PolyPromote Guide
You will pay for email software eventually. The only question is which of these six charges you fairly as you grow — and which one bills you hardest for succeeding. On five of the six, the sticker price is a floor, not a price.
Find your match
3 questions · 30 seconds · a personal pick at the end
Question 1 of 3
How big is your email list?
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Before you pick one: an email list is the only audience you own. Everything else is rented, and the rent keeps going up.
Return per $1 spent
Third-party benchmarks (Litmus, DMA, Omnisend, 2026). Self-reported and survey-based — treat the range as an order of magnitude, not a promise.
Reach works the same way. An organic post reaches 2–8% of the people who already follow you, depending on the platform. An email reaches about 21% of the people on your list, and you decide when it goes.
That return is why this page is not about free plans. You are not here to hunt freebies — you are here to pick the rails for your highest-return channel. The question that pays is which of these six takes the smallest cut as you grow. Before you look at a single price, answer three questions.
How big is your list, and how fast is it growing? A list of 200 adding 50 a month clears a 250-subscriber cap in a few weeks. A list of 2,000 that barely moves may never trigger one. Your size in six months decides this, not your size today.
How often do you email? Most of these tools cap the size of your list. Brevo caps how fast you can send instead — 300 emails a day, no limit on contacts. High frequency punishes one model; a large dormant list punishes the other.
Are you selling content or products? Creators need paid subscriptions and landing pages. Stores need ecommerce automation and SMS. Those live in different tools — buy the one built for your business, not the one with the longest free runway.
Six tools, six lanes. Pick yours — every row jumps to the full breakdown.
* Omnisend’s $16 covers 500 contacts — budget the $59 tier beyond that. Prices read 2026-09-01.
Compare these six
Six email tools. Pick any three — everything updates live.
| Measure | KKit (ConvertKit) | MMailerLite | OOmnisend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry Score | 84/100 | 93/100 | 83/100 |
| Starting Price | Free / $39/mo | $12/mo | Free / $16/mo |
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan limit | Up to 10,000 subscribers | Up to 250 subscribers · 2,500 emails/mo | Up to 250 contacts · 500 emails/mo |
| Primary use | Creator newsletter | General email marketing | Ecommerce email + SMS |
| SMS / multichannel | — | — | Yes |
| Landing pages & forms | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Paid subscriptions | Yes (Commerce) | Yes | — |
| Built-in CRM | — | — | — |
| Deliverability tools | — | Yes (Dedicated IP) | — |
| Go to tool | Try Kit (ConvertKit) | Try MailerLite | Try Omnisend |
Entry Score measures how easy a tool is to try before you pay — free access, entry price and pricing transparency. It is not a quality rating: a low score can still be an excellent tool. The formula is published.
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Drag to your subscriber count. On five of these six, the price follows your list.
At 2,500 subscribers, 2 of 6 are still free. The rest want money before you send anything.
Paid prices are the entry tier. On every tool except Brevo the price also rises with list size, so read “from $X” as a floor. Some links below are affiliate links; we earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Every vendor calls its entry option something welcoming. Underneath there are three different pricing models, and which one is cheapest for you depends entirely on how your list behaves.
Most of them cap your list size. MailerLite, Omnisend, Mailchimp and Kit all draw a line at a subscriber count — cross it and you pay. Brevo caps your send rate instead: unlimited contacts, 300 emails a day. ActiveCampaign skips the question: no free tier at all, paid from $15/mo.
That distinction outweighs any headline number. Take a 2,000-person list. It sits inside Kit’s free tier, stays inside Brevo’s as long as you send under 300 a day, and forces a paid tier on MailerLite, Omnisend and Mailchimp. Same list, same emails, three different bills — because the model differs, not the product.
Starts at $39/mo · Free to 10,000 subscribers
The creator’s tool. Newsletter-first, with landing pages and forms built in and paid subscriptions through Commerce — one of only two of the six that can charge your readers rather than just mail them.
What $39/mo buys is that revenue side: selling a paid newsletter without bolting on a second product. It is the steepest entry price of the six and it climbs with your subscriber count.
The free tier holds 10,000 subscribers, which is a long runway — but a runway is not the product. If the plan is to earn from the list, the question is whether Commerce earns back $39 a month, and for a paid newsletter with even a handful of subscribers it does.
Pay for it if you are a creator turning a newsletter into revenue.
Starts at $12/mo · Free to 250 subscribers
The generalist. Clean editor, landing pages and forms, paid subscriptions, and a dedicated IP option for when deliverability starts to matter.
At $12/mo it is the gentlest paid step among the tools that cap list size. The free tier stops at 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month — a few weeks of collecting signups, so read it as a trial rather than a plan.
Pay for it if you send regular campaigns for a small business and want the softest landing into paid email.
Starts at $16/mo · Free to 250 contacts
Built for ecommerce rather than newsletters: email and SMS in one tool, with automation aimed at carts and orders.
Its ladder is the steepest of the six, and this is the number to plan around. $16/mo covers 500 contacts. The next tier is $59 for 2,500, with nothing in between. Crossing 500 contacts does not cost $16 — it costs $59. The free tier is 250 contacts and 500 emails a month.
Pay for it if you run a store and want email and SMS in one place — and budget $59, not $16.
Starts at $13/mo · Free to 250 contacts
The highest Entry Score of the six, which means exactly one thing: it is the easiest to try before you commit. Free to 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, then $13/mo.
The household name at a middle-of-the-road entry price. Nothing on this page is cheaper to evaluate.
Pay for it if you want the lowest-friction test drive and are comfortable paying $13/mo when it ends.
Starts at $9/mo · Free within 300 emails/day
The outlier. No cap on contacts at all; the limit is 300 emails a day, about 9,000 a month. At $9/mo it is the cheapest paid plan of the six and the only one whose price does not climb with list size.
A list of 2,000 emailed twice a month — 4,000 sends — sits comfortably inside the free tier. The same 2,000 emailed all at once does not: at 300 a day that send takes a week to clear.
Pay for it if you have a large list that emails infrequently, or you want a paid plan with no contact-count paywall.
Starts at $15/mo · No free plan
The lowest Entry Score of the six, and that is the point: there is no free tier to score. $15/mo from day one.
What you get for skipping the free game is marketing automation with a built-in CRM — only Brevo also has one — and no upgrade ambush later.
Pay for it if you would rather start on a paid tool with no surprise paywall, and you want automation and CRM in the same product.
Ranked by cheapest paid tier: Brevo $9, MailerLite $12, Mailchimp $13, ActiveCampaign $15, Omnisend $16, Kit $39. That ranking is honest and incomplete, because the first bill is not the bill that matters. The curve is.
Omnisend’s curve is the one to watch. $16 buys 500 contacts; the next step is $59 for 2,500, with nothing between them.
Kit’s curve is the opposite shape. The longest free runway of the six, then the steepest first bill, still climbing with the list. You stay free longest and then pay most.
Brevo’s curve is the flattest. $9 in, no contact cap, and the price does not chase your list. The constraint is send speed, not list size.
The sticker price is a floor. “From $12/mo” means $12 is the least you will ever pay. On five of the six the price rises with list size; Brevo is the exception.
Watch for the missing middle. At 800 contacts on Omnisend you are on the $59 tier. There is no $16 tier for you.
Free longest is not cheapest longest. A slow-growing list saves most on Kit. A fast-growing one should price out year two before committing.
On five of the six, yes — the price follows your subscriber count. Brevo is the exception: no contact cap at all. That’s why the slider above matters more than any sticker price.
On five tools, yes. Kit holds 10,000 subscribers free; MailerLite, Omnisend and Mailchimp stop at 250; Brevo is free within 300 emails a day. ActiveCampaign has no free tier — $15/mo from day one.
Two are still free at 5,000: Brevo, as long as you stay under 300 emails a day, and Kit, whose free tier runs to 10,000. The other four want a paid tier by then — MailerLite from $12/mo, Mailchimp from $13, ActiveCampaign from $15, and Omnisend well past its $16 sticker. Kit’s first bill is the steepest when it lands: $39/mo once you pass 10,000.
Omnisend: email and SMS in one tool, built for carts and orders. Budget the $59 tier (2,500 contacts), not the $16 sticker — there is nothing in between.
Your subscriber list is yours, and every tool here lets you export it, so the list itself is portable. What does not move with you is the setup — automations, forms and templates get rebuilt. Price for year two before you commit, not just for today.
Prices and plan limits were read from each vendor’s own pricing page on 2026-09-01 and are shown with the date we checked them. Entry Score measures how easy a tool is to try before paying, not how good it is — the formula is published. Some of the links on this page are affiliate links.
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Search 100 promotion tools by name, purpose or keyword. Narrow by category, by the stage you're at, and by how they charge. Every list comes back ranked.
100 tools across 8 categories. Each one gets pros, cons, who it's for — and who it isn't. Scored the same way, so the numbers mean the same thing across all 100.
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| Entry Score | 84 | 93 | 83 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $39/mo | $12/mo | $16/mo |
| Free plan limit | Up to 10,000 subscribers | Up to 250 subscribers · 2,500 emails/mo | Up to 250 contacts · 500 emails/mo |