Free Omnisend alternatives
Omnisend's free plan is 250 contacts and 500 emails a month. So is Klaviyo's. So is Mailchimp's. Ecommerce email platforms converge on the same free tier, and it's an evaluation allowance rather than something to run a store on.
Free plans below — including the general-purpose ones that give ten times as much, and an honest note about what you'd lose by using them for a store.
The limit that bites first
The three ecommerce platforms cluster at 250 contacts. The general-purpose tools are an order of magnitude more generous — and don't know what an order is.
| Provider | Free tier | What stops you first | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sender | 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, with automation included | Volume, eventually. Automation, landing pages and forms are all included | Permanent |
| Kit (formerly ConvertKit) | Up to 10,000 subscribers with one basic visual automation | One basic visual automation — sequences are the paid product | Permanent |
| Email Bump | 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month | A 'Powered by Email Bump' badge on marketing footers. No daily cap; domains and seats unlimited | Permanent |
| EmailOctopus | 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with EmailOctopus branding | EmailOctopus branding on every send, 30-day reports, 1 user, 1 form | Permanent |
| Brevo | 300 emails a day, forever, with contact storage into the tens of thousands | 300 a day is a hard daily wall that doesn't roll over | Permanent |
| Zoho Campaigns | 2,000 contacts, 6,000 emails a month and 5 users | Volume — but 5 users, where most free plans allow one | Permanent |
| MailerLite | 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, 2 seats, 3 automations | 250 subscribers and 3 active automations | Permanent |
| EngageBay | 250 contacts, free for teams of up to 15 members | 250 contacts and 2 email sequences — but 15 team members | Permanent |
| Omnisend | 250 contacts, 500 emails a month and 500 web push notifications | 250 contacts — an evaluation allowance, not a plan | Permanent |
| Klaviyo | 250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messages | Sending stops entirely past 250 profiles or 500 monthly sends | Permanent |
| Mailchimp | 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seat | 250 a day, which bites before the 500-a-month limit does | Permanent |
| Drip | None — a 14-day trial with no credit card | There isn't one — a 14-day trial with no card | None |
| Benchmark Email | 500 contacts and 2,500 sends a month, 1 user, 1 domain | 500 contacts, 1 user and 1 sending domain | Permanent |
| listmonk, Mautic, Keila, Sendy | Free or one-time licence | The software costs nothing; your sending provider and your time still do | Self-hosted |
From each vendor's own pricing page. Free tiers change more often than paid ones — check before you commit a launch to one.
Ecommerce free tiers are demos on purpose
Omnisend, Klaviyo and Mailchimp all cap free at 250 contacts, and Drip and Sendlane don't offer one at all. That isn't a coincidence: these platforms are priced for stores with revenue, and the free tier exists to show you the interface rather than to run a business on.
The general-purpose tools have the opposite incentive. Sender gives 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 monthly emails with automation. Kit gives 10,000 subscribers. EmailOctopus gives 2,500 with 10,000 emails. All of them are ten to forty times more generous — and none of them know what a product or an order is.
What a general-purpose free plan costs a store
You lose abandoned cart that knows what was in the cart, post-purchase flows that branch on what was bought, back-in-stock triggers, and revenue attributed per flow. Those are the reasons ecommerce platforms exist, and no free tier from a general-purpose tool replaces them.
What you can still do is send an event when someone abandons a checkout and start a flow on it. For a small store running one recovery sequence, that's often enough. For merchandising products into the email, it isn't.
The honest test: open your flow reports and count how many automations branch on order or product data. If the answer is none, take the bigger free tier.
Omnisend alternatives, asked and answered
What is the best free Omnisend alternative?
For a store, none of them are a real upgrade — Klaviyo and Mailchimp cap free at the same 250 contacts and Omnisend's includes 500 web push notifications on top.
For a much larger free allowance without the ecommerce model, Sender at 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails, Kit at 10,000 subscribers, or Email Bump at 5,000 contacts with flows and a transactional API.
Why is Omnisend's free plan only 250 contacts?
Because ecommerce platforms price for stores with revenue, and the free tier is an evaluation allowance. Klaviyo and Mailchimp make exactly the same choice; Drip offers no free plan at all.
Omnisend's does include 500 web push notifications, which the other two don't.
Can I run a store on a general-purpose free plan?
For a simple recovery sequence, yes — track a checkout-abandoned event and start a flow on it. What you can't do is merchandise the cart contents into the email or attribute revenue back to the flow.
If your automations don't currently branch on order data, you're not losing anything you use.
5,000 contacts, twenty times the free tier
Track your own events, build live segments and run multi-step flows — with a transactional API on the same key. No ecommerce data model; that's the trade.