Mailerlite Review: Is This The Best Email Marketing Tool For Your Business?

Launch Your Online Business in Just 7 Days

MailerLite is both an email marketing service (with a knack for simplifying email campaigns) and a website builder (for leveling up your business).


With a successful email marketing tool, you can easily drive traffic to your website, convert subscribers, generate leads, and so on.


In this MailerLite review, we’re taking a deep dive into MailerLite to see if ,the platform can do all that.


More specifically, we’re examining its core features, pros, cons, and pricing — and also revealing a free alternative.


Strap yourself in as there’s more to cover.


Let's get started. Shall we?

What is MailerLite?

MailerLite’s homepage

MailerLite’s homepage

MailerLite has been in existence since 2010 and is an original brainchild of Eimantas Norkunas and Ignas Rubežius.


The MailerLite platform has rapidly grown since then — the result of over 800,000 companies subscribing to MailerLite every month, no doubt.


Unfortunately, the popular company recently changed hands with the Lithuania-based Vercom S.A (a cloud communication platform), which acquired MailerLite in April 2023 for an estimated $90 million.


This explains the new version of MailerLite.


You might be wondering: “What can MailerLite email marketing software do for my small business?”


With MailerLite’s feature-set, you can:

  • Design emails, send email campaigns, and grow your audience
  • Build websites and create blogs with just a few clicks
  • Generate leads using signup forms, landing pages, and email verifier
  • Sell digital products and integrate your ecommerce store

If you want a marketing tool that aims to grow your audience and drive revenue, then MailerLite might be a good fit for you.


Overall, MailerLite has a lot going for it — and there’s also a lot we like about the platform.


But, in some areas, we believe it can do better.


Let’s take a closer look at the best (and worst) of MailerLite.

MailerLite’s pros and cons

We’ve combed through hundreds of verified user reviews to compile a comprehensive list of MailerLite’s pros and cons.

Pros

  • It’s an affordable email marketing solution with transparent pricing
  • The platform has a solid website and landing page builder
  • Great set of easy email construction tools and advanced automation editor
  • Easy-to-use with a simple and modern user interface (UI)
  • The tool comes with a responsive and attentive customer support

Cons

  • Takes time to load campaign lists
  • The website builder is missing a few important features (it's difficult to create columns)
  • The platform’s Stripe integration has limited features
  • It’s tedious to move items between segments when creating a newsletter on the platform
  • The tool lacks pre-written templates for emails, welcome messages, thank you pages, etc

Want to know more about what makes the MailerLite platform tick?


If so, here are MailerLite’s key features to help you see what it can do for you — but most importantly, to help you make a good buying decision.

MailerLite’s features

MailerLite boasts a variety of functionalities up its sleeve.


In this section, we’re going to cover (in great detail) MailerLite’s key features and show you how they can grow and scale your business.

Drag and drop editor

An efficient drag-and-drop email editor lets you pull images and modules into place within the email design, with ease — creating beautifully-designed emails that stand out in the inbox.


To ensure your design emails appeal to your subscribers, MailerLite gives you total control over your designs using its 3 email editors:

1. Drag-and-drop email editor — Great for beginners who are looking to create and design emails without coding a single element.

MailerLite’s drag-and-drop editor

MailerLite’s drag-and-drop editor

This drag-and-drop email editor lets you add interactive blocks of content to your emails that encourage customer engagement, boost conversions, and increase click-through rates (CTRs).


Additionally, the editor allows you to track your design changes and level up your personalization by targeting email blocks to different audiences at once.


You can also use its built-in image editor to tweak pictures.

2. Rich text editor — Ideal for users with little experience in building and designing emails for campaigns.

MailerLite’s rich-text editor

MailerLite’s rich-text editor

The rich-text email editor lets you compose emails by combining a touch of plain text with the formatting capabilities of HTML.


With this email editor, you can structure your plain text emails using social media links, images, bullet points, table blocks, and other essential elements to enhance your messaging and connect with subscribers.

3. Custom HTML editor — Perfect for individuals with experience writing or importing HTML codes to create emails from scratch.

MailerLite’s HTML email editor

MailerLite’s HTML email editor

With the custom HTML editor, you can import pre-made email designs into the editor and speed up your design workflow.


Additionally, it helps you monitor email campaigns with quick maps, deliverability reports, and a range of email performance metrics — to identify what's working and what can be improved in your campaigns.


Overall, these editors are easy to use.


They also come with multiple email templates, covering various categories such as photography, events, blog and updates, ecommerce, and so on.

MailerLite’s email templates

MailerLite’s email templates

Now that you’ve finally created and designed beautiful emails, how will you ensure that they reach the right people at the right time?


Short answer: Automate your emails.

Email marketing automation

Automating your emails helps you grow and scale your business.


More precisely, email automation guides your subscribers through every step of the process and helps you send triggered emails (without lifting a finger) — from the welcome email to the buying stage.


But the question remains: Can MailerLite email marketing solutions help you automate your emails?


The MailerLite platform lets you automate your emails by building automated email workflows to help you reach your audience faster.


For instance, you can automate a book promotion, birthday offer, trigger campaign (as seen below), or even a series of emails.

An example of MailerLite’s automated workflow

An example of MailerLite’s automated workflow

With MailerLite’s email automation feature, you can:

  • Send triggered emails when a subscriber joins a group, completes a signup form, or clicks a link in one of your emails
  • Improve customer retention (or nurture subscribers with well-timed emails using ecommerce integration)
  • Supercharge your workflow by integrating all your web services, including customer relationship management (CRM)
  • Personalize all your emails by sending tailored content, rewarding loyal customers, or segmenting lists based on behavior
  • Track audience engagement, overall growth, and metrics

Besides MailerLite automating your email campaigns (to help deliver a better experience), it also integrates with WooCommerce and Shopify to send abandoned cart emails.


Overall, with the right mix of personalization and email automation, MailerLite can help you get through the noise to your prospects.


But to generate more business and increase brand value, you need to do more than just automate your emails — you need to build a website.

Website builder

If you want to show people who you are, or what your business does, then you need to create a website.


The good thing is that MailerLite lets you create a website for free (the platform's Free plan allows for such. We’ll cover more of this later).


With MailerLite’s drag-and-drop website builder, you can build and design simple websites using multiple layouts and interactive elements.

MailerLite’s website builder

MailerLite’s website builder

The only unconventional thing about creating a (free) website using MailerLite is that you have to connect it to a subscriber group.


While this isn’t something to cry wolf about, it can be a bit confusing for small business owners (or practically anyone) learning how to create and design a website using the MailerLite platform for the first time.


Just for the record, you can connect signup forms with multiple groups.


If creating a website feels like a tedious and joyless task, MailerLite lets you build your website with customizable templates covering different categories, including ecommerce, events, education, etc.

MailerLite’s website templates

MailerLite’s website templates

Just choose a web design (that tickles your fancy) from a library of website templates and customize it to match your brand, then start building.


With MailerLite’s website builder, you can:

  • Start a blog, personal website, or create an ecommerce store
  • Create custom website layouts by dragging content blocks
  • Engage visitors using interactive blocks such as surveys and quizzes
  • Collect leads and build relationships using integrated email tools

But building and designing a website is just half the journey.


You need to integrate your MailerLite account with other popular web services to help achieve a more efficient workflow for your business.

Integrations

Like most email marketing tools, MailerLite comes with multiple native integrations with third-party services, including Shopify, Stripe, WordPress, WooCommerce, Squarespace, and many more.

MailerLite’s third-party featured integrations

MailerLite’s third-party featured integrations

MailerLite can also integrate with major social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and so on.


Besides connecting to all the major social networks, MailerLite also integrates with Gravity, Couponcarrier, SendOwn, ConvertPlay, MiloTree, and many other related web services.


If you fail to find a specific app integration, just connect MailerLite to the Zapier app and then proceed from there.


Zapier is a bridge that links MailerLite with hundreds of other popular web applications.


While MailerLite isn't the perfect email marketing software out there, it packs more features than we’ve covered in this MailerLite review.


Let’s briefly explore some of the platform's additional features worth paying close attention to.

Extra features

MailerLite comes with extra but professional features that could greatly appeal to your business and individual needs.


But will these features move the needle on your email marketing needs?

MailerLite Extra Features

These bonus features will most likely appeal to you if they align with your marketing goals or if you’ll frequently use them for your business needs.


With that said, how much will MailerLite cost?

MailerLite’s pricing

Before we crunch the numbers, it’s worth noting that MailerLite pricing is based on the number of subscribers.


(Note: The pricing options seen below are based on 1,000 subscribers).

MailerLite pricing plans

MailerLite pricing plans

MailerLite comes with 4 pricing options:

  • Free — $0/month to send 12,000 monthly emails and get access to an email automation builder
  • Growing business — $10/month to send unlimited emails and access 24/7 email support
  • Advanced — $21/month to send Unlimited monthly emails and space for unlimited users
  • Enterprise — (Contact the sales team for custom pricing)

If you want to try out MailerLite, its Free plan (which is free for up to 1,000 subscribers) offers most of the platform's key features:

  • Drag-and-drop editor
  • Email automation builder
  • 1 website
  • 10 landing pages
  • Signup forms and pop-ups

Overall, the MailerLite platform's pricing options are affordable, at least, for the features you get in return.


The only downside is that MailerLite’s Free plan isn’t entirely free.


In other words, when your 30-day free trial expires, you’ll be charged the monthly subscription rate (unless you cancel beforehand).


Want to know how MailerLite stacks up against the competition?


Let’s find out!

MailerLite alternatives

MailerLite can provide the best email marketing solutions, but there are other more affordable and easy-to-use email marketing tools — with great email marketing capabilities to grow and scale your business.


Among the best MailerLite alternatives is systeme.io.


Here’s why:

  • Systeme.io’s Free-forever plan gives you full access to all the essential marketing tools you need to run your business online. (MailerLite’s Free plan limits you to a few templates and a basic editor)
  • Systeme.io simplifies your life by allowing you to focus on building your online business without using several development tools.
  • If you choose systeme.io’s Free plan over MailerLite’s Advanced plan, you’ll save $228 annually (plus, you'll access all marketing tools)

Moosend and Sendinblue are also great MailerLite alternatives.


But first, let's dive deep into the abyss of systeme.io.

Systeme.io — The best all-in-one marketing platform

systeme.io logo

systeme.io logo

An all-around marketing platform is the greatest foundation for creating successful email marketing campaigns.


And systeme.io is certainly one of the best — a treasure trove of all marketing tools and features.


Our intuitive platform gives you all the tools you need to jumpstart your marketing with fast and easy emailing.


We're talking about a marketing suite that lets you do the following:

  • Send unlimited emails to all of your subscribers
  • Set up automated email sequences with just a few clicks
  • Track all your email campaigns with in-depth statistics
  • Segment your customers and send tailored emails to specific groups

Our platform also leads the way when it comes to providing tools that are critical in keeping up with your competitors.


More correctly, systeme.io has helped thousands of business owners kickstart their business with easy-to-use tools — think sales funnels, online courses, website builders, etc, all in the same organized place.


Don't just take our word for it!


See what our customers have to say about our platform.


In summary, systeme.io solves customers’ pain points that keep most business owners awake at night.


How much does our platform cost?

systeme.io pricing options

systeme.io pricing options

Compared to MailerLite, our price point is more affordable.


We specifically have 4 scalable pricing options:

  • Free — $0/month to create 1 email campaign and get access to 1 automation rule
  • Startup — $27/month to create 10 email campaigns and access 5 automation workflows
  • Webinar — $47/month to create 20 automation workflows and 100 email campaigns
  • Unlimited — $97/month to access all our unlimited features, Including free migration and 1-on-1 kickstart coaching session

The best part?


All our pricing plans (including the Free plan), come with the broader ability to do the following:

  • Send unlimited emails to all your subscribers
  • Add an unlimited number of files to your web pages
  • Have unlimited students to your online courses or webinars
  • Accept payments through PayPal or Stripe at no extra cost
  • Setup manage and integrate your own affiliate program with your websites and sales funnels

Speaking of which, our Free plan is free forever (and we won’t even dare ask for your credit card details).


This means you can test-drive all our advanced features, including other powerful additional features, completely free of charge.


Can other MailerLite alternatives match our platform’s functionalities?

Moosend

Moosend logo

Moosend logo

Moosend is an email marketing and automation software, and a MailerLite alternative with multiple features and an affordable price point.


However, Moosend and MailerLite have stark differences.


For example, Moosend allows you to set multiple triggers and sit back as your audience receives your campaigns.


Meanwhile, the MailerLite platform lets users create just a single trigger.


What’s more, MailerLite’s HTML email editor limits you to a few content blocks when building email campaigns, lowering your conversions.


On the flipside, Moosend’s email editor offers an array of content blocks.


With the Moosend feature-set, you can:

  • Create responsive, personalized email campaigns
  • Create responsive user-friendly signup forms to grow your email list.
  • Send your emails to the right audience using list segmentation
  • Create automation workflows using pre-made automation templates with a variety of triggers and actions
  • Convert visitors into customers using landing pages

Like all other generic email marketing platforms, you’ll experience some drawbacks while using the Moosend platform:


For example:

  • The platform comes with limited analytics capabilities, has a terribly slow user interface, and lacks efficient customer support
  • Moosend also doesn’t support every industry and yet they don’t reveal which one’s they don't support (it's up to you to find out)

Now let's see how much Moosend costs.

Moosend pricing plans

Moosend pricing plans

Moosend’s pricing model is simple and straightforward and equally based on the number of your subscribers.


That said, the platform has 3 pricing options:

  • Free — $0/month to send unlimited emails, access automation workflows, and create 1 landing page
  • Pro — $9/month to send unlimited emails to up to 500 subscribers and build landing pages and signup forms
  • Enterprise — (Create a custom plan) that allows you to access all Pro features, including priority support, an SMTP server, etc.

To get started, you can try Moosend’s features for the next 30 days before upgrading to the Pro plan.


But once your subscription expires, you’ll be required to give out your credit card details (to be charged the monthly subscription rate).


As such (and like MailerLite) Moosend’s free plan isn’t entirely free!


Overall, Moosend’s free trial lets you access freely all of the platform's marketing automation features:

  • Automation workflow designer
  • Pre-made automation templates
  • Multi-step marketing automation workflows

However, it limits your access to a dedicated account manager, premium campaign performance services, and priority phone support.


If the lack of these features is a deal-breaker, skip ahead to Sendinblue.

Sendinblue

Sendinblue logo

Sendinblue logo

Sendinblue is an all-in-one marketing software that takes care of your entire email marketing needs — or, to put it more bluntly, it’s an affordable MailerLite alternative that also boasts more features.


But there are some drawbacks to using this platform.


For example, Sendinblue has lots of features available so if you’re unfamiliar with using them, it can get difficult (and frustrating) at first.


The platform also has a steep learning curve, especially when you want something custom-made.


It offers multiple email templates for your campaigns, but it doesn't offer any design services.


Sendinblue also compels you to create a separate account for your subscribers as it requires both its database and server to store your data.


Although it fails to meet expectations in some areas, Sendinblue is still a notable email marketing platform with advanced automation options.


With Sendinblue’s feature-set, you can:

  • Build stronger relationships with your customers
  • Promote your brand and grow your business with tailored emails
  • Automate your marketing and sales processes
  • Organize your team and track customer interaction with your CRM
  • Level up your transactional emails with on-brand designs (MailerLite doesn’t even offer transactional emails)

Unlike MailerLite, you can track users’ activity on your website using Sendinblue’s automation features to trigger workflow actions.


If you’re looking for an email marketing tool that creates user-friendly automation workflows, this platform might be a good fit for you.


So, how much does Sendinblue cost?

Sendinblue’s pricing plan

Sendinblue’s pricing plan

Like other email marketing tools, Sendinblue’s pricing model is based on the number of subscribers you have.


Overall, Sendinblue has 4 pricing options:

  • Free — $0/month to send 300 emails per day and unlimited contacts
  • Lite — $25/month to send up to 20,000 emails/month with no daily sending limit and access to email support
  • Premium — $65/month to send 20,000 emails/month and access marketing automation features, landing pages, etc
  • Enterprise — (Contact the sales team for a custom quote)

Sendinblue claims its Free plan is free to use without a time limit (free forever), and that it comes in handy when you're on a low budget.


But in the real sense, the Free plan is specifically designed to allow you time to grow your email list then once you achieve more than 2,000 subscribers, you’ll be required to subscribe to a paid plan.


This means Sendinblue’s Free plan isn’t truly free.


We’ve seen these MailerLIte alternatives' key features and pricing options, so which one should you choose for your email marketing needs?

Final verdict — Is MailerLite the Best Email Marketing Software for You?

As you’ve seen, all these email marketing tools are great at what they do — but who stands above the rest?


Here’s an overview of how MailerLite, systeme.io, Moosend, and Sendinblue compare against each other.

Comparison of MailerLite, systeme.io, Moosend, and Sendinblue

Compared to other formidable email marketing solutions, systeme.io sticks out a mile — it not only offers a real Forever-free plan, but it’s also the world's easiest all-in-one marketing platform.

FAQs about MailerLiteW

Still curious about the MailerLite platform?


We've compiled some of MailerLite’s frequently asked questions.

Are MailerLite email templates free?

Yes, they are. Most of MailerLite’s features are on the Free plan.


So, once you get started with the platform, you’ll get free access to auto-resend emails, email templates, and 24/7 live chat support.

Is it possible to use MailerLite with WordPress?

Yes, it’s possible to use MailerLite with WordPress.


Just install the MailerLite plugin for WordPress and then start collecting subscribers straight from your WordPress website into your MailerLite account.

How can I create a group in MailerLite?

It takes 5 easy steps to create a group in MailerLite:

1. First, navigate to the “Subscribers” page

2. Click on the “Groups” tab

3. Next, click “Create group

4. Then enter the name of your new group

5. Lastly, click “create

With your group now created, get ready to add subscribers.

Can you use MailerLite as a CRM?

Yes, you can. However, it’s worth noting that if you need simple CRM features, MaileLite will work just fine.


But if you’re more interested in a CRM system’s flexibility and capabilities, you need to integrate MailerLite with a more powerful CRM system.

Conclusion

Want to create automations that your audience will love?


You’ll most likely benefit from the multiple digital marketing tools that the MailerLite platform offers.


In summary, MailerLite is for people looking for simple email marketing solutions, and ways to create landing pages, websites, and signup forms.


But if you need an all-in-one marketing platform that's more versatile for email marketing, includes more unlimited features, and is also more affordable — we highly recommend systeme.io.


Systeme.io can do everything MailerLite can, and so much more, including automating your emails and selling digital products.


Sign up with systeme.io today, and put your business on autopilot.

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