What is MailerLite? A complete guide to features, pricing, and use cases

MailerLite has become one of the go-to email marketing platforms for creators, bloggers, and small businesses, largely because it gives you a powerful feature set at a price point that actually makes sense for early-stage lists. This guide covers what MailerLite is, how it works, what it costs, and how it compares to Mailchimp. If you're already using MailerLite and want to take it further, we'll also show you how IFTTT connects MailerLite to the rest of your stack, automatically adding new subscribers from forms and payment tools, logging signups to spreadsheets, and routing campaign activity to Slack and your team without manual effort.

IFTTT is an automation platform that connects over 1000 apps and services, so instead of manually exporting subscriber data or copy-pasting signups between tools, you build the connection once and it runs automatically.

What is MailerLite?

MailerLite is an email marketing platform designed for building subscriber lists, designing campaigns, and tracking engagement. It covers the core email marketing workflow, creating and sending newsletters, setting up automated sequences, building landing pages and sign-up forms, and analyzing how subscribers interact with your emails, in a clean, approachable interface built for teams without dedicated marketing operations resources.

Founded in 2010 in Vilnius, Lithuania, MailerLite was built as a deliberate alternative to tools like Mailchimp, prioritizing simplicity and transparent pricing over feature sprawl. It now serves more than 1.4 million users across 150+ countries and has become a popular choice for independent creators, newsletters, and small businesses that want professional email marketing without the complexity or cost of enterprise tools.

What is MailerLite used for?

Newsletter creators and bloggers use MailerLite to build and grow an email list, send regular newsletters to subscribers, and automate welcome sequences for new sign-ups. The clean editor and simple automation builder make it easy to maintain consistent communication without a marketing team.

eCommerce businesses use MailerLite to send promotional campaigns, abandoned cart sequences, and post-purchase follow-ups. MailerLite integrates with Shopify and other platforms, letting businesses segment buyers from browsers and trigger emails based on purchase activity.

Course creators and coaches use MailerLite to deliver email-based courses, drip sequences, and event promotions to their subscriber list. The landing page and sign-up form builder makes it straightforward to grow a list without a separate website tool.

Small businesses and agencies use MailerLite to send regular marketing emails, manage multiple client lists, and run campaigns with basic segmentation and automation, without paying for a platform priced for much larger teams.

How does MailerLite work?

MailerLite is organized around subscribers and campaigns. Subscribers are the people on your list, each with an email address, optional custom fields, and group membership. Campaigns are the emails you send to those subscribers, either as one-time broadcasts or as part of automated sequences.

Campaigns are created using MailerLite's drag-and-drop editor or its plain-text editor. You choose a subscriber group or segment to send to, schedule the send time, and MailerLite delivers the campaign and tracks opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and bounce rates.

Automation is where MailerLite goes beyond simple newsletters. You build a workflow that triggers when a subscriber joins a group, opens an email, clicks a link, or completes another action, and sends a sequence of emails over time. A simple welcome sequence, a seven-day onboarding series, or a re-engagement campaign for inactive subscribers all run through the automation builder.

Landing pages and forms are included across all plans. You can create a dedicated landing page for a lead magnet or newsletter sign-up without needing a separate website tool, and embed inline or pop-up sign-up forms directly on your site. New subscribers from forms are added to your MailerLite list automatically.

Analytics track campaign performance at both the campaign and subscriber level. You can see which campaigns had the highest open and click rates, which subscribers are most engaged, and how your list is growing over time.

Is MailerLite free?

Yes, MailerLite has a free plan that supports up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 email sends per month. The free plan includes the drag-and-drop editor, automation builder, landing pages, sign-up forms, and basic analytics, which makes it genuinely useful for creators and small businesses just getting started.

Paid plans unlock additional features and remove send limits:

The Growing Business plan starts at around $9/month (billed annually) for up to 500 subscribers and scales by list size. It removes the monthly send limit, adds unlimited templates, auto-resend campaigns, and removes MailerLite branding from emails and landing pages.

The Advanced plan starts at around $18/month (billed annually) and adds advanced automation features, a custom HTML editor, AI writing tools, a dedicated IP, and priority support. It's designed for businesses running more complex multi-step automation sequences.

Enterprise pricing is available for high-volume senders with custom needs.

MailerLite's pricing is notably lower than Mailchimp at equivalent list sizes, which is one of the primary reasons creators and small businesses switch to it.

MailerLite vs. Mailchimp: what's the difference?

MailerLite and Mailchimp are both email marketing platforms, but they're designed for different stages and use cases. Here's how they compare:

Bottom line: MailerLite is the better pick for creators, bloggers, and small businesses that want clean email campaigns, automation, and landing pages without paying premium prices as their list grows. Mailchimp offers more advanced segmentation, a larger native integration library, and transactional email capabilities at scale, but costs significantly more at higher subscriber counts. Both platforms have IFTTT support, so you can automate subscriber workflows across Google Sheets, Stripe, Typeform, and more regardless of which one you choose.

What are MailerLite's limitations?

MailerLite doesn't support transactional email natively. If you need to send receipts, password resets, or other event-triggered transactional messages alongside your marketing emails, you'll need a separate transactional email service.

Automation depth is more limited than dedicated marketing automation platforms. MailerLite's automation builder handles standard use cases: welcome sequences, drip campaigns, re-engagement flows, but complex branching logic, behavioral scoring, and advanced conditional splits require tools like ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo.

The native integration library is smaller than Mailchimp's. MailerLite connects to major platforms directly, but businesses with more specialized tech stacks may find fewer out-of-the-box integrations available compared to larger competitors, which is where IFTTT becomes particularly useful for bridging the gaps.

Reporting is functional but not deep. MailerLite provides standard campaign metrics: open rate, click rate, unsubscribes, bounces, but advanced reporting like revenue attribution, cohort analysis, or custom dashboards requires upgrading to higher tiers or using an external analytics tool.

Finally, the free plan's 12,000 monthly send limit can become a constraint as your list grows. A 1,000-subscriber list can only be emailed 12 times per month on the free tier before hitting the cap, frequent senders will need to upgrade sooner than the subscriber limit alone suggests.

How IFTTT works with MailerLite

MailerLite tracks your subscribers and campaign engagement. IFTTT connects that activity to the other tools in your stack, logging new subscribers to spreadsheets, routing campaign stats to Slack, adding sign-ups from forms and payment tools, and making sure subscriber events trigger the right follow-up actions automatically.

IFTTT's MailerLite integration works through six triggers, two Pro+ queries, and three actions. Triggers fire on new subscribers, subscriber updates, unsubscribes, and more. Actions let you create subscribers, update subscriber data, and add subscribers to groups, all from other apps in your stack.

Get notified when subscribers join or engage

Know the moment someone joins your list or opens a campaign, without checking MailerLite manually. IFTTT can push a notification or log the event so you always have a real-time view of subscriber activity.

Log subscribers and campaign data automatically

Build a running record of new sign-ups and campaign reports outside of MailerLite. Set it up once and every new subscriber and every campaign report is logged automatically, useful for stakeholders who don't have MailerLite access, or for tracking list growth over time.

Add subscribers from other tools

MailerLite's actions let you create and update subscribers from outside the platform entirely. A Google Forms submission can add a new subscriber. A Typeform response can enroll someone in a specific group. Your list grows automatically from the tools where sign-ups actually happen.

Share campaign activity with your team

Route new subscriber alerts and campaign performance updates to Slack, email, or notifications automatically, so your team stays informed on list growth and campaign results without needing direct access to MailerLite.

Explore MailerLite integrations

Google Forms to MailerLite

Turn every Google Forms submission into a new MailerLite subscriber automatically. Useful for creators running lead magnets, event registrations, or waitlists through Google Forms who want every sign-up to land directly in their email list.

• - Add every Google Forms respondent to your MailerLite subscriber list
• - Assign new form sign-ups to a specific MailerLite group
• - Trigger a welcome sequence automatically when a form is submitted

Set up Google Forms → MailerLite

Google Sheets to MailerLite

Sync subscriber data between spreadsheets and MailerLite in both directions. Useful for teams that manage subscriber imports manually in a spreadsheet or want to maintain an external record of all new sign-ups as they come in.

• - Add a new MailerLite subscriber for each row added to a Google Sheet
• - Log every new subscriber to a running spreadsheet automatically
• - Keep your subscriber list and spreadsheet data in sync

Set up Google Sheets → MailerLite

Typeform to MailerLite

Add subscribers and update subscriber data from Typeform responses automatically. Useful for businesses that use Typeform for detailed client intake, lead qualification, or multi-step sign-up flows where the form answers should map to subscriber fields in MailerLite.

• - Create a MailerLite subscriber for every Typeform submission
• - Append Typeform responses to a Google Sheet and sync to MailerLite
• - Route form completions directly into the right subscriber group

Set up Typeform → MailerLite

Stripe to MailerLite

Add customers to your email list automatically when they pay. Useful for course creators, digital product sellers, and eCommerce businesses that want every Stripe transaction to add the buyer to a post-purchase email sequence without manual exports.

• - Add new Stripe customers to your MailerLite list automatically
• - Create a Stripe customer record when a MailerLite subscriber is added
• - Keep your payments and email marketing in sync without manual steps

Set up Stripe → MailerLite

8 more ways to automate your email marketing workflow

If you're already connecting MailerLite with IFTTT, these applets extend automation to the other tools in your stack. HubSpot and Stripe are two of the most common platforms email marketers run alongside their list, and both are on IFTTT.

MailerLite and IFTTT: better together

MailerLite keeps your subscriber list growing and your campaigns running. IFTTT makes sure subscriber activity doesn't stay siloed, connecting new sign-ups from forms and payment tools, logging campaign data automatically, and routing list growth updates to the tools your team already uses.

Ready to connect MailerLite to your workflow? Get started on IFTTT today, no code required.

Frequently asked questions about MailerLite

Can I migrate from Mailchimp to MailerLite?

Yes, MailerLite has a built-in Mailchimp import tool that lets you transfer your subscriber list directly, including tags, groups, and custom fields. The migration process imports your contacts and maps your Mailchimp audience segments to MailerLite groups. Email templates don't transfer directly, since the two platforms use different template formats, you'll need to recreate your designs in MailerLite's editor. MailerLite's support team offers migration assistance for paid plan users, and the process typically takes less than an hour for most list sizes.

What is the difference between a MailerLite group and a segment?

In MailerLite, a group is a static list of subscribers that you manually add people to, either through a sign-up form, an automation action, or a manual import. A segment is a dynamic, condition-based filter that automatically includes or excludes subscribers based on their data, such as subscribers who opened your last campaign, joined in the past 30 days, or have a specific custom field value. Groups are best for organizing subscribers by source or interest; segments are best for targeting specific behaviors or attributes when sending campaigns. You can combine both when sending, targeting a group filtered by a segment condition.

Does MailerLite support A/B testing?

Yes, MailerLite supports A/B testing on Growing Business and Advanced plans. You can test two versions of a campaign, varying the subject line, sender name, or email content, and MailerLite will send each version to a portion of your list, then automatically send the winning version to the remainder after a set time period based on open rate or click rate. A/B testing is not available on the free plan, which is one of the more meaningful limitations of the free tier for marketers who rely on optimization to improve campaign performance over time.

Does MailerLite have a mobile app?

Yes, MailerLite has a mobile app for iOS and Android that lets you monitor campaign performance, view subscriber activity, and check list growth on the go. The app is primarily a reporting and monitoring tool, you can see open rates, click rates, and new subscriber stats in real time, and get notifications when campaigns are delivered. Creating and editing full campaigns is better suited to the desktop experience. The app is most useful for checking in on a campaign's performance in the hours after a send without needing to open a laptop.

Explore more IFTTT blogs

MailerLite is one of over 1000 services you can connect with IFTTT. Whether you're building your marketing stack, automating your small business, or just looking for ways to save time, IFTTT works across the tools you already use. Here are a few more blogs to help you get started.

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