Comparison

The best EmailOctopus alternatives

EmailOctopus is deliberately minimal and priced accordingly: 2,500 free subscribers, and $9/mo billed yearly after that. People leave when they outgrow basic automation, or when the branding on the free plan starts to matter.

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 it costs more than EmailOctopus.

20 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.

Best next step upMailerLite

From $12/mo, better automation, landing pages, and no branding on paid.

Best free tierSender

2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails free, with automation included.

Best for creatorsKit

10,000 free subscribers and native commerce.

Cheapest at very large scalelistmonk

Self-hosted, no per-contact cost at all, if you'll run it.

Best when the list has a product behind itEmail Bump

Behavioural segments, flows and a transactional API on one plan. That's us.

Context

What actually goes wrong with EmailOctopus

EmailOctopus is honest about being simple and cheap. The reasons to move are the things it never claimed to do.

The free plan brands your email. EmailOctopus branding on every send, plus reports that expire after 30 days, one landing page, one form and one user. Generous on subscriber count, tight on everything else.

Automation is basic. Simple sequences rather than branching journeys. No behavioural triggers, no conditional paths, no segments that re-evaluate themselves on what someone did.

No CRM, SMS or ecommerce data. It's a newsletter tool. If your marketing needs to know about orders, or hand a lead to a salesperson, you'll be reaching for a second system quickly.

It isn't the tool you grow into. That's the design and it's worth saying plainly. Teams whose programmes get more ambitious tend to move within a year or two, so factor the migration into the saving.

The baseline

What EmailOctopus costs, from their own pricing page

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

Two tiers

The plans

2,500 subscribersFree — 10,000 emails a month, EmailOctopus branding, 30-day reports, 1 user

From $9/mo

Billed yearlyPro — Unlimited users, reports kept forever, unlimited landing pages and forms

Quote

Over 500,000 subscribersCustom

Worth knowing

The fine print

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.
Free-plan reports are kept for 30 days; Pro keeps them forever.
Automation is simple sequences, not branching journeys.
EmailOctopus Connect is a separate product with its own pricing.

Side by side

All 20, on the things that decide it

Provider	Starts at	Free tier	What it covers	Licence	Data region
Email BumpHosted	$19/mo at 10,000 contacts	5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month	The whole product — campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and behavioural triggers	Proprietary	United States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
MailerLiteHosted	Comfort from $12/mo; Power from $25/mo	250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, 2 seats, 3 automations	Campaigns, automations, landing pages, forms and websites	Proprietary	European Union (Lithuania)
SenderHosted	Paid plans are priced by subscriber count and aren't shown as a static table	2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, with automation included	Campaigns, automation, landing pages, forms and pop-ups, plus SMS on paid tiers	Proprietary	European Union (Lithuania)
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)Hosted	Creator $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers ($390/year)	Up to 10,000 subscribers with one basic visual automation	Broadcasts, sequences, visual automations, landing pages, forms and digital product sales	Proprietary	United States
ButtondownHosted	Free to 100 subscribers; add-ons from +$9/mo	Up to 100 subscribers	Newsletters, with tagging, segmentation and automations as paid add-ons	Proprietary	United States
BrevoHosted	Paid plans start at 5,000 emails a month; the price scales with send volume	300 emails a day, forever, with contact storage into the tens of thousands	Campaigns, automation, plus SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM and landing pages	Proprietary	European Union (France)
MailchimpHosted	Essentials $13/mo at 500 contacts	250 contacts and 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seat	Campaigns, journeys, landing pages, forms, ads and a light CRM	Proprietary	United States
beehiivHosted	Scale $43/mo at 1,000 subscribers ($517/year)	Up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited email sends	Newsletter publishing, a website, paid subscriptions and an ad network	Proprietary	United States
ActiveCampaignHosted	Priced per tier and contact count; no static price table is published	None — a 14-day trial	The whole product, plus a sales CRM on the higher tiers	Proprietary	United States (Chicago-headquartered)
GetResponseHosted	Starter $19/mo at 1,000 contacts ($15.58/mo billed annually)	None — a 14-day trial with feature limits	Campaigns, automation, funnels, landing pages, webinars and courses	Proprietary	European Union (Poland)
MoosendHosted	Pro is priced by subscriber count on a calculator	None — a 30-day trial with no credit card	Campaigns, automation, landing pages, forms, plus SMTP and transactional email	Proprietary	European Union (Greece)
Benchmark EmailHosted	Pro from $27/mo	500 contacts and 2,500 sends a month, 1 user, 1 domain	Campaigns, automation, sign-up forms and reporting	Proprietary	United States
Campaign MonitorHosted	Lite and Essentials are priced by contact count on a slider	500 contacts and 500 emails a month	Campaigns, automated journeys, segments and a website builder on Premier	Proprietary	United States, with Australian origins
AWeberHosted	Lite $15/mo at 500 subscribers; $35/mo at 2,500	None — a 14-day trial with no subscriber limit	Campaigns, automations, landing pages and sales tracking	Proprietary	United States
LoopsHosted	Priced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table	1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your email	Campaigns and loops (their term for automations), plus transactional	Proprietary	United States
BentoHosted	$29/mo for up to 5,000 active users	100 transactional emails a month; the marketing platform has a 30-day trial	Campaigns, automations, CRM, segmentation, forms and pop-ups	Proprietary	United States
listmonkSelf-hostable	Free to run; you pay your SMTP provider for the sending	Self-hosted — the software is free	Lists, subscribers, campaigns and templates	AGPL-3.0	Wherever you deploy it
SendySelf-hostable	$69 one-time licence; you pay Amazon SES for sending	Not free, but there is no recurring cost	Lists, campaigns, autoresponders and reports	Commercial one-time licence	Wherever you host it
KeilaSelf-hostable	Keila XS €8/mo for 2,000 emails on the hosted plan	Self-hosted — the software is free	Campaigns, a visual editor, segmentation and analytics	AGPL-3.0	European Union hosting, or wherever you self-host
MauticSelf-hostable	Free to run; you pay for hosting and a sending provider	Self-hosted — the software is free	Full campaign builder, segmentation, landing pages, forms and lead scoring	Open source	Wherever 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

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.

03Hosted 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.

04Hosted 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.

05Hosted service

Buttondown

Best for: Writers who want the smallest possible newsletter tool

Deliberately minimal, privacy-minded and priced à la carte — a small base plus $9, $29 or $79 add-ons for the things you actually use. Free to 100 subscribers.

Starts at: Free to 100 subscribers; add-ons from +$9/mo
Free tier: Up to 100 subscribers
Marketing: Newsletters, with tagging, segmentation and automations as paid add-ons
Data region: United States

What it does well

Billed on active subscribers only — dormant addresses don't cost you.
Markdown-first writing with a hosted archive and custom domain sending.
Add-on pricing means you pay for exactly the features you switch on.
Small, independent and unusually transparent about how it works.

What to watch for

The free tier is 100 subscribers — the smallest here.
Automations are a $29/mo add-on, and teams and whitelabelling are $79/mo.
Standard pricing allows at most one email a day to your whole list.
No ecommerce data, no CRM, no transactional API.

06Hosted 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.

07Hosted 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.

08Hosted service

beehiiv

Best for: Newsletters that intend to become a business

Built by ex-Morning Brew people for newsletters that monetise. The free plan runs to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, and paid subscriptions carry a 0% platform take rate — you keep everything past Stripe's fee.

Starts at: Scale $43/mo at 1,000 subscribers ($517/year)
Free tier: Up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited email sends
Marketing: Newsletter publishing, a website, paid subscriptions and an ad network
Data region: United States

What it does well

2,500 free subscribers with unlimited sending, and no credit card.
0% take rate on paid subscriptions — you pay only Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30.
An ad network that matches sponsors to newsletters, on Scale and above.
Custom domains and API access even on the free plan.

What to watch for

Removing beehiiv branding requires Max at $96/mo.
The free plan excludes the ad network, paid subscriptions and the Send API.
It's a publishing platform, not a marketing automation tool — no behavioural segments or lifecycle flows.
$43/mo at 1,000 subscribers is expensive if you aren't monetising.

09Hosted 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.

10Hosted service

GetResponse

Best for: Course creators and anyone who needs webinars in the same tool

An all-in-one that includes things nobody else bundles — webinars, course hosting, a website builder — with unlimited sending on every plan.

Starts at: Starter $19/mo at 1,000 contacts ($15.58/mo billed annually)
Free tier: None — a 14-day trial with feature limits
Marketing: Campaigns, automation, funnels, landing pages, webinars and courses
Data region: European Union (Poland)

What it does well

Unlimited monthly email sends on every plan, including the $19 entry tier.
Webinars, courses and a website builder in the same subscription.
Polish company, so EU data handling comes as standard.
Abandoned-cart recovery and sales funnels on Marketer.

What to watch for

Starter allows exactly 1 automation workflow — the automation is really on Marketer at $59/mo.
No free plan.
Users are capped at 3 on Starter and 5 on Marketer and Creator.
Breadth means some modules feel less finished than the email core.

11Hosted service

Moosend

Best for: Unlimited sending on a budget, with a long trial to prove it

A Sitecore-owned platform that leads on unlimited sending and a 30-day no-card trial. There's also a credits model — buy 350,000 sends for $350 — which suits anyone whose volume is lumpy.

Starts at: Pro is priced by subscriber count on a calculator
Free tier: None — a 30-day trial with no credit card
Marketing: Campaigns, automation, landing pages, forms, plus SMTP and transactional email
Data region: European Union (Greece)

What it does well

Unlimited email campaigns and sends on every paid plan.
A 30-day trial with no card, which is unusually long.
A credits option — $350 for 350,000 sends — for irregular volume.
SMTP and transactional email included rather than a separate product.

What to watch for

No permanent free plan.
Pro pricing is a calculator rather than a published table.
Smaller integration catalogue than the big names.
Brand recognition is low, which matters if you need internal buy-in.

12Hosted service

Benchmark Email

Best for: Straightforward campaigns at a low flat price

An unfashionable, long-running option with a simple two-tier structure: a small free plan and a Pro plan from $27/mo that covers 2,500 to 100,000 contacts.

Starts at: Pro from $27/mo
Free tier: 500 contacts and 2,500 sends a month, 1 user, 1 domain
Marketing: Campaigns, automation, sign-up forms and reporting
Data region: United States

What it does well

One paid tier, so there's no feature-gating puzzle to solve.
10 sending domains on Pro.
A permanent free plan for evaluation.
Long-established and stable.

What to watch for

Pro sends are capped at 10× your contact limit.
Pro includes one user; additional users are $15/mo each, up to ten.
The free plan is 500 contacts and 2,500 sends.
Feature depth is well behind ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo.

13Hosted service

Campaign Monitor

Best for: Design-led teams and agencies sending on behalf of clients

The prettiest templates in the category, and a long history with agencies managing multiple client accounts. Now part of Marigold, with a free tier and unlimited sends from the Essentials plan up.

Starts at: Lite and Essentials are priced by contact count on a slider
Free tier: 500 contacts and 500 emails a month
Marketing: Campaigns, automated journeys, segments and a website builder on Premier
Data region: United States, with Australian origins

What it does well

Unlimited email sends from Essentials up — no multiplier.
Template and design quality that agencies keep coming back for.
Send-time optimisation and engagement segments on Premier.
10% off annual plans and 15% off for non-profits.

What to watch for

Lite caps sending at 5× subscribers a month.
The free plan is 500 contacts and 500 emails — an evaluation allowance.
Dollar amounts aren't published as a static table; the page prices by contact band.
Automation is shallower than ActiveCampaign's.

14Hosted service

AWeber

Best for: Small businesses who want unlimited users at a low tier

One of the oldest email tools still standing, and it has aged better than most. The Plus plan gives unlimited users at $30/mo — a seat policy the newer platforms reserve for their top tiers — and there's a done-for-you setup service if you'd rather someone else built it.

Starts at: Lite $15/mo at 500 subscribers; $35/mo at 2,500
Free tier: None — a 14-day trial with no subscriber limit
Marketing: Campaigns, automations, landing pages and sales tracking
Data region: United States

What it does well

Plus gives unlimited users at $30/mo — most competitors charge far more for that.
Unlimited landing pages and automations on Plus.
A Done For You tier that includes a 1:1 setup call and weekly newsletter drafts.
Decades of deliverability experience behind it.

What to watch for

Sending is capped at 10× subscribers on Lite and 12× on Plus.
Lite allows only 3 automations and 3 landing pages.
No free plan — a 14-day trial.
Sales tracking carries a 0.6% transaction fee.

15Hosted 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.

16Hosted service

Bento

Best for: SaaS and store teams who want marketing and transactional at a very low flat price

A small, opinionated platform with unusually blunt pricing: $29/mo for up to 5,000 active users with unlimited sends, automations and seats, and transactional email metered separately at cents per thousand.

Starts at: $29/mo for up to 5,000 active users
Free tier: 100 transactional emails a month; the marketing platform has a 30-day trial
Marketing: Campaigns, automations, CRM, segmentation, forms and pop-ups
Data region: United States

What it does well

$29/mo covers 5,000 active users with unlimited marketing sends, automations and seats.
Transactional at $5/mo to 12,500 emails, then $0.09 per 1,000 — among the cheapest anywhere.
A 30-day trial with no charge during it.
Deliverability tooling and analytics included rather than upsold.

What to watch for

Small company; fewer integrations and less public track record.
Bento Chat is a separate $30/mo add-on and requires the marketing platform.
Marketing and transactional are metered separately rather than as one plan.
Less polished than the established names, which is the trade for the price.

17AGPL-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.

18Commercial one-time licence

Sendy

Best for: Large lists on a one-off licence and Amazon SES rates

A $69 one-time PHP application you install on your own hosting, which sends through your Amazon SES account. No subscription, ever, at any list size.

Starts at: $69 one-time licence; you pay Amazon SES for sending
Free tier: Not free, but there is no recurring cost
Marketing: Lists, campaigns, autoresponders and reports
Data region: Wherever you host it

What it does well

$69 once. No monthly fee at any subscriber count, forever.
Amazon SES rates underneath — roughly $1 per 10,000 emails.
Runs on ordinary PHP and MySQL hosting, like WordPress.
Multi-brand support makes it popular with agencies.

What to watch for

You install, update and secure it yourself.
You bring your own SES account and own the deliverability entirely.
Automation is autoresponders, not branching journeys.
The interface is functional and dated.

19AGPL-3.0

Keila

Best for: Privacy-minded newsletters that want open source with a hosted option

AGPLv3, self-hostable, and unusual among open-source tools in offering a straightforward European hosted plan — with unlimited contacts at every tier and the option to send through your own server.

Starts at: Keila XS €8/mo for 2,000 emails on the hosted plan
Free tier: Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing: Campaigns, a visual editor, segmentation and analytics
Data region: European Union hosting, or wherever you self-host

What it does well

Unlimited contacts and projects on every hosted tier — you pay for sends, not list size.
Genuinely open source and self-hostable, with a hosted option if you'd rather not.
You can use Keila's sending or point it at your own server.
Priced in euros on European hosting, from €8/mo.

What to watch for

No lifecycle automation — campaigns and segments rather than branching flows.
A small project with a small ecosystem and few integrations.
Self-hosting means Elixir, Postgres and your own sending provider.
No transactional API for a product.

20Open 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.

FAQ

EmailOctopus alternatives, asked and answered

What is the best EmailOctopus alternative?

For a step up without much more money, MailerLite at $12/mo — better automation, landing pages and a free tier of its own. For the biggest free plan, Sender. For creators, Kit at 10,000 free subscribers.

If the list belongs to a product and you need behavioural triggers and a transactional API, that's a different category — us, Loops or Bento.

Is anything cheaper than EmailOctopus?

Among hosted tools, barely — $9/mo billed yearly is close to the floor for something credible. Sender's free plan covers 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails without paying at all.

Below that you're self-hosting: listmonk and Mautic cost nothing in licence, and Sendy is $69 once.

Does EmailOctopus put branding on my emails?

On the free plan, yes. Pro removes it, along with the 30-day report limit and the single-user cap.

Loops and Email Bump both brand free-plan marketing email too; MailerLite and Kit don't on their free tiers.

When the list belongs to a product

Flows, events and a transactional API

Track what subscribers do, build live segments from it, and run multi-step flows — with receipts and resets on the same plan and key. 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails free.

Start free Read the API docs

The best EmailOctopus alternatives

Pick by the reason you're leaving

What actually goes wrong with EmailOctopus

What EmailOctopus costs, from their own pricing page

The plans

The fine print

All 20, on the things that decide it

Every option, and what it's bad at

EmailOctopus alternatives, asked and answered

What is the best EmailOctopus alternative?

Is anything cheaper than EmailOctopus?

Does EmailOctopus put branding on my emails?

Flows, events and a transactional API

Keep reading