MailerLite Pricing Plans Broken Down So You Know What You're Paying For

The Short Answer Before the Long One

MailerLite has four pricing plans: Free, Growing Business, Advanced, and Enterprise. Paid plans start at $10 per month. The price you pay scales with your subscriber count, not your email volume - all paid plans include unlimited sends.

But the headline price is only part of the story. The billing rules, the feature gates between tiers, and how MailerLite stacks up against what Mailchimp and Kit charge for the same list size - that's where you decide.

This article covers all of it.

The Four MailerLite Pricing Plans at a Glance

Here is what each plan costs at the entry level and what it gives you:

Annual billing cuts 10% off all paid plans. The Growing Business plan drops to $9 per month and the Advanced plan to $18 per month when you pay annually.

Now let's go tier by tier so you know exactly what you're getting - and what you're not.

The Free Plan: Useful, But With a Hard Wall

The free plan lets you send up to 12,000 emails per month to up to 500 subscribers at no cost. It includes automation, landing pages (up to 10), a website builder, sign-up forms, and A/B testing. That is a genuine set of tools - more than most free tiers offer.

First, the MailerLite logo stays on every email you send. You cannot remove it without upgrading. Second, you get no access to email templates or landing page templates - you build from scratch or use basic blocks. Third, support is limited after the first 30 days on the free plan.

The biggest catch is the subscriber ceiling. The free plan was cut from 1,000 to 500 subscribers in late . If your list crosses 500, sending locks completely. You cannot send campaigns, run automations, or manually add subscribers until you either trim your list back under 500 or upgrade to a paid plan. Your forms and landing pages keep collecting signups - you just cannot email any of them.

For anyone actively growing a list, 500 subscribers is a short runway. I've watched people hit that ceiling within a few months of getting any traction. The free plan works well as a testing environment or a starting point, but it is not a long-term home.

One thing the free plan does give you: a 14-day trial of full Advanced-tier features. No credit card required. That means you get access to every feature MailerLite offers - templates, live chat support, unlimited users, the AI writing assistant - for two weeks before you have to choose a plan. Use it.

Growing Business Plan: The Plan Most People Need

The Growing Business plan starts at $10 per month for up to 500 subscribers and scales up from there. Here is the full subscriber-based pricing breakdown:

The per-subscriber cost drops 58% as you scale from 500 to 50,000. MailerLite gets cheaper per contact the larger your list grows - which is the opposite of what most platforms do.

What Growing Business unlocks over the free plan:

• MailerLite branding removed from all emails
• Unlimited websites and landing pages (vs. 10 on free)
• Newsletter and landing page templates
• RSS campaigns and Auto-Resend campaigns
• Dynamic email content
• Ability to sell digital products directly from MailerLite pages
• 24/7 email support
• Up to 3 account users

The Growing Business plan is the right choice for solo operators, small teams, content creators, and any business with a list under 10,000 that does not need unlimited team seats or advanced automation triggers.

The plan's main limits: you do not get live chat support (email only), you cannot use the custom HTML editor, and you are capped at 3 users. If you are running an agency or have a team larger than three people who need account access, Growing Business is not the plan for you.

Advanced Plan: When the Team Gets Involved

The Advanced plan starts at $20 per month for up to 500 subscribers. Here is how it scales:

At 5,000 subscribers, Advanced costs $10 more per month than Growing Business. At 50,000 subscribers, that difference is $60 per month. The price difference between tiers grows as your list grows - but so does the value of the features you're unlocking.

What Advanced unlocks over Growing Business:

• Unlimited account users (the 3-user cap is gone)
• Custom HTML editor for complete email design control
• Multiple automation triggers (vs. single trigger in Growing Business)
• AI writing assistant
• Facebook custom audience sync
• Promotional pop-ups
• Unsubscribe page builder
• Password-protected website pages
• 24/7 live chat support (vs. email only)
• 15% off Google Workspace
• 35% off Termly compliance suite

The live chat support is not a small detail. If you are running email campaigns at scale and something breaks - a sequence misfires, a segment gets corrupted - waiting for an email response costs you money. Advanced gives you live chat at any hour.

Advanced is the right choice for agencies managing multiple clients, growing e-commerce brands, and any team with more than three people who need account access. It is also the smart choice if you need Facebook Custom Audiences for retargeting - that integration is Advanced-only.

Enterprise Plan: For Lists Over 100,000

Enterprise is for businesses with over 100,000 subscribers. There is no published price - you contact the sales team and get a custom quote based on your subscriber count and what add-on services you need.

What Enterprise adds beyond Advanced:

• Dedicated Customer Success Manager
• Dedicated IP address
• Email deliverability consultation
• Onboarding and training
• Landing page and newsletter design services
• Account audits

The dedicated IP matters at this scale. When you are sending to 100,000 or more people, your sending reputation is everything. A shared IP means your deliverability is influenced by what every other MailerLite sender does. A dedicated IP means you own your reputation entirely.

The opacity of Enterprise pricing is worth acknowledging. If you are evaluating it, get specific numbers on what deliverability consultation and design services include before you sign. Custom pricing means negotiation is possible.

How MailerLite Counts Subscribers (The Billing Rule That Surprises People)

I see this trip people up constantly, and it matters more as your list gets messier.

MailerLite bills based only on active subscribers. Unsubscribed contacts and bounced addresses do not count toward your limit. That is a genuine advantage over platforms like Mailchimp, which bill you for unsubscribed and duplicate contacts - meaning your Mailchimp bill keeps climbing even when your active list is flat.

The wrinkle: MailerLite uses a cumulative count within a billing cycle. Any email address that was active at any point during the billing period counts toward your limit - even if you delete that contact before your billing date. Your count resets on your billing anniversary each month.

What this means in practice: if you import a big list, send to it once, and then clean out the non-openers before your billing date, MailerLite still counts those people. You cannot game the billing system by doing mid-cycle list purges.

On paid plans: if you exceed your subscriber tier, MailerLite automatically upgrades you to the next pricing tier and charges your card. You get a notification before this happens, but there is no hard block - the upgrade goes through automatically.

On the free plan: if you hit 501 active subscribers, sending locks completely. No automatic upgrade. You either reduce the list or you pay.

MailerLite vs. Mailchimp vs. Kit: Real Cost Comparison

The number that matters is not the entry price - it is what you pay at your specific list size. Here is what each platform costs at 5,000 and 10,000 subscribers:

At 5,000 Subscribers

At 10,000 Subscribers

At 10,000 subscribers, MailerLite Growing Business saves $80 per month versus Mailchimp Standard. That is $960 per year for a comparable feature set. Against Kit Creator at the same list size, MailerLite saves $45 per month - $540 per year.

The Mailchimp comparison has another layer beyond the sticker price. Mailchimp also imposes monthly send limits on its lower plans and charges overage fees when you exceed them. MailerLite's paid plans have no send limits. If you send frequently - multiple campaigns per week, active automation sequences - Mailchimp's overage costs stack on top of the already-higher base price.

At 2,500 subscribers, MailerLite's $25 per month Advanced plan competes with Mailchimp plans that run $69 per month for the same subscriber count. That is $44 per month for a relatively small list size.

The Free Plan Comparison: Who Offers What at $0

If you are trying to stay on a free plan as long as possible, here is what each platform gives you:

Kit wins on raw subscriber count - 10,000 free is the most generous in the category. But Kit's free plan does not include automation. If your strategy depends on welcome sequences or drip campaigns, Kit's free plan will not get you there.

Mailchimp's free plan sends only 1,000 emails per month to 500 subscribers. That is 2 emails to your whole list per month before you hit the ceiling. It has also become progressively more restricted over time, with automations removed from the free tier.

MailerLite's free plan includes a working automation builder, landing pages, and a website. The automation is the differentiator. You can build a real welcome sequence, a lead magnet delivery sequence, or a basic nurture flow at $0 per month. No other major platform gives you that combination at the free tier.

The trade-off is the 500-subscriber cap. Brevo lets you store unlimited contacts on its free plan, though the 300-emails-per-day limit is a serious constraint for any active sender. If you just need a place to store contacts without emailing them often, Brevo's free plan is worth knowing about. If you need to send to a growing list, MailerLite's free plan is more functional until you hit that ceiling.

What Triggers the Decision to Upgrade

Upgrades happen because of a specific feature locked behind a higher tier, not because of pricing.

The most common triggers:

Free to Growing Business: You hit 500 subscribers and sending locks. Or you get tired of the MailerLite logo on your emails. Or you need access to templates. Any one of these pushes the upgrade.

Growing Business to Advanced: You add a fourth team member who needs account access. You want live chat support. You need Facebook Custom Audiences for retargeting. You need multiple automation triggers for more complex sequences. These upgrade decisions come down to features, not the $10 price difference.

The pattern that shows up repeatedly in community discussions is that people who mention Klaviyo being too expensive specifically look at MailerLite as the mid-ground option. MailerLite's e-commerce automation is less granular, there are no native cart abandonment flows with product merge tags, and segmentation is simpler. For businesses that do not need Klaviyo's depth, MailerLite's Advanced plan covers the use case at a fraction of the price.

One pattern worth watching: users with growing lists who consider switching to Beehiiv are rarely doing it because of price. In community discussions, the switch trigger is access to Beehiiv's ad monetization marketplace - a feature MailerLite does not offer. If newsletter monetization through ads is part of your business model, no pricing difference fixes that.

The Discount Stack: How to Pay Less

MailerLite offers a few legitimate ways to reduce what you pay:

Annual billing: 10% off all paid plans. Growing Business drops from $10 to $9 per month. Advanced drops from $20 to $18. Not a massive discount, but it adds up. At the 10,000-subscriber tier on Growing Business, that is about $66 saved per year.

Nonprofit discount: 30% off for qualifying organizations. You need to provide documentation - an IRS tax certificate or equivalent for non-US organizations. This is one of the more generous nonprofit discounts in the email marketing space.

The rule: discounts cannot be stacked. You pick one. Annual billing gets you 10% off. The nonprofit discount gets you 30% off. Choose based on which saves more.

There is also a referral and affiliate program available for agencies and freelancers. It is not a multi-account discount, but if you are recommending MailerLite to clients regularly, the affiliate structure is worth understanding.

The 14-Day Trial Is More Valuable Than It Sounds

When you create a new MailerLite account - free or paid - you get a 14-day trial of full Advanced-tier features. No credit card required.

This includes access to every feature MailerLite offers: 100-plus email templates, live chat support, the AI writing assistant, unlimited users, Facebook audience sync, promotional pop-ups, and the custom HTML editor.

The smart move is to use this trial window to build out your core automations and email sequences before your trial ends. Set up your welcome sequence, your lead magnet delivery, your basic nurture flow. Build the templates you want to reuse. Get your integrations connected.

If you do this during the 14-day window, you can drop to Growing Business at $10 per month and keep everything you built running - the automations you set up during the trial do not disappear when you downgrade. You only lose access to features that require Advanced if you try to edit or create new workflows using Advanced-only triggers.

Who Each Plan Is For

Free plan: Solopreneurs and bloggers starting from zero. Works as a testing environment and a real starting point. Outgrows fast - plan on upgrading before you hit 500 subscribers or accept that sending will lock.

Growing Business: Small businesses, 1-to-3-person teams, content creators, newsletter operators with under 50,000 subscribers who do not need unlimited team seats or live chat. This is the plan most MailerLite users land on and stay on for years. The value-to-cost ratio is strong through the 10,000-subscriber range.

Advanced: Agencies, growing e-commerce brands, teams with more than three people who all need account access, and any sender who relies on Facebook Custom Audiences for retargeting. Also the right call if you want live chat support and cannot afford to wait hours for an email response when something goes wrong.

Enterprise: Brands with lists over 100,000 who need a dedicated IP, hands-on deliverability support, and account management. If you are at this scale, deliverability is the cost of business - the dedicated infrastructure that comes with Enterprise is what you are buying.

Building a List to Email: The Lead Generation Side

MailerLite pricing decisions get a lot easier when your list is growing predictably. The jump from Free to Growing Business is $10 per month - the same as two cups of coffee. If your list is stuck under 500 and not moving, the pricing plan is not the problem.

Lead generation is the problem. Cold outreach at scale, targeted B2B prospecting, reaching decision-makers in specific industries - that is where growth comes from before it shows up as a subscriber count.

If you need to build a contact list before you even have an email platform to send to, tools like ScraperCity let you search millions of B2B contacts by title, industry, location, and company size - then verify emails before you send. Starting at $49 per month with a free trial, it is worth understanding the cold outreach side of list growth before you invest in email platform upgrades.

One agency operator documented building initial prospecting lists of 100 leads with a 68% valid email rate - meaning the list quality coming in directly affects how many active subscribers you are billing for inside MailerLite. Cleaner input lists mean lower billing tier and better deliverability. Both outcomes are worth paying attention to.

The Billing Question Everyone Forgets to Ask

When you compare MailerLite to competitors, there is a structural difference in how billing works.

Mailchimp bills you for unsubscribed and duplicate contacts. Your subscriber count in Mailchimp is not your active list - it is everyone who has ever been on your list, including the people who left. That means your bill climbs independently of whether you are actually emailing more people.

MailerLite bills only for active subscribers. If someone unsubscribes or bounces, they stop counting toward your plan limit. On a list that has normal churn - which every active email list does - this means MailerLite's effective cost is lower than the subscriber count comparison suggests.

Also unique to MailerLite among most competitors: if a subscriber is in multiple segments, you are only billed for them once. You are not penalized for building granular segmentation.

At 10,000 subscribers with normal churn patterns, the difference between billing for active contacts versus billing for all contacts can easily represent one full pricing tier.

Switching to MailerLite: What the Migration Looks Like

MailerLite has a 1-click Mailchimp importer. You connect your Mailchimp account, and it pulls your subscriber list, tags, and basic segment structure. The migration takes minutes, not days.

What does not migrate automatically: complex automation logic, custom templates that rely on Mailchimp-specific merge tags, and any campaigns in draft status. You rebuild those inside MailerLite - but the drag-and-drop editor is fast enough that rebuilding a standard welcome sequence takes less than an hour.

The 14-day Advanced trial covers your entire migration window. You can import your list, rebuild your automations with full access to Advanced features, test deliverability, and confirm everything is running before you pay a dollar.

One thing to note for teams switching from Kit: Kit is text-focused and does not have a drag-and-drop editor. MailerLite's drag-and-drop editor is a meaningful upgrade for anyone who wants visual email design without coding. The trade-off is that Kit has a more developed creator monetization ecosystem - paid newsletters, sponsorships, and digital product sales through Kit's commerce layer are more polished than MailerLite's equivalent tools.

Summary: Which Plan to Choose

If you are under 500 subscribers and just getting started: use the free plan, run the 14-day trial to set up your automations, then stay free until sending locks.

If you have a list between 500 and 10,000 subscribers and your team is three people or fewer: Growing Business at $10 to $55 per month is where the strongest value is. You get unlimited sends, templates, and a functioning email marketing stack for less than most competitors charge for basic plans.

If you have a team larger than three, need Facebook Custom Audiences, or run complex multi-trigger automation flows: Advanced at $20 to $270 per month is the right tier. The jump from Growing Business is small at lower subscriber counts and becomes more meaningful at scale - but so does what you are unlocking.

If you are at 100,000 subscribers and above: talk to Enterprise. The dedicated IP and Customer Success Manager are the product at that scale, not the email editor.

The feature gating is what requires attention. Know which feature is the deciding factor for your business and pick the plan that includes it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does MailerLite charge for unsubscribed contacts?

No. MailerLite only bills for active subscribers. Contacts who have unsubscribed or bounced do not count toward your plan limit. This is a structural advantage over Mailchimp, which bills for all contacts including unsubscribed ones.

What happens if I go over my subscriber limit on a paid plan?

On paid plans, MailerLite automatically upgrades you to the next pricing tier and charges your card. You get a notification before this happens, but there is no hard block. On the free plan, sending locks completely once you hit 501 active subscribers.

Can I stack the annual discount with the nonprofit discount?

No. MailerLite applies only one discount at a time. You choose either the 10% annual billing discount or the 30% nonprofit discount - not both.

What does the 14-day trial include?

The 14-day trial gives you full Advanced-tier access - every feature MailerLite offers, including templates, live chat support, the AI writing assistant, unlimited users, Facebook audience sync, and the custom HTML editor. No credit card required to start.

Is MailerLite cheaper than Mailchimp for the same list size?

Yes, significantly. At 10,000 subscribers, MailerLite Growing Business costs $55 per month versus $135 per month for Mailchimp Standard. That is an $80 per month difference - $960 per year. That price difference holds across every subscriber tier.

What is the difference between Growing Business and Advanced?

The main differences are user seats (3 vs. unlimited), support type (email vs. live chat), automation triggers (single vs. multiple), and access to the custom HTML editor and Facebook Custom Audiences. The Advanced plan starts at $20 per month versus $10 for Growing Business.

Can I downgrade from Advanced to Growing Business?

Yes. You can switch plans at any time in your billing settings. Downgrading takes effect at the end of your current billing cycle - you keep Advanced access until the period you paid for ends. Automations you built with Advanced-only triggers will continue running but cannot be edited without re-upgrading.