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by Alkan Balkaya · Last updated: 2026-08-14The best HubSpot alternatives for email marketing are Mailsoftly, ActiveCampaign, Brevo, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Kit, and Constant Contact. Each delivers core email and automation features without HubSpot’s $890/mo Professional tier or its $3,000 onboarding fee. For most small and midsize teams, a dedicated email platform costs a small fraction of HubSpot’s price.
HubSpot is a powerful all-in-one marketing platform, but power comes at a price most growing businesses cannot justify. When Marketing Hub Professional costs $890/mo before you even add contacts, and a mandatory $3,000 onboarding fee hits before you send a single campaign, the math stops working for teams that need email marketing, automation, and CRM without enterprise-level budgets.
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The good news: the email marketing landscape has matured. Dedicated platforms now match or exceed HubSpot’s core email and automation capabilities at a fraction of the cost. Whether you need advanced segmentation, visual automation builders, or simple drag-and-drop campaign tools, there is a HubSpot alternative built for your exact use case. If you are new to the category, our primer on Email Marketing Fundamentals covers the basics, while this guide focuses on the seven strongest contenders.
I have spent years building Mailsoftly and studying what makes businesses switch email platforms. The reasons are consistent: cost surprises, feature bloat, and declining support quality. This guide breaks down each alternative honestly, with verified pricing and real capability comparisons, so you can make a confident decision.
Key Takeaways
Businesses leave HubSpot mainly for three reasons: cost escalation as contacts and features scale, feature bloat from paying for hubs they never open, and lock-in from annual contracts and proprietary templates. HubSpot built its reputation as the inbound marketing pioneer, and its platform genuinely excels at content management, sales pipeline tracking, and reporting. But for companies that primarily need email marketing and automation, the all-in-one model creates three persistent problems.
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Starter at $15/mo looks affordable until you need automation workflows, A/B testing, or custom reporting. Those features live in Professional at $890/mo. Contact overage charges add $250/mo per 5,000 contacts on Pro.
Most marketing teams use email campaigns, landing pages, and basic automation. HubSpot bundles those with a full CMS, sales tools, service desk, and operations hub. You pay for modules you never open.
Annual contracts on Professional and Enterprise, combined with proprietary CMS templates and workflow structures, make migration progressively harder with each renewal cycle.
None of this means HubSpot is a bad product. It means the platform is built for companies that will use every hub, not just the marketing features. If your primary need is email marketing, you are paying a significant premium for capabilities that live in other tabs.
The strongest HubSpot alternatives are Mailsoftly for AI-powered simplicity, ActiveCampaign for deep automation, Brevo for volume-based pricing, Mailchimp for integrations, Klaviyo for e-commerce, Kit for creators, and Constant Contact for local businesses. Each platform below was evaluated on five criteria: email campaign tools, automation depth, pricing transparency, ease of migration, and deliverability infrastructure. These rankings track closely with independent user ratings in G2’s marketing automation category. Here is a quick comparison before we dive into details.
| Platform | Best For | Free Plan | Starting Paid | Pricing Model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mailsoftly | growing businesses wanting AI-powered simplicity | 500 contacts | $39/mo (annual) | Contacts |
| ActiveCampaign | Advanced automation builders | No (14-day trial) | $19/mo (1K contacts) | Contacts |
| Brevo | Large lists, low send volume | 300 emails/day | $9/mo (5K emails) | Email volume |
| Mailchimp | Brand recognition, integrations | 250 contacts | $13/mo (500 contacts) | Contacts |
| Klaviyo | E-commerce brands | 250 profiles | $20/mo (500 profiles) | Profiles |
| Kit (ConvertKit) | Creators and newsletters | 10K subscribers | $39/mo (1K subs) | Subscribers |
| Constant Contact | Local businesses, events | No (free trial) | $12/mo (500 contacts) | Contacts |
Mailsoftly was built as a direct response to the complexity and cost problems that drive businesses away from platforms like HubSpot. Instead of bundling every marketing function into a single expensive suite, Mailsoftly focuses on doing email marketing exceptionally well, with AI-powered tools that handle segmentation, content optimization, and send-time prediction automatically.
The free plan is genuinely functional: 500 contacts, 2,000 emails per month, access to the automation builder, and no Mailsoftly branding on your emails. Compare that to HubSpot’s free plan, which limits you to 2,000 emails per month with HubSpot branding and no automation workflows. Explore Mailsoftly’s AI-powered marketing automation software to see the full feature set.
Mailsoftly’s Business plan at $79/mo (annual) gives you 15,000 contacts and 150,000 emails per month. To get comparable automation features on HubSpot, you would need Marketing Hub Professional at $890/mo plus the $3,000 onboarding fee. If you want the direct head-to-head, our HubSpot vs Mailsoftly comparison breaks down features, pricing, and migration side by side.
ActiveCampaign has earned its reputation as the most capable automation platform in the mid-market segment. Its visual workflow builder supports complex conditional logic, split actions, goal tracking, and predictive sending. If your marketing strategy depends heavily on multi-step, behavior-driven automation sequences, ActiveCampaign deserves serious consideration as a HubSpot alternative.
The Starter plan at $19/mo for 1,000 contacts includes email marketing and basic automation. However, advanced features like predictive sending, split automations, and CRM with sales automation require the Plus plan ($59/mo at 1,000 contacts) or higher. At 5,000 contacts, the Plus plan jumps to $179/mo and Professional reaches $235/mo. These prices are monthly; annual billing saves approximately 20%.
The main trade-off: ActiveCampaign does not offer a free plan. You get a 14-day trial, then you must commit. The learning curve is also steeper than simpler tools. Teams that only send newsletters and basic drip sequences may find the interface unnecessarily complex.
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) uses a fundamentally different pricing model: you pay based on the number of emails you send, not the number of contacts you store. Every plan, including the free tier, allows unlimited contacts. This makes Brevo the most cost-effective HubSpot alternative for businesses with large subscriber lists but moderate send frequency.
The free plan sends up to 300 emails per day with Brevo branding. Removing the logo costs $10.80/mo extra. Brevo also includes transactional email, SMS, and WhatsApp messaging on higher tiers, making it a reasonable multi-channel option. The automation builder is functional but less intuitive than ActiveCampaign or Mailsoftly, and advanced reporting requires the Business plan.
Mailchimp remains the most recognized name in email marketing, and its template library, integration ecosystem, and onboarding experience are genuinely best-in-class for beginners. However, since the Intuit acquisition, pricing has increased significantly while the free plan has shrunk to just 250 contacts and 500 sends per month. You can cross-check current list prices and user sentiment in Capterra’s email marketing software directory.
At 5,000 contacts, the Essentials plan costs $75/mo and Standard costs $100/mo. At 10,000 contacts, those prices rise to $110/mo and $135/mo respectively. One critical detail that often surprises users: Mailchimp charges for all contacts in your account, including unsubscribed contacts. You must manually archive or delete unsubscribed contacts to avoid paying for people who will never receive your emails.
Mailchimp is a solid choice if you need a wide integration library and you are comfortable with its pricing trajectory. For cost-conscious teams, the contact billing model and reduced free tier make it harder to recommend than it was three years ago.
Klaviyo is purpose-built for online stores, with deep native integrations for Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento. Its strength is event-driven automation: abandoned cart flows, post-purchase sequences, browse abandonment, and predictive analytics based on purchase behavior. If you run an e-commerce business and HubSpot feels too generic, Klaviyo speaks your language.
The free plan covers 250 profiles and 500 emails per month. Paid plans start at $20/mo for 500 profiles. At 5,000 profiles the Email plan costs $100/mo, and at 10,000 profiles it reaches $150/mo. These prices include 10x your profile count in monthly email sends.
Klaviyo’s weakness is its narrow focus. If you are not running an online store, most of its premium features (product recommendations, revenue attribution, catalog sync) provide no value. B2B companies, service businesses, and content creators will find better options elsewhere in this list.
Kit, which rebranded from ConvertKit in 2024, is designed for individual creators, bloggers, podcasters, and course sellers. Its subscriber-first model treats your email list as the product, with built-in landing pages, digital product sales, and a paid newsletter feature that lets you monetize your list directly.
The free plan is generous: up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited landing pages and forms. The catch is you get only one automation sequence and Kit branding on everything. The Creator plan at $39/mo for 1,000 subscribers unlocks full automation, third-party integrations, and removes branding. At 5,000 subscribers it costs $89/mo.
Kit excels at simplicity. The visual automation builder is clean and intuitive, and the tag-based subscriber management system avoids the list-duplication problems that plague other platforms. The limitation is scale: Kit lacks advanced segmentation, multivariate testing, and the reporting depth that marketing teams at growing companies need.
Constant Contact has been in the email marketing business since 1995, and its platform reflects that tenure: reliable deliverability, solid template library, built-in event management tools, and phone-based customer support. For local businesses, nonprofits, and organizations that value human support over cutting-edge features, Constant Contact remains a dependable HubSpot alternative.
The Lite plan starts at $12/mo for 500 contacts and includes basic email campaigns and reporting. Standard at $35/mo adds automation, contact segmentation, and A/B testing. At 5,000 contacts, Lite costs $80/mo and Standard costs $110/mo. There is no free plan, but a free trial gives you enough time to evaluate the platform thoroughly.
The Premium plan ($80/mo for 500 contacts, $200/mo for 5,000 contacts) adds SEO recommendations, Google Ads integration, and 500 free SMS messages per month. Constant Contact’s main drawback is its automation builder, which feels dated compared to ActiveCampaign or Mailsoftly, and its template editor has limited customization flexibility.
Most HubSpot alternatives cost between $12/mo and $110/mo at 5,000 contacts, compared to $215/mo for HubSpot Starter and $890/mo for Professional. The table below compares monthly prices at common contact tiers across the alternatives and HubSpot. All prices are as of 2026-04-15. Brevo is excluded from the contacts-based table because it prices by email volume, not contact count (see the Brevo section above for its volume-based pricing).
| Platform (Plan) | 1,000 Contacts | 5,000 Contacts | 10,000 Contacts | 25,000 Contacts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot (Starter) | $15 | $215 | $465 | $1,215 |
| Mailsoftly (Basic, annual) | $39 | $39 | $79 | $159 |
| ActiveCampaign (Starter) | $19 | $99 | $189 | — |
| Mailchimp (Standard) | $40 | $100 | $135 | $270 |
| Klaviyo (Email) | $30 | $100 | $150 | $400 |
| Kit (Creator) | $39 | $89 | $139 | $199 |
| Constant Contact (Standard) | $75 | $110 | $160 | $310 |
The pattern is clear. At 5,000 contacts, HubSpot Starter costs $215/mo while Mailsoftly’s Basic plan (which includes automation features HubSpot locks behind its $890/mo Professional tier) costs $39/mo on annual billing. At 25,000 contacts, HubSpot Starter reaches $1,215/mo. Mailsoftly’s Premium plan covers up to 30,000 contacts for $159/mo annually. Check the full breakdown on the Mailsoftly pricing page to see which plan fits your list size.
Choose based on what you actually use HubSpot for: pick Mailsoftly or Mailchimp for campaigns and newsletters, ActiveCampaign or Mailsoftly for deep automation, Klaviyo for e-commerce, and Brevo for large lists with infrequent sends. Most teams switching from HubSpot fall into one of these four categories.
Choose Mailsoftly or Mailchimp. Both offer intuitive drag-and-drop editors, template libraries, and A/B testing. Mailsoftly’s AI-powered send-time optimization and free automation access give it an edge for growing teams.
Choose ActiveCampaign or Mailsoftly. ActiveCampaign offers the deepest automation builder on the market. Mailsoftly provides a cleaner interface with AI-assisted workflow creation at a lower price point.
Choose Klaviyo. Its native Shopify and WooCommerce integrations, predictive analytics, and revenue attribution reporting are purpose-built for online retail.
Choose Brevo. Its volume-based pricing model means you can store unlimited contacts and only pay for the emails you actually send.
Regardless of which platform you choose, plan your migration carefully. Export your contact lists with all custom fields and tags. Recreate your highest-performing automation workflows first. Set up domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) on the new platform before sending your first campaign. And run both platforms in parallel for at least one billing cycle to confirm deliverability and engagement metrics are stable.
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For the broader landscape, see our full roundup of the best email marketing services covering every major platform across price tiers and use cases.
Looking for a simpler Hubspot alternative? See why teams switch to Mailsoftly as a Hubspot alternative — free hands-on migration in 1 to 2 hours, no contracts, real human support.
For contact-based pricing, Brevo’s Starter plan begins at $9/mo for 5,000 emails with unlimited contacts. For a full-featured free plan, Mailsoftly offers 500 contacts and 2,000 emails per month at no cost, including automation access. Kit’s free plan supports up to 10,000 subscribers but limits you to one automation and includes platform branding.
Yes. HubSpot allows you to export contacts as CSV files with all custom properties. Most alternatives listed here offer dedicated HubSpot import tools or migration assistance. Automation workflows cannot be exported directly. You will need to rebuild them on the new platform, but this is also an opportunity to simplify and optimize sequences that may have accumulated unnecessary complexity. See our step-by-step guide on switching from HubSpot to Mailsoftly for a full migration checklist.
Not necessarily. HubSpot’s free CRM remains available even if you stop paying for Marketing Hub. Several alternatives on this list also include built-in CRM features: ActiveCampaign offers a sales CRM on its Plus plan and above, and Mailsoftly includes contact management with deal tracking. For basic CRM needs, the free tiers of HubSpot CRM or a standalone tool like Notion or Airtable may be sufficient.
HubSpot Starter at $15/mo for 1,000 contacts is reasonably priced, but it only includes basic email marketing without automation workflows, custom reporting, or A/B testing. Those features require the Professional plan at $890/mo with a $3,000 onboarding fee. For most growing businesses, a dedicated email marketing platform delivers the same core functionality at a small fraction of the cost.
Deliverability depends more on your sending practices than on the platform itself. That said, platforms with dedicated IP options, built-in authentication tools, and proactive list hygiene features give you the best foundation. ActiveCampaign, Mailsoftly, and Brevo all provide SPF/DKIM setup wizards and deliverability monitoring dashboards. The most important factor is maintaining clean lists, authenticating your domain, and sending relevant content to engaged subscribers.
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