Best Free & Cheap Email Marketing Tools in 2026 - Complete Budget Guide

Free Plan: Brevo's pricing help page describes a Free plan that is free forever, with no card and no time limit: 300 email sends a day and storage for up to 100,000 contacts. It includes email and SMS campaigns, transactional email, basic reporting and multi-channel marketing automation for up to 2,000 contacts. Because the cap is daily, a month of steady sending is roughly 9,000 emails (300 a day over 30 days), but a 2,000-person newsletter takes about a week to go out in full. Steady flows suit it well: onboarding sequences, receipts and a small weekly digest. Large one-off blasts do not.

What You Pay: Paid plans are priced by the monthly email volume you select, not by contact count. Starter begins at $9 a month with no daily sending limit; its first tier covers 5,000 emails a month and stores up to 500 contacts. Standard begins at $18 a month and adds marketing automation for unlimited contacts, A/B testing and a landing page. Professional begins at $499 a month, which is far outside a low budget. Because the dollar figure for your own volume sits in a selector on the pricing page, read it there rather than trusting a third-party table. The advantage over subscriber-priced tools is that a large list you email lightly does not push the plan up a tier.

Costs That Show Up Later: Emails sent from the Starter plan carry a "Sent by Brevo" logo in the footer unless you buy the Remove Brevo logo add-on; the logo is not shown from Standard upward. Automation on the Free plan is limited to 2,000 contacts. SMS and WhatsApp use prepaid credits, which Brevo says never expire and start from 100 credits, so a team that adds SMS pays separately for it. A dedicated IP is an add-on too. Prepaid email credits are also offered; they give Starter features and carry the same 2,000-contact limit in automations.

Verdict: Brevo is the better pick than MailerLite when the contact list is big, you send lightly and you want SMS or a simple CRM in the same account, and Starter removes the daily cap for $9 a month. If you only need email for a few hundred people, MailerLite's tools are easier to learn; if your emails are triggered by Stripe or product events, Sequenzy does that more directly. The real budget decision is Starter at $9 versus Standard at $18: automation and A/B testing are the reason to step up.

Free Plan: Sequenzy's pricing page lists a free plan of 2,500 emails a month, with unlimited contacts and sending domains on every plan. That is fewer monthly sends than Brevo's free plan, where 300 a day adds up to roughly 9,000, but there is no limit on how many people you can store, so a SaaS with a long list of free-trial users and only a few lifecycle emails per person can sit on it for a while. Sequenzy is an email platform for SaaS companies that combines transactional and marketing email, so the free plan is a realistic place to test onboarding emails before you pay.

What You Pay: Pricing is by monthly email volume: $19 a month for 15,000 emails, $29 for 30,000, $49 for 60,000 and $99 for 120,000. At the first paid tier that is a little over a dollar per 1,000 emails if you use the whole allowance, which is far above raw infrastructure such as Amazon SES but includes the editor, automation builder and integrations. Because contacts are unlimited, the bill depends only on how much you send: a 10,000-subscriber list that receives about one and a half emails a month on average fits inside the $19 tier. That is the opposite of MailerLite, where the same list is $89 a month on Comfort.

What It Is Built For: Sequenzy's pages list integrations with Stripe, Paddle and Lemon Squeezy, among others, and describe segments built from plan, MRR and engagement data. Its homepage says that a Stripe invoice.payment_failed event starts a dunning email flow with a card-update page; the retries themselves stay in Stripe or Paddle, so Sequenzy sends the email and your billing system decides when to retry. The pricing page also lists revenue attribution, a visual automation builder and AI-generated email sequences among the included features. If your product does not feed billing events into email, those features add nothing for you.

Verdict: Sequenzy ranks third here because a general-purpose budget list is better served by MailerLite's bigger free feature set or Brevo's larger daily allowance. It moves to the front of the queue for a SaaS where billing events should trigger email: its free plan has no contact cap, and the $19 step is predictable. Before relying on it, confirm that your billing provider is on its integrations list and ask what happens when you send past your tier's email count, since the pricing page does not spell that out. For pure newsletters with no product data, you will not use what makes it different.

Free Plan: The Amazon SES pricing page no longer describes a permanent free allowance. New AWS customers receive up to $200 in Free Tier credits that can go toward SES, and at sign-up you can choose a free plan that lasts six months after account creation; if you upgrade to a paid plan, any remaining credit applies to your bill, and all credits must be used within 12 months. Older guides that promise tens of thousands of free emails a month from EC2 describe the previous scheme. More importantly, SES is sending infrastructure rather than a marketing product: you bring your own list storage, templates, unsubscribe handling and reporting, so the real cost of "free" is engineering time.

What You Pay: The Essentials plan is $0.16 per 1,000 emails for the first 10 million emails a month, with lower marginal rates at higher volume. Pro is $0.22 per 1,000 emails plus $105 per account per region per month, and adds managed dedicated IPs, email validation and deliverability reporting; Enterprise is $0.23 per 1,000 plus $500 a month. At the Essentials rate, 10,000 emails cost $1.60 and 100,000 cost $16, a fraction of what any hosted platform on this page charges for the same sends. The comparison is only fair if you also count the build: a developer who spends 40 hours on template management, a subscriber database, bounce and complaint handling, warm-up and reporting, at an assumed $100 an hour, has spent $4,000 before the first campaign goes out.

Costs That Show Up Later: Attachment data is billed per gigabyte on top of the per-email rate, and dedicated IPs are an add-on that you manage and warm up yourself unless you move to the Pro plan. New accounts start in a sandbox and have to request production access, which can delay a launch by days. Reputation is yours to protect: SES will not stop you from sending to a bad list, and a poorly configured account can damage deliverability. Support beyond the basics is a separate AWS charge. For a team with engineering capacity these are small items; for a founder who wants to write campaigns on Friday, they are the reason hosted tools cost more.

Verdict: Amazon SES is the cheapest way on this page to deliver an email, and it earns fourth place because it only suits teams that will build everything around it: transactional mail from your own app, or a custom sender where the volume is high enough to justify the work. If you send under about 50,000 emails a month and nobody on the team knows AWS, MailerLite, Brevo or Sequenzy will cost more per email and still cost less overall once you count the setup and maintenance. It is a power tool that rewards expertise; know which side of that line you are on before committing.

Free Plan: Buttondown's pricing page says it costs nothing for your first 100 subscribers. That base price includes a rich-text or markdown editor, sending from a custom domain and hosted newsletter archives. 100 subscribers is a small allowance next to MailerLite's 250 or Zoho's 2,000 contacts, but it is enough to test a newsletter idea and see whether people open it, and nothing about the free tier is a time-limited trial.

What You Pay: The page now works from a slider that asks about how many subscribers you have; the base price follows that number and only counts active subscribers, so people who stopped receiving your emails do not bill you. Everything beyond the base is sold as monthly add-ons: +$9 a month covers tagging and segmentation, paid subscriptions, comments and surveys, analytics, RSS-to-email, sponsorships and email attachments; +$29 a month covers archives on a custom domain, multiple newsletters and automations; +$79 a month covers whitelabeling and teams. Someone who wants segmentation and automations therefore pays $9 and $29 on top of the subscriber price. This page does not quote the subscriber price itself, because the slider has to be read at your own list size.

Costs That Show Up Later: The add-ons are the cost to watch. A plain newsletter can stay on the base price, but the moment you want tags, an RSS feed turned into email or a second publication, you are adding monthly lines, and automations are an add-on of their own, so a newsletter that grows into onboarding sequences gets pricier than it first looked. Buttondown is built around newsletters; if you need billing-triggered emails or transactional mail from an app, plan on a second tool, and compare Brevo or Sequenzy before stacking add-ons.

Verdict: Buttondown is a good fit for writers, developers and founders who want a plain, quiet newsletter tool and are happy with markdown. Its add-on structure means you pay for features only when you use them. It ranks fifth because the add-ons make it less predictable than flat plans, and because it is a newsletter tool rather than a general low-budget email platform; for marketing automation, triggered email or heavier segmentation, the tools above it do more for the same money.

Free Plan: Mailchimp's pricing page describes the Free plan as one seat and one audience with a maximum of 250 contacts and up to 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day. Those are small numbers: a 250-contact list gets two emails and the allowance is gone. It is enough to try the editor and collect your first signups, but not enough to run a real sending schedule. Compare it with MailerLite's 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails or Brevo's 300 emails a day, and Mailchimp's free plan is the tightest of the three on sends. Check the plan comparison on its page for which automation and testing features the Free plan includes before you build around it.

What You Pay: Standard starts at $20 a month at the default 500-contact selector, with up to 6,000 emails a month at that selector. Larger lists move into contact bands, and each band shows a first-year promotional price with a higher rate afterwards: 2,501-5,000 contacts is $50 a month for 12 months and then starts at $100; 5,001-10,000 contacts is $67.50 for 12 months and then starts at $135; 10,001-15,000 is $115 and then $230; and 20,001-25,000 is $155 and then $310. There is also a 14-day Standard trial. The takeaway for a budget is that the price you see on day one is half the price you will pay in month thirteen.

Costs That Show Up Later: Pricing is by contact, so list growth sets the bill, and the promotional rate expires after 12 months, which doubles it. Because the page leads with the promotional number, budget from the "then starts at" figure instead. Switching away later takes effort too: years of audiences, automations and integrations (Shopify, WooCommerce, Canva, Zapier and others are listed on the page) create the kind of lock-in that makes people stay on a plan that no longer suits them. Decide whether you need those integrations before you build on it.

Verdict: For a new project with a tight budget, Mailchimp is not the place to start: MailerLite and Brevo give more free room, and Sequenzy and Brevo price in ways that do not punish a big list. The reasons to choose it are specific, such as an integration you cannot get elsewhere or an existing account and audience you would rather not migrate. If you already use it, the numbers that matter are the contact band you are in and the date your promotional rate ends.

Free Plan: SendGrid sells two separate products, and each has its own free offer. The Marketing Campaigns page describes a free plan that stores up to 2,000 contacts and sends 6,000 emails a month. The Email API page offers a free trial of 100 emails a day for 60 days, with no card required. Many guides still call SendGrid's 100 emails a day "free forever"; on the current pricing page that is a 60-day trial, so plan for a paid API plan or a different provider once it ends. The marketing page describes its free offer as a plan rather than a trial, but its comparison table also shows a 60-day free trial, so confirm the current terms when you sign up.

What You Pay: On the API side, Essentials starts at $19.95 a month and its plan selector covers 50,000 to 100,000 emails a month; Pro starts at $89.95 and covers 100,000 to 2,500,000, with dedicated IPs included; Premier is custom. On the marketing side, Basic starts at $15 a month with a selector that goes up to 100,000 contacts and 300,000 emails; Advanced starts at $60 a month for up to 200,000 contacts and 1,000,000 emails, with dedicated IP access. Taxes and overages may apply on each. At the Essentials entry point, 50,000 emails for $19.95 is about $0.0004 per email, so sending-heavy transactional use is cheap per message.

Costs That Show Up Later: The main surprise is that marketing and transactional email are priced separately, so a team that wants both a newsletter tool and an API pays for two plans. The step from Essentials at $19.95 to Pro at $89.95 is also large, and it is the step where dedicated IPs come in. The email API plans are measured in tens of thousands of emails a month, so a small product that sends a few thousand transactional emails is paying for headroom it does not use. For a developer who wants reliable API delivery behind a product, that can be a fair trade; for someone writing a monthly newsletter, it is overhead.

Verdict: SendGrid suits developers who need a mature email API and are happy to pay once the 60-day trial ends, and teams that want a free marketing plan with 6,000 emails for a list under 2,000 contacts. It ranks seventh because the free API offer is a trial and because a budget team that needs both products ends up on two plans; MailerLite, Brevo and Sequenzy cover newsletters and lifecycle email in one account. Choose it when your priority is API reliability and the volume to justify it.

Free Plan: Elastic Email's pricing page lists a free email marketing plan for up to 1,000 contacts and up to 3,000 emails a month, with a separate limit of 100 emails a day. It is enough to test the platform and send a small newsletter to a few hundred people, but the daily cap means a 1,000-contact campaign takes ten days to complete. Support is free through the in-app messenger or email, with a response promised within 24 hours; paid, dedicated support is an add-on. Elastic Email also sells an Email API as a separate product, and you need a separate account to try it, so the numbers here are about the marketing product only.

What You Pay: The email marketing product is a monthly subscription based on how many contacts you store. Starter is $29 a month for up to 2,500 contacts and up to 37,500 emails a month, with a single automation. Pro is $49 a month for the same contact and send ceilings, adding advanced automation and user management. Divide the allowance and you get 15 emails per contact per month, which is the reason to consider it: it fits a small list that you email often, such as a daily or several-times-a-week newsletter, better than tools that cap sends per contact. Only active, engaged or transactional contacts count toward the limit, though a contact you unsubscribed or deleted mid-period still counts for that billing period.

Costs That Show Up Later: The Starter plan is limited to a single automation, so the first lifecycle sequence you add pushes you to Pro at $49, which is a jump of $20 a month for the same contacts and sends. Contact-based tiers mean list growth sets the bill, as with MailerLite. Paid dedicated support is its own add-on. Because the plan allows 37,500 emails to a 2,500-contact list, a team that sends a handful of emails a month to 2,500 people is paying for sending capacity it does not use, and a volume-priced tool will come out cheaper.

Verdict: Elastic Email is a niche pick on this page: a good one if you run a small, active list that gets many emails and you want a price that does not rise with each send. For the typical SaaS list with occasional broadcasts and a few lifecycle flows, MailerLite, Brevo or Sequenzy fit better and give you more automation on the cheaper end. It sits eighth because its Starter plan at $29 costs more than the first paid plans of the tools above it and offers only one automation.

Free Plan: Moosend's pricing page offers a 30-day free trial with no credit card, not a permanent free plan. The trial covers the core features, including the email builder, templates, an AI writer, automations, segmentation, and landing page and form design, with unlimited sends for up to 1,000 contacts. When it ends you can subscribe or buy email credits, and the account and its data stay intact until you decide. For a budget team that is the main drawback: MailerLite, Brevo, Sequenzy and Zoho Campaigns let you run indefinitely at small scale for nothing, while Moosend gives you a month.

What You Pay: There are two ways to pay. Subscriptions are set by a contact-band selector that starts below 500 contacts and runs to more than 250,000; the dollar figure for your band is on the pricing page, and this page does not quote it. Prepaid credits are sold in packs: 350,000 email credits for $350, 500,000 for $500, 750,000 for $750 and 1,000,000 for $1,000. Each credit is one email to one recipient, credits never expire, and the credit option comes with unlimited subscribers. That works out to one dollar per thousand emails, roughly six times what Amazon SES charges at $0.16, so credits are a convenience for seasonal senders rather than a bargain.

Costs That Show Up Later: The smallest credit pack is $350, which is a large upfront payment for a team on a tight budget, even if the credits never expire. On subscriptions, the bill follows list size, and Moosend counts unique email addresses, so someone who sits on several lists is billed once. The pricing page lists dedicated IPs, custom reports, SSO and an account manager under its custom-priced Moosend+ and Enterprise plans, so deliverability and reporting extras are not part of the cheap end. If you only need basic newsletters, those extras are irrelevant; if you outgrow the plan, the step up is a sales conversation.

Verdict: Moosend is a reasonable automation tool if you are ready to pay from the first month, but on a low budget the lack of a free plan and the size of the smallest credit pack put it ninth. Validate your list on MailerLite, Brevo or Zoho Campaigns first, then compare Moosend's subscription price for your contact band against Brevo's Standard and MailerLite's Comfort when your list is ready to grow. It also suits a business that sends in bursts, such as holiday campaigns, where non-expiring credits avoid paying for months you do not send.

Free Plan: SMTP2GO's pricing page lists a free plan of 1,000 emails a month, limited to 200 emails a day, which the page describes as being for testing low volumes. Extra emails are not permitted on the free plan, so reaching either cap stops sending rather than billing you. That makes it safe for a staging environment, a side project or a hobby app, and too small for anything with real traffic. It is a delivery service, so there is no newsletter builder or list tool behind the free plan.

What You Pay: Starter is $15 a month for 10,000 emails, with extra emails at $1.20 per thousand, 30 days of reporting, and ticket, chat and phone support. Professional is $75 a month, or $750 billed yearly, for 100,000 emails, with a dedicated IP address and email testing tools, and extra emails at $0.85 per thousand. Spread across the included volume, that is $1.50 per thousand emails on Starter and $0.75 on Professional, so plan size matters more than plan name. On Starter, 80,000 emails would cost $15 plus $84 of overage, $99 in all, against $75 on Professional.

Costs That Show Up Later: Overage is the number to model: a quiet month stays inside the allowance, but a busy one on Starter adds the per-thousand charge on every email past 10,000, so check how much your month-to-month volume varies before choosing a size. SMTP2GO does not replace a marketing platform, so a team that needs a newsletter, segmentation or automation pays for a second tool on top. Dedicated IPs are part of the Professional plan, which is a large step from $15 to $75.

Verdict: SMTP2GO is a solid choice when the job is reliable delivery for an application and you do not want to run SES yourself. It sits tenth on this list because most low-budget buyers need a marketing tool too: for a SaaS that wants both transactional and marketing email in one account, Brevo or Sequenzy do both under one login. Choose SMTP2GO when email is infrastructure behind your product and you value a plain SMTP relay with support, over a campaign editor.

Free Plan: Zoho Campaigns' pricing page lists a Forever Free plan with up to 2,000 contacts, 6,000 emails a month and five users, plus list management, templates with drag and drop, HTML import and generative AI, 35 app integrations and basic reporting. That is a bigger contact allowance than MailerLite's or Mailchimp's free plans, and a 6,000-email monthly cap is enough for a newsletter to a couple of thousand people twice a month. The page also advertises a 14-day free trial of the paid plans with no card.

What You Pay: Standard starts at $3 a month billed annually at the 500-contact tier, and Professional at $4.50 a month billed annually; the page's yearly toggle is labelled as saving 25%, so monthly billing costs more. Standard adds unlimited emails, ten users, basic segmentation, over 120 templates, A/B testing, basic drag-and-drop workflows and advanced analytics, according to the plan list. The price steps up with the contact band you pick in the selector, so read the figure for your own list size there; this page quotes only the entry prices. Even so, the entry price is the lowest monthly subscription on this page.

Costs That Show Up Later: The $3 headline is the 500-contact entry price on an annual commitment, so a team that wants to pay monthly, or has a bigger list, should expect more. The free plan caps at 6,000 emails a month, and the unlimited-email allowance only arrives with a paid plan. Zoho's integration list (35 apps on Free, more than 40 on the paid plans) is shorter than what the larger platforms advertise, which matters if your stack is not Zoho. Add-ons such as SMS, WhatsApp and a dedicated IP are listed separately on the pricing page.

Verdict: Zoho Campaigns is the right pick for a team already on Zoho CRM or other Zoho products, and for micro-businesses that want the lowest possible paid entry price and can pay annually. For standalone email marketing, MailerLite and Brevo are easier places to start and Sequenzy is the more direct fit for billing-triggered SaaS email, so it sits last on this list: the saving is real but the ecosystem fit is what decides it. Check the integration list against your stack before you commit.