Mailchimp Capped Free Users at 250 Contacts. Here's What's Free Now

The Default Choice Just Stopped Being Free

For years, when someone asked about the best email marketing software free, the answer was Mailchimp. That era is over.

Mailchimp's free plan now allows 250 contacts and 500 emails per month. No scheduling. No automation. And a "Sent with Mailchimp" badge on every email you send.

To understand how dramatic this is: in 2019, the same free plan gave you 2,000 contacts and 10,000 monthly sends. That's an 87.5% reduction in contacts over six years.

The automation removal happened in June . The latest contact cut happened in January . The top comment in r/nocode said it plainly: "Mailchimp has priced themselves out of the small business market for good at this point."

So the question changes. It's no longer "should I use Mailchimp free?" It's "which free plan is worth building on?"

The answer depends entirely on what kind of sender you are. The right match isn't obvious from the standard comparison articles.

What "Free" Means Right Now

Real user complaints - across Reddit threads, Twitter, and review sites - point to three things that make a free plan genuinely usable rather than just technically free:

First, the plan has to be persistent. Not a 14-day trial dressed up as "free." Not a countdown clock. A real no-expiry tier.

Second, it has to include at least basic automation. A welcome email sequence is table stakes. Any plan that forces you to pay before you can send a triggered email is making the free tier decorative.

Third, it should not charge you for contacts you cannot email. This is where Mailchimp's billing has historically burned people - counting unsubscribed contacts toward your cap. On a 250-contact plan, one lapsed customer costs you 0.4% of your total capacity.

With those filters in place, here is what is worth considering right now.

The Full Free Plan Comparison

This table reflects current plans as of the time of writing. Free tier limits have changed frequently across all platforms - always verify before committing.

The most surprising entry in that table is Sender. At 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails per month, full automation is included - no daily cap, no feature-gating - and it outpunches every other free plan on raw numbers. Yet it barely appears in comparisons I come across.

Kit - The Most Generous Free Plan for Creators

Kit (formerly ConvertKit) offers a free Newsletter plan for up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited email broadcasts, unlimited landing pages, and the ability to sell digital products directly. That is, by a wide margin, the highest subscriber ceiling of any free plan in the market.

You get one basic automation and one sequence on the free tier. Kit branding appears on your emails and forms. Support is email-only. And to fund the free tier, Kit places one Kit-managed Recommendation slot in your newsletters - meaning Kit earns revenue from that slot, not you.

For creators building an audience from scratch, this is the most sensible starting point. You can grow a list to 10,000 people, send as many broadcasts as you want, and sell products - all before paying a cent. The 10,000-subscriber free ceiling is genuinely useful, not a teaser.

The moment you need multiple automation sequences or want to remove Kit's branding, you're looking at $39 per month for 1,000 subscribers on the Creator plan. That jump is steep. But if you are below 10,000 subscribers and just need to send newsletters and build a list, the free tier works.

Sender - The Sleeper Pick

Sender is underrepresented in the conversation relative to what its free plan offers.

Sender's Free Forever plan includes 2,500 subscribers, 15,000 emails per month, unlimited automation workflows, segmentation, landing pages, and 100+ email templates. No daily sending cap. No expiry date. And critically - 24/7 live support is included even on the free tier, which almost no competitor offers at this level.

Where Sender wins against every other free plan is the automation access. Tools like Mailchimp and GetResponse gate automation behind paid plans entirely. Sender includes it free - including abandoned cart sequences, welcome series, and behavioral triggers. That is functionality that other platforms charge $20-$40 per month to unlock.

The one honest limitation: Sender branding appears on outgoing emails until you upgrade to the $7/month Standard plan. That is one of the lowest removal costs in the category.

If you are starting from zero and want the most capable free tool to build on, Sender is the answer most comparison articles skip.

MailerLite - Still Good, But the Rules Changed

MailerLite was the crowd favourite on Reddit for "usable free tier" through most of the last few years. The reasoning was solid: automation included, 10 landing pages, a website builder, and a polished interface that did not feel like a penalty for not paying.

That changed in September . MailerLite halved its free plan subscriber limit from 1,000 to 500. Monthly email sends stayed at 12,000. But the 500-subscriber cap is where growth stalls fast.

I still see comparison articles showing the old 1,000-subscriber figure. They are wrong. MailerLite's current free plan caps you at 500 active subscribers. When you hit 501, sending locks - campaigns, automations, everything stops until you upgrade or prune your list.

This is a meaningful change. At 500 subscribers, one good lead magnet week can flip you from free to $10 per month overnight. The 14-day paid trial you get when you sign up gives you full access to premium features - templates, unlimited landing pages, and 24/7 chat support - but that trial ends. After 30 days on the free plan, support drops to the knowledge base only.

MailerLite still makes sense if you are genuinely early-stage (under 400 subscribers, so you have a buffer) and you want a polished interface with automation included. It remains one of the best-designed free tools. But the subscriber headroom is tighter than most people expect.

Brevo - The Unlimited Contacts Hack (With a Real Gotcha)

Brevo's free plan works on a completely different model from everyone else. Instead of capping subscribers, it caps daily sends at 300 emails - roughly 9,000 per month if you send every day. Contact storage goes up to 100,000. That is not a typo.

For businesses with large but low-frequency lists, this is significant. A business with 4,000 contacts that sends two newsletters per month - say, 4,000 emails twice - sends 8,000 emails monthly. That sits under Brevo's monthly ceiling. Under standard subscriber-based pricing, that same list would cost $20-$40 per month on almost any other platform.

Reddit users in the small business communities spotted this and called it a "massive hack." But execution has a problem most reviews miss entirely.

The 300 emails per day limit is hard. It does not reset throughout the day. If you try to send a campaign to 4,000 subscribers, Brevo will send 300 on day one, 300 on day two, and so on. That stretches a single newsletter send across 14 days. For time-sensitive campaigns - a sale, a product launch, breaking news - this kills momentum completely. One operator who tried this documented the exact problem: sending to 4,000 contacts had to be dripped over two weeks, and by the time the last batch received the email, the offer context was already stale.

Also worth knowing: Brevo's 300-email daily cap covers both marketing and transactional emails combined. If your site sends password resets or order confirmations through the same Brevo account, those eat into your campaign budget.

Brevo's free plan is genuinely useful for one narrow use case - a large contact list that sends infrequently and does not have time-critical campaigns. Outside that case, the daily cap causes more problems than the unlimited contacts solves.

EmailOctopus - The Free Tier for Newsletters

EmailOctopus sits at a sensible middle ground: 2,500 subscribers, 10,000 emails per month, no branding on your emails, and no daily sending cap. Automation is limited compared to Sender, but for basic newsletter sending it is clean and reliable.

The standout is the no-branding policy. Of all the tools with generous subscriber caps, EmailOctopus is the only one that does not slap its name on your outgoing emails for free. That matters for anyone building a professional audience who does not want their emails to read like they were built on a free tool.

Support drops off after the first 30 days on the free plan. But for anyone comfortable with email basics, EmailOctopus runs cleanly.

Beehiiv - The Newsletter-First Free Tier

Beehiiv was the most-mentioned tool in social conversations about email marketing - 62 mentions in the research data with an average of 15 likes and 1,345 views per tweet. That attention is mostly driven by the creator and newsletter community, where Beehiiv has built strong word-of-mouth.

The free plan covers 2,500 subscribers with unlimited email sends. There is no automation on the free tier - Beehiiv structures its product around newsletters first, automated sequences second. You get a website and newsletter hosting, clean analytics, and a referral network that helps small newsletters cross-promote.

The monetization angle is where Beehiiv competes with Substack. Beehiiv lets you build a paid newsletter, run ads through their ad network, and accept paid subscriptions without taking a revenue cut on the free plan (unlike Substack, which takes 10%). If you are building a newsletter business, Beehiiv's free tier is structured around that goal in a way that generic email tools are not.

The limitation is scope. Beehiiv is a newsletter platform, not a marketing automation platform. If you need behavioral triggers, e-commerce sequences, or CRM-style segmentation, you will hit the ceiling fast.

The Tool Nobody Reviews - Listmonk for Developers

Listmonk is a free, open-source, self-hosted email platform that comparison articles covering "best email marketing software free" tend to skip.

Listmonk is free, open-source, and self-hosted. No subscriber cap. No email volume cap. No monthly fee. You run it on your own server, connect it to whatever SMTP provider you choose - Amazon SES, Mailgun, Postmark, or any other - and the software itself costs nothing.

At 100,000 emails, the total cost is just your hosting and SMTP fees, which run roughly $15-70 per month depending on provider. Compare that to Mailchimp at that same volume, which charges hundreds per month.

The technology behind it is fast. Written in Go, Listmonk handles bulk sending through multi-threaded queues and has been documented running over 7 million emails using a fraction of a single CPU core and only 57 MB of RAM. It supports SQL-based subscriber segmentation, transactional emails, multiple SMTP configurations, and a full REST API.

The honest limitation is the setup requirement. You need to be comfortable managing a PostgreSQL database, configuring server infrastructure, and handling your own deliverability. There is no vendor to call if something breaks. Automation features are basic compared to commercial tools - it handles campaigns and transactional sends well, but complex workflow builders are not there.

For developers, indie hackers, and technical teams who want unlimited free email with full data ownership, Listmonk is the answer. For everyone else, the setup cost outweighs the savings until you are sending at significant volume.

The Deliverability Problem on Free Plans

The most-engaged topic in email marketing discussions is not pricing or features - it is deliverability. Tweets about deliverability averaged 44 likes in the research data, nearly five times higher than pricing tweets (averaging 9 likes) and feature comparison tweets (averaging 7 likes).

The reason engagement spikes around deliverability is that it is the invisible variable. Two senders can use the same tool, build lists the same way, and see completely different open rates - and the difference is often shared IP reputation.

On free plans, almost every tool puts you on a shared IP pool. Your deliverability is tied to the sending behaviour of every other free user on the same infrastructure. If another user on your shared IP sends a spam campaign, your open rates can drop without you doing anything wrong.

One practitioner observation from Reddit sums it up: "Free tiers are designed to get you hooked, not to run a real operation. The deliverability on free plans is almost always worse because you're sharing infrastructure with everyone else."

What does this mean practically? Start on a free plan to learn the platform and build your list. But treat deliverability seriously from day one - authenticate your domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC records), keep bounce rates below 2%, and suppress unengaged contacts before they drag your sender reputation down. These habits matter more on free plans where you have no dedicated IP protection.

Brevo's shared IP limitation on free plans is worth specific attention: Brevo's free tier places you on a shared sending pool, and their thresholds for account suspension are strict - a bounce rate above 2%, unsubscribe rate above 1%, or complaint rate above 0.2% can trigger a suspension. On a new list, hitting those thresholds is not difficult if you are importing cold contacts.

Who Should Use Which Tool - A Practical Match

The right free tool depends on what you are building, not on which plan has the highest numbers on paper.

You are a creator, blogger, or newsletter operator building an audience from scratch. Use Kit. The 10,000-subscriber free ceiling, unlimited broadcasts, and built-in product selling give you everything you need to grow and test monetization before spending money. Upgrade when you need multiple automation sequences.

You are a small business that needs real email marketing features - automation, segmentation, templates - without paying. Use Sender. The 2,500-subscriber free plan with unlimited automation and no daily cap is the strongest combination of volume and features in the free tier category. The $7/month upgrade to remove branding is the lowest-cost entry point in the market.

You have a large contact list but email infrequently - monthly newsletters, low-frequency updates. Use Brevo. The 100,000-contact storage with no subscriber cap and 300 emails per day free tier is cost-effective if your send frequency is low. Just plan campaigns well in advance - you cannot send to large lists quickly.

You want a clean newsletter platform, no branding, and a built-in monetization path. Use Beehiiv up to 2,500 subscribers. When you outgrow it or need automation, reassess.

You are a developer or technical operator who wants genuinely unlimited free email with full control. Use Listmonk. Accept the setup time. The economics work in your favour at any volume above a few thousand subscribers.

You are a total beginner who just wants to see how email marketing works. MailerLite gives you the most polished experience at the free tier - good interface, automation included, 10 landing pages. Just know that 500 subscribers goes faster than it sounds, especially if you run any kind of lead magnet.

What Happens When You Outgrow Free

Starting on a free plan makes sense. The upgrade path is where costs accumulate.

The most painful upgrade cliff is Kit's. The free plan handles 10,000 subscribers at no cost. But the paid Creator plan starts at $39/month for just 1,000 subscribers. At 10,000 subscribers, the Creator plan costs $116/month billed annually or $139/month monthly. That is a big jump.

MailerLite's upgrade path is gentler. The Growing Business plan starts at $10/month for 500 subscribers and scales to $73/month for 10,000 subscribers. The free-to-paid jump is smaller, but you hit the free cap at 500 subscribers - meaning you will likely upgrade earlier than you planned.

Sender's upgrade costs are among the lowest: the Standard plan starts at $7/month, which is less than a streaming subscription. That makes the free-to-paid transition the least financially painful of any tool on this list.

Brevo's upgrade economics are interesting. The Starter plan begins at $9/month for 5,000 monthly emails. Since Brevo charges by email volume rather than subscriber count, a business with a large list that sends infrequently can stay on a low tier even as contacts grow. The catch: removing Brevo branding on the Starter plan costs an additional $12/month on top of the base price.

One insight from practitioners who have built and scaled email lists: the tool choice at 0-500 subscribers almost never matters as much as the habits you build. A list of 500 people who genuinely want your emails, opened consistently, with a verified domain and clean bounce management, is worth more than 5,000 contacts scraped and cold-imported. The platform is the infrastructure. The list is the asset.

The "Fake Free" Problem Is Getting Worse

User frustration data across Reddit threads points to a consistent pattern. The things that make free plans feel dishonest are:

Time-limited trials marketed as "free forever" until day 14. Feature-gating automation behind paid plans while calling the basic tier full-featured. Counting unsubscribed or lapsed contacts toward your cap so your real usable headroom is smaller than advertised. And branding on every outgoing email that signals to recipients you are using a free tool.

Mailchimp's current plan hits every one of these frustration points except the time limit - the plan is persistent, but at 250 contacts with no automation and full branding, it is barely distinguishable from a demo account.

The platforms moving in the opposite direction - adding more to free tiers as competitors tighten theirs - are winning the Reddit recommendation wars right now. Sender and Beehiiv both get organic positive mentions in threads where people are asking for Mailchimp alternatives. Mailchimp gets mentioned almost exclusively in comparison threads and complaint threads.

Platforms winning recommendations are gaining ground. Platforms losing them are not.

Building Your List Before You Have a Platform Figured Out

One pattern that shows up repeatedly in practitioner experience: people spend too long picking a tool before they have any subscribers, then pick wrong because they chose based on features they will not need for six months.

The right sequence is simpler. Pick a free plan that matches your immediate situation - not your aspirational situation. If you have zero subscribers today, the difference between Kit's 10,000-subscriber free cap and MailerLite's 500-subscriber free cap is irrelevant. You need to start sending and see what your audience responds to.

One operator who built an agency client's list from scratch documented this clearly: the platform switch they eventually made (from Mailchimp to something cheaper) cost them two weeks of migration work and a temporary deliverability dip. The better move, in retrospect, would have been to start on a platform they intended to stay on.

If you already know you need to build a B2B list - targeting specific industries, job titles, company sizes - the email platform question is secondary to the contact sourcing question. A clean, verified list of people who fit your exact criteria will outperform a larger unqualified list regardless of which platform you use to send it. Tools like ScraperCity let you search millions of B2B contacts by title, industry, location, and company size - then verify email addresses before importing, which protects your sender reputation from the start.

The Questions Worth Answering Before You Pick

Before choosing a free plan, three questions cut through the noise:

How fast will you grow? If you expect to run a lead magnet or have an existing social audience you will convert, MailerLite's 500-subscriber cap will feel tight within weeks. Sender or Kit gives you more runway.

Do you need automation from day one? If yes, eliminate Mailchimp (no automation), Beehiiv (automation is paid), and EmailOctopus (limited automation on free) from your list immediately. Sender and MailerLite both include automation on free.

Will you send time-sensitive campaigns? If yes, eliminate Brevo's free tier. The 300-per-day cap makes same-day full-list sends impossible at any meaningful list size.

Interface feel, integration ecosystem, and how much you trust the platform not to cut its free tier next quarter.

That last concern is legitimate. MailerLite cut its free cap in September . Mailchimp cut its cap in January . The trend across the category is toward tighter free tiers as platforms push toward paid conversion. The safest bet is a platform whose business model does not depend on eventually making free unsustainable - which is why Sender's low-cost paid entry point and Beehiiv's creator monetization model are worth paying attention to.

Frequently Asked Questions