Free mailing list service: MailChimp + MPZmail + MailerLite (Freshmail + Campayn) and an unlimited bonus

How can your organization get free email list management service totaling 6000 managed addresses?

MailChimp is the leader in the full-featured managed mailing list services, helping customers get users signed up to a mailing list, then letting owners manage lists and campaigns, including editing email campgaign templates in the browser. They also let you subscribe up to 2000 members for free, This is a great way for non-profit organizations to get started. But they aren't the only company around for sending emails and their pricing when you pass 2000 subscribers, even if you are not sending much mail through them, can add up to a lot of pizzas for an organization or individual on a budget.

When adding up the 5 options below, you can safely collect up to 6000 email subscribers for free, with a bit of segmentation. In the long run, this would be too bothersome to manage, but it's one less cost to consider for burgeoning startups just launching a product. You can also compare and contrast the mailing list manager products instead of just going with MailChimp.

  1. MailChimp. Industry leader for setting up email newsletter campaigns and delivering them.

  2. MPZmail - a name which you will not be able to remember. But sign up for it first because it's the MailChimp competitor offering the same amount of free subscribers, 2000, as MailChimp. So together with MailChimp you are free up to 4000. Check pricing

  3. MailerLite - like the above, but only up to 1000 free subscribers. Check pricing

  4. FreshMail - only up to 500 free subscribers. Check pricing

  5. Campayn - only up to 500 free subscribers. Check pricing

Doing the math: 2000 + 2000 + 1000 + 500 + 500 = 6000. This strategy can work if you start with MailChimp, then switch to MPZmail when you start to fill up to 2000, and continue switching.

But wait.

There's more!

SendinBlue, also providing transactional mail services (akin to MailChimp's Mandrill) and marketing automation is the only competitor which I found which doesn't charge by number of mailing list recipients but only by number of campaign emails sent! This means you can have unlimited numbers of people in your email list and as long as you're not sending them emails it won't cost you anything. The above choices, when reaching the free threshold, all start charging you a monthly fee just for having email addresses. So Campayn will charge you $10/month once you have 501 email addresses.

There's one catch with SendinBlue's free service. They will add "SendinBlue Branding" to messages and you aren't allowed to remove that. It's like emails sent with the footer "Sent from my iPhone". This means you will be doing a bit of free advertising for SendinBlue every time you send out a campaign. But if you're okay with that then the offer is hard to beat. And once you start paying, the price is easy to swallow (compared to MailChimp). The first paid level starts at $7.37/month for 40k emails.

See SendinBlue pricing

Besides using services like MailChimp, there are other types of services which are much cheaper: transactional mail.