MailerLite: what I pay to send one email a month to nine hundred people

I send one email a month to about nine hundred people. Homeowners, shop owners, a few accountants who forward it around. It is the same short email every time: one fix, what it costs, and a photo of whatever I broke while learning it. That list has sent me more jobs than the search engines have, and I pay about $15 a month to send it through MailerLite.

Here's the thing about that $15. It is the cheapest advertising I buy, and the only channel where the audience belongs to me. Facebook can change the rules tomorrow. The email list cannot, because I have the addresses in a file I can leave with.

I landed on MailerLite after trying two others, and I have paid for it for three years. This is what I know about it now, from the paying side.

What it costs in 2026

The pricing changed recently, and not in my favor, so here are current numbers.

1. The free plan now covers 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month. It used to cover a thousand. That is a real cut, and it means the free plan is a test drive now, not a home.
2. The first paid tier, the Comfort plan, starts at $12 a month for 500 subscribers. It climbs with list size, and it is cheaper billed yearly. At my list size I pay around $15 a month.
3. Automation, forms, and landing pages are included. I do not pay extra for the parts I actually use.

Total for me: about $180 a year to reach nine hundred people. Carol's tax office pays the same plan for her tax-tips list, and she considers it rent. The math I keep in my head is this. One drain cleaning job pays for a year of it. One.

What it is like to use

The editor is plain and it stays out of the way. I write a headline, drop in two photos, and hit send. The signup form tool plugs into a website in an afternoon, and the form is what does the collecting while I sleep. I built one for my blog and one for Carol's site, and both of them ask for exactly two things: a name and an email. Every extra field you ask for costs you subscribers. That is not a MailerLite rule, it is a people rule.

Deliverability has been solid. When I send, the mail arrives in inboxes, not in the spam folder graveyards where my old tool was dumping a fifth of my list. I am no deliverability engineer. I judge it by replies, and the replies kept coming.

Two frictions you should know before you sign up. First, MailerLite reviews new accounts by hand before you can send. Mine took about a day. It felt insulting for about an hour, and then I understood it. They are protecting their senders' reputation, which protects mine, but you should expect the wait and not build your week around sending on day one. Second, some of the better features sit on higher tiers. If you are running a store with complicated automations, look elsewhere. For a shop sending one or two emails a month, the Comfort plan has everything.

The lint trap

I'll be honest about the thing that actually damages small email lists, and it is not the software. Spam complaints work like lint in a dryer vent. A little is normal. But if you keep pushing heat through a clogged vent, the machine strains and eventually something burns. Email the people who asked to hear from you, keep the complaints low, and the list breathes for years. Buy a list of addresses at a conference and blast it, and no tool on earth saves your domain.

That is why I like that MailerLite is a little strict at the door. The friction is the vent screen.

What to do Monday

Pick the five customers you saw last week. Say this: "Can I email you one tip a month? Nothing else." Write their addresses on paper if you have to. Then set up the free MailerLite account and put those five in it tonight. Do not design a logo for the newsletter. Do not write three issues in advance. Five people, one signup form on your website, and the first email goes out on the first Tuesday of next month.