Steve Lamattina
Aug 21, 2018
MailerLite are relatively new when it comes to the world of email marketing, and that youthfulness permeates throughout its design and features. Not in a ‘young, crazy, fun!’ kind of way, but more in a ‘modern, clean and simple’ kind of way. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that their average office age is 25? Well, whatever it is, it’s working for them.
Also a reflection of their staff, and values, MailerLite is a more international tool than some of the others we’ve reviewed. The interface is available in 10 languages, and their support in almost as many.
Even with their aforementioned simplicity, they still manage to offer a wide range of choices when it comes to things like newsletter and form options. And this, coupled with their fast and simple editor, really feels like a steal when you’re on their ‘Free Forever’ plan. Sound too good to be true? Let’s have a look and see:
MailerLite’s is one of the cheapest newsletter tools. But if you’d like to read more about their prices and plans, check our pricing guide.
Generous freemium plan:
Every feature, including their newly added marketing automation, is available on their free plan. This is great value if you have less than 1,000 subscribers!
Easy-to-use:
A clean and simple interface make this a great service for new, and advanced, users alike.
Landing page editor:
A unique feature, allowing you to easily create and design a landing page hosted by MailerLite or on your own domain.
Missing some pro features:
Even though it has great prices, you do miss out on a few pro features, such as advanced reporting, integrations and social features.
You’re a smaller business, solopreneur or freelancer:
MailerLite is the perfect tool for those who have a modest budget, but still need a tool that does more than just send newsletters. Features include automation workflows, contact tagging and segmentation, and even a landing page editor, so even sophisticated campaigns can be run.
You’re a blogger or creative:
Apart from its affordable pricing, MailerLite is also packed with features tailored to bloggers, including RSS campaigns, WordPress integration, and video marketing.
You’re a complete beginner:
With a simple interface, intuitive navigation and easy-to-use email editor, MailerLite is the top choice for anyone who’s just getting started with email marketing.
You want a completely free newsletter service:
MailerLite have the best free plan out of all our tested providers, with access to all features and unlimited emails – as long as you have less than 1,000 contacts (and don’t mind having their logo in your emails).
You need comprehensive reporting:
The reports for MailerLite are the standard ones you’ll find in any email marketing tool (with stats for opens, clicks etc). However they don’t include any social or purchase tracking, so if you really need these we’d recommend a tool like GetResponse.
You need complex automations:
While MailerLite lets you set up automated workflows based on a handful triggers (e.g. when subscribers join a group, click a link or have a contact field updated), it lacks automations for more advanced triggers such as when they visit a page on your website.
| criterion | rating | comments |
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Ease of Use |
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MailerLite is very easy to navigate with most sections working fast. It has a logical structure and a clean interface. |
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Newsletter Creation |
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Editor |
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The editor works smoothly and has most things you need. If you want to create columns you can use their ‘products’ feature and customise as needed. You can’t place images in line with the text, which would have been useful within the article block. They also allow you to track changes, which makes undoing mistakes easy. |
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Personalization |
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Simple personalisation is possible, but not if/then/else logic. |
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Email types |
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Classic, A/B testing, autoresponders, recurring newsletters and date-based (specific, and once-off, for things like a membership reminder). |
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Choice and Flexibility of Template Designs |
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There aren’t a heap of templates to choose from, but they look good and they are very flexible. They might not have as many features as some other email tools, but we found they had the most important ones. |
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Email Automation |
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MailerLite offer useful marketing automation, allowing you to create workflows based on campaign actions, such as opens and clicking links, or conditions based on custom fields and segments. While unable to track page visits, this is offered to all users even on their free plan. |
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List Management |
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You are able to segment your subscribers using a wide variety of variables. There is even a tagging system which MailerLite calls “groups”. Through their automations you can even set up certain actions such as “when a subscriber joins one group, remove them from another group”. |
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Registration Forms/ Opt-in & Opt-out- Process |
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Very easy to create and use, with several types of forms available, including pop-up, embed, unsubscribe forms and subscribe buttons. You can also create a landing page from this section too. More below. |
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Deliverability |
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In our last test, MailerLite had a deliverability of almost 90%; not bad. The good news is that they delivered all the sent emails to the main inbox of the most popular providers (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, AOL). |
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Reports and Analysis |
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MailerLite has the basics of reporting available, but no dedicated section. Rather you reach it either within campaigns, or subscribers (where you can find handy individual stats on each list). It is lacking in most advanced options though, such as geo-tracking, social or ecommerce tracking, but it does have click-mapping and Google Analytics tags can be added. |
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Languages |
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MailerLite is available in 10 languages, and their support in 7. |
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Further Features |
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Spam- and Design-Testing |
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These are not available. |
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Bounce Management |
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After five soft bounces, or one hard bounce, subscribers are automatically moved to a bounce folder where they can be managed. |
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Blacklist |
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This is not available. |
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Storage available for data and images |
Unlimited |
There’s no limit on the size or amount of images you can store. |
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Pro Features |
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Authentication |
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SPF and DKIM (Domain Keys). |
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Own Domain |
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Not available. |
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Different levels of account access |
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There are four options available, plus a fifth, custom, option available allowing you to choose exactly what a team member has access to. There’s also two-factor authentication (2FA) available through the Google Authenticator App. |
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Integrations |
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MailerLite only have a few integration options available (Shopify, for example), yet they do allow access to the developer API which will help integrate it within other apps. Also, they support Zapier, which can connect to a multitude of services. |
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Landing Page Editor |
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This is a relatively unique feature. It can either be hosted by MailerLite, or on your own domain. You design it in exactly the same way as the newsletter, so it feels logical and is very easy to use. |
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Support |
4.5/5 |
Using email and chat is very fast and friendly, with the same few agents responding to your requests. The knowledge base was thorough, yet they could make it a little easier to navigate by highlighting your search terms within the results. |
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Overall rating |
4.3/5 |
MailerLite is a fast and easy to use email tool, with enough features for a small business. Keeping in mind that you can have up to 1,000 subscribers for free, it’s not a bad deal. |
MailerLite really shines in the areas of user experience and simplicity, and it has enough features for most small business needs. Of course, being cheaper than a lot of other tools means that there are some drawbacks: The reporting is a little thin, which also holds true for its integrations and social features. Some advanced features, such as spam/design testing, are not available, but they do offer marketing automation to all users which is a big plus.
If you think you can get away without a few advanced features, then it’s really hard to go wrong with their ‘Forever Free’ plan. Often a tool will only offer restricted features on a free plan, yet MailerLite allows ‘access all areas’ to users independent of what plan they’re on. And even if you want to add more than 1000 subscribers, their pricing is still competitive. The only minor drawback of the free plan is that outgoing emails will show a small MailerLite logo.
Basically, MailerLite does simple better than any other tool out there, and if that’s what you’re after then you don’t need to look any further.
MailerLite is based in Vilnius, Lithuania, and store all of their data there. In case you are wondering: yes, Lithuania is part of the European Union and thereby covered by EU data protection laws.
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