8 Best Mailjet Alternatives & Competitors

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By Ewen Finser

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Last Updated on March 2, 2024 by Ewen Finser

Mailjet can be a great solution for customized email marketing campaigns and tech stack integrations, but is it really the best email solution?

This is a question I asked myself as while knee deep in a technical site integration recently. The capability is amazing, but was this a classic case of over-engineering?

Are there email marketing solutions out there that do it better?

The answer for me was “yes”. That’s not to say that Mailjet is a poor service. It’s not. But, for many business use cases you CAN achieve similar functionality with a much more user-friendly interface for non-developers.

These were the options I looked at and tested in order of priority: 

1. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)

Summary: Brevo is one of the newer kids on the block, but they’ve come out strong with a robust marketing automation platform that gives Mailjet a run for it’s money.

Brevo’s email automation is my top alternative here because it’s 1) more affordable and scalable in terms of pricing, and 2) it’s much more user-friendly compared to Mailjet.

Brevo Advantages

  • Offers a completely free plan for up to 300 email sends per day
  • Pay per send pricing model (all tiers) is very unique to the email marketing service space (vs paying for subscribers)
  • Targeted email automation templates for transactional, SMS marketing campaign tools, CRM-style marketing, and more
  • Full landing page builder included (unlike Mailjet)
  • Email heat map included for advanced user analytics (typically not included in similar services)
  • Full SMS marketing automation
  • Lead scoring capability (unlike Mailjet)
  • Chat and phone support available regardless of pricing tiers (Mailjet only unlocks above 150,000 sends per month)
  • Optimized email sending time AI
  • More user-friendly and visual overall

Brevo Disadvantages

  • Less functional scope on transactional emails (Mailjet specializes in transactional)
  • Slightly more expensive compared to Mailjet
  • Less technical API customization (not as good for pure developers)

Brevo Prices: Free version for up to 300 emails/day, then $25/month for Lite Plan (up to 40,000 emails/month), then $39/month for Essential Plan (up to 60,000 emails/month), then $66/month for Premium Plan (up to 120,000 emails/month), with customized tiers and enterprise quotes beyond.

Further Reading:

2. MailerLite

mailerlite

Summary: MailerLite mixes an approachable interface with extremely competitive pricing. The API customization is not as extensive as Mailgun, but if that was overkill for what you needed, MailerLite is the perfect functional automation and list builder that just executes the basics really, really well.

MailerLite Advantages

  • Much less expensive compared to Mailjet (each pricing plan tier)
  • Completely FREE version up to 1000 subscribers OR 12,000 email sends per month (whichever is highest)
  • Excellent in-app photo editing capabiliy and image resizing, great for business with a heavy visual emphasis
  • Simplet to use drag-and-drop email builer, with dozens of pre-configured templates so you don’t have to start from scratch
  • Easier to use and more approachable than Mailjet
  • High email deliverability rates

MailerLite Disadvantages

  • Not suitable as CRM
  • Relative basic, with no advanced customization or API tools
  • Very low tolerance for spam, partly why their deliverability rates are so high

MailerLite Prices: Free version basic up to 1,ooo subscribers, $10/month for up to 1000 (fully featured), $15/month up to 2,500 subscribers, $30/month up to 5,000 subs, $50/month up to 10,000 subs, etc… see here for extended pricing.

Further Reading:

3. SMTP.com: Best Email Deliverability

Summary: SMTP.com is my go-to option if your business relies on timely automated email sends for things like customer authentication, transactional email, sign ups, and cart-abandonment sequences. It’s a more technical savvy (may need dev support), but it’s unparalleled for these use cases.

SMTP.com Advantages

  • Extensive technical customization based on specific and custom business use cases (basically, it can do MORE than Mailjet, with some configuring).
  • Trusted vendor with ISPs, SMPT.com is well known in the industry for it’s high quality traffic and you won’t get caught up with “spammy senders”.
  • Ideal for dev teams, with flexible API endpoints and scalability for even the largest integrations.
  • Simple, uncomplicated pricing based that is MUCH cheaper per email send compared to Mailjet (e.g. $25/month on Mailjet only currently gets you 15,000 emails/month).

SMTP.com Disadvantages

  • Bring some technical chops, similar to Mailjet you’ll either need some technical know-how or have a team to properly leverage the full capabilities of SMTP.com
  • No baby plans under $25/month like with Mailjet

4. Pabbly

pabbly

Summary: Pabbly offers many of the standard automation and segmentations offered by modern email marketing apps, but also features a robust “MailGet API” that can integrate with many third-party platforms and services. This makes it a great Mailjet alternative for more technically complex email marketing use cases.

Pabbly Advantages

  • MailGet API integrates with almost any SMTP provider like Amazon SES, Sendgrid, Gmail, etc… PLUS custom SMTP integrations (a bit more steps, but very doable)
  • Unlimited SMTP hooks for unlimited emails
  • Supports Webform entries
  • No daily email send limits
  • Extensible to Pabbly’s entire suite of products, including form builders, subscription billing software, and app connections (like a better Zapier)
  • Comes with free email marketing tutorials and guides to fully leverage their marketing emails functionality
  • More cost effective per subscriber compared to market leaders like Mailchimp, Aweber, ConvertKit, etc…

Pabbly Disadvantages

  • Still a bit on the technical side for things like custom SMTP integrations (but there are really good tutorials if needed)
  • Less market share and name recognition (it may be harder to find third party technical or dev support here)

Pabbly Prices: 7 Day Free Trial Plan and up to 100 sends, then $29/month for the Rookie Plan (up to 5000 subscribers), then $49/month for the Pro Plan (15,000 subscribers), and finally $99/month for the Advanced Plan (50,000 subscribers, then upgradable by increments).

5. ActiveCampaign

active campaign

Summary: If you need something more polished and user friendly than Mailjet, but at the same time more capable and scalable, then ActiveCampaign is the answer. It offers everything from the most affordable entry level plans to full-on enterprise level automations, integrations, and conditional logic. 

ActiveCampaign Advantages

  • The market leader and first-to-market for email marketing automation, big head start on conditional logic
  • Long history in the market, continues to grow with a well-supported team
  • Integrates with pretty much every sales, analytics, and technical stack
  • Robust Zapier ecosystem for any missing links
  • Deep bench of ActiveCampaign familiar and certified talent, including developers, marketers, and designers
  • Easy to import contacts from other sources (portable contact management)
  • Excellent & responsive customer support
  • A pricing plan for pretty much everyone (agency, solo shops, enterprise)
  • Some lite-CRM functionality (can compete with a Hubspot, for example)

ActiveCampaign Disadvantages

  • The dashboard can get a bit messy if your aren’t organized with your email marketing campaign sends
  • Can get pricey at scale, but not as DIY as Mailjet

ActiveCampaign Prices: Get’s started at just $9 per month for the basic plan, $49 per month for Plus plan (unlocks CRM features, advanced integrations), $129 per month for Pro Plan, and $229 per month for Enterprise Plan. Various pricing sliders on each tier based on # of contacts. 

Further Reading:

6. SendGrid

sendgrid

Summary: SendGrid is a powerful deliverability framework, with many similarities to Mailjet as well as a similarly steep learning curve and/or requirement for technical operators to maximize. If you need more customization and technical potential than Mailjet, consider SendGrid instead.

SendGrid Advantages

  • SendGrid is another “deliverability first” email sending platform, similar in many ways to Mailjet (top marks for email delivery)
  • Technical flexibility, custom hooks, rules, and advanced integration capabilities
  • SendGrid prioritizes email deliverability by combining IPs and deliverability protocols
  • Free to get started (up to 6,000 sends per month)

SendGrid Disadvantages

  • Similar to Mailjet, advanced technical implementations require experience or a dev team to fully leverage
  • Not ISO 27001 certified out of the box

SendGrid Prices:

  • Free Plan: Up to 6,000 sends per month.
  • Basic Plan: Cost ranges between $15 per month and $200 per month.
  • Advanced Plan: Cost ranges between $60 per month to $900 per month. Plus a custom plan for users with more than 200,000 contacts or 1 million email sends per month.

Further Reading on SendGrid Alternative Options:

7. GetResponse

getresponse

Summary: An older provider, but one of the “good ones”, GetResponse was one of the first email providers to fully embrace true marketing automation. They’ve generally kept up with the types and offer a good alternative to Sendinblue, particularly if you do video or webinar marketing in your email campaigns.

GetResponse Advantages

  • Specific automations built around webinars (the only service providor I’ve found with this unique use case)
  • Amazingly in-depth data analytics, including advanced click tracking
  • Offers a fully featured 30-day trial offer
  • Long tracker record in business (isn’t going anywhere), since 1998
  • Introduces lite-CRM features, particularly at the enterprise level
  • Extremly easy to use drag and drop email automation builder

GetResponse Disadvantages

  • Not as many API options and hooks compared to Mailjet
  • No 100% free tier (like Mailjet), just a free trial

GetResponse Prices: All plans start with an initial subscriber max of 1000. Price points are “starting at” depending on features. $15/month for Basic Plan, $49/month for Plus Plan, $99/month for Professional Plan, and $1,199/month for Enterprise Plan.

Further Reading:

8. ConstantContact

constant contact

Summary: ConstantContact has been around for quite some time and for a while suffered the same fate as Aweber (gradually becoming outdated), but in the last few years they’ve revamped their entire offering. If you’ve written off ConstantContact in the past, it’s time to check again.

Constant Contact Advantages

  • Easy to use drag and drop email template builder for email campaigns
  • Excellent for event based marketing
  • Built-in split testing capability
  • Large library of email templates to pull from
  • Above average email deliverability rates (marketing leading platform)
  • More responsive customer support with more contact methods (compared to Campaign Monitor)

Constant Contact Disadvantages

  • Relatively basic reporting and analytics tools
  • Limited ability to tag users based on behavior and triggers (automation and segmentation)
  • Not the cheapest Campaign Monitor alternative

Constant Contact Prices: Constant Contact offers a very basic service starting at $9.99/month for up to 500 contacts (and then scaling up) OR their new Email Plus option which starts at $45/month for up to 5oo contacts (then scaling up).

Further Reading:

So What’s the Best Mailjet Alternative?

To put it simply, these are the best Mailjet compettiors for specific use cases:

15 Best Ahrefs Alternatives & Competitors

ActiveCampaign vs Constant Contact: Deliverability Wins

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