Simple to use software benefiting from email automation, advanced segmentation, RSS campaigns and A/B testing, all very rare for a free plan.
OVERALL RATING: Best Free Plan
We’ve tested MailerLite’s features to see how they match up against other email marketing software platforms. We have all the information you need to decide for yourself whether MailerLite is right for you and your business.
Who is MailerLite best suited for? Perfect if you are on a tight budget, MailerLite allows users to benefit from email automation, advanced segmentation, RSS campaigns and A/B testing, rare for a free plan.
Pros
+ Amazing free plan
+ Simple enough to use
Cons
- A long initial approval process
- No phone access to customer support team
New kids on the block, blossoming from its roots as a web design agency formed in 2005 the MailerLite email marketing tool was born in 2010, making them fresh players in the email marketing game.
Despite this, MailerLite has grown exponentially thanks to its clean, simple, easy-to-use interface and competitive pricing, even being named by SaaS Magazine as the 5th fastest growing SaaS business worldwide.
Now, MailerLite sends more than 1 billion emails each month, for well over a million businesses.
Is MailerLite right for your startup or small business? Read our impartial review to find out.
Offering a wide range of choices when it comes to things like email campaigns, landing pages and form options, coupled with their fast and simple editor, MailerLite really feels like the email marketing dream when you are enjoying their ‘Free Forever’ plan.
Navigating around the dashboard is simple enough, you can view a number of useful metrics such as the number of unique active subscribers you have, subscriber growth, the number of sign-ups you've received during the month among more.
To create a new email campaign, you can navigate to a tab navigated in the top left corner of the page, or simply click the unmissable 'Create Campaign' button in the top right corner of your dashboard.
Then, you'll be taken to a page where you can input your subject line, 'from' name and the language that you want. You can choose to create a regular campaign, A/B split campaign, auto resend campaign or RSS campaign by clicking on the relevantly labelled tab and inputting this information in the form provided.
After inputting this information, you can click 'Next' which will take you to a page where you can choose which editor you want to use to create your email campaign: the drag-and-drop editor, rich-text editor or custom HTML editor (only available with the paid plans).
With the drag-and-drop editor - which tends to be the common preference - you're provided with a template complete with a huge range of content blocks that you can edit, delete or rearrange.
On the left-hand side of the screen, you'll be presented with a large selection of different types of content blocks which you can scroll through, including 'logo', 'title', 'highlight article', 'highlight video', 'survey' and many more that you can simply drag and drop into your email draft. Alternatively, you can use the drop-down menu shown at the top to search for a specific block.
It's worth mentioning that MailerLite has an extensive range of content blocks including the ability to directly include social media posts in your emails - something which few of their competitors offer.
You can also change the background, title and main text colour of each of these blocks easily, by clicking what you want to change and editing the feature with options displayed on the right.
If you add something or make an alteration that you're unhappy with, then you can easily amend your email by clicking on the history icon located at the top right of the page and undoing specific actions that you've completed. You also have the option to remove all the content blocks and start from scratch if you so choose.
Also located at the top right of the screen is the 'preview' button, which allows you to see what your creation will look like as an email, in addition to the option to send a test email so that you can double-check that your email content comes through as you expect it to, before you send it to your subscribers.
When you're happy with the email you've created, you can click 'done editing'. Then, you'll be taken to the lists of email subscribers you've created, so that you can choose which audience to send your email to. On the other hand, you can click the option 'all active subscribers' to send the email to all of your contacts.
The next step is: review and confirm, which is pretty self-explanatory before we move on to email scheduling, where you can choose to send your email immediately or later - at a time and date of your choice. If you're using a paid plan, you can also deliver the email based on the individual time zones of your subscribers - though, in this case, your email needs to be set 24 hours in advance.
If you have Google Analytics on your website, you can integrate this with the MailerLite email marketing software, and a multitude of other integration opportunities are made possible by the platform’s developer API, as one of the most integrative emailing platforms available.
Then, all that's left to do is to press send.
In terms of deliverability, MailerLite bodes pretty well. In 2020, it was reported that 65.31% of emails sent through MailerLite were delivered to the recipient's main inbox. Their deliverability may, in part, be due to the extensive approval process that all their customers have to go through before they use MailerLite to carry out their email marketing.
If you want to supercharge your emails' deliverability, MailerLite offers an add-on that provides you with a dedicated IP, which MailerLite recommends for those sending more than 50,000 emails per week.
In terms of reporting, MailerLite has the basics, which are displayed in an aesthetically clean and easy-to-navigate dashboard. This includes your total emails sent, the percentage of emails opened, the percentage of subscribers who clicked on a link in the email, as well as how these people read your emails (from webmail, mobile or computer).
Moreover, you can track the opening and clicking habits of individual subscribers, and you can view the number of total and unique clicks on each link you've embedded into your email.
Additionally, you'll be able to see the percentage of emails that are hard bounced, soft bounced and the percentage of people who have unsubscribed from your emails or newsletters.
MailerLite pricing plans increase in cost according to the number of subscribers/contacts you have, rather than on the features available.
So, once you pay for any of the platform’s pricing plans, MailerLite offers access to all of the email marketing features that MailerLite has to offer, regardless of the plan you choose - the only difference in the range of features offered is between the free and paid plans.
With the free plan, users can send emails to up to 1,000 subscribers and send a maximum of 12,000 emails per month.
Offering a generous free plan, MailerLite also allows their customers to benefit from email automation, advanced segmentation, the ability to create RSS campaigns and to A/B test their email campaigns, which is rare for a free plan from an email marketing platform.
MailerLite free plan users can also track the results of their email campaign reports and surveys, through a selection of more advanced analytics is available in the paid plan.
On top of this, the free plan allows users to create landing pages from a selection of customisable templates with a range of security features, which can be embedded with their own surveys and quizzes. You will also be able to access analytics relating to the performance of your landing pages.
With MailerLite's paid plans, users can send an unlimited number of emails to their contacts, with a range of paid plans in between and beyond.
When creating your email campaigns you’ll be able to access the custom HTML editor, and a number of newsletter templates to aid your newsletter creation process. Your emails won’t contain the MailerLite logo though.
When sending those emails, a paid plan allows you to deliver by time zone and MailerLite auto resends your emails if they don’t deliver the first time. When you come to track your results, the paid plans grant access to click maps and opens by location, on top of the basic tracking results afforded by the free plan.
Moreover, while embeddable signup forms are available to both free and paying MailerLite users, paid plan buyers also have the option to create and embed pop-up promotions.
In terms of landing pages, paid users are able to benefit from a customisable favicon, the option to create templates, unlimited domains and additional analytics. In addition to all the support given in the free plan, the MailerLite paid plans offer live chat support 24/7. Additionally, MailerLite customers can purchase add-ons for a monthly fee.
These include SitesPro, which allows you to publish as many websites and landing pages as you like, using their site-building tools for $10 a month; MailerPro, which grants priority support via email or live chat, and a dedicated MailerLite manager to help you, import subscribers, create email templates and more for $100 per month and; a Dedicated IP, to improve deliverability by providing you with an exclusive sending reputation for $50 per month.
MailerLite is the perfect email marketing software for those who have a smaller budget, but still want a tool that does more than just send emails. Great for bloggers, small businesses and startups that like a clean email interface.
So, is MailerLite any good? Yes! We certainly think so. MailerLite provides an intuitive automation editor that comes in handy when you need to build simple personalisation workflows.
MailerLite allows you to grow your mailing list using landing pages, popups, and forms. But that's not it. This email marketing tool is full of surprises. Because not only can you create landing pages, but you can also launch a website using MailerLite. If you’re not confident with designing your site, there are templates available making it possible to publish a site in under an hour.
We aren't huge fans of the initial approval process, it’s extremely strict and might take some time. You won’t be able to access MailerLite’s customer support team via phone either, which is an issue for some people.
With an intuitive, clear, ergonomic design, MailerLite makes creating email campaigns and sending newsletters easy for anyone, from the absolute beginner to the email marketing pro, with video tutorials to support you every step of the way.
MailerLite has a generous free plan which offers a range of typically premium-only features, which are great for those who have a small subscriber base but would benefit from the more advanced email marketing features. Moreover, their paid plans are super affordable and perfect for small, budget-conscious businesses. For larger businesses with over 50k contacts, however, MailerLite can become more pricey.
Overall, MailerLite is a great choice for small businesses and even medium businesses with its biggest selling point being its ease of use and logical structure that makes email marketing stress-free even for those with little experience. However, for rapidly growing SMBs or larger businesses, the accumulated price for sending emails to a larger number of subscribers might be more budget-friendly on another platform.
Yes! How to add MailerLite to WordPress? To integrate your accounts:
Go to the top right dropdown menu and choose ‘Integrations’
Choose ‘WordPress’ and copy the account API key at the bottom of the page
Log into your WordPress dashboard
Go to ‘Plugins’
Add New and search for MailerLite
Yes, and it's pretty simple as well. MailerLite allows you to create an embedded form or pop-up on Facebook. You just head to Integrations (click on the main dropdown menu next to your account name) and select Facebook. Log in to your Facebook account and authorise the connection.
Not that easy with MailerLite unfortunately. MailerLite only allows you to upload images to the MailerLite File Manager which means you can't upload a PDF. You'll need to upload your to a file sharing service like Dropbox in order to readily share it through MailerLite
Yes, it is! MailerLite is a simple, effective email marketing software that does the job. Have a read of our review to see if it's a good fit for your business.
A website is going to help you capture email addresses for your subscriber list but ultimately it's possible to effectively market with MailerLite without having a website at all.
Yes! It's part of one of the many great integration options available. MailerLite's Shopify integration allows you to automatically sync your Shopify customers with your MailerLite subscribers.
