Quick answer: The best email marketing platform for most bloggers is MailerLite if price matters most, Kit if you want a big free plan and blog-friendly automation, and beehiiv if the newsletter is the product. On 5 November 2026, MailerLite Comfort cost $19 a month at 1,000 subscribers, Kit Creator $39 and beehiiv Lite $59, all billed monthly.
Some links on this page may be affiliate links. We read every price on the vendor’s own page; nothing here is sponsored.
Those three figures change fast as a list grows, and several vendors print an annual rate as if it were the monthly price. So this page prices seven platforms at the list sizes a blogger actually passes, with the billing term stated every time.
The short version
- MailerLite Comfort was the cheapest plan with automations at every size we checked, from $12 a month at 500 subscribers to $89 at 10,000, billed monthly. Brevo Starter costs less, but we could not confirm that it includes automations, and Brevo bills by emails sent.
- Kit has the largest free plan, up to 10,000 subscribers. The catch is that automations, email sequences and RSS-to-email all start on the paid Creator plan.
- beehiiv is free to 2,500 subscribers and takes 0% of paid subscription revenue on Lite (Stripe’s card fee still applies).
- Mailchimp’s free plan stops at 250 contacts, and its paid bands count unsubscribed contacts. We cover that in our Mailchimp alternatives guide.
- Substack costs nothing to start and keeps 10% of paid subscription revenue, which makes it a different kind of bill altogether.
Why most price comparisons for email tools mislead
Three habits on vendor pricing pages trip up readers and reviewers alike.
The first is the annual rate shown as the headline. Kit’s pricing page opens on yearly billing and shows Creator at “$33/mo” with “$390 billed yearly” beneath it. Switch the toggle to monthly and the same plan is $39. beehiiv does the same: Lite shows $49 a month on yearly billing and $59 on monthly.
The second is the subscriber slider. Every figure on Kit and beehiiv moves with a slider that defaults to 1,000 subscribers, so a quoted price means nothing without the list size beside it.
The third is the contact band. Mailchimp prices in bands such as 501 to 1,500 contacts, so a list of 600 pays the same as a list of 1,500. Kit’s slider has a similar gap: it steps from 1,000 straight to 3,000, with no stop at 2,500.
Our email marketing guide for bloggers sets out the criteria for choosing a platform (deliverability, tagging, automation and the pricing model) without naming brands. This page applies those criteria to the actual products.
How we priced each platform
We read each vendor’s pricing page on 5 November 2026. For Kit, beehiiv and Mailchimp we moved the vendor’s own slider or contact selector to each list size and read the figure the page displayed. MailerLite and Brevo both publish a machine-readable pricing file on their own domain, and we took their figures from those files.
All prices are in US dollars. Mailchimp’s page switched to pounds when we opened it from a UK browser, so we selected the USD view. Kit and beehiiv displayed dollars without any change.
For each platform we priced the cheapest plan that includes automations, because a welcome sequence is the first thing most bloggers set up. Mailchimp gets two rows, since its Essentials plan caps automation flows at 4 steps. Brevo also gets two. Standard is the first plan where its pricing page lists multi-step workflows. Starter is shown for reference only, because we could not confirm what automation it includes.
Brevo needed one assumption. It bills by emails sent per month, with a contact limit attached to each volume tier. We assumed one email a week (four sends a month) and added Brevo’s listed volume charge to each plan’s base price ($9 for Starter, $18 for Standard). Brevo’s pricing file says its tables show “the base plan price before usage-based add-ons”, so treat the Brevo rows as our arithmetic on its figures.
We have not used these platforms hands-on for this article. Everything below comes from the vendors’ own pages.
Cost at 500 to 10,000 subscribers, billed monthly
This table shows what each plan costs if you pay month to month, which is how most bloggers start.
| Platform and plan | 500 | 1,000 | 2,500 | 5,000 | 10,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MailerLite Comfort | $12 | $19 | $33 | $49 | $89 |
| Brevo Standard (weekly sends, our sum) | $18 | $35 | $49 | $69 | $89 |
| Brevo Starter (reference only, automations unconfirmed) | $9 | $17 | $25 | $32 | $46 |
| AWeber Lite | $15 | $25 | $35 | $60 | $100 |
| Mailchimp Essentials | $13 | $26.50 | $45 | $75 | $110 |
| Kit Creator | $39 | $39 | $59 | $89 | $139 |
| beehiiv Lite | $59 | $59 | $79 | $109 | $139 |
| Mailchimp Standard | $20 | $45 | $60 | $100 | $135 |
| AWeber Plus | $30 | $45 | $55 | $90 | $135 |
Notes on the table:
- Kit’s lowest slider step prices 500 subscribers at the 1,000 rate, and the 2,500 column is Kit’s 3,000 step, because the slider has no 2,500 stop.
- beehiiv’s slider starts at 1,000, so 500 subscribers shows the 1,000 price. At 500 you would normally stay on beehiiv’s free plan.
- Mailchimp’s columns are its 0 to 500, 501 to 1,500, 1,501 to 2,500, 2,501 to 5,000 and 5,001 to 10,000 bands. In the 5,001 to 10,000 band, the page also showed a first-year rate of $93.50 on Essentials and $114.75 on Standard, rising to the figures above after 12 months.
- Brevo’s contact limits force the tier up at small sizes, on Starter and Standard alike. The 5,000-email tier allows 500 contacts, 10,000 emails allow 1,500, and 15,000 allow 2,500. A 1,000-subscriber list therefore needs the 10,000-email tier even at four sends a month.
Two things stand out. At 10,000 subscribers, Kit Creator and beehiiv Lite cost the same $139 a month. And at 1,000 subscribers, Kit Creator costs about twice MailerLite Comfort ($39 against $19).
Cost on annual billing
Annual billing cuts the bill on most platforms, by different amounts. Kit says paying yearly saves 17%, beehiiv says “up to 20%”, MailerLite and Brevo 10%, and AWeber advertises “up to 4 months free”. The figures below are the full year.
| Platform and plan | 500 | 1,000 | 2,500 | 5,000 | 10,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MailerLite Comfort | $129.60 | $205.20 | $356.40 | $529.20 | $961.20 |
| Brevo Standard (weekly sends, our sum) | $194 | $378 | $529 | $745 | $961 |
| Brevo Starter (reference only, automations unconfirmed) | $97 | $183 | $270 | $345 | $497 |
| AWeber Lite | $150 | $250 | $350 | $600 | $1,000 |
| Kit Creator | $390 | $390 | $590 | $890 | $1,390 |
| beehiiv Lite | $588 | $588 | $828 | $1,140 | $1,428 |
| AWeber Plus | $240 | $450 | $550 | $900 | $1,350 |
| Mailchimp | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Contact sales |
MailerLite prints a per-month figure on annual billing ($17.10 at 1,000, for example), and beehiiv prints “$49/mo” with “Yearly billing”. We multiplied those by 12. Kit and AWeber print the yearly total directly. Mailchimp says annual plans exist only for Standard and Premium at 10,000 contacts and above, through its sales team, so no annual figure was published for us to read.
Free plans: where each one stops
A free plan is the obvious place to start a list. The limits differ more than the word “free” suggests.
| Platform | Free plan limit | What the free plan leaves out |
|---|---|---|
| Kit | Up to 10,000 subscribers | Visual automations, email sequences, RSS campaigns, branding removal |
| beehiiv | Up to 2,500 subscribers | Automations, paid subscriptions, ad monetisation, branding removal (Pro) |
| MailerLite | 250 active subscribers, 2,500 emails a month | RSS campaigns and paid newsletters; capped at 3 automations and 1 landing page |
| Mailchimp | 250 contacts, 500 sends a month, 250 a day | Automations, A/B testing, scheduling, branding removal |
| Brevo | 300 emails a day after account approval; its pricing file lists 100,000 contacts included | Brevo logo removal; landing pages listed from Standard |
| Substack | No subscriber limit stated | Takes 10% of paid revenue once you charge |
| AWeber | A free signup exists, but the pricing page gives no limits | We could not confirm the free plan’s limits on AWeber’s page |
Kit’s free plan is the standout for size, and its limit is the one most likely to matter. A free Kit account can collect subscribers on unlimited landing pages and forms and send broadcasts, but it cannot run a welcome sequence. If a welcome sequence is your plan from day one (and for most blogs it should be), budget for Creator.
The features bloggers use most
Bloggers usually need these features in the first year, so we checked each one against the pricing pages. “Not listed” means the pricing page did not mention it, which is different from the feature not existing.
| Platform | Automations | Landing pages | Paid newsletter | RSS-to-email | Deliverability items on the page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kit | Creator and up, unlimited | Unlimited on all plans | All plans | Creator and up | Deliverability reporting on Pro |
| beehiiv | Lite and up | Free and up | Lite and up, 0% take rate | Not listed | Page claims “industry-leading deliverability” |
| MailerLite | 3 on Free, 50 on Comfort, unlimited on Power | 1 on Free, 10 on Comfort | Comfort and up | Comfort and up | Dedicated IP add-on on Enterprise |
| Mailchimp | Up to 4 flow steps on Essentials; up to 200 flows on Standard | Included on all plans | Not listed | Not listed on pricing page | Not listed |
| Brevo | Unlimited multi-step workflows listed from Standard | 1 on Standard, 10 on Professional | Not listed | Not listed | Deliverability specialist (3 hours a year) on Professional |
| AWeber | 3 on Lite, unlimited on Plus | 3 on Lite, unlimited on Plus | Subscriptions via AWeber Ecommerce, 1.0% fee on Lite, 0.6% on Plus | Listed, plan not marked | Not listed |
| Substack | Not checked | Not applicable | Core model, 10% fee | Not applicable | Not checked |
Mailchimp has a help article on sending blog posts by RSS, but neither that article nor the pricing page says which plans include it. We left it as unconfirmed.
Each platform in detail
Below, each platform gets what its pricing page says, the trade-offs, and the blogger it fits. The order follows the shortlist at the top of this page, from best fit for a typical blogger to most specialised.
MailerLite
MailerLite renamed its plans on 16 June 2026: Growing Business became Comfort and Advanced became Power. Older reviews still use the old names. Comfort starts at $12 a month for 500 subscribers, and RSS campaigns and paid newsletters both start on that plan.
Billing counts active subscribers only. MailerLite’s pricing file says “Subscribers who have unsubscribed or bounced don’t count”, although anyone active at any point in the billing cycle does.
- Pros: lowest monthly price at every size among the plans with confirmed automations; RSS-to-email on the cheapest paid plan; unsubscribes are not billed.
- Cons: the free plan stops at 250 subscribers; Comfort caps landing pages at 10 and automations at 50.
- Suits: a blogger who wants a weekly digest of new posts sent automatically and wants the lowest predictable bill.
Kit
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) has not changed its Creator price since we first logged it on 20 July 2026: $39 a month or $390 a year at 1,000 subscribers. What is new since our September reading is a first-year offer on Pro, shown as $593 for the first year at 1,000 subscribers, after which it renews at the standard rate. Our Kit pricing history keeps the dated readings.
The free plan’s 10,000-subscriber cap is far above every other free tier here. Paid newsletters run on all plans, and Kit’s Paid Recommendations feature (Creator and up) carries a 23.5% fee according to the plan comparison table.
- Pros: largest free plan; unlimited landing pages and forms on every plan; a free migration service on the paid plans.
- Cons: a 2,500-subscriber list pays Kit’s 3,000 step ($59 a month); no automations at all on Free.
- Suits: a blogger who sells digital products or wants tag-based sequences, and who expects the list to pass several thousand.
Our Kit review covers the plan in more depth.
beehiiv
Between our 4 September and 3 October readings, beehiiv replaced Scale with Lite and Pro. On 4 September Scale was $49 a month billed monthly; on 5 November the entry paid plan is Lite at $59 billed monthly, or $49 a month billed yearly, at 1,000 subscribers. Pro is $109 monthly or $95 a month yearly at the same size.
beehiiv’s FAQ says it takes 0% of paid subscription and digital product revenue, with Stripe’s 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction still applying. Lite and Pro also list ad monetisation, with the page quoting an “Avg. $39/mo”.
- Pros: free to 2,500 subscribers; a website on every plan; no platform cut on paid subscriptions.
- Cons: most expensive entry paid plan at 1,000 subscribers; RSS-to-email is not listed on the pricing page.
- Suits: a writer for whom the newsletter is the main product, with or without a blog behind it.
For the two side by side at every list size, see Kit vs beehiiv.
Brevo
Brevo is the odd one out because it bills by email volume. Starter is $9 a month or $97 a year, and Standard $18 or $194, each including 5,000 emails and 500 contacts. Above that, each volume tier adds a charge and raises the contact limit, which reaches 500,000 from the 20,000-email tier.
Sending less only saves money on bigger lists. A list of 10,000 emailed twice a month uses 20,000 emails: $32 a month on Starter or $69 on Standard, against $46 and $89 for weekly sends. Below 2,500 contacts, Brevo’s contact limits set the tier, and your send count makes no difference. Brevo publishes base prices in pounds as well: Starter is £6 a month in its pricing file.
- Pros: Starter is the lowest figure in our table, although its automation is unconfirmed; pound prices published for UK buyers; the free plan sends up to 300 emails a day once Brevo approves the account.
- Cons: total price takes arithmetic; landing pages and multi-step workflows are listed from Standard, which starts at $18 a month.
- Suits: a blogger who sends a monthly or fortnightly round-up to a list of more than 2,500 contacts.
Mailchimp
At 500 contacts Mailchimp is competitive: Essentials is $13 a month. The bands then climb faster than MailerLite’s, to $26.50 at 501 to 1,500 contacts and $75 at 2,501 to 5,000. Mailchimp’s help centre also states that “Subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed contacts are included in your contact count”, so a list that sheds readers does not shrink the bill.
- Pros: landing pages on every plan, including Free; a 14-day free trial of Essentials and Standard.
- Cons: free plan ends at 250 contacts; Essentials automation stops at 4 flow steps; no annual discount below 10,000 contacts.
- Suits: a blogger already running a shop on an integration that depends on Mailchimp.
AWeber
AWeber’s plan cards show Lite at $12.49 a month and Plus at $19.99, both marked “Billed annually”. The tier tables lower down give the month-to-month figures: Lite is $25 at 1,000 subscribers, Plus $45. Lite keeps AWeber branding and allows 3 automations and 3 landing pages; Plus removes the branding and lifts both limits.
- Pros: annual Lite is cheaper than Kit Creator at every size; RSS-to-email is listed as a feature.
- Cons: the pricing page does not mark which plans include RSS-to-email; free plan limits are not published on that page.
- Suits: a blogger who wants annual billing and a small number of automations.
Substack
Substack charges nothing to publish free posts. Once you charge, its revenue page says “Writers keep 90% of their revenue minus credit card fees”. As an illustration, 1,000 paying readers at $5 a month would hand Substack $500 a month, more than any subscription fee in the tables above. Our Substack vs WordPress fee comparison works through that maths.
- Pros: no cost at any list size while the newsletter is free.
- Cons: the cost scales with your revenue, and your writing lives on Substack’s platform.
- Suits: a writer testing whether readers will pay, before committing to a separate site.
Worked example: a weekly RSS digest at 2,500 subscribers
Say your blog has 2,500 subscribers and you want new posts emailed automatically each week. Four of the platforms list RSS-to-email on a paid plan.
- MailerLite Comfort: $33 a month, or $356.40 a year on annual billing.
- AWeber Lite: $35 a month, or $350 a year. AWeber’s page lists RSS to email but does not mark the plans, so confirm with AWeber before paying.
- Kit Creator: $59 a month at its 3,000 step, or $590 a year.
- Mailchimp Essentials: $45 a month. Mailchimp has RSS campaigns, but its pages did not say whether Essentials includes them.
Over 12 months of monthly billing, MailerLite costs $396 and Kit $708. That $312 gap buys Kit’s unlimited landing pages and unlimited automations, which matter if you plan to sell. If you only want the digest, it buys nothing you need.
Collecting opt-ins
Every platform above includes signup forms. Some bloggers want more than a name-and-email box: a quiz, a multi-step form or a survey that tags subscribers by interest. Fillout lists native integrations for Mailchimp and Brevo on its integrations page. If you use either, a Fillout form (affiliate link) can pass contacts straight into your list. For the other platforms, compare options in our form builder guide.
Which platform to choose
- To start from zero and spend nothing, use Kit Free if you can live without a welcome sequence for now, beehiiv Free if you want a newsletter website too.
- A beginner who wants automation from day one should look at MailerLite Comfort, at $12 to $19 a month up to 1,000 subscribers.
- A solo creator selling products or courses is best served by Kit Creator. The price premium buys unlimited sequences and landing pages.
- For newsletter-first writers, beehiiv Lite or Substack. Pick beehiiv if you want 0% of subscription revenue taken, Substack if you want no fixed bill at all.
- Infrequent senders with more than 2,500 contacts should price Brevo against their real monthly email volume.
Frequently asked questions
Quick answers on cost and features, all taken from the same 5 November readings.
What is the best free email marketing platform for bloggers?
Kit has the largest free plan we found, at up to 10,000 subscribers, but it has no automations. beehiiv is free to 2,500 subscribers. MailerLite’s free plan includes 3 automations but stops at 250 subscribers.
Which email platform is cheapest at 1,000 subscribers?
Among plans with confirmed automations, MailerLite Comfort was cheapest at $19 a month on monthly billing, then AWeber Lite at $25 and Mailchimp Essentials at $26.50. Kit Creator was $39 and Brevo Standard $35 on our weekly-send sum. Brevo Starter came out at $17, but we could not confirm it includes automations. All figures were read on 5 November 2026 in US dollars.
Is Kit’s price $33 or $39 a month?
Both, depending on billing. At 1,000 subscribers Kit Creator is $39 billed monthly, or $390 billed yearly, which the page displays as $33 a month.
Which platforms send new blog posts by RSS automatically?
Kit lists RSS campaigns on Creator and Pro, and MailerLite on Comfort and Power. AWeber lists RSS to email without marking plans. Mailchimp documents RSS campaigns in its help centre without stating which plans include them.
What is the best newsletter platform if I want to charge readers?
beehiiv Lite takes 0% of paid subscription revenue, with Stripe’s card fee on top. Kit runs paid newsletters on every plan, including Free. Substack keeps 10% of paid revenue but has no monthly fee.
Do unsubscribed contacts count toward my bill?
On Mailchimp, yes: its help centre says unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts are included in the contact count. MailerLite says unsubscribed and bounced subscribers do not count. We did not find a statement either way on the other pricing pages.
The bottom line
For most bloggers, MailerLite is the cheapest route to automation and RSS-to-email, and Kit is the better buy once you sell something or outgrow a small free plan. beehiiv suits writers whose newsletter is the business. Whichever you pick, read the price with the subscriber count and billing term beside it, because the headline number on the card is often the annual rate.
We keep dated price readings for Kit and beehiiv on our tool pricing hub, and will re-read these pages when vendors change them.
Sources
- Kit pricing
- beehiiv pricing
- MailerLite pricing
- MailerLite pricing (machine-readable file)
- Mailchimp marketing plans pricing
- Mailchimp compare plans
- Mailchimp: About Mailchimp pricing plans
- Mailchimp: Share your blog posts with Mailchimp
- Brevo pricing
- Brevo pricing (machine-readable file)
- AWeber pricing
- Substack: start a paid newsletter
- Fillout integrations
Written by
Blogging Titan Team
Blogging Titan is an independent team of bloggers documenting what actually grows a blog in the AI search era. We have been building, ranking, and monetizing WordPress sites since 2017, and every guide on this site is based on strategies and tools we have tested ourselves. Want a second pair of eyes on your blog? Request a free blog audit or start with the 2026 playbook.