Pick the wrong email marketing platform and you end up rebuilding your subscriber list six months later, paying monthly for features you never use, or fighting an automation system that was designed for enterprise teams rather than a two-person operation.
We tested four of the most common options for UK small businesses: MailerLite, GetResponse, ActiveCampaign, and Klaviyo. Each one suits a different type of business, and the right call depends on your list size, what you are selling, and how much automation you actually need.
You can filter all four by features and current pricing on our email marketing comparison page.
For most small businesses starting with a list under 1,000 contacts, MailerLite's free plan covers up to 1,000 subscribers with no time limit and no credit card, making it a practical starting point while you figure out what you actually need.
Most platforms claim to do everything. What actually matters for a small business narrows down to a handful of things, and knowing which to prioritise will save you from switching tools later.
MailerLite earns its reputation as the default recommendation for small businesses entering email marketing for the first time, and having tested it across several campaign types, that reputation holds.
The free plan supports up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 sends per month. That is enough to run a regular newsletter and a basic welcome sequence for most early-stage businesses. The drag-and-drop email builder is the most user-friendly in this group. You can put together a professional-looking campaign in under an hour without any design background.
Paid plans start at around £7.56/month. You also get a landing page builder and a basic website tool built in, which is useful if you want everything in one place early on.
The limitations are real. There is no built-in CRM, so if you need to track deals alongside contacts, you will need a separate tool. SMS marketing is available but thin compared to GetResponse. Reporting is closer to basic than advanced: you get open rates, click rates, and a map view, but nothing approaching the revenue attribution you will find in Klaviyo.
MailerLite is the right starting point for newsletters, service businesses, coaches, and any business that sends regular campaigns without needing deep ecommerce data. See our full MailerLite review for the detailed breakdown.
GetResponse positions itself as an all-in-one marketing platform, and for small businesses that want a single subscription to cover email, landing pages, and basic funnel management, it delivers on that pitch.
The free plan covers up to 500 contacts. That is tighter than MailerLite's 1,000-contact free tier, but the paid plans offer noticeably more breadth. The Email Marketing plan starts at around £13/month and includes automation, landing pages, and list management. Move up to the Marketing Automation plan and you get a full visual automation builder with tagging, scoring, and conditional branching.
The webinar tool is a genuine differentiator. If you host online events, run training sessions, or sell coaching programmes, having webinars baked into your email platform removes the need for a separate Zoom subscription and a manual integration. GetResponse handles registration, reminders, and post-event follow-up all within the same account.
The interface has more menu layers than MailerLite. It is not confusing, but finding a specific setting the first time can involve more clicking than expected. Once you know where things live, it becomes quick enough. GetResponse also integrates well with Shopify and WooCommerce, so ecommerce teams are not left without options.
Full details in our GetResponse review.
GetResponse's free plan gets you started with up to 500 contacts and access to the email builder and basic automation at no cost.
ActiveCampaign starts at around $15/month (roughly £12) and there is no free plan. That immediately makes it a harder sell for businesses still finding their feet. But for the right type of business, it is the most capable tool in this group.
The automation builder is the strongest here. You can create multi-branch workflows triggered by any combination of web page visits, contact behaviour, purchase history, form submissions, or custom events. For a business with a longer sales cycle, a B2B consultancy or a trade service company chasing project enquiries, that level of control over the customer journey makes a real difference.
The included CRM is the feature that sets ActiveCampaign apart from the other three. It tracks deals, pipelines, and contact activity in the same place as your email campaigns. For service businesses managing five to fifty active client relationships, that consolidation saves time and reduces errors.
The reporting is advanced. You can track contact behaviour across email, your website (with the site tracking pixel), and landing pages, then connect that activity back to deal revenue in the CRM. That is the kind of data a small business cannot normally access without stitching together multiple tools.
The learning curve is steeper than either MailerLite or GetResponse. Budget time for onboarding. Full breakdown in our ActiveCampaign review.
ActiveCampaign's Starter plan from $15/month includes CRM access and core automation from day one.
Klaviyo is built around ecommerce. If you run a Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce store, it is probably the most powerful tool in this list for your situation. If you are not selling products online, one of the other three options will serve you better.
The free plan covers up to 250 contacts, the smallest free tier in this group. The trade-off is what you get in return: deep native integrations with Shopify and WooCommerce, predictive analytics that surface high-value customers, and revenue attribution that shows exactly how much each flow or campaign is generating.
Those integrations are the selling point. Klaviyo pulls order history, browsing behaviour, and product data directly from your store. Your abandoned cart emails show the actual product left behind, your win-back campaigns target customers by days-since-last-purchase, and your revenue attribution reports tell you exactly how much each flow or campaign generated.
On Klaviyo's Trustpilot score: it sits at 1.8, which looks alarming. This is not a product quality signal. The negative reviews are overwhelmingly billing and account dispute complaints, not feature criticisms. Klaviyo's G2 score of 4.6 from over 1,200 practitioner reviews is a far more accurate reflection of the day-to-day product experience.
The cost scales fast once your list grows past 500 contacts. Plan for this in your budget before migrating from another platform. Full review in our Klaviyo review.
Klaviyo's free plan covers up to 250 contacts with the full feature set included, including flows, segmentation, and analytics.
Here is how the four platforms stack up on the factors that matter most for small businesses.
Compare live offers and filter by feature on our email marketing page.
The honest answer is that the right tool depends on what your business does and where you are in your growth.
Most small businesses should start with MailerLite. The free plan for up to 1,000 subscribers is the most practical entry point here: the interface is the easiest to learn, the output looks professional, and you can move to a paid plan when your list grows or your needs change. There is no financial risk in starting there.
If you run an online store on Shopify or WooCommerce, move to Klaviyo instead. The free tier is smaller, but the depth of ecommerce integration is in a different category to every other option. Once you are sending abandoned cart flows and win-back sequences driven by real purchase data, the monthly cost becomes easy to justify.
For businesses with active sales pipelines, multi-step client journeys, or a need for a combined CRM and email tool, ActiveCampaign is worth the subscription. The learning curve is real, but the capability at the Starter plan level outclasses anything else in this group for service businesses.
GetResponse fills a specific gap: all-in-one marketing for businesses that need email, landing pages, and webinars in a single subscription without the complexity of ActiveCampaign.
