Newsletter platforms
Sender alternatives 34 tools ranked by verified data
Data checked Oct 14, 2026 against the vendors' own pages. How we verify
We found 34 tools comparable to Sender among newsletter platforms, and scored each with the same scorecard; 26 have enough verified data to be ranked.
Flodesk ranks first with 98/100, ahead of Brevo (98) and notifuse (93).
Sender itself scores 98/100 on the same scorecard, so 1 alternative scores higher.
16 alternatives have a free plan.
Sender's cheapest paid plan is $9 a month; 2 alternatives start lower (entry prices, not like-for-like plans).
Sender alternatives ranked
| # | Tool | Score | Coverage | From, billed monthly | From, billed yearly | Free plan | Integrations | Public API | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Flodesk | 98/100 | 75%5 of 8 criteria | Free | Free | Yes | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 2 |  Brevo | 98/100 | 75%5 of 8 criteria | $9/mo | Not offered | Yes | 150 | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 3 |  notifuse | 93/100 | 85%6 of 8 criteria | $16/mo | $24.17/mo | Yes, unlimited emails per month | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 4 |  EmailOctopus | 92/100 | 85%6 of 8 criteria | Not offered | $9/mo | Yes, 2,500 subscribers | 1,000 | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 5 |  forwardemail.net | 88/100 | 75%5 of 8 criteria | $3/mo | Not offered | Yes | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 6 |  AWeber | 85/100 | 85%6 of 8 criteria | $15/mo | $12.49/mo | Yes, 500 subscribers | 750 | – | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 7 |  MailerLite | 85/100 | 85%6 of 8 criteria | $12/mo | $10.80/mo | Yes, 250 subscribers | 100 | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 8 |  Klaviyo | 84/100 | 85%6 of 8 criteria | Free | Free | Yes, 250 subscribers | 350 | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 9 |  Mailchimp | 83/100 | 75%5 of 8 criteria | $13/mo | Not offered | Yes | 300 | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 10 |  ActiveCampaign | 82/100 | 75%5 of 8 criteria | Not offered | $15/mo | No | 1,000 | – | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 11 |  GetResponse | 79/100 | 75%5 of 8 criteria | $19/mo | $15.58/mo | No | 170 | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 12 |  Cocomail | 79/100 | 85%6 of 8 criteria | $5/mo | $4/mo | No | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 13 |  warmbly | 78/100 | 75%5 of 8 criteria | Not offered | $23/mo | Yes | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 14 |  Omnisend | 74/100 | 95%7 of 8 criteria | $11.20/mo | Not offered | Yes, 500 emails per month | 305 | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 15 |  Abstract27 | 74/100 | 65%4 of 8 criteria | Not offered | $15.83/mo | No | – | – | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 16 |  Lighthouse | 73/100 | 75%5 of 8 criteria | $19/mo | Not offered | No | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 17 |  Ghost | 71/100 | 80%6 of 8 criteria | Not offered | $18/mo | No | 8,000 | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 18 |  Emailit | 71/100 | 75%5 of 8 criteria | $25/mo | $20/mo | Yes, 3,000 credits per month | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 19 |  NotesIQ | 63/100 | 75%5 of 8 criteria | $9/mo | Not offered | No | – | – | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 20 |  Astro Send | 58/100 | 80%6 of 8 criteria | $20/mo | Not offered | No | – | – | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 21 |  react-email-editor | 56/100 | 60%4 of 8 criteria | $250/mo | Not offered | Yes | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 22 |  InternalNewsletter | 55/100 | 65%4 of 8 criteria | $49/mo | $39/mo | Yes, 1 user | – | – | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 23 |  Loops | 54/100 | 95%7 of 8 criteria | $49/mo | Not offered | Yes, 1,000 subscribers | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 24 |  Paragraph | 54/100 | 95%7 of 8 criteria | $2,500/mo | $159/mo | Yes, 1,000 subscribers | 900 | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 25 |  Memberful | 51/100 | 80%6 of 8 criteria | $49/mo | Not offered | No | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| 26 |  Customer.io | 41/100 | 85%6 of 8 criteria | $100/mo | $1,000/mo | No | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| – |  Campaign Monitor | Not ranked | 50%4 of 8 criteria | Contact sales | Contact sales | No | 250 | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| – |  HeyNews | Not ranked | 50%3 of 8 criteria | $39/mo | Not offered | No | – | – | Oct 14, 2026 |
| – |  Moosend | Not ranked | 50%4 of 8 criteria | Contact sales | Contact sales | No | 80 | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| – |  Buttondown | Not ranked | 25%2 of 8 criteria | – | – | – | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| – |  Mailcoach | Not ranked | 25%2 of 8 criteria | – | – | – | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| – |  mautic | Not ranked | 25%2 of 8 criteria | – | – | – | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
| – |  NoteStack | Not ranked | 25%2 of 8 criteria | – | – | – | – | – | Oct 14, 2026 |
| – |  Sendy | Not ranked | 25%2 of 8 criteria | – | – | – | – | Yes | Oct 14, 2026 |
Each value links the vendor page it was read from (hover for the check date). Coverage is the share of the scorecard's weight with verified data, and "N of M criteria" how many criteria the score is based on; a tool is ranked at 60% or more.
– = not published by the vendor, or not verified yet.
For reference, Sender scores 98/100 with 85% coverage. Sender review
Why each one ranks where it does
- 1. Flodesk 98/100
Email marketing platform with a visual email builder, forms, landing pages, workflow automations and checkout and subscription tools.
- Entry price (100/100): Free: the pricing page lists no paid plan
- Free plan or trial (100/100): Free plan (Free)
Homepage captured Oct 14, 2026 - 2. Brevo 98/100
Multichannel marketing platform covering email, SMS and WhatsApp campaigns, automation, segmentation, landing pages and a sales CRM.
- Entry price (100/100): $9/month billed monthly on Starter (scored on the monthly price)
- Free plan or trial (100/100): Free plan (Free)
From $9 per month billed monthly on the Starter plan.
- 3. notifuse 93/100
Open-source newsletter and transactional email platform offered as a managed cloud service or as self-hosted software with optional licences.
- Free plan or trial (100/100): Free plan (Self-hosted)
- Verified features (100/100): 5 of 9 tracked features verified: automations / sequences, custom domain, a/b testing, segmentation and tags, open and click analytics
From $16 per month billed monthly on the Notifuse Cloud plan.
- 4. EmailOctopus 92/100
Email marketing service for sending campaigns and automations with a drag-and-drop editor, forms, landing pages and reports.
- Entry price (100/100): $9/month billed annually on Pro; no monthly-billed price published (scored against annual-billed prices)
- Free plan or trial (100/100): Free plan (Starter)
From $9 per month billed yearly on the Pro plan.
- 5. forwardemail.net 88/100
Open-source email service offering domain email forwarding, encrypted mailboxes, outbound sending, newsletters and an API.
- Entry price (100/100): $3/month billed monthly on Enhanced Protection (scored on the monthly price)
- Free plan or trial (100/100): Free plan (Free)
From $3 per month billed monthly on the Enhanced Protection plan.
- 6. AWeber 85/100
Email marketing platform for small businesses with automations, landing pages, signup forms, ecommerce pages and web push notifications.
- Free plan or trial (100/100): Free plan (Free)
- Verified features (100/100): 5 of 9 tracked features verified: paid subscriptions, automations / sequences, landing pages and forms, segmentation and tags, open and click analytics
From $15 per month billed monthly ($12.49 billed yearly) on the Lite plan.
- 7. MailerLite 85/100
Email marketing platform with a drag-and-drop editor, automations, landing pages, signup forms, websites and digital product sales.
- Free plan or trial (100/100): Free plan (Free)
- Verified features (100/100): 7 of 9 tracked features verified: paid subscriptions, automations / sequences, a/b testing, landing pages and forms, segmentation and tags, newsletter website, open and click analytics
From $12 per month billed monthly ($10.80 billed yearly) on the Comfort plan.
- 8. Klaviyo 84/100
Customer data and marketing platform that sends email, SMS and mobile messages, with a built-in helpdesk and AI agents for campaigns and service.
- Entry price (100/100): Free: the pricing page lists no paid plan
- Free plan or trial (100/100): Free plan (Free)
- 9. Mailchimp 83/100
Email and SMS marketing platform with automations, audience tools, templates, popup forms and reporting.
- Free plan or trial (100/100): Free plan (Free)
- Pricing transparency (100/100): 4 of 4 plans have a public price
From $13 per month billed monthly on the Essentials plan.
- 10. ActiveCampaign 82/100
Marketing automation platform with email, WhatsApp and SMS messaging, segmentation, landing pages, CRM add-ons and AI features.
- Pricing transparency (100/100): 4 of 4 plans have a public price
- API, integrations and export (100/100): 1,000 integrations
From $15 per month billed yearly on the Starter plan.
How we picked
Every one of these newsletter platforms is scored by the same 8 criteria (scorecard v2). Each criterion gives 0 to 100 from the vendor's published data; the total is the weighted average. A criterion without verified data is left out and the other weights are re-normalised. A tool with under 60% of the weight covered is listed as not ranked, and so is a tool with no verified price and fewer than 2 verified features (“needs a verified price”); each score shows how many criteria it is based on. The core criteria are the same in every category; the category criteria are specific to newsletter platforms. Nobody gets custom weights, including our own products.
| Criterion | Weight | Type | What we measure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | 25% | Core | Price per month of the cheapest paid plan, against the prices of other newsletter platforms on the same billing basis (monthly-billed prices against monthly, annual-billed against annual).Log scale. Billed monthly: $9/month or less = 100, $100 or more = 0. Only billed annually: $9/month or less = 100, $159 or more = 0. Only free plans = 100. Usage-priced and one-time plans are not scored. |
| Free plan or trial | 15% | Core | Whether you can use the tool before paying: a free plan, or failing that a free trial, as shown on the vendor's pricing page.Free plan = 100. No free plan but a free trial = 60. The pricing page lists plans but shows neither = 0. No plans read = not scored. |
| Pricing transparency | 10% | Core | How much of the pricing is public: the share of plans with a published price ("contact sales" counts against), and whether there are at least 3 published tiers.80 x (plans with a public price / plans listed) + 20 x (public plans, up to 3) / 3. No plans read = not scored. |
| Verified features | 15% | Core | How many of the 9 features we track for this category the vendor's own pages verifiably show (paid subscriptions, automations / sequences, custom domain, referral programme, a/b testing, landing pages and forms, segmentation and tags, newsletter website, open and click analytics). This counts verified features only: a tool that documents less scores lower here, and only here.Linear: verified features / 5 (half the tracked list) x 100, capped at 100. No tracked feature verified = not scored. |
| API, integrations and export | 10% | Core | Whether a public API exists, how many integrations the vendor states, and whether the vendor documents a way to export your data.Average of the parts with data: public API yes = 100, no = 0; integrations on a log scale (100 or more = 100); a documented data export = 100. None verified = not scored. |
| Cost at 1,000 subscribers | 10% | Category | Monthly price of the cheapest paid plan that allows at least 1,000 subscribers.Log scale: $5/month or less = 100, $100 or more = 0. Plans that do not state a subscriber limit are not used. |
| Free plan limits | 10% | Category | What the free plan allows: subscribers (full marks at 2,500), emails per month (full marks at 10,000).Each stated limit linear up to its full mark (unlimited = 100), averaged. Tools without a free plan, or whose free plan states none of these limits, are not scored here. |
| Paid subscriptions | 5% | Category | Whether writers can charge for subscriptions, and the platform's fee on that revenue.No paid subscriptions (verified) = 0; paid subscriptions: linear, 0% fee = 100, 15% or more = 0. Fee not stated = not scored. |
Sources are vendor pricing pages, docs and changelogs, each with the date we checked it. We did not test these tools hands-on unless a listing says so. Full formulas: methodology.
Questions, answered from the data
What is the best alternative to Sender?
Flodesk, with 98/100 on our scorecard; Brevo is second with 98/100.
Is there a free alternative to Sender?
Yes: Flodesk, Brevo and notifuse have a free plan; Flodesk ranks highest of them.
What is the cheapest Sender alternative?
By entry price, forwardemail.net: $3 per month billed monthly on the Enhanced Protection plan.