Free Email Marketing Tools: When Each Free Plan Runs Out

Free email marketing tools with a free plan that never expires include Mailchimp, MailerLite, Brevo, Kit, Sender and EmailOctopus. Contact caps run from 250 on Mailchimp and MailerLite to 100,000 on Brevo; send caps from 500 a month on Mailchimp to unlimited broadcasts on Kit.

Choose by the list you will have in six to twelve months and how often you will email it. Sending weekly, only Mailchimp runs out of sends before contacts; on the other five, list size sets the date.

A new weekly newsletter that gains 15 sign-ups a week outgrows Mailchimp's free plan in its third month and Sender's in its 42nd.

Free email marketing tools compared: the free plan limits

Limits as each tool published them on 25 October 2026. Contacts are the people you can store; automation means emails that send themselves, such as a series that greets new subscribers.

Every tool in the table tells you to send from a domain you own. Sender requires one from the first send, and MailerLite once its 14-day trial ends, because it can't authenticate a Gmail address. So a free start often means buying a domain.

Mailchimp, Brevo and EmailOctopus accept a Gmail address but send from their own domain instead. On Mailchimp, the From address becomes something like [email protected], and replies still reach your inbox.

The swap follows Gmail's own rule: Google's email sender guidelines tell senders not to impersonate Gmail addresses in the From line, and warn that such mail can be quarantined.

The logo column is the same everywhere: each tool brands the emails its free users send, and only paying removes it.

Klaviyo, built for online shops, also has a free plan: 250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, with its logo in the footer.

Check the date on any list of free email marketing tools you read. Until 16 June 2026, MailerLite's free plan allowed 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails a month, so older pages still quote those limits.

How long a weekly newsletter lasts on each free plan

A free plan can stop you on contacts, on monthly sends or on a daily cap. We worked it out for a business we made up: a board-game café opening in Swindon.

It collects 15 sign-ups a week at the counter and online, and emails everyone every Friday.

Free plan	Limit the café reaches first	Newsletter that can't go out in full	Month
Mailchimp	500 sends a month	The 12th, to 180 people, with 50 sends left	3
MailerLite	250 active subscribers	The 17th, to 255 people	5
Brevo	300 sends a day	The 21st, to 315 people: 15 wait for a manual resend	6
Sender	2,500 subscribers	The 167th, to 2,505 people	42
EmailOctopus	2,500 subscribers	The 167th, to 2,505 people	42
Kit	10,000 subscribers	The 667th, to 10,005 people	167

Mailchimp stops the café while its list holds 180 people, long before Mailchimp's 250-contact cap comes into play. Klaviyo's 500 monthly sends end at the same 12th newsletter.

Frequency moves the date. Sending every other Friday would push Mailchimp's stop from month 3 to month 5, when the 250 contacts take over.

MailerLite pauses campaigns and automations at the 251st active subscriber. Its 2,500 monthly emails alone would have lasted until month 11. Only active subscribers fill those 250 places, one of the rules behind MailerLite's plans and limits.

Brevo never blocks the café outright. From month 6, each newsletter needs a second day and a click on Requeue. In month 36 the list passes 2,100, and seven days of 300 sends no longer cover one Friday email.

At six months the café has 360 subscribers and sends 1,350 emails a month. At twelve it has 720 and sends 2,790. By the six-month mark, only Kit, Sender and EmailOctopus still carry its newsletter without manual work.

Kit lasts longest, almost 13 years at this rate, but its visual automations and sequences need a paid plan. Until the café pays, new sign-ups get no automatic welcome email series.

How to test the limits against your own list

Run this sum with your own numbers, twelve months ahead. Five checks settle it.

Two patterns come out of these numbers. A list of up to 10,000 emailed now and then, with no welcome series, fits Kit Free. Brevo stores ten times as many, but one email to 3,000 people takes ten days.

A small list emailed often, with a welcome series, lasts longest on Sender or EmailOctopus.

The café's newsletter on MailGraf

MailGraf has no free plan. Its paid plans are priced by monthly sends, as Brevo's are, while the other five tools above price by list size.

For the café, that turns just over three years of growth into two plans:

Café's months	Sends in its busiest month	MailGraf plan	Price
1 to 21	4,950	5K a month	$190 a year, billed yearly only
22 to 42	9,990	10K a month	$29 a month, or $290 a year

Passing 2,500 subscribers in month 42 changes nothing on that bill. Owning a domain is not a condition either: you can send from a MailGraf-managed domain until you buy one.

Compare those paid allowances on the pricing page before moving off a free plan.