AWeber vs MailerLite in 2026: Which Email Marketing Platform Is Right for Your Business?

Affiliate disclosure: some links in this article are monetised, which means Ecommerce Paradise may earn a commission if you buy through them. It costs you nothing and it never decides what goes in the comparison. Every price here was read off each vendor’s own live pricing page on 29 September 2026, with the subscriber band it applies to, and where a cheaper or free option wins we say so even when it pays us nothing.

If you are picking an email marketing platform for your store or content business, AWeber and MailerLite both come up constantly, and people conflate them because they look similar on the surface: both have free plans, both target small to mid-size senders, and both are positioned as beginner-friendly. But once you look at how each one actually works, and at what each one publishes today rather than what it published two years ago, they serve noticeably different operators. I have built and sold a lot of ecommerce stores over the years, including a three-store package that sold for $700,000, and through the work I do at Ecommerce Paradise I help people pick the right tools for the actual stage they are at. So here are these two head to head with no spin.

One thing up front, because it changes the recommendation. An earlier version of this comparison said MailerLite had the more generous free plan, at 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 sends a month. That is no longer what MailerLite publishes. MailerLite has re-tiered its whole range, and its free plan is now up to 250 subscribers with 2,500 monthly emails, against AWeber Free at 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails monthly. On raw free-plan capacity, AWeber is now the more generous of the two, and the direction of that comparison has reversed rather than merely narrowed. The price half of the old thesis still holds: MailerLite is still cheaper on the entry paid tier. Both halves are worked through below with the published figures.

AWeber vs MailerLite at a Glance

Here is the corrected side-by-side for 2026. Every price names its subscriber band, because both vendors price by list size and a bare starting figure tells you nothing.

Both scale by subscriber count and both deliver respectable email. The decisive differences are now free-plan capacity, which AWeber wins, and entry paid price, which MailerLite wins.

The Free Plan Comparison Has Reversed

This is the correction that matters most, so it gets its own section rather than a quiet footnote. For years the standard line about these two platforms, on this site included, was that MailerLite had the bigger free plan. It does not any more.

What MailerLite publishes on its free card today is up to 250 subscribers with 2,500 monthly emails, 2 user seats, community support, 3 automations, 1 website and 1 landing page, 1 digital product or booking, and 3 signup forms. What AWeber publishes for AWeber Free is lifetime access at no cost with the upgrade optional, manage up to 500 subscribers, send 3,000 emails monthly, a single list profile, and a single workflow automation or autoresponder campaign.

So on the two numbers most people actually care about, AWeber is ahead. It gives you exactly twice the subscriber cap, 500 against 250, and 500 more monthly emails, 3,000 against 2,500. If your plan is to grow a list as far as you can before paying anything, AWeber buys you roughly twice as long on the free tier, and MailerLite will be asking you for money at 251 subscribers.

The honest counterweight, and it is a real one, is that MailerLite’s free plan is deeper on features even though it is smaller on capacity. Three automations against AWeber’s one is a meaningful difference if you want a welcome sequence and an abandoned-browse nudge running at the same time. And on sends per subscriber MailerLite is actually more generous: 2,500 emails across 250 subscribers is 10 sends per subscriber a month, while 3,000 across 500 is 6, both figures being my division of the two published pairs. If you mail a small list frequently, that ratio can matter more than the headline cap.

What Each Platform Actually Charges

MailerLite has re-tiered completely, and the old plan names are gone. There is no Growing Business plan and no $9 or $10 entry price, both of which this article used to quote. The current plan set is Free, Comfort, Power and Enterprise, and here it is as published.

AWeber’s side, at the matching 0 to 500 subscribers band, is Lite at $12.50 a month billed annually with a published annual total of $150, or $15.00 a month if you pay monthly. Plus is $20.00 a month billed annually with a published annual total of $240, or $30.00 monthly. There is also an Unlimited plan at a flat $899 a month, a Done For You setup tier priced identically to Plus at every band with a one-off setup fee AWeber currently shows as $599 marked down to $79, and an unadvertised Hold Package at $4.99 a month that pauses an account without losing subscribers, automations or landing pages. None of the three has a MailerLite counterpart. The full 14-band AWeber ladder is in my AWeber pricing breakdown.

Lined up at the same band and the same billing mode, MailerLite is cheaper on the entry paid tier, and it is not a rounding error. Comfort at $129.60 a year against AWeber Lite at $150 a year is $20.40 of difference over twelve months on the two vendors’ own published annual totals. On monthly billing it is $12 against $15.00, a $3 a month gap. What I am not going to claim, because I could only read MailerLite’s prices at its default band, is that MailerLite is cheaper at every subscriber tier. That was the old version of this article and it was never established. At the entry band it is, and that is what I can show.

A Note on Feature Depth, Because MailerLite Changed That Too

The old framing of this comparison was that AWeber had the deeper feature set and MailerLite the prettier interface. That is still broadly true at the very top of each range, but MailerLite’s own pricing headline now reads that every paid plan gets its full feature set and you only pay more for a bigger list or more sending, which cuts directly against the idea that MailerLite gates capability behind tiers.

What each vendor actually gates is worth stating precisely. AWeber gates hard at Lite: 1 email list, 3 landing pages, 3 email automations, 3 users, 1 custom segment and a 1.0% transaction fee against Plus at 0.6%. MailerLite gates at Comfort too, but more loosely: 50 automations, 10 websites and landing pages, 3 user seats and 5,000 monthly emails, with Power lifting all of those to unlimited. So if you compare the two cheapest paid plans rather than the two most expensive, MailerLite Comfort is both cheaper and less restricted than AWeber Lite, and that is the opposite of how this comparison usually gets written.

Where AWeber pulls ahead is the top paid tier at a small list. AWeber Plus at $20.00 a month billed annually publishes unlimited lists, landing pages, automations, segments and users. MailerLite Power, the equivalent uncapped tier, is $22.50 a month billed yearly at up to 500 subscribers, which is $270.00 a year against AWeber Plus at $240.00 a year on the two published totals. So the price advantage flips once you want the uncapped plan rather than the entry plan, and that is the single most useful thing in this article for anyone who already knows they will outgrow a capped tier.

Why Operators Still Choose AWeber

The Bigger Free Runway

Twice the free subscriber cap is twice the runway before a card goes in. If you are building a list from zero, 500 free subscribers on AWeber against 250 on MailerLite is usually several months of difference, and those are the months where a new store has no email revenue to pay for the tool. The caveat is that AWeber Free gives you one list and one automation, so the runway is real but the capability is narrow.

Deliverability and Tenure

AWeber’s copyright line runs from 1998, which puts roughly 28 years of relationship with mailbox providers behind it, against MailerLite’s from 2010. Tenure is not a guarantee of inbox placement, and I have no deliverability test of my own to cite, so treat this as a reasonable prior rather than a measurement. It still matters, because an email in spam is an email that never converts, the same way I tell operators to prioritise fundamentals over surface aesthetics when building around a high-ticket niche.

The Uncapped Tier Is Cheaper

If your answer to feature caps is to skip them entirely, AWeber Plus at $240.00 a year undercuts MailerLite Power at $270.00 a year at the same 500-subscriber band. That is the version of the price comparison nobody runs, because everyone compares the cheapest plan on each side instead of the plan a growing operator actually ends up on.

Where MailerLite Is Genuinely the Better Choice

I am not going to pretend AWeber is the answer for every operator, because for a large group of readers MailerLite is clearly the better buy and the corrected figures make that case stronger, not weaker.

The first reason is the entry price, which is the cheapest of any established sender in this comparison. Comfort at $10.80 a month billed yearly, a published $129.60 a year, undercuts AWeber Lite by $20.40 across twelve months, and it does so while giving you 50 automations against AWeber Lite’s 3 and 10 websites and landing pages against 3. If your budget is the binding constraint and you want more than one automation, MailerLite is simply the better deal at the entry tier.

The second reason is the interface, and it is not close. MailerLite’s builder is the cleanest in the category and the drag-and-drop editor is intuitive in a way AWeber’s is not. The third is scope: MailerLite Free bundles 1 website and 1 landing page, 1 digital product or booking and 3 signup forms, so it doubles as a very small site builder and a way to sell a single product before you have a store. AWeber publishes no landing-page allowance for its free tier at all.

The Support Claim This Article Used to Get Wrong in Both Directions

An earlier version of this comparison said AWeber gives you 24/7 live chat, phone and email support on the free plan, and that MailerLite reserves live chat for paid plans. Both statements were wrong, and correcting them changes the recommendation for anyone who is buying on support.

On the AWeber side, the support rows on AWeber’s pricing page cover Done For You, Plus and Lite, with priority support on the top two. The free plan is not a column on that table at all, and no AWeber page I could read states what support a free account gets. So the correct claim is that AWeber publishes chat, email and phone support on every paid plan, and publishes nothing about the free plan.

On the MailerLite side, live chat is not reserved for paid plans in general: it is on the Power tier only. Comfort gets 24/7 email support and Free gets community support. So a reader choosing on support should know that the cheapest way to get 24/7 live chat between these two platforms is MailerLite Power at $22.50 a month billed yearly, and that AWeber does not publish a live chat entitlement for free accounts either way.

Which One Should You Choose?

Here is my straight take, rebuilt on the current figures. Choose AWeber if you are starting from zero and want the longest free runway, because 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails monthly is double MailerLite’s free cap. Choose it as well if you already know you want an uncapped plan, because Plus at $240.00 a year beats MailerLite Power at $270.00 a year at the same band.

Choose MailerLite if the entry paid tier is where you will actually live, because Comfort is cheaper than AWeber Lite on both billing modes and considerably less capped. Choose it too if you want a modern builder, a landing page and a small site out of the same tool, or if you want 3 automations rather than 1 without paying anything.

Either way, match the platform to where your list will be in twelve months rather than where it is today, which is the same discipline I apply to every part of a store buildout. The formation and supplier side of that is covered in my guide to finding vetted suppliers. For the wider field beyond these two, there is my roundup of the best email marketing platforms for beginners.

Frequently Asked Questions: AWeber vs MailerLite

Which has a better free plan, AWeber or MailerLite?
AWeber, on capacity. AWeber Free publishes up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails monthly against MailerLite Free at up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 monthly emails, so AWeber gives you twice the list cap. MailerLite Free is the deeper of the two on features, with 3 automations plus 1 website and 1 landing page against AWeber’s single list profile and single workflow automation. If capacity is the constraint, take AWeber; if you need more than one automation on day one and can live with 250 subscribers, take MailerLite.

Is AWeber more expensive than MailerLite?
At the entry paid tier, yes. AWeber Lite is $12.50 a month billed annually at 0 to 500 subscribers, a published $150 a year, against MailerLite Comfort at $10.80 a month billed yearly, a published $129.60 a year. On monthly billing it is $15.00 against $12. At the uncapped tier it flips: AWeber Plus is $240.00 a year against MailerLite Power at $270.00 a year at the same band. I read MailerLite only at its default band, so I am not claiming a result at every tier.

Is AWeber or MailerLite better for beginners?
Both are beginner-friendly, and the answer depends on which constraint bites first. MailerLite has the cleaner interface and the cheaper entry paid tier, which suits a beginner who expects to pay something quickly. AWeber has twice the free subscriber cap, which suits a beginner who wants to build to 500 before spending anything. You can start free on AWeber and see which constraint you hit.

Does AWeber give free users 24/7 live chat support?
Not as far as AWeber publishes. Its pricing page shows chat, email and phone support rows for Done For You, Plus and Lite, with priority support on the top two, and the free plan is not a column on that table. No AWeber page states what support a free account receives, so any article claiming 24/7 live chat on the free plan is going beyond the published terms, and this one used to.

Does MailerLite reserve live chat for paid plans?
Only for one paid plan. MailerLite publishes 24/7 live chat and email support on Power, 24/7 email support on Comfort, and community support on Free. So live chat is a Power-tier feature, at $25 a month monthly or $22.50 a month billed yearly for up to 500 subscribers, not something every paid plan unlocks.

Can I switch from MailerLite to AWeber later?
Yes, both platforms allow exporting and importing subscriber lists, so migration is possible. It is painful enough that you want to get the choice right first time, which is why the band you expect to be in matters more than the entry price. The full strategy for picking and stacking marketing tools is something I work through directly in my 1-on-1 coaching.

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Pricing and feature details change frequently. Always verify current pricing directly with each platform before subscribing. Ecommerce Paradise may earn affiliate commissions from purchases made through links in this article.

Trevor Fenner

Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.

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