mailchimp vs mailerlite: which is best? [2026 review]
MailerLite vs. Mailchimp: The Pricing Trap That's Crushing Small Businesses
You're probably looking at these two platforms thinking Mailchimp is the "safe" choice because everyone knows the name.
I thought the same thing three years ago.
Then I watched my monthly bill triple as my list grew, while my actual results stayed flat. That's when I realized I wasn't paying for better performance—I was paying for brand recognition.
The Choice That Defines Your Budget
Mailchimp feels like the professional option, especially when you're starting with their free plan.
The interface looks polished. They have 225+ email templates. The integrations are extensive.
When you tell people you use Mailchimp, they nod approvingly. It feels like you're using "real" marketing software.
But here's what they don't advertise upfront: as your list grows, the pricing becomes punishing.
What starts as a reasonable monthly fee can quickly become your biggest business expense, often without any improvement in actual email performance.
MailerLite positions itself as the budget alternative, and honestly, that's exactly what it is.
Fewer templates (around 90), simpler interface, less brand recognition. But here's what matters: it does the core job of email marketing just as effectively as Mailchimp, often for half the cost or less.
The trade-off? You won't have every bell and whistle, and you might need to explain to clients why you're not using the "industry standard."
The Cost Escalation Nobody Warns You About
Here's the math that changed my perspective: let's say you build a list of 15,000 subscribers over two years.
On Mailchimp, you're looking at roughly $230 monthly.
On MailerLite, the same list costs about $85 monthly.
That's $145 monthly difference, or $1,740 annually.
Over five years, you're talking about $8,700 in extra costs for essentially the same email delivery capability.
But here's the deeper issue: both platforms face identical delivery challenges.
Mailchimp uses their email infrastructure, MailerLite uses theirs, but each system has strengths with certain email providers and weaknesses with others.
Whether you're paying $85 or $230 monthly, you're still dealing with the same fundamental limitation: no single email engine performs optimally across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and all other major providers simultaneously.
This is where Lemon Email becomes interesting.
Instead of forcing you to choose between Mailchimp's expensive infrastructure or MailerLite's budget approach, Lemon sits on top of both their email engines.
It can route your emails through Mailchimp's infrastructure when that's optimal for certain subscribers, or through MailerLite's system when that provides better delivery for others.
You get the delivery strengths of both platforms without being limited to just one approach.
What Really Matters Here
If you're building a business where email marketing is just one small piece of a larger strategy, and you don't mind paying premium prices for brand recognition and extensive integrations, Mailchimp makes sense.
But if email performance and cost efficiency are priorities—if you need every dollar to count and every email to actually reach your subscribers—then paying extra for Mailchimp's brand name starts to feel like expensive vanity.
Something like Lemon Email won't give you 225 templates or the ability to impress clients with a recognizable platform name.
But it can work with both Mailchimp's and MailerLite's email infrastructure, automatically choosing the best delivery path for each subscriber based on their email provider, without the pricing limitations that force you to choose between cost and performance.
The real question is whether you're optimizing for perception or performance.
Both have their place, but only one actually affects your bottom line.
