business with no designer?

Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor have the strongest template libraries. MailerLite is the easiest to get a clean result from without touching a setting you do not understand.

### Do I need a dedicated IP address for email marketing?

Almost certainly not. A small sender does better on a shared IP with an established reputation. Dedicated IPs appear at MailerLite Enterprise and Campaign Monitor Enterprise, which is the volume where it starts to make sense.

### What is the best email marketing software for a small ecommerce store?

Omnisend if the store is under a few thousand customers and cart recovery is the goal. Klaviyo once you have enough order history to segment on purchase behaviour.

### Can I move my email list from Mailchimp to another platform?

Yes. Contacts, tags, and send history export to CSV and import cleanly almost everywhere. Automations must be rebuilt by hand, so budget a weekend and do it before the list hits 5,000.

### How many emails should a small business send per month?

Two to four campaigns a month is the range most small-business lists tolerate without unsubscribes climbing. Send frequency drives the bill on Brevo, and not at all on contact-priced tools.

### Is email marketing software the same as marketing automation software?

No. Email tools send campaigns and simple sequences. Marketing automation adds lead scoring, CRM sync, and multi-branch journeys. Our [marketing automation guide](/list/best-marketing-automation/) covers that tier.