Sender vs MailerLite: Bigger Free Plan and SMS, or More Tools
By Joris van Huët
Enterprise Interim CMO & Marketing Leader · 15+ years · 50+ orgs
Published
2026-10-26
The short answer: a small shop or service business with up to 2,500 subscribers can run its email on Sender for nothing: the free plan allows 15,000 emails a month to that many people (Sender pricing), where MailerLite's stops at 250 subscribers (MailerLite pricing). Sender stays cheaper on the entry paid plans and adds SMS. MailerLite is the pick when the account also has to carry a website, digital products or a paid newsletter, and above 5,000 subscribers if you want unlimited sends.
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The two are close cousins: drag-and-drop newsletters, automation, forms, landing pages, and an MCP server for AI assistants. The differences sit in the free plan, in how sending is metered, and in what else lives in the account.
Run these three checks:
- See whether the free plan is enough. For example, 2,000 subscribers mailed weekly is 2,000 x 4 = 8,000 emails a month, inside Sender's free 15,000 and its 2,500-subscriber cap (Sender pricing). The same list on MailerLite needs the 2,500 band of Comfort at $33 a month, so 12 x $33 = $396 a year (MailerLite pricing).
- Count the phone numbers you already have consent for. If your shop collects mobile numbers at checkout, export them with their consent records. Sender sells SMS on Standard through credits priced by destination, $0.015 a message to the United States on its calculator, and includes free monthly SMS credits on Professional (Sender pricing).
- Pick the number that tells you the move paid off. Revenue from email and SMS as a share of total sales is a good one for a shop; for a service business, booked calls per campaign. Write this month's figure down first.
Tier against tier
| Tier | Sender plan | Seats and sends | MailerLite plan | Seats and sends |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | 1 seat; 15,000 emails a month to up to 2,500 subscribers; Sender branding | Free | 2 seats; 2,500 emails a month to up to 250 subscribers |
| Entry paid | Standard | 3 role-based seats; 12 times subscribers each month; SMS by credits | Comfort | 3 seats; 10 times the band each month |
| Upper paid | Professional | 10 role-based seats; 24 times subscribers; free SMS credits each month | Power | Unlimited seats; unlimited sends under a fair use policy |
| Custom | Enterprise | Unlimited emails, SSO, phone support | Enterprise | Above 200,000 subscribers, dedicated IP |
From the Sender pricing page and its plan comparison, and the MailerLite pricing page with its plan comparison and FAQ. Sender lists no daily sending limit on any plan.
What tips the balance
The free plan is ten times larger on Sender
Sender's free plan holds 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, and adds a 14-day trial of the Pro features (Sender pricing). MailerLite's holds 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails, and locks campaigns and automations once active subscribers pass 250 until you upgrade or remove people (MailerLite pricing FAQ). For a list between those two sizes, Sender is free and MailerLite is not.
Sending multiples, and where they cross
Sender meters by a multiple of subscribers: 12 times on Standard, 24 times on Professional. MailerLite Comfort uses 10 times the band, and Power drops the meter altogether (Sender, MailerLite). At 5,000 subscribers that unlimited Power plan costs $69 against $79 for Sender Professional's 120,000 emails, so a heavy sender of that size pays less on MailerLite.
SMS on one side, a website on the other
Sender puts SMS in the same account as email: Standard buys credits, Professional includes $15 of SMS a month on monthly billing, and a paid account can register a toll-free number for texting in the United States and Canada (Sender pricing). MailerLite's marketing plans list websites with a blog, digital products, bookings and paid newsletters, and keep SMS under a separate transactional tab on the same page (MailerLite pricing).
Price at five list sizes, checked on 26 October 2026
Monthly billing in USD from the Sender pricing page and the MailerLite pricing page. Each cell gives Sender's price first.
| Subscribers | Sender Standard vs MailerLite Comfort | Sender Professional vs MailerLite Power |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | $9 vs $12 | $15 vs $25 |
| 1,000 | $15 vs $19 | $20 vs $39 |
| 2,500 | $27 vs $33 | $44 vs $49 |
| 5,000 | $39 vs $49 | $79 vs $69 |
| 10,000 | $69 vs $89 | $127 vs $129 |
Sender also sells a pay-as-you-go pack, $29 for 5,000 emails, for occasional campaigns. On annual billing it offers first-time users 30% off the first year: Standard for 500 subscribers is billed $75.60 for that year instead of $108 (Sender pricing).
An assistant that can only draft
Sender's MCP server is unusually explicit about its limits. You connect it to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor at its server address and approve access through OAuth; everything the assistant creates arrives as a draft, campaigns are never sent through the connection, and workflows are created inactive, going live only through the same pre-flight checklist as the dashboard (Sender MCP guide). A good first job comes from the guide itself: ask it to review your segments and point out the broken, duplicated or misnamed ones. A person then merges or renames them in the dashboard. Every tool also checks the permissions of the user who connected it, so a junior seat cannot do through the assistant what it cannot do by hand.
MailerLite's MCP server drafts and analyses the same way, and its campaigns wait for your confirmation before sending.
Start without paying
Put your current list on Sender's free plan if it is under 2,500, send two issues, and use the 14-day Pro trial to test one SMS flow. If the website or the paid newsletter is the reason you are looking, MailerLite's 14-day trial of its paid features asks for no card.
Sender's first-year discount is generous, and it is still a first-year price. It exists to win the signup; the renewal is billed at the full figure, $108 a year for Standard at 500 subscribers. Budget the second year before you commit to the first.
Choose Sender if your job is
- Running a list of up to 2,500 subscribers on a free plan.
- Sending email and SMS to shop customers from one account.
- Keeping the entry paid plan as cheap as possible below 5,000 subscribers.
Choose MailerLite if your job is
- Running a website, a blog and landing pages next to the newsletter.
- Selling digital products, bookings or paid subscriptions to readers.
- Mailing several times a week to a list of around five thousand, where Power's unlimited sends cost less than Sender Professional.
FAQ
Does Sender's free plan remove the branding?
No. Free emails carry Sender branding; Standard and above remove it, per the Sender pricing page.
Can Sender's MCP server send a campaign?
No. Its guide says campaigns are never sent through the connection and workflows are created inactive (Sender MCP guide).
Which is cheaper at 5,000 subscribers?
On the entry plans, Sender: Standard costs $39 a month against $49 for MailerLite Comfort. On the upper plans, MailerLite: Power costs $69 against $79 for Sender Professional (Sender, MailerLite).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I am Joris van Huët, an enterprise interim CMO. 15+ years, 50+ organizations, including ING, P&G, Nestlé, BNP Paribas, WeTransfer and Vinted. I take on innovation projects (venture building, design sprints), agentic marketing (setting up and running AI agents) and hands-on multi-channel work. See the track record.
I wrote and published this with AI assistance, and I answer for it. Claims about my own experience are limited to the track record above, and a statistic links to its source or is labelled as an example. I sell interim and fractional CMO work, which is why this site exists. How this site is written.
A senior operator doing the work: campaigns, channels, CRM and AI agents, live from day one.