Best email marketing tools for founders

The one audience nobody can take away. All 15 compared on what they actually cost, read from each vendor's own pricing page on 28 August 2026. 11 have a real free tier.

If you only look at three

The rest of the email marketing table is worth reading, but these are the three most founders should be choosing between.

1
BentoFree, then $5/mo
Cheapest way in at $5, with marketing and transactional on one bill and pricing on active users rather than list size.
2
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)Free, then $32.50/mo
The default for a newsletter you sit down and write, and the one most readers will already recognise.
3
ResendFree, then $20/mo
For transactional email specifically, which is a different job people keep conflating with the other two.

The short version

Fifteen tools doing three jobs that get conflated constantly. Resend, Plunk and Loops send transactional email, the receipts and password resets your app produces. Kit, beehiiv, MailerLite and Buttondown are for a newsletter you sit down and write. Customer.io, Encharge and ActiveCampaign are lifecycle automation, a third thing again, priced accordingly at $79 to $100. Choosing the wrong one of those three costs you a migration rather than money, so settle which you are doing before you look at a price. No editorial pick, because the answer depends entirely on that. Eleven of the fifteen have a free tier and they are unusually honest here: most cap on subscriber count rather than on time, so a list under a thousand can stay free for a long while. Watch what happens at the cap. The step from free to paid is where email pricing gets steep, and the cheap entry prices, Bento at $5 and EmailOctopus at $9, are quoted for small lists. Price the list you expect in a year, not the one you have.

Head to head

Bento vs Loops

Compare all 15

Tool	From	Rating	Free to try	Free tier	Automations	Transactional email	Landing pages	Paid newsletters	API/dev friendly
Buttondown @jmduke	Free	Not rated	Yes	Yes, first 100 subs	Add-on, $29/mo	No	Hosted archive only	Add-on, $9/mo	Yes, full API	Visit
Plunk @DagnoloCarlo	Free	Not rated	Yes	Yes, 1,000 emails/mo	Yes, workflow automation	Yes, core feature	No	No	Yes, open-source API	Visit
Bento @jessethanley	$5/mo	Not rated	Yes	100 transactional emails	Yes, unlimited included	Yes, from $5/mo	Forms only, no pages	Not built-in	Yes, API and SDKs	Visit
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)	$8.08/mo	Not rated	Yes	Yes, 300 emails/day	Add-on from Standard	Yes, included/add-on	Add-on from Standard	No	Full REST API, webhooks	Visit
EmailOctopus	$9/mo	Not rated	Yes	Yes, 2,500 subs	Basic only	No	1 free, unlimited paid	No	REST API	Visit
MailerLite	$10.80/mo	Not rated	Yes	Yes, 250 subs	3 free, unlimited paid	Add-on	Yes, included	No native support	REST API, 100+ integrations	Visit
Mailchimp	$13/mo	Not rated	Yes	Yes, 500 subs	4 free, 200 paid	Add-on (Mandrill)	Yes, included	No native support	Mature REST API	Visit
ActiveCampaign	$15/mo	Not rated	No	No	Yes, advanced, all plans	Add-on	Yes, from Plus	No native support	Full REST API, webhooks	Visit
Resend	$20/mo	Not rated	Yes	Yes, 3,000 emails/mo	No, run-based only	Yes, core product	No	No	Yes, API-first	Visit
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)	$32.50/mo	Not rated	Yes	Yes, 10,000 subs	1 free, unlimited paid	No	Yes, unlimited	Yes, built-in	Basic REST API	Visit
beehiiv	$43.08/mo	Not rated	Yes	Yes, 2,500 subs	Add-on from Scale	No, API on Max	Yes, website built in	Yes, 0% fee (Scale+)	REST API, MCP, webhooks	Visit
Loops	$49/mo	Not rated	Yes	Yes, 1,000 subs	Yes, all plans	Yes, included, unlimited	No	No	API-first, React Email support	Visit
Encharge @kalo_yankulov	$79/mo	Not rated	No	No, 14-day trial	Yes, core flow builder	Premium plan only	No	No	Yes, API and webhooks	Visit
Customer.io	$100/mo	Not rated	No	No (12mo startup program)	Yes, event-triggered, advanced	Yes, included	No	No native support	Yes, strong event API	Visit
Userlist @uibreakfast	Custom	Not rated	No	No, 14-day trial	Yes, visual workflows	Yes, included	No	No	Yes, API and webhooks	Visit

Prices are the cheapest paid plan, annual rate where published. A price band counts a free tool as zero, and leaves out anything whose price is not published, because we cannot say an unknown price fits a budget.

All 15 email marketing tools

Buttondown

Email Marketing

Markdown-native newsletters, built for writers

Best for solo writers and indie newsletter creators