MailerLite vs Mailjet
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentMailjet compared with MailerLite
MailerLite is the better pure marketing platform: a cleaner interface, a stronger automation builder, landing pages, websites, and a better free tier at 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails. It prices on subscribers, so a large infrequently mailed list costs considerably more there than on Mailjet. MailerLite also has no meaningful transactional API. Choose MailerLite for marketing depth and polish, Mailjet when per-email pricing suits your send pattern or you need transactional mail on the same account.
Choose MailerLite if
Solopreneurs, small businesses, and lean marketing teams that want the whole email toolkit (campaigns, automations, sites, forms, paid newsletters) at low cost, with a clean editor and EU-hosted data, and do not need enterprise CRM depth.
Choose Mailjet if
Small businesses and European companies that need both marketing campaigns and transactional email from one vendor, especially those with a large list they mail infrequently, where per-email pricing is dramatically cheaper than per-contact pricing.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | MailerLite | Mailjet |
|---|---|---|
| Category | ESPs | ESPs |
| Starting price | $10.80/mo (Comfort, up to 500 subscribers, billed annually; $12 monthly) (free plan available) | $0 for 6,000 emails a month, then $9 a month (Starter) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Usage-based tiers: every paid plan carries the full feature set, and price scales with active subscriber count and sending volume. Comfort includes 10x your subscriber-tier ceiling in monthly emails; Power includes unlimited sending under fair use. Annual billing saves 10%. | Metered on monthly emails sent rather than on contacts stored, with unlimited contacts on the Essential tier and above. Four published tiers plus a quoted Custom tier, scaling with send volume. |
| Free plan | Up to 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/month, 2 user seats, 3 automations, 1 website, 1 landing page, 3 forms, all three editors, A/B testing. | 6,000 emails a month capped at 200 a day, with 1,000 contacts, one sub-account, and Mailjet branding on messages. |
| Free trial | 14-day premium feature trial on every new account, no credit card | No |
| Best for | Solopreneurs, small businesses, and lean marketing teams that want the whole email toolkit (campaigns, automations, sites, forms, paid newsletters) at low cost, with a clean editor and EU-hosted data, and do not need enterprise CRM depth. | Small businesses and European companies that need both marketing campaigns and transactional email from one vendor, especially those with a large list they mail infrequently, where per-email pricing is dramatically cheaper than per-contact pricing. |
| Setup time | An afternoon for import, a form, and a first campaign; domain authentication (SPF/DKIM) is the only technical step most users touch. | A few hours. Add a sending domain, publish SPF and DKIM, import contacts or drop in the API credentials, and send. Nothing is gated behind a sales conversation below the Custom tier. |
| Learning curve | Low. The editor and automation builder are among the most approachable in the category; the subtle parts are billing mechanics (cumulative counting, the 10x multiplier) rather than the product itself. | Low for the marketing side and low for developers on the transactional side. The one concept worth learning deliberately is sub-accounts, which are how you keep marketing and transactional reputation apart and are only available in quantity on Premium. |
| Platforms | Web app, iOS app, REST API, MCP server | Web application, REST API v3, SMTP relay, Inbound parsing webhook, Official libraries for 6 languages |
| Compliance | GDPR, ISO 27001 (EU data center) | ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR as an EU-established processor, CAN-SPAM |
| Founded | 2010 | 2010 |
| Headquarters | Vilnius, Lithuania (remote-first team) | Paris, France, as part of Sinch (Stockholm, Sweden) |
| Ownership | Subsidiary of Vercom S.A. (Warsaw-listed communications group) since 2022; operates as an independent brand | Owned by Sinch AB (STO: SINCH) since December 2021 |
Strengths and limitations
MailerLite
Strengths
- Full feature set on every paid plan; pricing scales on usage alone, which makes cost modeling honest and upgrade pressure structural rather than feature-hostage.
- Interface and editor quality are consistently the best-reviewed part of the product, with three editor modes and 70+ content blocks.
- Websites, landing pages, popups, digital products, and commission-free paid newsletters are bundled where competitors charge or take a cut.
- A/B testing on the free plan and auto-resend on paid plans are practical performance features at every budget.
Limitations
- Free plan's 250-subscriber cap makes it an extended demo, far behind Kit's 10,000 and beehiiv's 2,500 free ceilings.
- Comfort's 10x email multiplier quietly meters frequent senders; daily-send publishers need Power at roughly double the cost.
- Cumulative active-subscriber billing means a purged list keeps costing until the next billing anniversary.
- No growth network of any kind: no recommendations marketplace, no ad network, no referral bounty; acquisition is entirely your problem.
Mailjet
Strengths
- Priced on emails sent with unlimited contacts on paid plans, which is dramatically cheaper than contact-based pricing for a large list mailed infrequently and eliminates the dormant-contact hidden cost entirely.
- Covers both jobs in this category from one account: marketing campaigns and a genuine transactional API with inbound parsing, webhooks, and message logs.
- The real-time collaborative email editor with comments and locked sections is unique in this category and removes an entire review cycle for teams.
- MJML, the open-source responsive email markup language Mailjet created, is genuinely good and is used far beyond Mailjet's own customer base.
Limitations
- Automation is Premium-only and simple, with none of the branching or behavioural depth of ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, or Omnisend.
- Segmentation does not exist below the Essential tier, so the cheap plans are broadcast tools rather than marketing platforms.
- No landing pages, webinars, events, courses, or CRM; Mailjet is email and nothing else, which limits how much of a stack it can consolidate.
- The free plan's 200-emails-a-day cap makes it close to unusable for real campaigns, and it takes five days to mail a full 1,000-contact list.
Pricing compared
MailerLite
Usage-based tiers: every paid plan carries the full feature set, and price scales with active subscriber count and sending volume. Comfort includes 10x your subscriber-tier ceiling in monthly emails; Power includes unlimited sending under fair use. Annual billing saves 10%.
- Free$0
- ComfortFrom $10.80/mo annually ($12 monthly) at 500 subscribers
- PowerFrom $22.50/mo annually ($25 monthly) at 500 subscribers
- EnterpriseCustom
MailerLite is the value benchmark of this category's mid-market: at 1,000 subscribers, Comfort's roughly $17/month annual rate buys automations, sites, forms, paid newsletters, and A/B testing that Kit prices at twice that and old-guard suites price higher still. Only EmailOctopus meaningfully undercuts it, and it does so with a visibly thinner product. The traps are structural rather than hidden: the 250-subscriber free ceiling is the tightest of the five platforms reviewed here, the 10x sending multiplier pushes frequent senders into Power at roughly double the price, and cumulative subscriber counting means list churn is billed for a full cycle. Priced against what it replaces (a page builder, a form tool, a newsletter platform), it remains hard to beat.
Mailjet
Metered on monthly emails sent rather than on contacts stored, with unlimited contacts on the Essential tier and above. Four published tiers plus a quoted Custom tier, scaling with send volume.
- Free$0
- Starter$9
- Essential$17
- Premium$27
- CustomQuoted
Because Mailjet meters sends rather than contacts, the standard comparison points need translating. A 1,000-contact list mailed once a month is 1,000 emails, comfortably inside the free plan, though the 200-a-day cap means the send takes five days; $9 on Starter fixes that. A 10,000-contact list mailed once a month is 10,000 emails, inside the $17 Essential tier with room to spare, against $120 to $275 on Constant Contact and $100 to $135 on AWeber for the same list. A 50,000-contact list mailed once a month is 50,000 emails, which needs a higher volume step but still lands far below the $430 to $575 Constant Contact charges. Mail that same 50,000-contact list weekly and the picture changes: 200,000 emails a month moves Mailjet up several volume steps while the contact-priced platforms charge exactly the same as before. Mailjet is outstanding value for a large list mailed occasionally and merely competitive for a small list mailed often. Add the transactional API on the same account, which replaces a separate Postmark or Resend subscription for low-volume application mail, and the total-cost case for a small business gets stronger still.
Editorial verdict on each
MailerLite
MailerLite is the sensible default for small-business email in 2026: the most complete toolkit per dollar in this comparison, delivered through the category's friendliest interface, on EU-hosted, ISO 27001 infrastructure. Its honest usage-based pricing cuts both ways, no feature hostage-taking, but also structural nudges (the 250-subscriber free cap, Comfort's 10x sending multiplier, cumulative billing) that move growing accounts up tiers on schedule. It offers nothing for audience growth, no network, no marketplace, and no built-in transactional layer, so creators chasing distribution should weigh Kit or beehiiv, and SaaS teams should look at Loops. Everyone else can start here and probably stay.
Read the full MailerLite profileMailjet
Mailjet is the one platform in this category that meaningfully changes the arithmetic rather than the feature list. Metering emails sent instead of contacts stored, with unlimited contacts from $17 a month, makes it dramatically cheaper than everything else here for a business with a large list it mails occasionally, and it removes the dormant-contact hidden cost entirely. Add a genuine transactional API with inbound parsing and sub-accounts on the same account, European data centres, the only real-time collaborative email editor in the category, and MJML, and the case for a small European business is strong. The limits are equally clear. Automation is Premium-only and shallow, segmentation does not exist below Essential, there are no landing pages or events or CRM, and the free plan's 200-a-day cap makes it a demo rather than a plan. On the transactional side Sinch clearly reserves the depth for Mailgun. Buy Mailjet when your send pattern favours per-email pricing, when you want both jobs from one vendor at low cost, or when EU hosting is a requirement. Buy something else if the automation is what you are actually shopping for.
Read the full Mailjet profileMailerLite profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Mailjet last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.