Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend tools we believe are worth paying for.
Category: Tool Reviews
Most small businesses pick their email marketing tool the wrong way. They find a list, pick the most familiar name, and sign up without knowing whether it fits their actual workflow. Then they spend months fighting a platform built for someone else.
This guide covers the five tools that matter in 2026: Mailchimp, ConvertKit (now Kit), Brevo, Beehiiv, and Substack. Each one has a different strength, a different pricing model, and a different type of business it actually serves well.
—
What to Look For Before You Pick
Before comparing features, answer three questions:
Are you building a list to sell products, or to build an audience?
Selling products (ecommerce, courses, services) needs segmentation, automations, and conversion tracking. Building an audience needs great writing tools and reader engagement metrics. These are different priorities.
How much do you want to automate?
Some tools handle complex drip sequences with behavioral triggers. Others are glorified newsletters. Know which you need.
What’s your realistic subscriber ceiling in 12 months?
Pricing scales with list size. A tool that’s free at 500 subscribers might cost $150/month at 10,000. Plan for where you’re going, not where you are today.
—
Mailchimp
Mailchimp has been around since 2001 and remains the default recommendation for new businesses. That reputation is partially earned and partially inertia.
What It Does Well
Mailchimp covers the basics solidly. You get a drag-and-drop email builder, basic automation sequences, landing pages, signup forms, and audience segmentation. The free plan supports up to 500 contacts and 1,000 sends per month, which is genuinely useful for businesses just starting out.
The platform also has a large library of integrations, so it connects easily to Shopify, WordPress, Squarespace, and most CRMs. If you are running an ecommerce store, Mailchimp’s abandoned cart automation and product recommendation emails are built into the mid-tier plans.
Where It Falls Short
Mailchimp’s pricing structure became more expensive after a 2019 restructuring. The free plan limits are tight, and jumping to the Essentials or Standard tier ($13 to $20/month at 500 contacts) adds up quickly as your list grows.
The automation builder works, but it is not as intuitive as newer platforms. Complex sequences require more clicks than they should. Support on lower tiers is limited to email, and response times are slow.
Pricing (2026)
| Plan | Contacts | Monthly Send Limit | Price | |——|———-|——————–|——-| | Free | 500 | 1,000 | $0 | | Essentials | 500 | 5,000 | $13/month | | Standard | 500 | 6,000 | $20/month | | Premium | 10,000+ | 150,000+ | $350/month |
Prices increase as your contact list grows. At 10,000 contacts, Essentials runs around $100/month.
Best For
Small ecommerce businesses, brick-and-mortar stores moving online, and businesses that need a simple newsletter alongside basic automations.
—
ConvertKit (Now Kit)
ConvertKit rebranded to Kit in 2024 to reflect its broader positioning beyond just email. The platform is still best known for serving creators: bloggers, YouTubers, course sellers, and consultants.
What It Does Well
Kit’s tagging and segmentation system is excellent. Instead of managing multiple lists, you manage one list and apply tags based on subscriber behavior. Someone who clicked a link about freelancing gets tagged differently from someone who clicked about software. That distinction lets you send more relevant emails without running separate lists.
The visual automation builder is the clearest in this category. You can see the entire logic of a sequence at once, branching paths included. For someone selling a course or an online product, this matters because the path from “new subscriber” to “purchase” usually has multiple steps.
The free plan allows up to 10,000 subscribers with basic features. That is unusually generous. The catch is that automations are limited on the free tier.
Where It Falls Short
Kit is not a strong choice for ecommerce businesses that need product catalog integrations or deep Shopify workflows. It is built for digital products and services, not physical inventory.
The email editor is also more limited than Mailchimp’s. Kit’s design philosophy favors plain-text style emails, which works well for audience-building but looks sparse if you want visually branded campaigns.
Pricing (2026)
| Plan | Subscribers | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Up to 10,000 | $0 |
| Creator | 300 | $25/month |
| Creator Pro | 300 | $50/month |
Creator Pro unlocks subscriber scoring, advanced reporting, and the newsletter referral system.
Best For
Bloggers, course creators, coaches, consultants, and anyone building a content-based audience where the relationship matters more than the campaign design.
—
Brevo (Formerly Sendinblue)
Brevo rebranded in 2023 but kept most of what made Sendinblue competitive: a transactional email focus, generous free tier, and SMS marketing built in.
What It Does Well
Brevo’s free plan allows unlimited contacts with 300 emails per day. That is a fundamentally different model from competitors who charge based on list size. If you have a large list but send infrequently, Brevo is significantly cheaper.
The platform handles transactional emails well, meaning automated emails like order confirmations, password resets, and shipping notifications. If your business sends a mix of marketing campaigns and transactional messages, Brevo handles both from the same dashboard.
SMS marketing is built in without requiring a third-party integration. For businesses that want to run text campaigns alongside email, this simplifies the stack.
Where It Falls Short
The email builder is functional but not polished. It lags behind Mailchimp and Kit in terms of design flexibility. The automation workflows are capable but require more setup time than the visual builders on other platforms.
Deliverability on the free tier can be inconsistent. The daily send cap of 300 emails is also a real constraint for any business with a list over a few hundred active subscribers.
Pricing (2026)
| Plan | Emails/Month | Price | |——|————–|——-| | Free | 9,000 (300/day) | $0 | | Starter | 20,000 | $25/month | | Business | 20,000+ | $65/month | | Enterprise | Custom | Custom |
Best For
Businesses with large, infrequently-contacted lists. Service businesses that send transactional emails alongside newsletters. Companies that want SMS marketing without adding another tool.
—
Beehiiv
Beehiiv launched in 2021, built by former Morning Brew employees, and it shows. The platform is designed from the ground up for newsletter operators who want to grow an audience and monetize it.
What It Does Well
Beehiiv treats newsletters as media businesses, not just email campaigns. The platform includes a web-based publication (your newsletter gets a public URL), a referral program, paid subscriptions, ad network access, and subscriber analytics that go deeper than open rates.
The ad network is notable. Beehiiv connects publishers with advertisers, so once your newsletter reaches a certain size, you can earn revenue from sponsored placements without negotiating deals yourself.
The free plan is generous: up to 2,500 subscribers, unlimited sends, and the core publishing tools. The upgrade path to paid tiers is based on features, not contact count, which is a cleaner model.
Where It Falls Short
Beehiiv is narrowly focused on newsletters and content monetization. If you need ecommerce integrations, complex behavioral automations, or transactional email handling, it is not the right tool.
The platform is also younger than competitors, so the integration ecosystem is smaller. Connecting Beehiiv to your CRM or other business tools requires Zapier or Make in most cases.
Pricing (2026)
| Plan | Subscribers | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Launch | 2,500 | $0 |
| Grow | 10,000 | $42/month |
| Scale | 100,000 | $84/month |
| Max | Unlimited | $333/month |
Best For
Newsletter operators, media-style content businesses, and anyone who wants to monetize their audience through paid subscriptions and advertising.
—
Substack
Substack is not a traditional email marketing tool. It is a publishing platform with email delivery built in. That distinction matters.
What It Does Well
Substack handles paid subscriptions natively. Writers charge readers directly, and Substack takes a 10% cut. There is no separate paywall setup, no payment processor integration, and no developer required. You write, set a price, and Substack handles the rest.
For free newsletters, Substack allows unlimited subscribers with no platform fee. The open rate data, subscriber growth charts, and basic analytics are included.
The platform also has a built-in discovery engine. Readers browsing Substack can find your publication without any external SEO or marketing. For new writers, that distribution has real value.
Where It Falls Short
Substack’s 10% fee is expensive at scale. A newsletter generating $10,000/month in subscriptions pays $1,000 to Substack. Comparable functionality on Beehiiv or a dedicated membership tool would cost far less.
Substack also has very limited customization. You cannot change the email template design, add custom automations, segment subscribers, or integrate with external tools in any meaningful way. What you see is what you get.
Pricing (2026)
Free newsletters: no cost, unlimited subscribers. Paid newsletters: Substack takes 10% plus Stripe’s 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
Best For
Writers and creators who want to start a paid newsletter immediately with zero technical setup. Early-stage publications testing whether readers will pay before committing to a more capable platform.
—
Head-to-Head Comparison
| Tool | Free Tier | Best Feature | Weakest Area | Best For | |——|———–|————–|————–|———-| | Mailchimp | 500 contacts, 1,000 sends/month | Ecommerce integrations | Pricing at scale | Ecommerce and product businesses | | Kit | 10,000 subscribers | Tagging and automations | Email design | Creators, course sellers, coaches | | Brevo | Unlimited contacts, 300/day | Transactional email + SMS | Builder polish | Infrequent senders, SMS users | | Beehiiv | 2,500 subscribers | Newsletter monetization | Integrations | Newsletter publishers | | Substack | Unlimited subscribers | Paid subscription handling | Customization | Writers starting a paid newsletter |
—
How to Choose
You sell physical products or run ecommerce: Mailchimp or Brevo. Mailchimp has better Shopify and WooCommerce integrations. Brevo is cheaper if your list is large and you send infrequently.
You sell courses, coaching, or digital products: Kit. The automation and tagging system is built for this exact workflow.
You want to build and monetize a newsletter: Beehiiv if you want maximum control and ad revenue options. Substack if you want zero setup and are comfortable with the 10% fee.
You are just getting started and want free: Kit’s free tier at 10,000 subscribers is the strongest in this category. Beehiiv’s free tier is strong for newsletter-focused work.
—
The Platform Switch Problem
One thing nobody mentions when comparing email tools: switching is painful.
Migrating a list from one platform to another means exporting contacts, importing them somewhere new, rebuilding automation sequences from scratch, and accepting that your open rate history does not transfer. Warm subscribers can go cold during a migration if the timing is off.
Pick the right tool for where you are going, not just where you are today. A few hours of research now saves weeks of migration work later.
—