The short version: there is no single best newsletter platform for small businesses, only the best one for your list size, your budget, and what you do with your list. For most small businesses under 10,000 subscribers who just want to send a good-looking newsletter without a technical headache, MailerLite or Kit (formerly ConvertKit) will beat Mailchimp on price and simplicity. For anyone selling products or nurturing a sales pipeline, ActiveCampaign earns its higher price tag.
Why this question doesn’t have a tidy answer
I get asked this at least once a month, usually by someone who has just been quoted a price by Mailchimp that made them wince and want to jump ship. And I understand the instinct to want one clean recommendation. But I have run my own list through three different platforms over fifteen years, and I have watched clients switch platforms expecting a miracle and get nothing but a few weeks of admin and the same open rates they had before.
Newsletter platforms are tools, not strategies. The platform does not write your subject lines, it does not decide how often you show up, and it will not fix a list full of people who signed up for a discount code three years ago and never opened a single email since. Before we get into the specifics, I want that on the table, because most posts on this topic skip straight to a comparison chart and pretend the tool is the whole answer.
My own switch, and what it cost me
I built my first 20,000 subscribers on Mailchimp, back when it was the default choice for anyone starting a list around 2011. It was free at low volumes, the templates looked fine, and nobody questioned it. Then in 2019 Mailchimp changed how it counted contacts, and unsubscribed and cleaned contacts started counting toward your billable total. My monthly bill went from around 40 pounds to nearly 140 pounds without me adding a single new subscriber. That was the moment I moved to ConvertKit, now rebranded as Kit.
The move itself took me a weekend. Exporting a list is simple, the pain is always in rebuilding your automations, your tags, and your forms on the new platform. I lost about 4 percent of my list in the process, mostly people whose email addresses had quietly gone dead and never got flagged until I re-verified everything on import. That is normal. If you are dreading a platform switch because you think you will lose half your list, you will not, but budget a proper weekend for it and do not attempt it the week before a launch.
The platforms worth putting on your shortlist
These are the six I recommend clients look at in 2026. I have used four of them myself and consulted on the other two for clients.
Mailchimp
Still the biggest name, and still fine for a small list. The free plan covers up to 500 contacts and 1,000 sends a month. Past that, pricing climbs fast, and their essentials, standard and premium tiers add features many small businesses never touch, like multivariate testing and predictive segmentation. It works, but the interface has grown cluttered over the years, and support has slipped noticeably since they were acquired by Intuit. I still recommend it for total beginners with under 500 contacts who want zero learning curve, and nothing more.
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)
Built by and for creators, and it shows in how it handles tagging. Instead of static lists, Kit tags subscribers based on behaviour, so someone who clicks a link about your coaching offer gets tagged differently to someone who clicks your podcast link. Pricing starts free for up to 10,000 subscribers on the creator plan with limited automation, then moves to around 25 pounds a month at low volumes for full automation, scaling with list size. This is the platform I moved to and still use. If your business runs on one-to-many relationship building, courses, coaching, or content, this is the strongest option.
MailerLite
The best value platform on this list, full stop. The free plan covers up to 1,000 subscribers with automation included, which is more generous than almost anyone else. Paid plans start around 9 pounds a month and stay affordable well past 10,000 subscribers. The drag-and-drop editor is clean, automations are easy to build without a tutorial, and I have set up client accounts here in under an hour. The trade-off is fewer advanced integrations and a less flexible tagging system than Kit. For a straightforward monthly or weekly newsletter with basic automation like a welcome sequence, this is where I point most small business clients now.
ActiveCampaign
This is not really a newsletter tool, it is a marketing automation and light CRM platform that happens to send excellent newsletters. Pricing starts around 29 pounds a month and rises quickly once you add the CRM and sales automation features. The automation builder is the most powerful of anything on this list, letting you build complex behaviour-based sequences, like moving a lead through different email tracks depending on which pages they visit on your site. If you are already thinking about how your marketing automation and your email list should work together, or you are managing leads through a CRM for lead management, ActiveCampaign is worth the extra spend. For a simple monthly newsletter it is overkill.
beehiiv
Built specifically for people who want their newsletter to become a business in its own right, not just a marketing add-on. The free plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers, and beehiiv’s own ad network can connect you with sponsors once your list grows, something none of the others offer natively. Growth tools like referral programmes are built in rather than bolted on. If your goal is a paid or sponsored newsletter as the product itself, rather than a marketing channel for another business, beehiiv is the newer, sharper choice.
Flodesk
Flat pricing regardless of list size, currently around 35 pounds a month whether you have 200 subscribers or 20,000. That flat rate makes it brilliant once your list is large, and expensive if your list is small. The email templates are the best looking of any platform on this list by a distance, which is exactly why it is popular with photographers, designers, and boutique retailers who care about visual polish. Automation is more limited than Kit or ActiveCampaign, so it suits businesses sending beautiful, simple newsletters rather than complex funnels.
Substack deserves a mention, with a caveat
Substack is free to send from and takes no cut unless you charge for subscriptions, in which case it takes 10 percent plus payment processing. It has built-in discovery, meaning readers already on Substack can stumble onto your newsletter, something none of the platforms above offer. But Substack was built for independent writers monetising direct reader subscriptions, not for small businesses using a newsletter to support product sales or services. I have seen small businesses set up a beautiful Substack and then struggle to connect it to their website, their CRM, or their existing customer list. Use it if your newsletter is the product. Skip it if the newsletter supports a different product.
The five questions that decide this for you
Skip the twelve-tab comparison spreadsheet. Answer these five questions honestly and you will land on the right platform in under twenty minutes.
- How big is your list right now, and how fast is it growing? Under 1,000 subscribers, price barely matters, so pick on ease of use. Over 10,000, price differences between platforms can run into hundreds of pounds a month.
- What is the newsletter for? Nurturing leads toward a sale needs strong automation, so look at ActiveCampaign or Kit. A simple update to existing customers needs almost none, so MailerLite or Flodesk will do.
- Do you sell anything directly through email? If yes, check native integrations with your store platform before anything else. Poor Shopify or WooCommerce integration has broken more automated abandoned cart sequences than any other single mistake I see.
- How much of your own time can you give it? Kit and ActiveCampaign reward time spent learning them. MailerLite and Flodesk are built to get you sending in a single afternoon.
- Does it need to talk to your CRM? If your sales team relies on a CRM, check the native integration exists before you sign up, not after. Some connections that look supported are clunky third-party plugins that break during updates.
The uncomfortable bit nobody selling you a platform will say
Here is the thing most comparison posts avoid, because platforms pay affiliate commissions and nobody wants to say it plainly: switching platforms almost never fixes a bad newsletter. I have had clients spend three weeks migrating from Mailchimp to a shinier tool expecting their 12 percent open rate to jump, and it stayed at 12 percent because the actual problem was their subject lines, their sending frequency, and a list that hadn’t been cleaned in two years. The platform was never the bottleneck. The habits were.
If your open rates are low, check your sending frequency and your subject lines before you check your software. If your emails are landing in spam more than they should, that is very rarely the platform’s fault either, it is almost always about your sender reputation and your list hygiene, which I cover in why your newsletter keeps landing in spam. Fix that first. Then, and only then, worry about which button colour the platform lets you choose.
What I tell clients to do
When a client asks me to help them decide, I give them a shortlist of two, never six. Nine times out of ten it is MailerLite against Kit, because between them they cover almost every small business scenario without the price creep of Mailchimp or the complexity of ActiveCampaign. I ask them to build one real welcome sequence in each platform’s free trial, not just click around the dashboard. The platform that lets you build that sequence without opening a help article wins. That single test tells you more than any comparison chart.
One boutique accountancy client of mine in Leeds moved from Mailchimp to MailerLite in early 2025. Their list was around 3,400 contacts, their Mailchimp bill was 54 pounds a month, and the same list on MailerLite cost 18 pounds. Nothing else changed. Same content, same frequency, same team writing it. Open rates stayed within a point of where they had been for the previous six months, because open rates track content and consistency, not the sending platform. They saved 432 pounds a year and lost nothing.
Where this fits into your wider marketing
None of this matters much if the newsletter itself sits disconnected from everything else you do. A newsletter platform is one piece of a bigger picture that includes your content marketing plan and, for most small businesses, a genuine understanding of why email marketing still matters when everyone tells you it is dead. It is not dead. It is the one channel you own outright, with no algorithm deciding who sees it. If you want a broader look at picking any email platform, not just for a newsletter but for your full marketing stack, I wrote a longer breakdown on how to decide which email marketing platform is best for your specific situation, which walks through the CRM and automation angles this post does not have room for.
Pick a platform, give it three months of consistent sending, and judge it on real numbers rather than gut feeling after a fortnight. Most platform regret I see comes from businesses judging a tool after two sends, when the real test is whether you are still using it after ninety days.
Every AI guide I have written for owner run businesses is indexed on the AI for small business guide.
A closely related guide: What does HR support for a small business include and when do you need.
Frequently asked questions
Is Mailchimp still worth using for a small business in 2026?
Only if your list is under 500 contacts and you want the simplest possible free option. Past that, MailerLite and Kit both offer better value and fewer unnecessary features cluttering the dashboard.
What is the cheapest newsletter platform for a growing list?
MailerLite is the cheapest platform that scales well, staying affordable from a free 1,000-subscriber plan up through tens of thousands of contacts, with automation included even on lower tiers.
Do I need marketing automation for a simple business newsletter?
No. If you send a monthly or weekly update without complex behaviour-based sequences, a simple platform like MailerLite or Flodesk will serve you better than paying for automation features in ActiveCampaign or Kit that you will never use.
Will switching newsletter platforms improve my open rates?
Rarely. Open rates are driven mostly by subject lines, sending consistency, and list hygiene, not by which platform sends the email. Fix those three things before spending time or money migrating platforms.
