Answers that mention MailerLite

If you’re a solo blogger on a tight budget, I’d pick kit.com right now.

My ranking

• 🥇 Kit — best overall for a budget-conscious blogger

• Free up to 10,000 subscribers
• Unlimited email sends, so a weekly newsletter costs nothing as your list grows.
• Built specifically for creators, with landing pages, forms, basic automation, and monetization tools.
• The main catch: the free plan has limited automation/features and includes Kit branding. Kit Help Center Kit Help Center
• 🥈 beehiiv.com — best if the newsletter itself is your business

• Free up to 2,500 subscribers, with unlimited sends.
• Particularly strong for newsletter growth, referrals, recommendations, and eventually monetizing the publication.
• Once you exceed 2,500 subscribers, the paid plans become considerably more expensive than the free tier. Beehiiv Beehiiv
• 🥉 mailerlite.com — good software, but no longer my budget pick

• Its free tier was recently reduced to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails/month.
• Paid plans start around $12/month, so it's reasonable if you want more traditional email-marketing features, but less attractive for a blogger trying to grow without paying. MailerLite MailerLite

What I'd do in your situation

Start with Kit and don't overthink it. A weekly newsletter to 1,000, 5,000, or even 10,000 people can remain on the free plan, which gives you an unusually long runway before email software becomes an expense. Kit Help Center

The exception is if your primary goal is building a standalone media/newsletter business rather than using email to support your blog. In that case, I'd choose beehiiv because its newsletter-native growth features are more compelling.

Bottom line:
Blog + weekly newsletter + minimal budget → Kit.
Newsletter is the main product → beehiiv.
Small list + more traditional marketing automation → MailerLite.

One important 2026 wrinkle: MailerLite's free plan changed substantially this year, so older comparisons recommending it as the cheapest option are now outdated. MailerLite

For a solo blogger on a tight budget, I’d pick kit.com.

My ranking

Why Kit wins: As of August 2026, its new Newsletter plan lets you manage up to 10,000 subscribers for free, with unlimited email broadcasts, landing pages/forms, audience tagging and segmentation, and tools for selling products/subscriptions. That's an unusually long runway for someone who doesn't want another monthly bill. Kit Kit Kit Help Center

For a weekly newsletter, that means you could theoretically grow from 100 → 1,000 → 5,000 → 10,000 subscribers without paying for the email platform itself. The main downside is that the free plan has limitations around automation and includes Kit branding. Kit

beehiiv is my second choice if your blog is really becoming a newsletter business. Its free Launch plan supports up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, and it has particularly strong newsletter growth/monetization features. Beehiiv Newsletter Cost Calculator

I would not choose MailerLite specifically for maximum free growth right now. Its free tier was reduced to 250 subscribers and 2,500 monthly emails, although its paid plan starts at $12/month and offers more conventional email-marketing features. MailerLite MailerLite

Bottom line

Start with Kit. It's the best combination of $0 cost + generous subscriber limit + list-building tools for a solo blogger in 2026.

If you tell me roughly how many subscribers you have now (e.g. 0, 500, 2,000, or 10,000+), I can tell you which platform will be cheapest at your actual size and what I'd use for your blog.

For a small nonprofit that needs newsletters + donation management + paid memberships + broadcasts, I’d lean toward an all-in-one nonprofit CRM/engagement platform rather than a pure newsletter tool. Many email platforms are excellent at sending broadcasts but don’t understand donor history, memberships, or renewals. GrantPipe

Here are the strongest fits:

Covey Zeffy### My shortlist by nonprofit type

• You have members who pay annual dues or recurring fees:

Start with Neon One or another nonprofit CRM with membership support. Covey

• You’re a small volunteer-run nonprofit and want one simple system:

Look closely at Zeffy. It is designed around keeping fundraising, contacts, and communications together without a large software budget. Zeffy

• You mainly need beautiful newsletters and already have donations/memberships handled elsewhere:

Choose Mailchimp or MailerLite and integrate them with your donor database. EmailTooltester.com

A few questions would narrow this down quickly:

1. Roughly how many contacts do you have now (500, 5,000, 50,000+)?
2. Are “paid memberships” a core program (like a museum/association), or just recurring supporters?
3. Do you need online payment processing and automatic renewal reminders?
4. What’s your monthly software budget range?

If your priority is “move my existing list with minimal pain, then add paid tiers without becoming a systems admin,” I’d pick beehiiv.

My ranking

1. beehiiv — best overall for your situation

• Built specifically around newsletters, paid subscriptions, and growth.
• You can import your existing subscriber list and create paid subscription tiers.
• It takes 0% platform fees on paid subscriptions (Stripe processing still applies). Beehiiv Newsletter Cost Calculator
• Its migration tooling has become quite good; for example, its current Ghost migration flow can map existing paid subscriptions and tiers during import. Beehiiv
• Best if you eventually want paid subscriptions + sponsorships/ads + referral growth.
• Substack — easiest absolute setup

• Probably the lowest-friction option if you just want to upload your list, turn on payments, and start publishing.
• Substack explicitly supports importing an existing CSV list and setting subscribers' subscription types. Substack Support
• The catch: it takes 10% of paid subscription revenue, indefinitely, in addition to payment processing. Beehiiv
• I'd choose it if simplicity and Substack's built-in discovery network matter more than long-term economics.
• Ghost — best if you want a publication you own

• Excellent paid-membership functionality and 0% platform fee on subscriptions.
• More flexible for building a full website/publication, but migration and setup are somewhat more involved.
• I'd choose Ghost if you care strongly about ownership, branding, and eventually having something closer to your own publishing business than a newsletter account.

The practical choice

If you already have a meaningful subscriber list, I'd go:

Existing list → beehiiv → free tier + 1–2 paid tiers → Stripe → migrate/archive your old content.

If you're talking about, say, 2,000 subscribers with no paid members yet, beehiiv is particularly attractive: you're avoiding the future 10% Substack cut while still getting a relatively straightforward migration.

If you tell me roughly how many subscribers you have, what you're currently using (Mailchimp, ConvertKit, MailerLite, etc.), and what you want the paid tiers to include, I can compare the exact migration path and likely monthly cost for beehiiv vs. Substack vs. Ghost.