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Comparison

The best Bento alternatives

Bento charges $29/mo for 5,000 active users with unlimited sends, automations and seats — one of the bluntest prices in this category. People leave over the size of the company behind it and the separate meters for marketing and transactional.

Eighteen alternatives below, with what each costs, what its free tier really gets you, and what it is bad at. We make one of them. It's marked, and its gaps are listed like everyone else's.

18 options Prices checked 2 August 2026 No affiliate links
The short answer

Pick by the reason you're leaving

Nobody replaces a platform in the abstract. Something specific stopped working. Start from that, not from a feature matrix.

Closest like-for-likeLoops

Contact-priced, transactional included, similar simplicity and a bigger customer base.

Cheapest with a free tierMailerLite

From $12/mo with a permanent free plan.

Most powerfulCustomer.io

If the data model matters more than the price.

Best ecommerceKlaviyo

If your segments should be built from orders.

Best one-meter alternativeEmail Bump

Marketing and transactional on one contact-priced plan rather than two meters. That's us.

Context

What actually goes wrong with Bento

Bento is cheap, capable and small. Each of those explains one of the reasons people move.

Two meters, not one. The marketing platform is $29/mo for 5,000 active users. Transactional is separate: free to 100 emails, $5/mo to 12,500, then $0.09 per 1,000. That's genuinely cheap and it's still two bills, two allowances and two things to watch.

It's a small company. Fewer integrations, less public deliverability history, and a smaller team behind the on-call rota. That's the honest trade for a $29 flat price, and it's the same trade people weigh with us.

Bento Chat is another $30/mo. And it requires the marketing platform. So a team wanting email plus chat is at $59/mo before transactional volume.

There's no free marketing tier. A 30-day trial with no charge during it, which is generous, and then $29/mo. Sender, Kit, MailerLite and we all run permanent free plans.

The baseline

What Bento costs, from their own pricing page

Everything below is compared against these numbers, read on 2 August 2026.

Two products

The plans

$29/mo
Up to 5,000 active usersMarketing — Unlimited sends, automations and seats
$5/mo
Up to 12,500 emailsTransactional — Free for the first 100; $0.09 per 1,000 beyond
$30/mo
Requires the marketing platformBento Chat
Worth knowing

The fine print

  • $0.09 per 1,000 transactional emails is among the cheapest published rates anywhere.
  • Unlimited marketing sends, automations and team seats on the paid plan.
  • A 30-day trial with no charge during it.
  • Marketing and transactional are metered separately.
  • CRM, segmentation, forms and pop-ups are included in the marketing platform.
Side by side

All 18, on the things that decide it

ProviderStarts atFree tierWhat it coversLicenceData region
Email BumpHosted$19/mo at 10,000 contacts5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a monthThe whole product — campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and behavioural triggersProprietaryUnited States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
LoopsHostedPriced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your emailCampaigns and loops (their term for automations), plus transactionalProprietaryUnited States
MailerLiteHostedComfort from $12/mo; Power from $25/mo250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, 2 seats, 3 automationsCampaigns, automations, landing pages, forms and websitesProprietaryEuropean Union (Lithuania)
BrevoHostedPaid plans start at 5,000 emails a month; the price scales with send volume300 emails a day, forever, with contact storage into the tens of thousandsCampaigns, automation, plus SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM and landing pagesProprietaryEuropean Union (France)
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)HostedCreator $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers ($390/year)Up to 10,000 subscribers with one basic visual automationBroadcasts, sequences, visual automations, landing pages, forms and digital product salesProprietaryUnited States
EmailOctopusHostedPro from $9/mo billed yearly2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with EmailOctopus brandingCampaigns, simple automations, landing pages and formsProprietaryUnited Kingdom
SenderHostedPaid plans are priced by subscriber count and aren't shown as a static table2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, with automation includedCampaigns, automation, landing pages, forms and pop-ups, plus SMS on paid tiersProprietaryEuropean Union (Lithuania)
Customer.ioHostedEssentials includes 5,000 profiles and 1 million emails a month; the price isn't published as a flat figureNone, but early-stage startups can get a full year freeEvent-driven campaigns and journeys across email, push, SMS and in-appProprietaryUnited States, with an EU data centre option
EnchargeHostedGrowth $99/mo at 2,000 subscribers ($79/mo billed yearly)None — a 14-day trialBehaviour-based flows, segmentation and broadcasts for SaaSProprietaryUnited States
UserlistHostedBasic from $10/mo per additional 1,000 users, with 10,000 users includedNone — a 14-day trialLifecycle campaigns, broadcasts, in-app messages and transactional emailProprietaryUnited States
KlaviyoHostedPriced by active profiles on a slider; no static price table is published250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messagesCampaigns, flows, ecommerce segmentation, SMS and pushProprietaryUnited States
OmnisendHostedStandard $11.20/mo for 500 contacts; Pro $41.30/mo for 2,500250 contacts, 500 emails a month and 500 web push notificationsEcommerce campaigns and automations, SMS and web pushProprietaryEuropean Union (Lithuania)
ActiveCampaignHostedPriced per tier and contact count; no static price table is publishedNone — a 14-day trialThe whole product, plus a sales CRM on the higher tiersProprietaryUnited States (Chicago-headquartered)
MailchimpHostedEssentials $13/mo at 500 contacts250 contacts and 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seatCampaigns, journeys, landing pages, forms, ads and a light CRMProprietaryUnited States
DripHosted$39/mo for 1–2,500 peopleNone — a 14-day trial with no credit cardEcommerce campaigns, visual workflows, segmentation and onsite behaviourProprietaryUnited States
HubSpot Marketing HubHostedStarter $7/mo per seat with 1,000 marketing contactsFree Marketing Hub for up to 2 users, with basic email, forms and live chatCampaigns, omni-channel workflows, landing pages, ads and a full CRMProprietaryUnited States, with EU hosting available
MauticSelf-hostableFree to run; you pay for hosting and a sending providerSelf-hosted — the software is freeFull campaign builder, segmentation, landing pages, forms and lead scoringOpen sourceWherever you deploy it
listmonkSelf-hostableFree to run; you pay your SMTP provider for the sendingSelf-hosted — the software is freeLists, subscribers, campaigns and templatesAGPL-3.0Wherever you deploy it

Read off each vendor's own pricing or documentation page on 2 August 2026. Where a vendor renders prices from a slider and publishes no static table, the cell says so instead of repeating a number from someone's affiliate post.

In detail

Every option, and what it's bad at

01Hosted service

Email Bump

Best for: Teams tired of send multipliers, seat limits and paid add-ons

Contact-priced marketing automation with the transactional API included rather than sold as an add-on. Sending isn't a multiple of your list size, seats aren't rationed, and unsubscribed contacts stop counting toward the bill.

Starts at
$19/mo at 10,000 contacts
Free tier
5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month
Marketing
The whole product — campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and behavioural triggers
Data region
United States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
What it does well
  • No send multiplier. Most of this list caps you at 10–15× your contact count; sending here is uncapped under fair use.
  • Unlimited team seats on every plan, including free — seats are the quiet upsell everywhere else.
  • Unlimited sending domains, also on every plan.
  • Unsubscribed and bounced contacts stop being billable, so the number you pay for is your real audience.
  • The transactional API, SMTP and inbound email are included, not add-ons.
  • A CLI, an MCP server and agent skills cover the same surface as the API, including creating the account itself.
What to watch for
  • No sales CRM — no pipelines, deals or lead scoring. If you're replacing ActiveCampaign's sales side, this isn't it.
  • No SMS or WhatsApp. Email and inbound email only.
  • No landing page or form builder.
  • US-only sending; no EU data region.
  • A much smaller integration catalogue than the incumbents' hundreds of connectors.
  • The free plan puts a 'Powered by Email Bump' badge on marketing footers.
02Hosted service

Loops

Best for: SaaS teams who want lifecycle email without assembling it

Contact-priced, opinionated, and quick to set up, with transactional sending folded in at no extra charge. Less configurable than ActiveCampaign by design.

Starts at
Priced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table
Free tier
1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your email
Marketing
Campaigns and loops (their term for automations), plus transactional
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Transactional sending included rather than billed as a second product.
  • Genuinely fast to set up — hours, not a fortnight.
  • The free plan runs a small product.
  • Clean, modern interface with no legacy modules.
What to watch for
  • Free adds Loops branding and caps you at 10 emails/second.
  • Paid pricing sits behind a slider, so budgeting means signing up.
  • Automation is deliberately simpler than ActiveCampaign's.
  • No CRM, SMS or landing pages.
03Hosted service

MailerLite

Best for: Small teams who want a clean builder and a cheap entry price

The most consistently recommended ActiveCampaign alternative for people who found ActiveCampaign too much. Well-designed, inexpensive, and the Power plan drops the send multiplier entirely.

Starts at
Comfort from $12/mo; Power from $25/mo
Free tier
250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, 2 seats, 3 automations
Marketing
Campaigns, automations, landing pages, forms and websites
Data region
European Union (Lithuania)
What it does well
  • Power removes the send cap entirely — unlimited monthly emails and unlimited seats.
  • $12/mo entry is among the cheapest real plans in this category.
  • The editor and templates are genuinely pleasant to use.
  • 24/7 support even on the cheaper paid tier.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 subscribers and 3 active automations — small.
  • Comfort caps you at 50 active automations and a 10× send multiple.
  • Automation logic is shallower than ActiveCampaign's; complex branching gets awkward.
  • No sales CRM.
04Hosted service

Brevo

Best for: Large lists you email infrequently, and teams that want EU-based billing

Formerly Sendinblue. The structural difference from almost everything else here is that Brevo meters emails sent rather than contacts stored — so a big dormant list costs nothing to keep.

Starts at
Paid plans start at 5,000 emails a month; the price scales with send volume
Free tier
300 emails a day, forever, with contact storage into the tens of thousands
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, plus SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM and landing pages
Data region
European Union (France)
What it does well
  • Priced on emails sent, not contacts stored — the cheapest way to hold a large, rarely-mailed list.
  • French company with EU data handling, which settles a lot of procurement reviews.
  • SMS, WhatsApp, CRM and landing pages included in the platform rather than bolted on.
  • The free plan is genuinely usable for a small list.
What to watch for
  • The free plan's 300-a-day ceiling is a hard daily wall, not a monthly allowance.
  • Breadth over depth — the automation builder is less capable than ActiveCampaign's.
  • Deliverability on shared infrastructure gets mixed reports; warm up carefully.
  • The interface carries the scars of a product that has absorbed a lot of modules.
05Hosted service

Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

Best for: Creators, newsletters and anyone selling their own digital products

Built for individual creators rather than marketing departments, and it shows in the best way: unlimited sending, a free tier that goes to 10,000 subscribers, and commerce built in.

Starts at
Creator $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers ($390/year)
Free tier
Up to 10,000 subscribers with one basic visual automation
Marketing
Broadcasts, sequences, visual automations, landing pages, forms and digital product sales
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • The most generous free tier here by subscriber count — 10,000, not 250.
  • Unlimited email broadcasts on every paid plan; no send multiplier.
  • Sells digital products and subscriptions natively.
  • Pro includes unlimited users, which most competitors reserve for their top tier.
What to watch for
  • The free tier allows one basic automation — the sequences are the paid product.
  • Creator is $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers, well above MailerLite or Mailchimp at that size.
  • Commerce takes a transaction fee on product sales.
  • Built around a creator's mental model; a B2B lifecycle team may find it thin.
06Hosted service

EmailOctopus

Best for: The cheapest way to email a list of a few thousand people

Deliberately minimal and priced accordingly. No CRM, no funnels, no ecommerce data model — a list, a campaign, a simple automation, and a bill that stays small.

Starts at
Pro from $9/mo billed yearly
Free tier
2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with EmailOctopus branding
Marketing
Campaigns, simple automations, landing pages and forms
Data region
United Kingdom
What it does well
  • 2,500 free subscribers and 10,000 free emails a month — ten times most free tiers.
  • Pro adds unlimited users, which is rare at $9/mo.
  • Reports kept forever on Pro, against 30 days on free.
  • Nothing to learn. It does one thing.
What to watch for
  • Free puts EmailOctopus branding on your email and limits you to 1 landing page and 1 form.
  • Automation is basic — no branching journeys.
  • No CRM, no SMS, no ecommerce data.
  • Not the tool you grow into.
07Hosted service

Sender

Best for: The most generous permanent free plan in marketing email

Free forever at 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 monthly emails — with automation, landing pages, forms and transactional sending included rather than held back for paid tiers.

Starts at
Paid plans are priced by subscriber count and aren't shown as a static table
Free tier
2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, with automation included
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, landing pages, forms and pop-ups, plus SMS on paid tiers
Data region
European Union (Lithuania)
What it does well
  • 2,500 free subscribers and 15,000 free monthly emails — the largest free allowance in this comparison.
  • The free plan includes automation, which most competitors reserve for paid tiers.
  • SMS on paid plans, with free credits on Standard and Professional.
  • Transactional sending is part of the platform.
What to watch for
  • Paid prices weren't rendering on their pricing page when we checked, so budgeting means signing up.
  • Smaller company and integration catalogue than the well-known names.
  • Automation depth is closer to MailerLite than ActiveCampaign.
  • A very generous free tier means a broad shared sender base — warm up carefully.
08Hosted service

Customer.io

Best for: Product teams sending lifecycle email off real product events

The technical end of this list. You pipe in events and objects, and build messaging on top of your actual data model rather than a list. Powerful, and priced for companies that already know they need it.

Starts at
Essentials includes 5,000 profiles and 1 million emails a month; the price isn't published as a flat figure
Free tier
None, but early-stage startups can get a full year free
Marketing
Event-driven campaigns and journeys across email, push, SMS and in-app
Data region
United States, with an EU data centre option
What it does well
  • 1 million emails a month included on the entry plan — sending is not the constraint.
  • Data model built on events and objects, not lists and tags.
  • Extra profiles are $0.009 each, so growth is predictable.
  • The startup programme gives qualifying companies a year at no cost.
What to watch for
  • You need engineers. This is not a tool a marketer sets up alone.
  • Pricing above Essentials is a sales conversation.
  • No landing pages, forms or CRM — it assumes those live elsewhere.
  • Overbuilt for a straightforward newsletter.
09Hosted service

Encharge

Best for: B2B SaaS running behaviour-based onboarding at a mid-market price

Built specifically for SaaS lifecycle email — flow builder, behavioural triggers, Stripe and Segment integrations — with unlimited flows and unlimited team members on every paid plan.

Starts at
Growth $99/mo at 2,000 subscribers ($79/mo billed yearly)
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial
Marketing
Behaviour-based flows, segmentation and broadcasts for SaaS
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Unlimited flows and unlimited team members on every paid plan.
  • Native Stripe, Chargebee, Segment, HubSpot and Salesforce integrations.
  • Free email verification included.
  • Premium adds transactional email, API events and custom objects.
What to watch for
  • $99/mo at 2,000 subscribers is expensive against general-purpose tools.
  • Sending overages are $100 per 100,000 emails.
  • No free plan — a 14-day trial.
  • Transactional email and custom objects need Premium at $159/mo.
10Hosted service

Userlist

Best for: B2B SaaS that needs company-level automation, not just per-user

Lifecycle messaging built around the way B2B software actually works — accounts and companies rather than individual subscribers — with in-app messages alongside email.

Starts at
Basic from $10/mo per additional 1,000 users, with 10,000 users included
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial
Marketing
Lifecycle campaigns, broadcasts, in-app messages and transactional email
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Company-level automation — target an account, not just a person.
  • In-app messages and notifications alongside email, from the base plan.
  • Transactional email and broadcasts included rather than sold separately.
  • 10,000 users included on Basic and Professional before the per-1,000 rate applies.
What to watch for
  • Priced on users, so a large free-tier user base costs the same as paying customers.
  • No free plan — a 14-day trial.
  • No ecommerce data model.
  • A small team and a small integration catalogue.
11Hosted service

Klaviyo

Best for: Ecommerce, where revenue attribution per email is the point

The ecommerce standard. Deep Shopify and store-data integration, segmentation built on purchase behaviour, and reporting that ties sends to revenue better than anything else here.

Starts at
Priced by active profiles on a slider; no static price table is published
Free tier
250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messages
Marketing
Campaigns, flows, ecommerce segmentation, SMS and push
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Best-in-class ecommerce data model — orders, products and browsing drive segments directly.
  • Revenue attribution per flow and per campaign, out of the box.
  • SMS and push in the same platform as email.
  • Predictive analytics on customer lifetime value.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 profiles and 500 sends a month.
  • Priced on active profiles, and the definition of active is broader than 'subscribed'.
  • It gets expensive fast as the list grows; that's the standard complaint.
  • Overkill, and overpriced, if you aren't an ecommerce store.
12Hosted service

Omnisend

Best for: Small ecommerce stores that want Klaviyo's shape at a lower price

Ecommerce-focused automation with email, SMS and web push in one plan, priced well below Klaviyo at the sizes most stores actually operate at.

Starts at
Standard $11.20/mo for 500 contacts; Pro $41.30/mo for 2,500
Free tier
250 contacts, 500 emails a month and 500 web push notifications
Marketing
Ecommerce campaigns and automations, SMS and web push
Data region
European Union (Lithuania)
What it does well
  • Pro gives unlimited monthly emails at $41.30/mo.
  • Web push is unlimited from the Standard plan.
  • SMS from $0.007 with no separate platform fee.
  • Free migration and 24/7 support even on the entry plan.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 contacts and 500 emails.
  • Standard's 6,000-email allowance is small if you send weekly.
  • Built for stores; a B2B SaaS will find the data model a poor fit.
  • Reporting is thinner than Klaviyo's.
13Hosted service

ActiveCampaign

Best for: Teams that need marketing and sales automation in one system

The deepest automation builder in the mid-market, with a CRM alongside it. Four tiers, priced on contacts, with sending capped at a multiple of your list and most of the interesting parts sold as add-ons.

Starts at
Priced per tier and contact count; no static price table is published
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial
Marketing
The whole product, plus a sales CRM on the higher tiers
Data region
United States (Chicago-headquartered)
What it does well
  • Automation depth that most of this list doesn't match.
  • Marketing and sales in one system, with custom objects on Enterprise.
  • Over 1,000 integrations.
  • Free migration and onboarding, and no setup fees.
What to watch for
  • Sending is capped at a multiple of your contacts: 10× on Starter and Plus, 12× on Pro, 15× on Enterprise.
  • Seats are rationed — 1 user on Starter and Plus, 3 on Pro, 5 on Enterprise.
  • Starter limits automations to 5 actions each.
  • CRM, transactional email and SMS are paid add-ons on top of the plan.
  • No free plan, and the price scales with contacts whether or not you email them.
14Hosted service

Mailchimp

Best for: Teams who need the name procurement already recognises

The default answer for a decade, now part of Intuit. Enormous integration catalogue, and a pricing model built around send multipliers and seat counts that gets expensive at the top.

Starts at
Essentials $13/mo at 500 contacts
Free tier
250 contacts and 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seat
Marketing
Campaigns, journeys, landing pages, forms, ads and a light CRM
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • The largest integration catalogue in the category.
  • Template and content tooling that non-marketers can use without training.
  • Predictive segmentation and reporting on Standard and above.
  • Every agency and freelancer already knows it.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 contacts and 500 sends — a demo, not a plan.
  • Send multipliers apply: 10× on Essentials, 12× on Standard, 15× on Premium.
  • Seats are rationed at 1 / 3 / 5 until Premium, which is $350/mo at 500 contacts.
  • You pay for unsubscribed contacts unless you archive them yourself.
15Hosted service

Drip

Best for: Ecommerce stores that want unlimited sending on a flat contact price

Ecommerce marketing automation with a visual workflow builder, priced on active people with sending left uncapped. Positioned between MailerLite's simplicity and Klaviyo's depth, and priced closer to Klaviyo.

Starts at
$39/mo for 1–2,500 people
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial with no credit card
Marketing
Ecommerce campaigns, visual workflows, segmentation and onsite behaviour
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Unlimited email sends on every plan — no multiplier at all.
  • The visual workflow builder is genuinely good and easier than ActiveCampaign's.
  • Billed on active people, so dormant contacts cost less than they do on some competitors.
  • Purpose-built for ecommerce without Klaviyo's price curve.
What to watch for
  • $39/mo at 2,500 people is expensive at the small end — MailerLite is $12 and EmailOctopus is $9.
  • No free plan, only a 14-day trial.
  • Cost scales with active people and email volume, so a big send month can matter.
  • Ecommerce-shaped, so a B2B list gets features it will never populate.
16Hosted service

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Best for: Companies buying a CRM and getting marketing with it

Not really an email tool — a CRM platform with marketing attached. The free tier is real and useful; the jump to the tier with the automation people actually want is one of the steepest in software.

Starts at
Starter $7/mo per seat with 1,000 marketing contacts
Free tier
Free Marketing Hub for up to 2 users, with basic email, forms and live chat
Marketing
Campaigns, omni-channel workflows, landing pages, ads and a full CRM
Data region
United States, with EU hosting available
What it does well
  • The free CRM is genuinely free and genuinely useful.
  • Starter at $7/mo per seat is the cheapest entry on this page.
  • One system for marketing, sales, service and content.
  • The reporting and attribution an executive team will ask for.
What to watch for
  • Professional is $800/mo with a $3,000 mandatory onboarding fee. Enterprise is $3,600/mo plus $7,000 onboarding.
  • Unlimited workflows — the actual automation — start at Professional.
  • Additional core seats are $45/mo each.
  • Marketing contacts are billed separately from CRM contacts, which surprises people.
17Open source

Mautic

Best for: Owning your marketing automation stack outright

The largest open-source marketing automation project — campaigns, segmentation, landing pages, lead scoring — running on your own PHP and MySQL. Free as software, expensive in attention.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay for hosting and a sending provider
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
Full campaign builder, segmentation, landing pages, forms and lead scoring
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • No per-contact pricing, ever. The list can be any size.
  • Feature coverage close to the commercial platforms, including lead scoring.
  • Your data stays on your infrastructure, which answers most privacy requirements.
  • Over 10,000 GitHub stars and years of production use.
What to watch for
  • PHP, MySQL and correctly configured cron — this is a system you administer.
  • Upgrades are known to be involved.
  • You bring your own sending provider and own the deliverability.
  • The interface feels its age next to the commercial tools.
18AGPL-3.0

listmonk

Best for: Newsletters at volume, on hardware you already pay for

A single Go binary and a Postgres database that will push millions of newsletters through whatever SMTP you point it at. Mature, fast, and list-first by design.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay your SMTP provider for the sending
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
Lists, subscribers, campaigns and templates
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • Over 22,000 GitHub stars and years of production use.
  • One binary plus Postgres — no queue broker, no Redis.
  • Handles very large lists on modest hardware.
  • No per-contact cost at any size.
What to watch for
  • No automation builder. It sends campaigns to lists.
  • Bring your own SMTP and your own deliverability.
  • No CRM, no ecommerce data, no landing pages.
  • The admin UI is functional rather than beautiful.
FAQ

Bento alternatives, asked and answered

What is the best Bento alternative?

For the same shape with a larger company behind it, Loops or Email Bump — both contact-priced with transactional included. For a permanent free tier, MailerLite or Sender. For more power, Customer.io.

If you're using Bento Chat, note that almost nothing on this page bundles live chat, so replacing it means adding Intercom, Crisp or similar.

Is Bento cheap?

Very. $29/mo for 5,000 active users with unlimited sends, automations and seats is at the low end of this whole comparison, and $0.09 per 1,000 transactional emails is cheaper than almost any published rate.

The trade is company size — fewer integrations and less public track record.

Is there a free Bento alternative?

Bento's marketing platform has a 30-day trial rather than a free tier, though transactional is free to 100 emails a month. Sender gives 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails free, Kit gives 10,000 subscribers, and Email Bump gives 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails with flows and the API included.

One meter instead of two

Marketing and transactional on one plan

Contacts are the only thing metered — campaigns, flows, segments, SMTP and the transactional API all share it. 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails free.

Start free Read the API docs

Keep reading

Email Bump vs BentoThe head-to-head, including where Bento is the better buy.Every comparisonAll the platforms we've priced and compared, in one index.Email Bump pricingWhat contact-based pricing costs at every list size.