The short version: the best alternatives to Mailchimp, Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign right now are Brevo (cheap, sends-based pricing), MailerLite (best value for straightforward lists), Flodesk (flat fee, unlimited contacts, built for creators) and Omnisend (best for ecommerce on a budget). None of them are perfect. The one that saves you the most money is usually the one you’re most annoyed about learning again.
Useful alongside this: How an AI Email Writer Can Save You Real Time on Client Replies.
Why people go looking for an alternative in the first place
Nobody switches email platforms because they’re bored on a Sunday. They switch because a bill landed that made them wince. I had a client on Mailchimp who grew their list from 4,000 to 15,000 subscribers over about eighteen months, mostly through a lead magnet that worked far better than expected. Their monthly bill went from £46 to £238. Same emails, same open rate, same everything, just more names on the list, most of whom hadn’t opened an email in four months.
That’s the trigger point for almost everyone I’ve worked with. It’s rarely “this tool is bad.” It’s “this tool got expensive at exactly the size where I can least afford to be paying more.”
The alternatives worth considering in 2026
I’ll give you real numbers here, not “contact us for pricing,” because that’s the bit every other list on this topic skips.
- Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Pricing is based on emails sent, not contacts stored, which flips the whole maths. Free plan gives you 300 emails a day. The Starter plan is around $9/month for 5,000 emails, no daily cap. If you have a huge list but only email twice a month, this is the cheapest option on the market by a wide margin.
- MailerLite. Contact-based pricing but fair at every tier. Free up to 1,000 subscribers with most features unlocked. Paid plans start around $9/month for 500 subscribers and scale gradually rather than jumping in huge steps. The automation builder is nearly as capable as ActiveCampaign’s for a fraction of the price.
- Flodesk. Flat fee, currently around $38/month, unlimited subscribers, unlimited sends. If you’re a coffee shop, a florist, a photographer, or anyone whose emails are more visual than transactional, this is the one that stops punishing you for growing your list. I’ve recommended it to two small hospitality clients and both stayed under budget for the first time in years, similar to the thinking I wrote about in how to get your coffee shop customers hooked through great marketing.
- Omnisend. Built for ecommerce, with SMS and Facebook Ads sync built in. Free up to 250 contacts, paid plans start around $16/month. If your emails are triggered by cart abandonment or purchase behaviour rather than manual campaigns, this beats Klaviyo on price at small-to-mid list sizes, though Klaviyo still wins on raw segmentation power once you’re past 50,000 contacts.
- ConvertKit (now called Kit). Creator-focused, strong tagging system, free up to 10,000 subscribers on the basic tier. Paid plans add automation and start around $9/month for 300 subscribers, scaling up from there. Good if you’re a solo consultant, coach, or writer rather than a brand with product catalogues.
- EmailOctopus. The cheapest serious option I’ve used. Around $8/month for 500 subscribers, and their higher tiers using Amazon SES integration get cheap at scale. Fewer bells and whistles, but deliverability has been solid every time I’ve tested it.
- GetResponse. Starts around $19/month, includes webinar hosting and a landing page builder bundled in, which some businesses use as a reason to drop a separate tool entirely, similar logic to what I cover in the marketing tools I pay for in 2026 (and the ones I cancelled).
What nobody tells you before you migrate
Here’s the bit that gets left out of nearly every “best alternatives” post: switching platforms will not fix a list that’s mostly dead weight. If 60% of your subscribers haven’t opened an email in six months on Mailchimp, they won’t magically start opening on Brevo. The problem isn’t the platform, it’s the list. I’ve watched businesses spend three weeks migrating templates and automations to a shiny new tool, only to hit the exact same deliverability issues within two months, because they moved the same 12,000 dead contacts across with them instead of cutting the list first.
The uncomfortable truth is that most people research alternatives for the wrong reason. They want a cheaper way to keep emailing people who don’t want their emails, rather than accepting that the list needs to shrink. A list of 3,000 people who open regularly will outperform 15,000 people who mostly ignore you, on every metric that matters: open rate, click rate, deliverability, and yes, cost. Cutting your list before you migrate is the single highest-use thing you can do, and it costs nothing.
Step by step: how to move
This is the process I use with clients, and it takes about two to three weeks done, not the “migrate overnight” pitch some tools sell you.
- Step 1: Clean the list first, before you touch a new tool. Remove anyone who hasn’t opened an email in 90 to 180 days. Send one last “still want to hear from us?” email to that segment before you cut them.
- Step 2: Export contacts with full field data, not just name and email. Tags, purchase history, custom fields, all of it, as a CSV.
- Step 3: Run a trial on the new platform with a small segment first, maybe 500 to 1,000 contacts, before moving everyone. Check open rates and spam placement against your old numbers.
- Step 4: Rebuild your automations one at a time, not all at once. Welcome sequence first, then abandoned cart or nurture sequences, then one-off broadcasts.
- Step 5: Set up authentication , meaning SPF, DKIM and DMARC records for your sending domain. Skipping this step is the single biggest reason new platform migrations tank deliverability in the first month.
- Step 6: Run both platforms in parallel for two weeks, sending the same broadcast from each to a small split of your list, and compare open rates before switching over fully.
- Step 7: Cancel the old platform only after one full billing cycle on the new one has gone smoothly, not before.
Skipping step 5 is the mistake I see most often. Businesses move providers, forget to update their domain authentication records, and their open rates drop by a third for no reason they can identify. It’s not the new platform’s fault. It’s an admin step that takes twenty minutes and gets forgotten in the rush.
Matching the tool to what you sell
The right alternative depends far more on your business model than on which platform has the prettiest dashboard. A service business sending a monthly newsletter has completely different needs to an ecommerce store running abandoned cart flows. I’ve laid out how to think about this in the best email marketing platform for small businesses (what I’d choose in 2026 and why), but the short version is this: if you sell products, prioritise ecommerce integrations and behavioural triggers over pretty design templates. If you sell your time or expertise, prioritise segmentation and tagging over automation complexity, because your list is smaller and your relationship with it matters more than volume.
This is the same principle behind strong marketing strategies for business growth generally: the channel should fit the customer journey, not the other way round. A brand like Uber didn’t win by picking flashy tools, they won by matching simple, relentless communication to exactly where their users were, something I broke down in Uber’s marketing strategy and how they built a brand that wins. Email works the same way. The platform is the least important decision. What you send and who you send it to matters ten times more.
What I’d do if I were starting today
If I had a list under 2,000 people and no budget, I’d start on MailerLite’s free tier or Brevo’s free tier and not think about it again until I hit a growth ceiling. If I ran a visual, brand-heavy business like a shop or a studio, I’d go straight to Flodesk and enjoy never worrying about the bill again as my list grows. If I ran an online store, Omnisend at the starter tier gives you flows most people pay double for elsewhere. And if I were running a side project alongside a day job, something in the spirit of what I cover in 13 side hustles you can start this week, I’d pick whichever tool has the most generous free tier and worry about upgrading only once revenue justifies it, not before.
None of these choices are permanent. Migrating platforms every two years as your business changes shape is normal and healthy. What isn’t healthy is staying on an expensive platform out of inertia, paying £200 a month to email a list that stopped caring about you a year ago.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest real alternative to Mailchimp?
Brevo, because it charges by emails sent rather than contacts stored, which means a large but infrequently-emailed list costs far less than it would on Mailchimp. For contact-based pricing, MailerLite is the fairest and cheapest at most list sizes.
Is Klaviyo worth switching to from a smaller platform?
Only if you run ecommerce with meaningful order volume, since its strength is behavioural segmentation tied to purchase data. Below roughly 5,000 contacts and modest order numbers, Omnisend or Brevo do the same job for less money.
Will switching email platforms fix poor open rates?
No, and this is the part most guides skip. Poor open rates almost always come from an unengaged list, not the software. Clean the list before you migrate, or you’ll carry the exact same problem to the new tool at a lower price.
How long does an email platform migration take?
Done, two to three weeks: cleaning the list, testing on a small segment, rebuilding automations one at a time, and running both platforms in parallel for about two weeks before cancelling the old one.
Further reading
Related reading: How to Use Facebook Hashtags to Get More Reach (What They Do in 2026) and Red Bull Marketing Strategy: How They Built a Brand That Wins.
For the bigger picture, see my full guide to email marketing.
If you would rather pitch your own version, you can write for us about email marketing.
