MailerLite* is an affordable email marketing platform that provides a wide range of features for small businesses and marketers.

It’s a great allrounder for many creators.

Founded in 2005, MailerLite now serves over 800,000 users per month. With its free plan, reasonable pricing, ease of use, and robust feature set, MailerLite has grown in popularity over the years.

In this MailerLite review for 2024, I’ll take an in-depth look at the platform’s features, pricing, pros and cons, and how it compares to competitors.

Read on to find out if MailerLite is the right email marketing solution for your needs. Or which alternative might be a better fit for you.

Key Features

Some of the key features and capabilities offered by MailerLite include:

• Email campaigns – Create and send regular email newsletters, promotions, and RSS digests.
• A/B testing – Split test different email components like subject lines to optimize open and click-through rates.
• Audience building – Embed opt-in forms and targeted popups on your site to grow your mailing list.
• Segmentation – Target campaigns to specific subscriber groups based on attributes and behaviors.
• Website builder – Build landing pages and simple websites that integrate with your emails.
• Automation – Set up triggers like subscriptions and purchases to send automated email flows.
• Affordable pricing – Plans start free for under 1,000 contacts. Paid plans cost as little as $10/month.
• Strong deliverability – MailerLite has above average inbox placement and spam rates.
• Integrations – Connects to ecommerce platforms, CMSs, and other marketing apps.

Creating and Sending Email Campaigns

The core functionality of MailerLite revolves around creating and sending email campaigns. There are a few different types of campaigns available:

Regular campaigns are one-off email sends like newsletters or promotions.

A/B campaigns allow you to split test different versions of emails.

Auto resend campaigns automatically resend emails to non-openers after a set period of time.

RSS campaigns can automatically generate email digests from your blog RSS feed.

When designing your emails, you can choose from over 40 professionally designed templates if you’re on a paid plan. The drag and drop editor makes customizing these templates simple, with a wide selection of content blocks you can easily add and customize.

Once your email is designed, you can leverage MailerLite’s advanced segmentation features to target specific groups of subscribers based on attributes like demographics, behaviors, and more. Scheduling your sends is straightforward – pick a date and time or have it adjust based on subscriber timezones.

Overall, MailerLite provides an intuitive yet powerful email campaign creation experience comparable to more expensive competitors. The template library and editing tools make it easy for anyone to create stylish, customized emails.

Building Your Audience with Forms and Popups

Aside from email campaigns, MailerLite* also provides tools to help you grow your mailing list. You can build popup forms, embedded forms, and landing pages to convert website visitors into subscribers.

There are a variety of nice looking templates to choose from when designing your forms and popups. The drag and drop editor makes customization easy.

For popups, you can configure the targeting settings to control exactly when and how they are triggered. Options include scroll depth, time on page, exit intent, and more.

Forms can be set up to require double opt-in for GDPR compliance in certain regions. You can also link forms to automation workflows to provide new subscriber onboarding experiences.

While MailerLite’s form and popup builders aren’t as advanced as dedicated lead generation tools, they provide more than enough functionality for most use cases.

Building Landing Pages and Websites

Expanding beyond email campaigns and lead gen forms, MailerLite also offers easy website building capabilities.

You can use the landing page editor to quickly build custom landing pages using a selection of templates. It uses the same drag and drop editor as the email builder.

For creating entire websites, there is a website builder with multi-page site templates for common use cases. You can either host websites on MailerLite’s subdomain or connect your own custom domain.

The website builder is fairly basic and won’t replace advanced CMS platforms. But it’s great for spinning up simple sites integrated with your MailerLite email marketing. You can even add blog functionality to publish articles and newsletters.

Advanced Segmentation and Automation

Two of the areas where MailerLite really shines are subscriber segmentation and email automation.

You can leverage segments, groups, and tags to target subscribers based on a variety of criteria:

• Static attributes like demographics and geography
• Dynamic behaviors like email opens, clicks, and activity
• Purchases and transactions from integrated stores
• Membership in groups, segments, or campaigns

Combining multiple criteria, you can get extremely targeted with your email sends.

The automation builder provides an easy drag and drop workflow editor for building out multi-step campaigns triggered by events like signups, form submissions, date-based events, and more.

Automations can include emails, delays, conditions, and actions to create sophisticated behavioral-based campaigns like churn reduction and re-engagement flows.

For smaller businesses that don’t need advanced automation, MailerLite provides more than enough functionality. Power users may want to look at dedicated marketing automation platforms for more complex scenarios.

Affordable Pricing

One of MailerLite’s biggest differentiators from competitors is its pricing model. Plans start free and scale affordably.

The free plan supports up to 1,000 contacts with basic functionality. Paid plans start at just $10 per month for up to 500 contacts and unlimited emails.

There are no monthly sending limits. Two paid plan tiers are available with great feature sets.

Here’s a breakdown of MailerLite’s pricing tiers based on number of contacts:

• Up to 1,000 contacts: Free
• Up to 2,500 contacts: $25 or $40/month
• Up to 5,000 contacts: $73 or $50/month
• Up to 10,000 contacts: $50 $110/month
• Up to 50,000 contacts: $289 or $340/month

Yearly discounts are available on paid plans. Volume pricing past 500,000 contacts is also available by request.

When comparing to other popular platforms like ConvertKit, MailerLite delivers better value in most pricing bands — sometimes up to 50% cheaper for comparable plans.

Pros and Cons

Based on our hands-on testing and research, here are some of the main pros and cons we found with MailerLite:

Pros

• Very affordable and competitive pricing
• Easy drag and drop editors
• Great free plan with robust capabilities
• Powerful segmentation and automation features
• Above average deliverability rates

Cons

• Website and landing page builders are fairly limited
• Automation builder less advanced than dedicated platforms
• Smaller third party integration ecosystem
• Support options limited on free plan

For the price point, MailerLite manages to pack an impressive punch in terms of features. The main limitations center around its builders and platform depth rather than core email marketing capabilities.

MailerLite Alternatives

MailerLite* competes in a crowded email marketing software market. Here are some of the top alternatives to consider:

ConvertKit* – More focused on creators, bloggers, and info product businesses, ConvertKit specializes in email automation for lead nurturing and has strong integration with webinar and course platforms. It’s powerful for digital marketing workflows. With the Creator and Sponsor Networks, it’s also perfect to connect with and earn from recommendations and partnerships. In addition, SparkLoop is a part of ConvertKit and deeply integrated.

Beehiiv* – Beehiiv is a very simple, easy-to-use email marketing platform aimed at solopreneurs, startups, and small businesses. It has generous free plans and an intuitive drag-and-drop editor. Automation is basic but it’s a good basic email sender. The paid plans shine with creator networks, recommendations, and sponsors.

EmailOctopus* – EmailOctopus is one of the easiest & most affordable MailerLite alternatives. It has a very generous free plan supporting 2,500 contacts and 10.000 emails. The editor is easy-to-use and it has solid analytics. Lacks some advanced features.

Substack* – Substack is a specialized email newsletter platform built for writers, publishers, and creators wanting to start paid subscription newsletters and membership content. It streamlines newsletter creation, subscriptions, and reader engagement.

Omnisend* – Omnisend combines email and SMS marketing with ecommerce marketing tools like abandoned cart recovery. Ideal for retail/eCommerce, but with advanced automation and segmentation capabilities.

The Bottom Line

MailerLite hits a sweet spot between ease of use, features, and pricing.

Though not as powerful as some enterprise marketing platforms, and not as tailored toward content creators and network building like ConvertKit, MailerLite provides tremendous value for small and mid-size businesses, content creators, and entrepreneurs.

The free plan, affordable paid tiers, and generous capabilities make MailerLite one of the best email services for startups, solopreneurs, and bootstrapped operations. More advanced users may want greater segmentation flexibility, deeper automation, and more integration options.

But for most use cases, MailerLite offers all the core email marketing and lead generation tools an organization needs at highly competitive pricing. The main limitations are around its website builder and platform depth rather than the email features themselves.

Thanks to its balance of simplicity and sophisticated functionality, MailerLite remains a top choice in the email marketing space. This is especially true for budget-conscious businesses that still want great results without high costs.

I use MailerLite for parts of my business, and I’ve never had an issue. It’s an intuitive and well-rounded tool you can’t go wrong with in 2024 if it fits your needs.