Email marketing
Explore MailerLite for newsletters and welcome sequences, Brevo for send-based billing with a larger, less active list, and Mailchimp for ecommerce behavior and branching customer journeys.
Researched separately by GPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5.
Reference workload: 2,000 subscribers, four monthly campaigns and a two-email welcome sequence for 100 new subscribers: about 8,200 sends. We also consider a 5,000-contact list with infrequent sends.
For newsletters, welcome sequences and basic segmentation, consider MailerLite. Mailercloud describes welcome sequences, conditional branches and custom-field filtering. Start with a two-email welcome flow to assess setup and ongoing maintenance. Confirm that the current plan supports 2,000 recipients in one day and 8,200 monthly sends. Do not rely on older free allowances or plan prices.
For teams with more contacts but fewer campaigns that want to compare send-based billing, consider Brevo. MailerLite describes Brevo's send-based pricing. It is worth calculating for infrequent campaigns, while also checking contact-storage limits. The reported free-plan limit of 300 emails a day cannot cover a same-day campaign to 2,000 people. Check paid contact limits, daily sending capacity and automation together.
For marketing workflows that need ecommerce behavior triggers, branching journeys and more detailed segments, consider Mailchimp. Mailercloud describes multi-step branches, behavior triggers and custom-field segmentation. Build a real example of your customer journey to test the fit. Automation varies by plan, and billing can include unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts. Audit your list before confirming the plan and send allowance.