MailerLite Free Plan 2026: The Day You Pass 250

Say you run a small pottery studio and you're on MailerLite's free plan with 190 subscribers. On Monday you post a free glazing guide on Instagram and it travels further than anything you've posted before. By Wednesday night 70 people have signed up for it. Every one of them sees the form's thank-you message. The ten who arrive after your count passes 250 never get the guide, because the welcome automation that sends it stopped at that point, and so did the newsletter you scheduled for Thursday. Nothing on your form tells a visitor anything is wrong. You find out when someone replies to an old email asking where the guide is.

That week isn't a story anyone told me. It's what MailerLite's own free-plan FAQ says happens, laid end to end. Over 250 subscribers, "forms and landing pages will continue to be active and collect subscribers without showing any errors to your visitors," while campaigns and automations stop. So the free plan doesn't end with a bill or a blocked form. It ends with emails that never go out, on the day your list is growing fastest. So the number to know isn't 250. It's how many months you have before you reach it, and the month before that is when to decide.

What the free plan includes in October 2026

MailerLite changed the plan on June 16, 2026. Several pages ranking for this search still describe the old one, with 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails a month. Those numbers are gone.

Existing free accounts heard about it inside the app. On June 25, 2026, a Reddit user posting in r/selfpublish described it: "When I logged into Mailerlite last night, there was a pop-up that starting July 1, the free subscriber tier is being limited to 250." It was the plan's second cut in under a year. In September 2025, a user in r/Emailmarketing had posted, "I got the following email to say they are dropping the free plan from 1000 to 500 now!"

So the free plan is now a starter kit for one list, one welcome sequence and one signup page. Drafts don't count against the feature limits, so you can build more than you switch on. The same update moved some paid-only tools onto Free, including custom templates, the HTML editor and promotional pop-ups.

Every new account starts with a 14-day premium trial. The 250 and 2,500 limits apply during the trial too. One trial feature matters later: an automation with multiple triggers stops when the trial ends, and restarting it needs the Power plan. If you build your welcome sequence in the first two weeks, give it a single trigger.

What stops at 251 and what keeps going

Here is MailerLite's description of an account over 250, from the FAQ it published for the June change.

Two rows decide the damage. The form keeps saying thank you, so signups keep arriving and your visitors never see a warning. And the automation that answers them stops, so the people who arrive during a good week are the ones who hear nothing. The FAQ's own answer to "what if I don't take any action?" is that you "will not be able to send campaigns, run automations, or add new subscribers."

To get sending back you either upgrade or bring the count under 250. MailerLite's free FAQ points people to the "Clean up inactive" tab for that, and a list with a lot of dead addresses can recover this way.

The feature limits lock harder than the subscriber limit. Go over any one of them (four active forms, say, after the plan changed under you) and the whole account enters what MailerLite calls a restricted state: sending emails, importing subscribers and editing automations, forms and pages are all disabled until you're back under. Sitting exactly at a limit is fine. Anything you switch off while over a limit can't be switched back on until the total is under, so take things down in the order you'd want them back. A Trustpilot reviewer who had built several automations and forms on the old plan, and linked them to a cart and website, put the June change as "pay or else loose everything but 3 of each."

Your runway to 250

The pages ranking for this search treat 250 as a size: if your list is smaller, you fit. I treat it as a date. To plan around it, count gross signups for a normal month, everyone who arrives before anyone leaves, because that's the number that moves the meter on the way up.

Runway in months = (250 − active subscribers today) ÷ gross signups per month

Read your row. A new list growing by 25 a month has ten months of free plan, which is a real head start. A list at 150 that gets 50 signups a month has two, and a list at 200 doing 100 a month crosses in about two weeks.

Why gross and not net? Because MailerLite's billing help describes "a cumulative count during one billing cycle": someone who was on your active list for even a day of the cycle stays on the meter after you delete it. That page is written for billing cycles, and a free account doesn't have one. The free FAQ, meanwhile, tells people over 250 to clean inactive subscribers to get back under, which only works if deleting frees room straight away. I can't tell from the documents which reading a free account follows, and I can't log in to a locked account from here to test it. So I plan on the stricter one: unsubscribes and deletions don't buy you room this month, and the runway uses everyone who arrives.

On the paid side the cumulative rule applies for certain. Once you upgrade, the plan you need "includes deleted subscribers that were Active during the billing period," so a clean-up the week before you pay doesn't shrink the tier you're billed for that month.

The 2,500 emails run out later than you'd think

The send limit took the bigger cut, from 12,000 to 2,500. Even so, on the numbers, the 250 binds first for almost every newsletter rhythm.

A send is one email to one person, so a full list can take ten campaigns a month and nothing else. Twice weekly with a short welcome series still fits. The send cap only bites if you mail a full list more than twice a week, or run a long automated course to a lot of new people. Going over 2,500 pauses campaigns and automations until the reset date, which is your registration date. Paused automations mean the same silent stop, from the other side.

Three rules for staying free

Upgrade in the month before you'd cross, not after. The test: if active subscribers plus next month's expected signups would pass 250, upgrade now. At 210 subscribers and 50 signups a month, that's this month. At 190, you have one more. Upgrading on a calm day costs the same $12 as upgrading in the middle of a good week, and only one of them loses a week of welcome emails.

Don't launch anything on the free plan. A lead magnet, a giveaway, a course pre-sale or a podcast mention can bring a month's signups in a day. If your list is within one good week of 250, a launch on Free means your best week of signups is the week the welcome emails stop. Upgrade before the launch goes live, then judge the tier afterwards.

Count your automations before you count your subscribers. Three active automations is a welcome series, one lead-magnet delivery and one more. If your plan needs a fourth (a second lead magnet, a post-purchase sequence), the free plan has already ended for you, whatever your list size. Going over doesn't just block the fourth; it puts the whole account into the restricted state.

What leaving costs

Comfort is the exit for nearly everyone leaving Free. It raises the caps to 50 active automations and 10 forms, allows 10 sites and landing pages between them plus 5 digital products, removes the logo and adds email support. Power is for people who need multiple automation triggers, no feature caps or live chat. Nonprofits get 30% off any plan, but that doesn't stack with the yearly discount, so a nonprofit at 500 pays $8.40 a month on monthly billing.

Before June 16 the cheapest paid plan, Growing Business, started at $10 a month. If you priced MailerLite this spring, $12 is the number now. How Comfort's feature caps compare with GetResponse is in my GetResponse matchup, and how its 500-subscriber step compares with Moosend's ladder is in the Moosend matchup.

If the runway is shorter than your budget

If the table above gives you weeks and you're not ready to pay $12 a month, the size of another free plan matters less than what it does when you hit it. Some hold new signups in a queue, some stop the welcome emails the way MailerLite does, and one sends no automated email at any size. I ranked them by the bill each sends once you outgrow it, with what ends each one. Check that before moving 200 people, because each move resets the runway clock at a new vendor.

Who I wouldn't start on MailerLite Free

A list that already has more than about 200 people. At 25 signups a month your runway is two months, at 50 it's one. Moving 220 people onto a plan you'll leave that soon means doing the migration twice. Start where you'll stay.

Anyone who emails rarely but has more than 250 people. The clearest review I found came on June 16 from someone with 296 subscribers who sends one email a year: "I can't afford >£100 to send one email." Comfort at $12 a month is $144 a year for that one email. For a list like that, a free plan with a larger contact ceiling fits better, since a yearly email needs no automation. The free-plan ranking lists each one's contact and send limits; check its inactivity terms before you rely on it for a once-a-year send.

Anyone whose plan depends on a welcome sequence starting the day a launch begins. That's the exact moment the sending stops. Pay before you launch, or start on a free plan whose ceiling holds new people instead of silencing the emails to them.

The plan does suit the opposite case: a new list, a steady trickle of signups, one welcome sequence and a newsletter. A 4-star reviewer wrote "It's great even in it's free plan" in September, and thanked support for sorting out a login problem, though they don't say what their list looks like. For that shape of list the runway table counts in months, sometimes years.

Every rule here is tied to a count you can see in your own account: your active subscribers, your signups last month, your active automations. If those say stay, stay.

FAQ

Is the MailerLite free plan 250 or 500 subscribers now?

250. MailerLite halved it on June 16, 2026 and cut the monthly email allowance from 12,000 to 2,500 on the same day, while capping active automations and forms at three each. A page quoting 500 or 12,000 predates the change.

Do unsubscribed or deleted subscribers count toward the 250?

Unsubscribed and bounced contacts don't count. Deleted ones are less clear: MailerLite's billing help says anyone active during a billing cycle counts even if deleted, while its free-plan FAQ suggests cleaning inactive subscribers to get back under 250. Plan as if deletions free no room until the following month, and ask support if you're relying on it.

How do I get back under 250 if I've already passed it?

In MailerLite, go to Subscribers, open the "Clean up inactive" tab, and remove people who no longer open your emails. MailerLite also suggests its MailerCheck tool for typos and disposable addresses. If you've deleted people by mistake, the FAQ describes restoring them by exporting the recipients of a sent campaign and re-importing them.

Will people who sign up while I'm locked get my welcome email after I upgrade?

MailerLite's documents say forms keep collecting during the lock and automations stop, but they don't say whether people who joined during the lock enter the automation once it restarts. Before you rely on it, check the automation's activity after upgrading, and send a one-off campaign to that group if they were skipped.

Will MailerLite charge me automatically when I go over 250?

Not on Free. You're charged only if you upgrade. On a paid plan it's different: the account moves up a tier automatically when you reach the limit.

When does the 2,500-email limit reset?

On your account registration date each month, not the 1st. Test emails during the trial don't count toward it.