Comparison

The best Ontraport alternatives

Ontraport runs a whole business — CRM, payments, membership sites, campaign maps and marketing — from $124/mo, priced per user with contacts and emails metered separately on top. Most people searching this have decided they're paying platform money for an email tool.

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 we're clear it doesn't replace the CRM or the payments.

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.

Closest all-in-oneKeap

CRM, invoicing, appointments and marketing — from $299/mo, so not cheaper.

Best marketing-plus-CRM valueActiveCampaign

Marketing automation with a sales CRM, at a fraction of $124/mo.

Cheapest suiteEngageBay

CRM, marketing and helpdesk from $12.74 per user per month.

Best free CRMHubSpot

Free for two users — keep it and run marketing elsewhere.

Best when you only needed the emailEmail Bump

Campaigns, segments and flows from $19/mo, no per-user charge. That's us.

Context

What actually goes wrong with Ontraport

Ontraport is a lot of platform. The complaints are about how many meters run at once.

Three meters at the same time. A plan price, a per-user charge, and then additional contacts and additional emails each billed at $99/mo per 100,000. Growing your list, your team or your send volume moves the bill independently, which makes forecasting genuinely hard.

Pro starts at $124/mo and Enterprise at $249/mo. That's platform pricing. Reasonable against Keap's $299 and against a stack of four tools; unreasonable if what you use is campaigns and a couple of automations.

No free plan. No permanent free tier at all. HubSpot's CRM is free for two users, EngageBay's free plan allows fifteen team members, and most email tools here have something.

You need to use the platform to justify it. Membership sites, payments, custom objects, campaign maps. If three of those are switched off, you're funding software you don't open, which is the same trap as Keap and HubSpot Professional.

The baseline

What Ontraport costs, from their own pricing pages

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

Plan plus per user

The tiers

From $124/mo

Per-user charges apply on topPro

From $249/mo

Per-user charges apply on topEnterprise

$99/mo

per 100,000Additional contacts — Billed separately from the plan

$99/mo

per 100,000Additional emails — Billed separately from the plan

Worth knowing

The fine print

Contacts and emails are metered separately, each at $99/mo per 100,000.
Users are charged on top of the plan price.
CRM, payments, membership sites and campaign maps are the reason for the price.
There is no free plan.
Custom objects give it a genuine business-data model rather than a contact list.

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)
KeapHosted	From $299/mo ($2,988/year), 2 users included	None	Email and landing pages, plus CRM, pipelines, appointments, invoicing and text marketing	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)
EngageBayHosted	Basic $12.74/user/month on biennial billing, 500 contacts	250 contacts, free for teams of up to 15 members	Campaigns, sequences, landing pages, forms and pop-ups, plus a CRM and helpdesk	Proprietary	United States
HubSpot Marketing HubHosted	Starter $7/mo per seat with 1,000 marketing contacts	Free Marketing Hub for up to 2 users, with basic email, forms and live chat	Campaigns, omni-channel workflows, landing pages, ads and a full CRM	Proprietary	United States, with EU hosting available
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)
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)
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)
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
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
Constant ContactHosted	Lite from $9/mo; Premium from $69/mo	None — a free trial	Campaigns, events, social posting, surveys and basic automation	Proprietary	United States
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
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
KlaviyoHosted	Priced by active profiles on a slider; no static price table is published	250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messages	Campaigns, flows, ecommerce segmentation, SMS and push	Proprietary	United States
OmnisendHosted	Standard $11.20/mo for 500 contacts; Pro $41.30/mo for 2,500	250 contacts, 500 emails a month and 500 web push notifications	Ecommerce campaigns and automations, SMS and web push	Proprietary	European Union (Lithuania)
Customer.ioHosted	Essentials includes 5,000 profiles and 1 million emails a month; the price isn't published as a flat figure	None, but early-stage startups can get a full year free	Event-driven campaigns and journeys across email, push, SMS and in-app	Proprietary	United States, with an EU data centre option
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
FluentCRMSelf-hostable	$90/year for one site; $174/year for five	A free version of the plugin	Campaigns, sequences, automations, segmentation and forms, inside WordPress	Commercial plugin, with a free edition	Wherever your WordPress site is hosted
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
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)

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

Keap

Best for: Service businesses who want CRM, invoicing and automation in one

Formerly Infusionsoft. Not really an email tool — a small-business operating system with CRM, pipelines, appointments, invoicing and payments alongside the marketing. Priced accordingly.

Starts at: From $299/mo ($2,988/year), 2 users included
Free tier: None
Marketing: Email and landing pages, plus CRM, pipelines, appointments, invoicing and text marketing
Data region: United States

What it does well

Invoicing, payments and appointment scheduling in the same system as the marketing.
A dedicated Customer Success Manager and US-based phone support included.
Text marketing bundled — 500 messages and 100 voice minutes on the entry tier.
Genuinely one system for a service business that would otherwise run four.

What to watch for

From $299/mo, which is an order of magnitude above most of this list.
Only 2 users included; additional users are $39/mo each.
Implementation services are sold on top, and are effectively expected.
Enormously over-specified if what you need is a newsletter.

03Hosted 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.

04Hosted service

EngageBay

Best for: Small teams who want a HubSpot-shaped suite at a tenth of the price

An all-in-one marketing, sales and service suite priced per user rather than per contact. The free tier is unusually functional and explicitly allows teams of up to fifteen.

Starts at: Basic $12.74/user/month on biennial billing, 500 contacts
Free tier: 250 contacts, free for teams of up to 15 members
Marketing: Campaigns, sequences, landing pages, forms and pop-ups, plus a CRM and helpdesk
Data region: United States

What it does well

A free plan that allows fifteen team members — almost unheard of.
CRM, marketing and helpdesk in one suite at a fraction of HubSpot's price.
Growth at $55.24/user/month includes 5,000 contacts and real marketing automation.
Per-user pricing means a big quiet list doesn't inflate the bill.

What to watch for

Per-user pricing gets expensive fast for a large team.
Headline prices are biennial; monthly billing costs more.
Free is 250 contacts with 2 lists, 5 forms and 2 email sequences.
The breadth means individual modules are less polished than the specialists'.

05Hosted 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.

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

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.

08Hosted 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.

09Hosted 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.

10Hosted 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.

11Hosted service

Constant Contact

Best for: Small local businesses who want a phone number to call

One of the oldest email marketing companies still operating, and still the answer for a restaurant, a gym or a non-profit that wants an event tool, a template and someone on the phone rather than a chat widget.

Starts at: Lite from $9/mo; Premium from $69/mo
Free tier: None — a free trial
Marketing: Campaigns, events, social posting, surveys and basic automation
Data region: United States

What it does well

Event management and registration built in, which almost nobody else has.
Phone support with actual humans, which small businesses value more than features.
Templates and an editor aimed squarely at non-marketers.
Decades of deliverability experience.

What to watch for

Sending is capped at a multiple of your contact list, rising with the tier.
Lite is a single user; automation and segmentation arrive on Standard.
No free plan.
Feels dated next to the newer platforms, and priced as if it doesn't.

12Hosted 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.

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

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.

15Hosted 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.

16Hosted 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.

17Hosted 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.

18Commercial plugin, with a free edition

FluentCRM

Best for: WordPress sites that want the CRM inside WordPress

A WordPress plugin rather than a SaaS. Contacts, sequences and automations live in your own WordPress database, and you bring your own sending provider — so the licence is a flat annual fee no matter how big the list gets.

Starts at: $90/year for one site; $174/year for five
Free tier: A free version of the plugin
Marketing: Campaigns, sequences, automations, segmentation and forms, inside WordPress
Data region: Wherever your WordPress site is hosted

What it does well

Flat annual licence — unlimited contacts, no per-contact pricing at all.
Data stays in your own WordPress database.
Deep integration with WooCommerce, LearnDash, membership plugins and the rest of the ecosystem.
The genuine answer to 'ActiveCampaign alternative for WordPress'.

What to watch for

It doesn't send email. You still pay Amazon SES, Mailgun or similar underneath.
Sending at volume from WordPress cron is fragile; large lists need care.
Deliverability is entirely your problem.
If your site goes down, so does your marketing automation.

19Open 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.

20Hosted 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.

FAQ

Ontraport alternatives, asked and answered

What is the best Ontraport alternative?

If you need the CRM and payments, Keap is the closest — and more expensive. ActiveCampaign gives marketing automation plus a sales CRM for far less. EngageBay gives the whole suite from $12.74 per user per month.

If what you actually use is campaigns and automations, almost anything on this page does that for under $50/mo.

Why is Ontraport expensive?

Because three meters run at once: the plan, the per-user charge, and additional contacts and emails at $99/mo per 100,000 each. A team that grows and a list that grows move the bill independently.

Against a stack of four separate tools it's reasonable. Against an email platform it isn't a comparison.

Is there a free Ontraport alternative?

For the CRM, HubSpot's free tier for two users or EngageBay's free plan for fifteen team members. For the email side, Sender gives 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails free, and Email Bump gives 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails with flows included.

Ontraport itself has no free plan.

If you only needed the email

One meter, and no per-user charge

Contacts are the only thing metered — sending is uncapped, seats are unlimited, and campaigns, flows and the transactional API all share the plan. 5,000 contacts free.

Start free Read the API docs

The best Ontraport alternatives

Pick by the reason you're leaving

What actually goes wrong with Ontraport

What Ontraport costs, from their own pricing pages

The tiers

The fine print

All 20, on the things that decide it

Every option, and what it's bad at

Ontraport alternatives, asked and answered

What is the best Ontraport alternative?

Why is Ontraport expensive?

Is there a free Ontraport alternative?

One meter, and no per-user charge

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