Quick verdict
Sender wins on the free tier and on price; MailerLite wins on everything else. Sender Free carries 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month with automation included, against MailerLite Free at 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails, a tenfold difference that decides the matter for anyone starting out. Sender also bundles SMS, which MailerLite does not offer at any price. What MailerLite gives you in return is a better-built product: a clearer editor, better documentation, a larger integration catalogue and a longer operating track record. Take Sender if budget is the binding constraint or you need SMS. Take MailerLite if the tool is going to be used daily by someone whose time has a cost.
Winner by use case
| If you want | Winner | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Sender | 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails against 250 and 2,500, not close. |
| Lowest paid price | Sender | Cheaper at every band we checked, often by a wide margin. |
| SMS | Sender | MailerLite has no SMS capability at any tier. |
| Ease of use | MailerLite | A more polished editor and noticeably clearer documentation. |
| Integrations | MailerLite | Over a hundred native integrations against a much shorter list. |
MailerLite vs Sender at your list size
Cheapest
Sender
Standard
£28.79/mo
Lowest effective monthly cost of every plan that meets your requirements.
Best value
Sender
Standard
£28.79/mo
Of the plans costing up to 2x the cheapest paid option, the one with the highest capability score.
Best automation
MailerLite
Comfort
$49/mo
≈ £36.13/mo
Highest automation score among plans that actually include automation on that tier.
Standard
£28.79≈ £28.79/moCheapestBest value- Monthly
- £28.79
- Annual (per mo)
- Same
- Subscribers
- 5,000
- Emails/mo
- 60,000
AutomationLanding pagesEcommerceSMSForms3 role-based seats. Send allowance is 12x the subscriber band up to 50,000; above that Sender quotes the allowances shown per band, which step up in blocks.
Verified8 September 2026sourceComfort
$49≈ £36.13/moBest automation- Monthly
- $49
- Annual (per mo)
- $44.10
- Subscribers
- 5,000
- Emails/mo
- 50,000
AutomationLanding pagesEcommerceForms50 automations, 10 landing pages, 10 signup forms, 3 user seats. Send allowance is 10x your subscriber band.
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
| MailerLite | Sender | |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | $12/mo (Comfort) | £6.64/mo (Standard) |
| Same plan billed annually | $10.80/mo | No annual discount |
| Free plan | 250 subs · 2,500 emails/mo | 2,500 subs · 15,000 emails/mo |
| Uncapped sending available | Yes, on at least one plan | No |
| Automation score | 7.5/10 | 6.5/10 |
| Ease of use score | 9.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Deliverability score | 8.0/10 | 6.5/10 |
| Support score | 8.0/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Pricing bands published | 59 | 85 |
Automation
Both include automation on their free plans, which is unusual and to both their credit. MailerLite has the better builder (clearer canvas, more predictable conditions) but caps Comfort at 50 workflows. Sender includes automation everywhere including free, with a narrower condition set and a less refined interface. For welcome sequences and simple re-engagement either is sufficient.
Ecommerce features
Neither is an ecommerce platform, and both should be ruled out for a serious store. Sender includes ecommerce blocks and store triggers on its free plan, which is more than MailerLite Free offers. MailerLite adds ecommerce features on Comfort and abandoned cart only on Power. If store flows are the requirement, Omnisend or Drip are the honest answers rather than either of these.
Forms and landing pages
MailerLite is stronger and it is not particularly close. Forms, popups, landing pages and a website builder are all included from the free tier, built in the same editor as campaigns. Sender includes forms, popups and up to ten landing pages on free, which is generous, but the builder is more limited and there is no website builder.
Email send limits
Sender allocates twelve sends per subscriber on Standard and twenty-four on Professional. MailerLite Comfort allows ten per subscriber and Power removes the cap under fair use. At normal cadence both are ample; if you mail more than twice a week to a list at the top of its band, check the arithmetic against the table above before committing.
Free plan limits
The headline difference on this page. Sender Free: 2,500 subscribers, 15,000 emails a month, automation, forms, popups, ten landing pages, and live chat support, with Sender branding on emails. MailerLite Free: 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails, three automations, one landing page, three forms, community support only. For a list under 2,500 Sender is free where MailerLite is not.
Integrations
MailerLite has the larger and better-maintained catalogue: Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Stripe, Squarespace and over a hundred more. Sender covers WooCommerce, Shopify, WordPress and PrestaShop plus Zapier and Make. For most small businesses Sender covers enough; for anyone with an unusual stack, MailerLite is likelier to have it natively.
Deliverability
MailerLite has the stronger position. It operates a larger sending estate and manually reviews new accounts before the first send, which protects the shared pool. Sender supports SPF and DKIM and offers dedicated IPs on Professional, but it is a smaller operation with a shorter track record, which is the main reason we score it lower. Neither figure is a measured inbox rate; we do not run seed-list tests.
Support
Sender offers live chat to free users, which almost nobody does, and 24/7 chat and email on paid plans. MailerLite gives 24/7 email on Comfort and reserves live chat for Power, leaving free users with documentation and community only. On availability Sender wins; on the quality of the self-serve documentation MailerLite wins clearly.
Ease of use
MailerLite is the better-designed product. The editor is cleaner, the campaign flow is shorter, and the help content answers the question you actually have. Sender is straightforward and quick to learn, but some interface copy reads as translated and a few advanced settings are harder to find than they should be.
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
Sender
A free tier that most providers charge for
Pros
- Free plan carries 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month with automation
- SMS included in the Professional plan rather than billed separately
- Live chat available even to free users
- Very low entry price for paid plans
Cons
- Smallest provider here, with the least operational track record
- Template library and editor are less polished
- No CRM
- Free plan carries Sender branding
Alternatives worth checking
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