Feed aggregator

The Wella Shockwaves Volume mousse is an affordable and surprising way to get long-lasting volume into fine hair.

The Iran war has nearly doubled jet fuel prices in the United States. That means the bill for firefighting aircraft operations this summer will likely rise by tens of millions of dollars.

(Image credit: Justin Sullivan)

If you're training for any of the upcoming marathons this year, the Garmin Forerunner 55 could help you achieve your goals without costing too much.

Dreame has a pair of new phones, but will we ever see Aurora again?

A father and daughter in New Jersey have pleaded guilty to running a years-long counterfeiting scheme to trick art galleries and auction houses into buying forged paintings

(Image credit: Jake Offenhartz)

President Trump suggested he could soon reduce the U.S. military presence in Germany as he continues to feud with Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the U.S-Israel war against Iran.

(Image credit: Mark Schiefelbein)

AWeber is one of the original email marketing platforms, having launched in 1998. Founded by Tom Kulzer in Chalfont, Pennsylvania, the company has grown to serve over one million small businesses and individual creators worldwide. Its focus hasn't shifted much in 25 years: AWeber is built for people who want to send newsletters and automated email sequences without managing complex technical infrastructure.

Since TechRadar last reviewed the platform in 2023, AWeber has made several notable updates. The AI toolset has expanded considerably, with an AI Subject Line Assistant now included on all paid plans and a standalone AI Writing Assistant for drafting full email copy. The company also renamed its automation builder from Campaigns to Workflows in mid-2025 and added a direct Facebook Lead Ads integration that pulls new leads into your AWeber list automatically.

Another significant structural change is the Done For You plan, which replaces the previously listed Unlimited tier. Rather than offering higher subscriber limits, Done For You brings in AWeber's team to configure your account within seven days. That covers your email template, landing pages, signup form, and an initial automation sequence, with 30 days of edits included after delivery.

• You can sign up to AWeber here.

(Image credit: AWeber)My experience with AWeber

AWeber has one of the smoothest onboarding experiences in the industry. The platform walks you through your business goals before you build anything, and importing subscribers follows a structured five-step process that handles data mapping and tagging before sending an opt-in confirmation. It's particularly well-suited to creators and small business owners who want to get a first campaign out without reading through documentation.

The email builder is where things get slightly muddier. AWeber's drag-and-drop editor works fine once you're in it, but selecting a template can trip you up: the preview thumbnails are small, and there's a checkbox labeled "Keep My Message Content" that's easy to overlook. If you leave it ticked, only part of the template applies. I found this confusing during testing and it's a friction point that has been around since at least 2023.

That said, AWeber's new AI Subject Line Assistant is one of the more practical recent additions. It generates suggestions based on your actual email content rather than a generic prompt, so the output tends to be relevant.

The value of the new Done For You plan depends heavily on what you're starting from. It's a reasonable option if you're migrating from another tool or launching email for the first time, but once the initial 30-day edit window closes, you're responsible for maintaining everything yourself.

AWeber: Plans and pricing

Plan

Starting rate (billed monthly)

Starting rate (billed annually)

Subscriber count

Lite

$15.00/month

$12.49/month

Up to 500

Plus

$30.00/month

$19.99/month

Up to 500

Done For You

$30.00/month + $79 setup fee

$20.00/month + $79 setup fee

Up to 500

The Lite plan gives you one email list, three landing pages, three automations, and up to three team members. It covers the basics for most new senders but carries a 1.0% transaction fee on ecommerce sales and excludes behavioral automation and advanced reporting.

Plus removes most of those limits: you get unlimited lists, automations, landing pages, and users, along with priority support and a reduced 0.6% transaction fee. Paying annually on Plus saves you roughly $120 per year at the base subscriber tier.

Done For You is AWeber's managed setup tier. It includes everything in Plus and adds a professional team that configures your account within seven days: an email template, two landing pages, a signup form, a welcome sequence, and a 1:1 setup call.

The $79 setup fee shown is a promotional rate, reduced from the standard $599 at the time of writing. Businesses with more than 100,000 subscribers need to contact AWeber directly through its large-account pricing page for a custom quote.

(Image credit: AWeber)AWeber: Features

Aweber provides a collection of 600+ email templates designed by professionals that you can edit to fit your brand. These templates make it easier to design appealing marketing emails instead of doing that from scratch. The platform also gives you access to thousands of free high-quality stock images or you can create your own images with Canva (without leaving your Aweber account).

Aweber's drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to edit emails after selecting a template. You can also use it to design your own email template from scratch if you have the required skills. 

This platform lets you send personalized emails using different data collected from your customers. You can also send automated emails based on specific triggers, e.g., a welcome email to anyone who signs up for your subscriber list. 

The reports section of your Aweber account lets you monitor critical metrics about your marketing campaigns like deliverability, open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, etc.

Some more new features worth highlighting include the AI Subject Line Assistant (available on all paid plans), the AI Writing Assistant, the Newsletter Assistant, AWeber's Smart Designer tool, and a new Facebook Lead Ads integration.

(Image credit: AWeber)AWeber: Interface and use

Once you’ve completed the setup phase, AWeber makes it easy for you to find the key functions of the service: adding subscribers and creating emails.

Adding subscribers is an easy-to-follow, five-step process that begins by importing a file or copying and pasting your data, mapping that data to AWeber fields, confirming the opt-in message, adding tags, and then providing information about how the people came to be on your list.

Creating an email was a bit less intuitive, though. There are three options for creating emails: the drag-and-drop email builder, plain text message, and HTML editor. When choosing the drag-and-drop builder, we were presented with a blank canvas with a list of elements that could be added on the left and templates on the right.

The thumbnails for the templates are quite small, so to get a proper look at them, you have to apply them to your email. To start with, things didn’t seem to be working properly. Only part of the template seemed to be applied. It wasn’t until we unchecked a small box at the top that says “Keep My Message Content” that the whole template, including content and images, were applied. This is confusing and makes for a less than ideal user experience.

When you actually begin working on your own content, though, you’ll want to keep that box ticked.

AWeber: Support

AWeber has an impressive track record in support, having won several customer service awards in recent years. You can receive direct support either by live chat, which is available 24/7, by phone, which is available 8 AM to 8 PM ET, or by email.

For those wanting to learn themselves, there is a knowledge base with articles, a video tutorial library, live and on-demand webinars, and a certified experts program that connects you with experienced marketing and design professionals who can help you with copywriting, graphic design, or marketing strategy.

AWeber: Specs

Spec

Details

Email automations

3 on Lite; unlimited on Plus

AI tools

Subject Line Assistant on all paid plans

Ecommerce transaction fee

0.6% on Plus/Done For You; 1.0% on Lite

Support channels

24/7 chat, email, and phone on all plans

Template library

600+ pre-built email templates

Should I buy AWeber?

Attribute

Notes

Score

Features

Core email tools are solid; automation depth remains limited on Lite

3.5/5

Performance

Stable infrastructure with decent deliverability, though below some rivals in independent testing

3.5/5

Design

600+ templates available, but the editor UX feels dated compared to newer platforms

3/5

Value

Reasonable entry price; costs compound quickly as subscriber counts grow

3/5

Buy it if

• You need 24/7 phone support. AWeber includes phone support on all plans, not just premium tiers. For solo operators and small teams without in-house technical help, that accessibility makes a genuine difference compared to competitors that restrict phone access to enterprise customers.
• You want a managed launch. The Done For You service sets up your email infrastructure, automations, and landing pages within a week, which is a rare offer in this space. It's particularly useful for businesses migrating from a different tool that don't want to rebuild everything from scratch.
• You're new to email marketing. AWeber's onboarding is beginner-friendly, and the platform backs it up with tutorials, live webinars, and a certified expert network for users who want guided support at every stage.

Don't buy it if

• Your automations need to branch. The Workflow builder handles basic trigger-based sequences well but doesn't support the complex conditional logic you'd get from tools like ActiveCampaign or Brevo. On the Lite plan, you're also capped at three workflows total.
• You're watching costs as your list grows. At 10,000 subscribers, you're looking at $100/month on Lite or $135/month on Plus (monthly billing). That's considerably more than some comparable alternatives at the same subscriber volume.

Also consider

• MailerLite: A cheaper alternative for creators and small businesses, with competitive pricing and a free plan supporting up to 1,000 subscribers. Its automation builder is more accessible for beginners, and the template designs feel more current than AWeber's.
• Mailchimp: Worth considering if you need a wider template library and strong third-party integrations. Note that Mailchimp's free plan now caps at 500 contacts, down from the 2,000 cited in the previous version of this review.
• Brevo: Formerly Sendinblue, Brevo is a stronger option if automation depth matters to you. It prices by email sends rather than subscriber count, which can work out cheaper for larger lists that you don't mail frequently.

AWeber: Final verdict

If having 24/7 support available is important to you, AWeber is worth considering as it does provide a high level of customer support. But it’s certainly not the cheapest option available, the user interface of its email builder isn’t as intuitive as it could be, and the design of its templates didn’t impress us much.

Having to manually keep on top of your unsubscribes to avoid being bumped up to more expensive plans is also not something busy business owners should be expected to do.

We've featured the best online marketing services.

ActiveCampaign was founded in 2003 by Jason VandeBoom as a consulting firm before pivoting to software. Today it serves over 180,000 businesses across more than 170 countries, and positions itself as a full-stack autonomous marketing platform rather than just an email marketing tool. Its 2022 acquisition of Postmark, a transactional email service, expanded its reach into triggered notifications, receipts, and system emails.

The platform went through significant restructuring in 2024, replacing its legacy Lite/Plus/Professional/Enterprise plan structure with Starter, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise. CRM features that used to ship with core plans were moved into paid add-ons, which came as a surprise to many existing users at renewal. The bigger story of the past year has been Active Intelligence, launched in May 2025 — a system of AI agents that can write campaign emails, build multi-step automations, and interpret performance data from plain-language prompts.

There is one important billing change worth knowing about before you sign up. Since November 2025, ActiveCampaign accounts are now charged for every contact in their database, including unsubscribed and bounced contacts. Most email service providers only bill for active, marketable contacts, so this policy makes cost estimates less straightforward than the headline pricing suggests.

(Image credit: ActiveCampaign)My experience with ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign's onboarding has improved much recently. The platform asks you to define your goals early and recommends templates based on your business type, which reduces the initial overwhelm that used to affect new accounts.

Active Intelligence is the real headline addition, though. You can prompt it with something like "Build a three-email welcome series for new subscribers" and get a full automation draft with copy, timing, and branching logic within seconds. The output isn't always ready to publish, but it gives you a strong structural starting point.

However, the interface has a learning curve, particularly in the automation builder. The depth of available triggers, conditions, and actions is a genuine asset for experienced marketers but can feel excessive when you're starting out. I'd also note that the Starter plan's limits become obvious quickly: no landing pages, no generative AI, and no CRM functionality unless you upgrade or add on.

ActiveCampaign: Plans and pricing

Plan

Starting rate (billed monthly)

Starting rate (billed annually)

Contacts

Starter

$19/mo

$15/mo

1,000

Plus

$59/mo

$49/mo

1,000

Pro

$99/mo

$79/mo

1,000

Enterprise

$179/mo

$145/mo

1,000

There is no permanent free plan, but a 14-day trial is available on all tiers and is based on the Pro plan. New customers are also covered by a 30-day results guarantee: if you don't see results in your first month, you can request a full refund. Annual billing saves around 20% compared to paying month-to-month.

Beyond the base plan, costs can stack quickly.

CRM features like pipelines, deal management, and lead scoring are sold as separate add-ons (Pipelines or Sales Engagement) and aren't included in any core plan. SMS marketing is also an add-on, starting at around $16.83/month for 1,000 sends. Custom reporting and transactional email through Postmark are priced separately too.

Since November 2025, new accounts are billed for all contacts in their database, including unsubscribed and bounced contacts, which is a less common practice and can push costs higher than the starting rates imply.

(Image credit: ActiveCampaign)ActiveCampaign: Features

ActiveCampaign makes it easy to design emails by providing templates that users can choose from and edit to fit their tastes. The templates are designed by professionals, plus you can customize them using the platform's drag-and-drop editor. If you have good design skills, you can also use the drag-and-drop editor to design your own template from scratch.

You can use ActiveCampaign to send automated emails to your subscribers. For example, you can send welcome emails to every person who subscribes to your newsletter or schedule celebratory newsletters for events, holidays, and birthdays. You can even send targeted emails based on your contacts’ interaction with your website.

Moreover, you can create landing pages for your products with ActiveCampaign. The platform offers many templates to pick and choose from. Likewise, you can create signup forms and embed them on your website to gather more email addresses for your subscriber list. 

But the biggest update is the addition of Active Intelligence, which includes 34+ specialized AI agents for campaign creation, automation building, segmentation, and performance analysis. It's available across all plan tiers as of 2026.

(Image credit: ActiveCampaign)ActiveCampaign: Interface and use

For the many tools that ActiveCampaign includes, we find the software well-organized and easy to navigate.

When you create a campaign, then next you can filter and segment lists for inclusion of only contacts. Additionally, this platform incorporates one of the most versatile drag-and-drop email designers that we’ve encountered. With a significant amount of control over how every content element displays, you can then decide whether a block should be only for contacts that meet certain conditions.

For setting up a marketing automation, you can then have hundreds of templates from which to choose. We appreciate that the visual designer is intuitive while offering highly flexible triggers and responses. By way of example, it tooks me a few minutes to connect ActiveCampaign to Slack, then triggering a message when a contact tag is updated.

ActiveCampaign: Support

Help is available for ActiveCampaign by sending them a message through the portal or live chat. The hours of operation in the US are Monday to Thursday from 6 am - 11 pm, CST and Friday from 6 am - 5:30 pm, CST, which means no help on the weekend and holidays.

All accounts come with free migration if you’re switching over from another CRM or email marketing service. In addition, Professional users get access to one-on-one training sessions and Enterprise users receive free phone support that is lacking in the lower tiers. We would have liked to see some additional methods of support, however, like direct email and live chat for entry-level users.

The company also has a very robust online knowledgebase, complete with video tutorials and a community forum. We found the help articles to be detailed, along with plenty of webinars like “Accelerated Onboarding,” and “The Digital Study Hall.”

ActiveCampaign: Specs

Spec

Details

Active Intelligence agents

34+ AI agents; all plan tiers

Email send limit

10x contacts on Starter; 15x on Enterprise

App integrations

1,000+ including Salesforce, Shopify

Should I buy ActiveCampaign?

Attribute

Notes

Score

Features

Deep automation and AI agents; CRM costs extra

4/5

Performance

Reliable delivery; contact-based scaling

4/5

Design

Organized interface; steeper learning curve than rivals

3.5/5

Value

Competitive at low contact counts; expensive as lists grow

3/5

Buy it if

• You need serious marketing automation. The visual automation builder and AI-assisted workflows are among the strongest available for small and midsized businesses, particularly if your customer journeys are multi-step or behavior-based.
• Your contact list is under 5,000. The Starter and Plus plans offer fair value at lower contact counts. Above 10,000 contacts, you're looking at $149/month and up for Starter alone, and costs rise steeply from there.
• You want AI to speed up campaign work. Active Intelligence can generate automations, draft campaign emails, and analyze performance data from conversational prompts. It's available on all plans, though the full set of capabilities sits behind Pro or Enterprise.

Don't buy it if

• You need a CRM without paying extra. Pipelines, deal management, and sales automation are not included in any base plan. If your workflow depends on a built-in CRM, budget for the add-on on top of your subscription.
• You're starting with a large or messy contact list. New accounts are now charged for all contacts, including inactive ones. A database with significant bounces or unsubscribes will cost more than the headline pricing suggests.
• You want a free plan to start. ActiveCampaign has no permanent free tier. Brevo and Mailchimp both offer functional free plans for basic email marketing if cost is the primary constraint.

Also consider

• Brevo (formerly Sendinblue): Offers a free plan with up to 300 emails per day and no contact limit, making it a stronger fit if you're on a tight budget or prefer simpler pricing.
• Mailchimp: More beginner-friendly, with a free tier for up to 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly sends. It lacks ActiveCampaign's automation depth but requires far less setup time.
• Klaviyo: Worth considering for ecommerce stores. Its Shopify and WooCommerce integrations and revenue attribution tracking outperform ActiveCampaign's, and it offers a free plan for up to 250 contacts.

ActiveCampaign: Final verdict

ActiveCampaign is a platform with plenty of grunt as it combines the best aspects of email marketing along with a CRM. We like the unique features including automated email scheduling, agentic AI, and SMS marketing, and also does a nice job with standard tools like marketing automation and email design.

We think that the biggest downside to this platform is the higher price. A Plus or Professional plan can cost hundreds of dollars per month for a comparatively small number of contacts.

We've featured the best online marketing services.

iContact has been in the email marketing software business since 2003, co-founded by Ryan Allis and Aaron Houghton while both were students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The platform was built with a focus on making email marketing accessible to small businesses, a mission it has preserved even through multiple ownership changes.

Vocus acquired it in February 2012 for $169 million; following a 2014 merger with Cision, the combined company sold iContact to j2 Global for $49 million in January 2019. It now operates under the J2 Martech Corp umbrella and serves thousands of customers worldwide, including Habitat for Humanity and NASA.

The platform has come a long way from its earlier days. iContact now offers Standard and Premium paid plans, with Premium adding AI writing tools, unlimited automations, and social posting. A 30-day free trial replaced the old permanent free tier, giving you full access to the platform before any billing begins.

For small businesses with lists under 50,000 contacts, iContact covers the basics well. The drag-and-drop editor is clean and deliverability is reliable. The catch is that Standard limits you to one user, one automation, and one landing page, so the full value only becomes clear once you move to Premium.

(Image credit: iContact)My experience with iContact

Setting up iContact was very simple. I found the onboarding short and straightforward. The drag-and-drop editor is definitely among the cleaner ones at this price point, with blocks that snap into place automatically and a live mobile preview built into the UI. Its built-in stock image library is a nice practical touch for small teams without dedicated design resources.

The Standard plan feels more limited in practice than it looks on paper. Working with a single automation and one landing page is manageable for a solo operator, but it constrains any business with campaign ambitions beyond a basic welcome sequence.

Deliverability held up well in my testing, with very few messages landing in spam folders. For email marketing specifically, inbox placement matters more than most interface features when it comes to actual campaign results.

The Premium plan's AI Content Assistant is modest at 20 transcriptions per month, but it's a practical addition for small teams drafting occasional campaigns rather than running high-volume content operations. The social posting feature is a convenient bonus, though it won't replace a dedicated social tool for businesses that post frequently.

iContact: Plans and pricing

Plan

Starting rate (billed monthly)

Starting rate (billed annually)

Subscriber count

Standard

$9/month

$7.67/month

Up to 500

Premium

$16/month

$13.58/month

Up to 500

Custom

Contact sales

Contact sales

50,000+

iContact offers a 30-day free trial before any billing begins. Standard scales from $9/month at 500 contacts to $350/month at 50,000 contacts billed monthly, or the equivalent of $7.67 to $297.50 per month billed annually. Premium runs from $16/month to $399/month billed monthly, or $13.58 to $339.17 per month billed yearly.

Standard is a single-user plan limited to 1 automation, 1 landing page, 2 contact lists, 1 segment, and 250 MB of storage. Premium removes most of those restrictions, adding unlimited users, automations, landing pages, lists, and segments, along with social posting, Subject Line AI, an AI Content Assistant (20 transcriptions/month), an email verification add-on, phone support, and 500 MB of storage.

For lists above 50,000 contacts, iContact's Custom plan offers enterprise-level sending capacity and dedicated support. But pricing requires a conversation with iContact's sales team.

(Image credit: iContact)iContact: Features

iContact's drag-and-drop editor makes designing very easy. The platform offers a collection of email templates that you can pick and customize to fit your brand using the drag-and-drop editor. Emails that you build using the editor are optimized for both desktop and mobile displays without any extra effort from you.

If you have some programming chops, you can even edit the underlying HTML to make your emails look better. Subscribers on the Advanced plan also have access to a drag-and-drop editor for creating landing pages.

iContact lets you use automation triggers to send emails to customers based on specific conditions. For example, you can send an automatic welcome email to every person that signs up for your subscriber list. You can personalize these automated emails by including the recipient's name to make them more likely to respond. 

Of course, you also need to be able to measure the performance of your campaigns. Fortunately, iContact provides analytical and reporting tools that monitor open rates, click-throughs, and bounce rates, among other things.

(Image credit: iContact)iContact: Interface and use

I found iContact’s email deliverability rate an improvement over most email marketing tools I’ve tried. Very few emails sent from this platform end up being sent to the abyss of the spam inbox.

Hundreds of licensed stock images are available to create a unique email for maximum impact, plus designing an email is straightforward with the drag-and-drop interface. However, the task is more challenging if you want to create an email from scratch instead of using a template.

iContact also has strong list management tools. It’s simple to create subsets of contact lists based on zip codes or signup dates. This platform also easily integrates with in excess of over 100 apps, including PayPal, Shopify, and Survey Monkey. 

iContact: Support

iContact features a wealth of content to assist you become a better email marketer. There are over 100 professionally created webinars, videos, and guides to optimizing your PR, email designs, and campaigns that can help both novices and experts alike.

The professional content available via a blog, podcast, and email lookbook are excellent quality too, for example the webinar on “Head & Heart of Marketing: Why Your Emails MUST Have These 10 Things.” We also found excellent video walkthroughs of the software and training videos on every aspect of the portal.

For technical support, FAQs explain every part of the software for those looking for self help. Free plan users only have email support and a support portal to initiate contact. But, paid plan users can access live chat and phone support for direct contact, and are available Monday to Friday 9am –7pm EST.

iContact: Specs

Email editor

Drag-and-drop, mobile-optimized

Automations

1 (Standard); unlimited (Premium)

AI writing tools

Subject line + content; Premium only

App integrations

100+; includes Shopify and PayPal

Sending limits

10x–12x contacts per month

Should I buy iContact?

Attribute

Notes

Score

Features

Core tools are solid; AI and social restricted to Premium

3.5/5

Performance

Reliable deliverability and consistent inbox placement

4/5

Design

Clean, intuitive editor with built-in mobile preview

4/5

Value

Competitive entry price; Standard plan is quite limited

3.5/5

Buy it if

• You're a small business with a modest list. Standard starts at $9/month for 500 contacts, backed by a 30-day free trial that requires no credit card. For businesses just getting started with email marketing, it's a low-risk entry point with enough tools to run functional campaigns.
• You want a clean setup without a steep learning curve. The drag-and-drop editor is approachable even without prior experience, and iContact's help resources cover most early questions before you ever need to contact support.
• You need AI writing tools without adding a separate product. Premium includes Subject Line AI and an AI Content Assistant to draft copy faster, which saves time for small teams handling campaigns alongside other responsibilities.

Don't buy it if

• You need more than one person managing campaigns. Standard is strictly single-user. The moment you need shared account access, you're on Premium, which more than doubles the starting cost.
• You send frequently relative to your list size. Monthly sending limits of 10x contacts on Standard and 12x on Premium can be reached quickly by high-frequency senders, leading to overage charges on top of your subscription.
• You need advanced segmentation from the start. Standard restricts you to one segment and two contact lists. Businesses that want to target subscribers based on behavior or purchase history will hit those limits quickly.

Also consider

• Mailchimp: Worth considering for more sophisticated multi-step automation and deeper segmentation. Its free plan was cut significantly in January 2026 to just 250 contacts and 500 emails per month, making it impractical for most businesses. Paid plans start at $13/month (Essentials), with multi-step automation only unlocking on Standard at $20/month.
• Brevo (formerly Sendinblue): Prices by email volume rather than contact count, which makes it more cost-effective for businesses with larger lists that send infrequently. The free tier supports 300 emails per day with up to 100,000 contacts stored, with no time limit. Paid plans start at $9/month for 5,000 monthly sends and include SMS alongside email on most tiers.
• Constant Contact: Suits small businesses running event-driven campaigns or working in the nonprofit sector. The platform removed its permanent free plan in June 2025 and now offers a 14-day free trial plus a 30-day money-back guarantee. Paid plans start at $12/month for 500 contacts.

iContact: Final verdict

In summary, iContact offers a solid product, and is priced competitively. The excellent onboarding and comprehensive tutorials make it a solid choice for a small business starting out in email marketing, with tons of support articles, webinars, and blogs to support your ongoing growth. While some professional marketers might find the automation, segmentation, and metrics lack the detail required for large-scale, complex marketing plans, those with more modest goals are sure to be pleased with what iContact does better than most.

We've also listed the best online marketing services.

I've tested and reviewed all of Apple's AirPods, including Apple's new AirPos Max 2. Here's how they stack up.

MailerLite is an email marketing platform built for small businesses, creators, and freelancers who want professional results without a steep learning curve. It covers the essentials — newsletter campaigns, automation workflows, landing pages, sign-up forms, and pop-ups.

Since the last couple of years, the platform has added a ton of meaningful updates: an AI writing assistant, a Smart Sending feature that optimizes delivery times for individual subscribers, and an MCP server that lets you control MailerLite through AI tools like Claude or ChatGPT.

There's also been a push toward improving monetization. MailerLite now lets you sell digital products, run paid newsletter subscriptions, and offer bookings directly through the platform. These aren't the deepest implementations you'll find, but for small operators who want everything in one place, they reduce the need to stitch together separate tools. The free plan still gives you a workable starting point, though the subscriber limit has dropped from 1,000 to 500 in 2026.

• You can sign up for Mailerlite here.

My experience with MailerLite

MailerLite makes a solid first impression. Setup takes minutes, while the interface holds up well even as you start working with automations and segmentation. The drag-and-drop editor is one of the better ones we've tested at this price point. The AI writing assistant added in late 2023 is a useful drafting aid when you're stuck — it won't write campaigns for you, but it takes the edge off a blank page.

It mostly earns its reputation from making mid-tier features feel accessible. Automation workflows, A/B testing, and subscriber segmentation are all present without being buried. For a small business or solo creator, that combination is hard to argue with at these prices. The one structural caveat: Growing Business users max out at 50,000 subscribers, so larger lists move to Advanced or Enterprise territory.

There are more limitations worth flagging before you sign up. There's no built-in spam testing, so you'll need a third-party tool like Litmus if deliverability is critical to your workflow. The free plan's 500-subscriber cap is also more restrictive than several competitors, which may push new users toward a paid plan earlier than they'd expect. At least the 14-day trial of premium features gives you a fair window to evaluate before committing.

MailerLite: Plans and pricing

Plan

Starting rate (billed monthly)

Starting rate (billed annually)

Subscriber count

Free

$0/month

$0/month

Up to 500

Growing Business

$10/month

$9/month

500-50,000

Advanced

$20/month

$18/month

500-500,000

Enterprise

Custom

Custom

100,000+

MailerLite has a free tier but with limited features. This tier supports a maximum of 12,000 monthly emails to 1,000 subscribers. It gives you access to basic features like a drag & drop email editor and email automation builder. You can also create sign-up forms and landing pages on this tier.

If you want more advanced features, you'll need a premium tier, and MailerLite offers three such tiers; Growing Business, Advanced, and Enterprise. The Growing Business plan costs $10 / £10 / AUD$15 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers and increases according to the number of subscribers. For example, 10,000 subscribers on this plan will cost $54 / £50 / AUD$79 per month and 50,000 subscribers will cost $239 / £210 / AUD$350 per month. This plan gives you access to sophisticated features like dynamic emails and auto-resend campaigns.

The Advanced plan costs $21 / £21 / AUD$30 per month for 1,000 subscribers and increases according to the number of subscribers. For example, 10,000 subscribers on this plan will run you $87 / £85 / AUD$125 per month and 50,000 subscribers will cost $289 / £270 / AUD$450 per month. This plan gives you a dedicated account manager, a dedicated IP address, and 24/7 live chat & email support among other features.

While the Advanced plan can be scaled up to 500,000 subscribers, businesses with over 100,000 subscribers can also opt for the Enterprise plan, which might offer better terms. You’ll have to contact MailerLite’s sales team for a custom quote.

MailerLite offers a 30-day free trial for each of its premium plans. You’ll also get a significant discount if you pay annually instead of monthly.

The MailerLite pricing tool shows how much the service will cost for your circumstances. (Image credit: MailerLite )MailerLite: Features

You can create email marketing campaigns with MailerLite using a drag-and-drop editor, rich text editor, or custom HTML editor. With a paid plan, you have access to 63 templates. They’re OK designs, but most of MailerLite’s competition offers more variety.

However, MailerLite goes beyond email newsletters with a robust set of tools for creating landing pages, forms, pop-ups, and even entire websites using a drag-and-drop editor. There are also strong campaign reports that can show you how many people have opened your emails based on their location.

You can optimize campaigns with A/B split testing, time zone delivery, personalization, and segmentation. We particularly like how easy it is to tweak and resend a campaign to people who didn’t open the email the first time. 

MailerLite has an intuitive drag-and-drop email editor. (Image credit: MailerLite )MailerLite: Interface and use

We found MailerLite particularly intuitive to use. Its simple interface and well-designed editors meant we spent less time learning the product and more time actually marketing. MailerLite is organized so that features like automation workflows, the landing page editor, and segmentation aren’t a distraction when you don’t need them.

However, in our testing, MailerLite performed rather poorly in deliverability, achieving around 80% deliverability with a 20% chance of being flagged as spam. In comparison, Sendinblue achieved a 95% deliverability rate.

MailerLite has a relatively powerful email marketing automation system. (Image credit: MailerLite )MailerLite: Support

MailerLite provides direct support through email and live chat. Free-tier users have access to email support from Monday to Friday. Users on the Growing Business plan have access to 24/7 email support, while users on the Advanced and Enterprise plan have access to 24/7 live chat and email support.

Apart from direct support, every user can access MailerLite’s official Knowledge Base, which contains a plethora of articles concerning all the platform's features. For example, you can find manuals on how to integrate MailerLite with third-party apps or how to create and send email campaigns. There's also something called the MailerLite Academy, which provides free online courses for users to learn about email marketing.

If you need help with your email marketing efforts, MailerLite has a directory of vetted experts that you can hire for a fee. 

MailerLite has context-sensitive help available on every page that can help with your current task. (Image credit: MailerLite )MailerLite: Specs

Spec

Details

AI writing assistant

Drafts copy in 30+ languages

MCP server

Connects to Claude, ChatGPT, others

Smart Sending

AI-optimized per-subscriber send times

Automation workflows

Multi-trigger, visual builder included

Monetization tools

Products, subscriptions, bookings built in

Should I buy MailerLite?

Attribute

Notes

Score

Features

Solid core set with useful AI additions; automation depth lags behind ActiveCampaign

4/5

Performance

Deliverability has improved since 2023; but no native spam testing

3.5/5

Design

One of the cleanest editors in its price range; easy to pick up

4.5/5

Value

Competitive pricing and a usable free tier despite the tighter subscriber cap

4/5

Buy it if

• You're building a list on a budget. MailerLite's free plan and low starting prices make it one of the more cost-effective entry points for email marketing. Growing Business at $9/month (billed annually) gives you a workable toolkit without a large upfront commitment.
• You want to sell products without a separate platform. Digital product sales, paid newsletter subscriptions, and bookings are all built in. For creators who want a single tool rather than a cobbled-together stack, that's genuinely useful.
• You're new to email marketing. The interface is approachable, and the automation builder doesn't require much ramp-up time. MailerLite Academy also offers free courses if you want structured guidance from the start.

Don't buy it if

• You need a built-in CRM or deep sales automation. MailerLite is focused on email; it won't replace a proper CRM. ActiveCampaign or HubSpot are better options if sales pipeline management is part of the equation.
• Your list is approaching 50,000 and you're price-sensitive. Growing Business caps at 50K subscribers. Beyond that, you move to Advanced pricing, which is meaningfully higher. Use the pricing calculator on MailerLite's website before committing.
• Deliverability testing matters to your workflow. There's no built-in spam testing tool, and you can't preview emails as a specific subscriber before sending. You'll need to budget for a third-party tool like Litmus if that's a priority.

Also consider

• Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo charges by email volume rather than subscriber count, making it cheaper for large lists that send infrequently. It also includes SMS marketing and a basic CRM in the same platform.
• Mailchimp. More templates and deeper third-party integrations than MailerLite, though pricing climbs quickly as your list grows. A better fit if you need extensive e-commerce integrations or detailed audience analytics.
• Kit (formerly ConvertKit). Built for creators and newsletter operators. It offers stronger monetization and audience segmentation tools, though it costs more than MailerLite at comparable subscriber counts.

MailerLite: Final verdict

The developers of MailerLite have done a marvelous job of streamlining and simplifying marketing processes, making for a highly intuitive product that’s easy to use. Though professional marketers might find the reporting and automation tools lack a few of the more advanced features of tools like Infusionsoft, most small businesses, freelancers, bloggers, and beginners will find MailerLite has more than enough power and versatility for their email marketing campaigns.

We've also listed the best Q&A polling platforms for customer feedback.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for April 30

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for April 30 No. 583.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for April 30, No. 788.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for April 30 #1054

Amazon's Leo will be "six times better on the uplink performance than existing alternatives," CEO Andy Jassy said.

This Philips air fryer is the most versatile air fryer I've tried and worth every penny, all thanks to an additional steam functionality.

Amazon layoffs are hitting workers across several states as Fresh closures, AI investments, and post-pandemic restructuring reshape its workforce.

The post Amazon Layoffs Hit Thousands Across Multiple States as Fresh Stores Close appeared first on TechRepublic.

Microsoft confirmed a Windows zero-click flaw tied to an incomplete patch is being exploited, putting credentials at risk for unpatched users.

The post Microsoft Confirms Windows Flaw Is Being Exploited After Incomplete Patch appeared first on TechRepublic.

Elon Musk says Tesla’s Optimus robot could launch next year, with production starting in 2026 and a major scale-up planned by 2027.

The post Tesla Optimus Robot Launch Timeline Targets 2027 Scale appeared first on TechRepublic.