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Comparison

MailerLite vs EmailOctopus

Pricing, send limits, automation and features compared at your own list size. Prices checked 8 September 2026.
Jump to the calculatorMailerLite reviewEmailOctopus review

Quick verdict

EmailOctopus is cheaper, MailerLite does more, and for once that trade is clean enough to give a straightforward answer. If your requirement is genuinely "send a newsletter to my list", EmailOctopus wins: it is free up to 2,500 subscribers and cheaper than MailerLite at every paid band we checked, its free tier carries ten times MailerLite free, and it is UK-based, which simplifies invoicing for UK buyers. The moment you want landing pages that look designed, a website builder, ecommerce blocks, deeper automation or a template library worth using, MailerLite is the better product and the price gap stops looking large. The question to answer before choosing is not which is better but whether you will ever need the things EmailOctopus does not do, because it does not intend to do them.

Winner by use case

Different questions have different answers. Nothing here is a general claim that one platform is better than the other.
If you wantWinnerWhy
Lowest costEmailOctopusFree to 2,500 subscribers, then cheaper than MailerLite at every paid band we checked.
Free plan sizeEmailOctopus2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails against 250 and 2,500.
Feature breadthMailerLiteWebsite builder, ecommerce blocks and a far larger template library.
AutomationMailerLiteA visual branching builder against linear tag-triggered sequences.
UK invoicingEmailOctopusUK-based and UK-invoiced, with a published nonprofit discount.
Design qualityMailerLiteBetter editor, better templates, better landing pages by a clear margin.

MailerLite vs EmailOctopus at your list size

The same engine as the main calculator, limited to these two. Change the inputs and the whole page updates.

Cost calculator

Contacts you actually hold, after bounces.

Campaigns plus automated sends. This is what breaks plans.

Billing
Features you need

Ticking a box removes every plan that does not include it. Leave them all clear to see the full field.

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Cheapest

EmailOctopus

Pro

£24.50/mo

Lowest effective monthly cost of every plan that meets your requirements.

Visit EmailOctopus

Best value

MailerLite

Comfort

$49/mo

≈ £36.13/mo

Of the plans costing up to 2x the cheapest paid option, the one with the highest capability score.

Visit MailerLite

Best automation

MailerLite

Comfort

$49/mo

≈ £36.13/mo

Highest automation score among plans that actually include automation on that tier.

Visit MailerLite
  • £24.50
    ≈ £24.50/mo
    Cheapest
    Monthly
    £24.50
    Annual (per mo)
    £22
    Subscribers
    5,000
    Emails/mo
    50,000
    AutomationLanding pagesForms

    Unlimited landing pages, forms and users. Reports kept indefinitely. Send allowance is 10x your subscriber band, with a 10,000-email floor.

    Visit EmailOctopusRead more
    Verified8 September 2026source
  • 2MailerLite

    Comfort

    $49
    ≈ £36.13/mo
    Best valueBest automation
    Monthly
    $49
    Annual (per mo)
    $44.10
    Subscribers
    5,000
    Emails/mo
    50,000
    AutomationLanding pagesEcommerceForms

    50 automations, 10 landing pages, 10 signup forms, 3 user seats. Send allowance is 10x your subscriber band.

    Visit MailerLiteRead more
    Verified8 September 2026source

Ranked by the effective monthly cost on your chosen billing cycle, converted to pounds where a provider quotes in another currency. Only the cheapest qualifying plan per provider is shown. Prices are the provider’s own published rate. Always confirm before buying.

Side by side

Entry prices, free plan limits and send allowances, drawn from the same pricing rows the calculator uses.
 MailerLiteEmailOctopus
Cheapest paid plan$12/mo (Comfort)£9/mo (Pro)
Same plan billed annually$10.80/mo£8/mo
Free plan250 subs · 2,500 emails/mo2,500 subs · 10,000 emails/mo
Uncapped sending availableYes, on at least one planNo
Automation score7.5/105.5/10
Ease of use score9.0/108.5/10
Deliverability score8.0/107.5/10
Support score8.0/106.5/10
Pricing bands published5915

Automation

MailerLite is ahead. Its visual builder supports branching, conditions and split steps, with 50 workflows on Comfort and unlimited on Power. EmailOctopus offers time-based and trigger-based sequences with tag and list conditions, genuinely useful for onboarding and drips, but linear. There is no branching, no scoring and no ecommerce triggers.

Ecommerce features

MailerLite by default, because EmailOctopus has no ecommerce features at all. MailerLite includes ecommerce blocks and digital product sales on Comfort, with abandoned cart on Power. Neither is a serious ecommerce platform and a store with real volume should be looking at Omnisend or Drip instead of either of them.

Forms and landing pages

The clearest quality gap on this page. MailerLite includes signup forms, popups, landing pages and a full website builder from the free tier, all in the same editor as campaigns. EmailOctopus allows one landing page and one form on free, unlimited on Pro, with a functional but plain builder. If your opt-in page is a meaningful part of your funnel, MailerLite is worth the difference.

Email send limits

Both allocate ten sends per subscriber per month on their entry paid plans: EmailOctopus Pro and MailerLite Comfort are identical here. The difference is at the top: MailerLite Power removes the cap entirely under fair use, while EmailOctopus keeps the 10x ratio at every band. Above roughly eight campaigns a month, MailerLite Power becomes the only one of the two that fits.

Free plan limits

EmailOctopus wins decisively on size. Its Starter tier carries 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, against MailerLite Free at 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails. Both brand your emails. MailerLite Free does include automation, a landing page and three forms, so it is more capable per subscriber, but ten times smaller, which for most people settles it.

Integrations

MailerLite has well over a hundred native integrations, including Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Stripe and Squarespace. EmailOctopus keeps a deliberately short list aimed at publishers (WordPress, Ghost, Carrd, Shopify) plus Zapier and Make. For a standard stack both are fine; for anything unusual, MailerLite is much likelier to support it natively.

Deliverability

MailerLite scores higher, mainly on scale and policy. It runs a larger sending estate and manually reviews new accounts before first send, which protects the shared pool from imported cold lists. EmailOctopus supports SPF, DKIM and custom sending domains and has a solid record, but offers no dedicated IP option. Neither figure is a measured inbox rate.

Support

MailerLite offers 24/7 email support on Comfort and 24/7 live chat on Power, with the free tier on documentation only. EmailOctopus is email-only during UK business hours at every tier. EmailOctopus responses are knowledgeable and the docs are decent, but there is no escalation path and no chat, which is a real consideration if email is business-critical.

Ease of use

Both are easy, in different ways. EmailOctopus is easy because the product is small. There is very little to get wrong. MailerLite is easy because it is well designed, and it stays easy as you take on landing pages, automations and a website. MailerLite has the better editor; EmailOctopus has the shorter path to a first send.

Pros and cons

MailerLite

Clean, cheap and capable enough for most lists

Pros

  • Among the cheapest paid plans for lists under 1,000 subscribers
  • The clearest editor and onboarding of any provider here
  • Free plan includes automation, which most free plans do not
  • Landing pages and a website builder included rather than sold separately

Cons

  • No native SMS on any plan
  • CRM is tags and segments, not pipelines or deals
  • Manual account approval can delay the first send by a day
  • Automation branching is shallower than the enterprise tools
Visit MailerLite

EmailOctopus

Low-cost sending for newsletters

Pros

  • Free plan carries 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month
  • Lowest-priced contact-based plan we track from 5,000 to 50,000 subscribers
  • UK-based, which simplifies invoicing and data questions for UK buyers
  • 20% lifetime discount for registered nonprofits

Cons

  • No ecommerce features, cart recovery or SMS at all
  • No CRM, no pipelines, no sales features
  • Free plan puts EmailOctopus branding on every email
  • Email-only support with no chat or phone escalation
Visit EmailOctopus

Alternatives worth checking

If neither of these fits, these are the providers we would look at next and why.

How we compared these two

Prices come from each provider’s own published pricing page. The source URL and the date we checked it are shown against every figure in the calculator above; where a band has not yet been confirmed against the source it is labelled “needs review” rather than presented as confirmed.

The ranking in the calculator is by price alone. Our editorial scores, automation, ease of use, deliverability, support, do not reorder it. They inform the verdict and the use-case winners above, and each score has its reasoning written out on the provider’s own page.

We do not run our own inbox placement tests, so nothing in the deliverability section should be read as a measured inbox rate. It reflects published sending infrastructure, authentication and IP options, and documented provider policy.

Pricing on this page was last verified on 8 September 2026. Read the full methodology.

Affiliate disclosure

Email King may earn a commission if you sign up through some of the links on this page, at no additional cost to you. Commission never affects the ranking: results are ordered by the price you would actually pay, calculated from published rate cards. Read the full disclosure.