MailerLite

ALMOST

A weekend of work, and real gaps remain.

Email marketing for small lists: a drag-and-drop campaign editor, signup forms and landing pages, simple automations, and a free tier generous enough that many senders never pay.

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is

Build me a newsletter tool for one small list, where the free tier of a relay is enough.

STACK
- Astro with a Node adapter, SQLite via better-sqlite3
- Amazon SES for sending — cheapest per thousand once out of the sandbox
- One cron worker

SCOPE, DELIBERATELY SMALL
- One list, tags instead of segments, no visual automation builder
- Markdown in, table-based HTML out, with a plain-text part always

SENDING
- Batches with a rate limit under the SES account maximum, resumable after a crash
- A dry-run mode that renders every email to disk without sending
- Send-time personalisation limited to first name, with a fallback that reads well when it is missing

FORMS
- One embeddable signup form, double opt-in, honeypot and a timing check instead of a captcha
- A hosted confirmation page and an unsubscribe page that works without JavaScript

KEEPING THE DOMAIN CLEAN
- SES bounce and complaint notifications over SNS into a suppression table
- Refuse to send to any address in that table, forever
- Alert when the complaint rate over the last thousand sends passes 0.1 per cent

WHAT YOU ARE ACCEPTING
- No Outlook-proof visual editor; the templates are yours to test
- No landing page builder

Include a README covering SES sandbox exit, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and the monthly cost at 5,000 subscribers.

What you lose

Deliverability at a price that is hard to beat by renting a relay yourself
A drag-and-drop editor whose output survives Outlook, which is a genuinely hard rendering problem
Automation builder, landing pages and pop-ups without a deploy
Subscriber management for people who will never open a terminal
Bounce and complaint handling that keeps the sending domain clean without supervision

If you would rather not build

Brevo — paid, similar bracket, includes SMS
Buttondown — paid, minimal, aimed at writers

The escape hatch

open source · no votes, no paid placement

listmonk

Newsletter and mailing list manager with subscriber import and bounce processing.

knadh/listmonkfree · open source

Mautic

Marketing automation with campaigns, segments and lead scoring.

mautic/mauticfree · open source

Why this verdict

our own opinion · changed only by a person

44/100

Verdict kinda at 44: at a small list size SES plus this layer costs a couple of dollars a month, and the build is a weekend. What stays hard is template rendering across mail clients, and the free tier means many people would be rebuilding something they were not paying for.

History

tracked since 9 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten

Interest · last 30 days

Nothing recorded yet. This chart fills in once the page has visitors, votes or prompt copies — it will not draw a flat line to look busy.

Questions about MailerLite

answered from the record above

Is MailerLite free?

No — the plan we track is $10 a month. Growing Business from about $10/month at 500 subscribers; a free tier covers 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails.

Can you replace MailerLite by building your own?

ALMOST. A weekend of work, and real gaps remain. Replacement score 44 out of 100, build time a weekend. Read what you lose before you decide.

How much does MailerLite cost?

$10 a month on Growing Business — $120 a year. Recorded 9 Aug 2026.

What do you lose by replacing MailerLite?

Deliverability at a price that is hard to beat by renting a relay yourself; A drag-and-drop editor whose output survives Outlook, which is a genuinely hard rendering problem; Automation builder, landing pages and pop-ups without a deploy; Subscriber management for people who will never open a terminal; Bounce and complaint handling that keeps the sending domain clean without supervision. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.

Is there an open-source alternative to MailerLite?

Yes: listmonk, Mautic. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.

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