MailerLite let us build a subscribe form, a welcome automation and a full campaign on a brand-new free account. Then it refused to switch the form and the automation on. The reason wasn’t a paywall. It was a set of DNS records we hadn’t added to our own domain.
Why We Reviewed MailerLite’s Email Marketing on a Free Account
MailerLite says more than 1 million creators and businesses use it (MailerLite pricing), and its free plan shows up in almost every list of beginner email tools. Its help center calls it “an email marketing tool and website builder for businesses of all shapes and sizes” (MailerLite Help: How to get started).
That popularity is exactly why we wanted to look past the feature list. Most MailerLite reviews describe what the app can do. Fewer show what happens on day one, when you have no list, no paid plan and maybe no domain.
So what does MailerLite email marketing actually look like before you pay? We opened a fresh account, ran the same seven tasks we run on every newsletter tool, and wrote down every screen that stopped us.
Here’s the catch we found early: on MailerLite, building things is easy, and going live depends on your domain. The rest of this review explains why.
Key Takeaways
MailerLite’s Free plan covers 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, per its public pricing page (MailerLite pricing). In our hands-on test, every building task worked without a card, but the subscribe form and the welcome automation stayed off until the sender domain was authenticated. The in-app usage caps we saw during the trial were also far larger than the Free plan limits on the pricing page, so plan around the pricing page. What does that mean for a new list? Budget time for DNS before your launch date.
Quick Verdict: Is MailerLite Good for Email Marketing in 2026?
MailerLite is good for email marketing if you already own a domain and your list will stay under 250 subscribers for a while: in our October 20, 2026 test, 5 of our 7 tasks finished on the free account, and the 2 that needed to go live stopped at domain authentication. If you have no domain yet, expect a DNS task before anything reaches a subscriber.
| Task | Result in our test |
|---|---|
| Sign up | Worked with Google, no card; a postal address was required before the dashboard |
| Create a newsletter (onboarding) | Worked; the dashboard showed “Trial — 14 days left” |
| Build a subscribe form | Built and got the embed code; enabling it needed an authenticated sender domain |
| Set up a welcome email | Built from a template; Activate was blocked until the domain was authenticated |
| Send the welcome email as a test | Worked; the test reached our inbox |
| Write a campaign and test it | Worked; the test reached our inbox |
| Read the free plan limits | Worked; Free plan, 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails, $0 |
Is a domain requirement a dealbreaker? Not if you run a business site, because an authenticated domain helps your emails reach the inbox anyway. It is a real hurdle if you are starting a hobby newsletter from a personal address.
You can start on MailerLite’s free signup page without a card. If you are still choosing between tools, our hands-on comparison of the best newsletter platforms puts MailerLite next to beehiiv and Kit.
How We Tested MailerLite: Seven Tasks on a Free Account
We tested MailerLite on October 20, 2026, on day 1 of its 14-day trial, with one work account, Google sign-in and no credit card entered anywhere. Each tool we review gets the same seven tasks, written down before we start:
- Sign up.
- Create a newsletter.
- Build a subscribe form and get the embed code.
- Set up an automatic welcome email.
- Check the welcome email by sending it to ourselves.
- Write an email and send it only to ourselves as a test.
- Read the free plan limits from the billing page.
We never sent anything to a real list. Every email went to our own inbox. When a step needed a card, a DNS change or a paid upgrade, we stopped and wrote down why. Changing DNS records on our domain was outside the test rules, so we didn’t authenticate a domain.
Why so few tasks? Because these are the steps every new newsletter goes through, whatever the topic. If one of them is painful, you feel it in your first week. We copied what each screen said word for word and kept masked screenshots. When this review quotes a screen, the quote comes from our test log.
A note on money: Indie Stack Lab may add affiliate links to some tools later. When a link is an affiliate link, it is labeled, and our disclosure page explains how that works. It did not change what we tested or what we wrote down.
Signing Up and Onboarding: The Required Address Step
Signing up took one Google click and a short survey, and the signup page promised: “Get started with a Free plan — Sign up in seconds. No credit card required.” A side panel added “Try everything free for 14 days … Up to 250 subscribers … Send up to 2,500 emails.”
A Cloudflare check flashed “Success!” on its own. One small note for anyone automating their setup: our browser script could not trigger the Google button, but it worked normally when clicked by hand. A regular user won’t notice. If you prefer a password, MailerLite’s help center describes an email and password signup too (MailerLite Help: How to get started).
The onboarding survey asked four things: how many subscribers we had (“Less than 500”), where we were moving from (“I’m starting fresh!”), our industry and our website. Then came a step we didn’t expect, a required postal address with Address, City and Country fields. MailerLite says the address “ensures you’re compliant with regional policies and regulations.”
Why would an email tool need your street address? For US senders, the law already does. The FTC’s CAN-SPAM guide says a commercial email “must include your valid physical postal address” (FTC CAN-SPAM Compliance Guide). MailerLite simply collects it up front so it can go in your footer. If you work from home, a PO box or a registered business address is worth arranging before you send your first campaign.
After the survey, the dashboard read “Trial — 14 days left”, with the account labeled as a 14-day trial. The getting-started checklist already pointed at the hurdle ahead: step 4 was “Connect your domain.”
One more thing you may see in search results: “MailerLite Classic.” That is the older version of the app. MailerLite’s help pages now open with a note that Legacy (Classic) users have a separate help center, and a new account like ours lands in the current app. If a tutorial shows menus you can’t find, check whether it was written for Classic.
Building a Subscribe Form: Embed Code and the Double Opt-In Lock
Building the form took a few clicks in our test, from Forms to the embed code, but the form page then told us it couldn’t be enabled until our sender domain was authenticated. That one message shapes the whole free MailerLite experience.
The path was Forms, then Embedded forms, then Create. We named the form “Indie Stack Lab test form”, created a new group called “Indie Stack Lab test” for the signups, kept the default design and pressed Done editing.
The embed code comes in two parts. A site-wide “MailerLite Universal” script goes into your site once, and a short <div class="ml-embedded" data-form="…"> element goes wherever the form should appear. That split is handy: add the script to your site template one time, and every later form needs only the small div.
Then we hit the lock. The form page said: “Double opt-in — Sender email domain must be authenticated and verified before you can enable this form.” Next to it sat an “Authenticate email domain” button, which we didn’t press, because that step means editing DNS.
So can you collect subscribers without a domain? Not with this form on our account, because MailerLite tied enabling the form to the sender domain. Double opt-in sends each new subscriber a confirmation email, and that email needs a sender MailerLite trusts.
The pricing page also limits how many forms can run at once on the Free plan: 3 active forms, with embedded forms and pop-ups included (MailerLite pricing). Build as many drafts as you like, but plan on three live ones. Not sure where your first signups will come from? Our step-by-step guide to building an email list covers that part.
The Welcome Automation: Built, but Blocked Until the Domain Is Verified
We built a welcome automation from MailerLite’s “Simple welcome email” template in a few clicks, but the Activate button returned “Looks like some steps or triggers are incomplete. Let’s fix that!” and the automation stayed inactive in our October 20 test.
The setup itself was clear. Automations, then Create, then the template. We set the trigger to “Joins group(s): Indie Stack Lab test”, so anyone who signs up through our form would enter the flow, and wrote the subject line “Welcome to the Indie Stack Lab test list.”
The email step showed two warnings. The first: “Sender email must be authenticated before you can send from this address. Connect domain.” The second: “Add missing URLs to buttons.” The template ships with placeholder buttons, and MailerLite won’t activate a flow until each one has a link. That second warning is easy to fix. The first one is the domain again.
Could we at least see the email? Yes. “Send a test email” from the automation’s email step still worked. The dialog warned: “Test emails have limited features and Unsubscribe, Forward and Preference Center links will not work on them.” The test arrived in our inbox, so you can proofread a welcome email long before your domain is ready. For a sequence worth copying, see our welcome email examples and setup guide.
What domain authentication involves
MailerLite’s help center lays out the steps (MailerLite Help: Domain authentication). Go to Account settings, open the Domains tab, click Add domain and enter the address you want to send from. MailerLite then shows three records: DKIM as a CNAME record, SPF as a TXT record and a domain verification TXT record. You add them at the company that manages your DNS and press Check DNS Records. The help article says servers can take up to 24 hours to update, though most checks pass in minutes. For many hosts, an automatic setup does the DNS part for you.
Why is MailerLite so strict? Gmail’s own rules leave little room. Google’s sender guidelines require SPF or DKIM for all senders, and senders of 5,000 or more messages a day also need DMARC and one-click unsubscribe (Google: Email sender guidelines). The same page asks senders to keep spam rates below 0.10%. MailerLite’s help center ties its requirement to those Google and Yahoo sender rules.
What if you only have a Gmail or Yahoo address? MailerLite’s help center says it then rewrites your sender to a MailerLite subdomain, so john@yahoo.com goes out as john.yahoo.com@send.mailerlite.eu, and still recommends a domain of your own (MailerLite Help: The limitations of using a free domain). Our test account used a custom-domain address, which is why the domain lock applied to us.
Triggers you can build once it’s live
MailerLite’s automation page lists triggers for joining a group, completing a form, clicking a link, updating a field, date-based events and e-commerce events such as abandoned carts (MailerLite automation). On the Free plan, the pricing page allows 3 active automations with up to 5 steps each, while multiple triggers in one automation are a Power feature.
Writing a Campaign: Regular, A/B Split and the Premium-Only Types
Writing a campaign worked from start to test send, and the campaign picker offered 5 types, of which 3 carried a Premium label in our test: RSS, Auto resend and Multivariate. Regular and A/B split campaigns had no label.
Before we could pick anything, a product tour overlay (“Start with a regular campaign … Got it”) covered the campaign type buttons. Dismiss it first, or you’ll think the buttons are broken.
We chose a Regular campaign, picked a template from “Simple emails”, replaced the heading and the first paragraph, and opened Preview and test. MailerLite’s help center describes three editors for a campaign started from scratch: Drag & drop, Simple and Custom HTML (MailerLite Help: How to get started). It also warns that a campaign’s type can’t be changed once you create it, so choose before you start writing.
The test-email dialog carried an honest warning: “Spam placement is common for test emails and doesn’t reflect your actual campaign health.” That is worth remembering. If your first test lands in spam, don’t panic, and don’t judge deliverability from it. Our test arrived, and we stopped there without pressing Send. Want more layout ideas than MailerLite’s “Simple emails” set? Our guide to newsletter templates walks through layouts you can rebuild in any editor.
What about the sender address? The same help article recommends your own domain address, such as yourname@yourcompany.com, and advises against no-reply addresses. Combined with the domain lock, the message is consistent: MailerLite expects you to send from a domain you control.
Free Plan Limits We Saw: 250 Subscribers and 2,500 Emails a Month
MailerLite’s Plan and billing page showed “Plan: Free — Up to 250 subscribers. 2,500 emails. — Monthly cost $0” in our test, which matches the public pricing page (MailerLite pricing). The other caps did not match, and that gap matters more than any feature.
Here is what the in-app usage list showed during our trial, next to what the public pricing page says about the Free plan on October 23, 2026:
| Item | In-app usage page (October 20, during the trial) | Public pricing page, Free plan |
|---|---|---|
| Subscribers | 250 | 250 |
| Emails per month | 2,500 | 2,500 |
| Automations | 1,000 | 3 active, 5 steps each |
| Landing pages | 500 | 1 |
| Websites | 500 | 1 |
| Forms | 500 | 3 active |
| Products | 1,000 | 1 digital product or booking |
| User seats | Not shown | 2 |
Which numbers should you believe? We read the in-app page while the account was in its trial. MailerLite’s trial help article says that when the trial ends, “your account will revert to the Free plan” and “Free plan limits will apply” (MailerLite Help: 14-day premium trial). We did not wait 14 days to see the switch, so we can’t confirm which caps the app enforces afterward. Our advice: plan on the pricing-page numbers.
What happens at subscriber 251? The pricing FAQ is direct: when a free account goes over 250 active subscribers, “sendings will be locked (campaigns + automation)” until you upgrade or remove subscribers. Unsubscribed and bounced addresses don’t count toward the limit. Plan your upgrade before a launch, not during one.
Paid Plans in Brief and What the 14-Day Trial Unlocks
MailerLite’s paid plans start at $12/month for Comfort and $25/month for Power, billed monthly, at the 500-subscriber tier, per its pricing page on October 23, 2026 (MailerLite pricing). Paying yearly saves 10%.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | At this price | Monthly emails | Key limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | Up to 250 subscribers | 2,500 | 1 website, 1 landing page, 3 active forms, 3 active automations, 2 seats |
| Comfort | $12/month | $10.80/month ($129.60/year) | 500 subscribers | 5,000 | 50 automations, 10 forms, 10 sites, 5 digital products, 3 seats |
| Power | $25/month | $22.50/month ($270/year) | 500 subscribers | Unlimited, fair use | Unlimited automations, forms, sites and seats; multiple triggers; live chat |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | 200K+ subscribers | Custom | Dedicated IP, onboarding and deliverability support |
The pricing FAQ says “Pricing is based on usage, not feature access.” Comfort’s sending allowance is 10 times the top of your subscriber tier, so the up-to-1,000 tier gets 10,000 emails a month. Nonprofits get 30% off paid plans after sending proof of status, such as an IRS tax exemption certificate in the US. For every tier and price, see our breakdown of MailerLite costs by subscriber count.
So what does the trial really include? MailerLite’s help article says the 14-day trial lets you test features from both Comfort and Power, including RSS campaigns, auto resend, multiple automation triggers, the AI writing assistant and the preference center (MailerLite Help: 14-day premium trial). It still caps you at 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails, and it leaves out custom domains, logo removal, more than 2 users and a dedicated IP.
When the trial ends, MailerLite deletes no data. Automations that use multiple triggers stop, though, and paid features such as auto resend go away. To upgrade, the help article points to Account settings, then Plan and billing, then Upgrade.
Landing Pages, Websites and Integrations, From MailerLite’s Docs
MailerLite’s Free plan includes 1 landing page and 1 website with free hosting and unlimited traffic and storage, according to its landing page builder page (MailerLite landing pages). We didn’t build either in our test, so this section relies on MailerLite’s own pages.
Landing pages and websites
The landing page builder offers an AI generator, more than 70 prebuilt sections, Google Analytics tracking, custom HTML injection and A/B tests of up to 5 page versions. The website builder adds a blog section, quizzes, surveys and publishing to a custom domain with SSL (MailerLite website builder). Keep the trial exclusion in mind: custom domains for sites are not part of the 14-day trial.
Can you sell from these pages? Yes, per MailerLite’s website builder page: digital products, bookings and paid subscriptions, paid through Stripe in more than 135 currencies. The Free plan allows 1 digital product or booking. MailerLite says it takes no cut of sales, so you pay Stripe’s fees only.
Integrations, the API and AI assistants
The pricing page lists 100+ integrations on every plan, and the integrations directory features WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe, Squarespace, Wix and Zapier, which MailerLite says connects it with 5,000+ apps (MailerLite integrations). There are also connectors for Claude and ChatGPT through MailerLite’s MCP server. On the Free plan, the pricing FAQ says API and MCP access is limited and “doesn’t include sending.”
Analytics and segmentation
The pricing page lists unlimited dynamic segments and unlimited interest groups on every plan, Free included. Its reporting section also names list growth reporting, individual subscriber profiles and email click maps; check the plan columns there for which ones your plan gets. Segments and groups alone cover most of what a small newsletter needs to send the right email to the right readers.
Is MailerLite a CRM, and does it do SMS?
MailerLite is an email marketing tool, not a full CRM. It keeps subscriber profiles, groups and segments, and its integrations directory has a CRM category for syncing with tools like Copper CRM. For text messages, MailerLite’s pricing page points to MailerSend, its sister service. MailerSend’s SMS API is for transactional texts only, in the US and Canada, and “You cannot use the transactional SMS service to send promotional SMS messages” (MailerSend SMS API).
What We Could Not Test
Our MailerLite test left 4 things unchecked, all because they need a DNS change, a real list or a paid plan. We’d rather list them than guess:
- Domain authentication. Adding the DKIM, SPF and verification records meant editing DNS on our domain, outside our test rules.
- A live form and a live welcome automation. Domain authentication blocked both, so we never saw the double opt-in email or the welcome email fire for a real signup.
- Sending a campaign to a list. Our task only needed an email to ourselves.
- Inbox placement. Test emails tell you nothing about deliverability, as MailerLite’s own dialog says.
We also didn’t wait for the trial to end, so we can’t say which in-app caps MailerLite enforces on day 15. When we finish the domain step, we’ll update this review with what changed.
Does that make the verdict weaker? A little. But it also tells you something useful: a new user without a domain hits the same wall we did.
MailerLite Next to beehiiv and Kit on the Same Seven Tasks
On the same day and the same seven tasks, MailerLite was the only one of the three newsletter tools we tested that could not put a welcome email live without domain authentication, per our October 20, 2026 test logs. beehiiv went live in one publish, and Kit needed three separate pieces.
| MailerLite | beehiiv | Kit | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free subscriber cap we saw | 250 (in-app) | 2,500 (in-app) | Up to 10,000 (public pricing page) |
| Google sign-in | Yes | Yes | No |
| Extra step at signup | Postal address | Phone SMS and “press and hold” checks | Card modal with a skip link |
| Live welcome email | Blocked until the domain is authenticated | 1 publish | 3 pieces |
| Double opt-in | Needs an authenticated domain to enable | No confirmation step in our signup | On by default |
Which one fits you? If you already own a domain and want many forms and pages, MailerLite is a strong pick. If you have no domain, beehiiv was the fastest start in our test; read our beehiiv review. If you plan to sell digital products, our Kit email marketing review covers its free plan. The full side-by-side lives in our comparison of the best newsletter platforms.
MailerLite Pros and Cons From Our Test
MailerLite’s strengths and weaknesses come straight from our seven tasks plus its public pricing page; the single biggest con is that 2 of our 7 tasks stopped at domain authentication. Is the trade worth it? For a business with a domain, usually yes.
What we liked:
- Signup with Google needed no card, and the signup page said so clearly.
- The form embed code splits into one site-wide script and a small div per form.
- Test emails worked for automations and campaigns, even before domain authentication.
- The trial label and days left sat on the dashboard from the start.
- Regular and A/B split campaigns carried no Premium label.
What held us back:
- Forms and automations can’t go live until the sender domain is authenticated.
- MailerLite requires a postal address before you reach the dashboard.
- The welcome template ships with placeholder buttons that block activation.
- In-app usage caps during the trial were much larger than the Free plan limits on the pricing page.
- The Free plan stops at 250 subscribers, and sending locks above it.
Who Should Use MailerLite: Your Next Step
MailerLite suits small businesses, authors and creators who own a domain and expect fewer than 250 subscribers at first, and in our test the domain was the only thing between a built setup and a live one. If that describes you, authenticate your domain on day one.
A short checklist before you sign up:
- Do you own a domain and can you edit its DNS? If not, sort that out first or pick a tool that doesn’t need it yet.
- Will you pass 250 subscribers in the next few months? Budget for Comfort at $12/month.
- Do you need more than 3 live forms or 3 automations? That also means a paid plan.
- Which trial features must you keep? Check them against the Free column of the pricing page, not against what works in week one.
Then run the same test we did: build one form and one welcome email, and send a test to yourself. Seven small tasks were enough to show us MailerLite’s one real hurdle. Comparing more than these three? Our roundup of the best email marketing platforms for creators widens the field. Whatever you choose, keep your subscriber list exportable from the start.
References
- MailerLite: Pricing
- MailerLite Help: What is included in MailerLite’s 14-day premium trial?
- MailerLite Help: Domain authentication
- MailerLite Help: The limitations of using a free domain
- MailerLite Help: How to get started with MailerLite
- MailerLite: Automation builder
- MailerLite: Landing page builder
- MailerLite: Website builder
- MailerLite: Integrations
- MailerSend: SMS API
- Google: Email sender guidelines
- FTC: CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business