MailerLite's pricing page looks like every other email tool's: tiers, subscriber counts, a monthly figure. Look closely and something odd appears — Comfort and Power are quoted at the same 500 subscribers. The difference between them is not list size at all, and knowing what it actually is saves you $13 a month or a very annoying surprise. Prices verified on 2026-09-09.
The free plan, and what it genuinely runs
250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, with 2 seats, 3 automations, 1 website, 1 landing page and 3 forms. Support is community only and your emails carry MailerLite branding.
Three automations is the number that matters here, and it is unusual at $0. A welcome email, a lead-magnet delivery and one follow-up sequence all fit. That means the free plan can run a real, working funnel — not just collect addresses — which is more than Kit offers on a free plan forty times larger.
Do the arithmetic on the sends before you rely on it: 250 subscribers against 2,500 emails a month is ten sends to your whole list. Weekly is comfortable. Daily is not.
The two paid tiers, and the real difference
Comfort is $12 a month at 500 subscribers ($10.80 on annual). It gives 5,000 emails a month, 3 seats, 50 automations, 10 sites or landing pages, logo removal and 24/7 email support.
Power is $25 a month at 500 subscribers ($22.50 annual). Unlimited emails, unlimited seats, unlimited automations, unlimited landing pages and forms, plus 24/7 live chat.
Same subscribers. Both scale with list size from there. So the decision between them is how often you send, not how many people you have:
- 500 subscribers on Comfort = 5,000 emails = ten sends a month to the full list.
- Weekly newsletter plus a monthly promotion: comfortably inside Comfort.
- A daily email, or a heavy automation that fires several messages per subscriber per month: you will hit the cap, and the cap arrives as messages that do not go out.
The other Comfort ceiling is 50 automations, which sounds like plenty until you count that every sequence, tag rule and trigger is one. Most small businesses never reach it. Anyone running segmented lifecycle campaigns will.
Where the annual discount leaves you
Ten percent. Comfort is $12 monthly or $10.80 on annual; Power $25 or $22.50.
That is meaningfully worse than the two-months-free that most of this category offers, and it changes the advice: there is little reason to commit a year here. Pay monthly, and if you outgrow the plan you have lost nothing.
When something else fits better
You want the biggest possible free list. Kit is free to 10,000 subscribers — but with no automations at all, so it is a broadcasting tool until you pay. MailerLite vs Kit is the direct comparison, and the honest summary is that MailerLite's smaller free plan does more.
You are selling a course or coaching. Systeme.io puts email alongside funnels, a course area and a checkout on a free plan with 2,000 contacts. If the email list exists to sell something specific, a suite beats a better email tool: Systeme.io vs MailerLite.
You run an ecommerce store. MailerLite's ecommerce integrations are shallower than tools built for it, and its automation logic is simpler than ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo for advanced segmentation. See best email marketing for ecommerce.
The short version
Start free — 250 subscribers with three automations runs a genuine funnel. Move to Comfort at $12 when the branding or the 2,500-email cap starts to hurt. Move to Power only when you send more than about ten times a month to your full list, because that, not your subscriber count, is the entire difference between the two tiers. And pay monthly: 10% is not worth a year of commitment.
For where MailerLite's free tier sits against every other one we have checked, see the Free Plan Index. To start from scratch, build an email list from zero.