# SaaS and Stacks > Build the right software stack ## Posts - [Webflow vs WordPress 2026: Which Should You Actually Own?](https://saasandstacks.com/webflow-vs-wordpress/): Webflow vs WordPress compared on ownership and total cost, not features. Plus the January 2026 change that decides it for membership sites. - [Best ActiveCampaign Alternatives 2026 (Read Before Migrating)](https://saasandstacks.com/activecampaign-alternatives/): ActiveCampaign alternatives compared by reason for leaving. Plus the two fixes that cut your bill without migrating anything. - [Best Course Platforms for Beginners in 2026 (Read This First)](https://saasandstacks.com/course-platforms-for-beginners/): Course platforms for beginners compared, starting with the question none of them ask: should you pay before anyone has bought your course? - [Kajabi vs Thinkific 2026: The Price Gap Everyone Gets Wrong](https://saasandstacks.com/kajabi-vs-thinkific/): Kajabi vs Thinkific compared on total stack cost, not sticker price. The tier where Kajabi becomes the cheaper option. - [Brevo Review 2026: Where the Cheap Pricing Stops Being Cheap](https://saasandstacks.com/brevo-review/): A Brevo review with the crossover point nobody calculates: where send-based pricing stops saving you money and starts costing more. - [GetResponse Review 2026: The Best Deliverability, With a Catch](https://saasandstacks.com/getresponse-review/): A GetResponse review that leads with the no-refund policy and the real $59 price. Plus why its 99% deliverability claim measures 81%. - [5 Best Thinkific Alternatives in 2026 After the Price Rise](https://saasandstacks.com/thinkific-alternatives/): Thinkific raised prices 10% in August 2026. Five alternatives compared against the tier you'd actually need, not the $40 headline. - [MailerLite Review 2026: The Approval Risk Nobody Mentions](https://saasandstacks.com/mailerlite-review/): A MailerLite review that starts with the account approval process, the suspension thresholds, and who gets rejected before they can send. - [Systeme.io vs ClickFunnels 2026: The Lock-In Nobody Mentions](https://saasandstacks.com/systeme-io-vs-clickfunnels/): Systeme.io vs ClickFunnels compared on price, funnels and the payment lock-in that costs more than the subscription gap. - [Best Free Email Marketing Software in 2026 (What Survived)](https://saasandstacks.com/best-free-email-marketing-software/): Free email marketing software compared after four plan cuts in 2026. What each one still gives you, with dates, and which limits changed last week. - [Systeme.io Review 2026: The Free Plan's Real Limit](https://saasandstacks.com/systeme-io-review/): An honest Systeme.io review from an affiliate. The automation limit that stops the free plan, and three groups who should choose something else. - [AWeber vs MailerLite 2026: Which Free Plan Is Best Now?](https://saasandstacks.com/aweber-vs-mailerlite/): AWeber vs MailerLite compared after MailerLite cut its free plan in June 2026. The free tier flipped, and no ranking article has updated. - [Best Email Marketing for Freelancers in 2026](https://saasandstacks.com/email-marketing-for-freelancers/): Email marketing software for freelancers compared after Kit removed free automations in September 2026. What the free plans still give you, and where the wall is. - [Best Landing Page Builders for Small Business in 2026](https://saasandstacks.com/landing-page-builders/): Landing page builders compared on the variable nobody leads with: traffic caps. Plus why the published prices never match. - [MailerLite vs GetResponse 2026: Which Is Best for Your List?](https://saasandstacks.com/mailerlite-vs-getresponse/): MailerLite vs GetResponse compared at real list sizes. The automation tier gap most comparisons miss, and who each one is wrong for. - [5 Best Mailchimp Alternatives in 2026 (Real Cost Compared)](https://saasandstacks.com/mailchimp-alternatives/): The best Mailchimp alternatives in 2026, priced at real list sizes. Plus the ten-minute fix that drops your bill without switching. - [6 Best ClickFunnels Alternatives in 2026 (Compared by Cost)](https://saasandstacks.com/clickfunnels-alternatives/): The best ClickFunnels alternatives in 2026, compared on what you're actually paying for. Plus the payment lock-in most reviews never mention. - [6 Best Kajabi Alternatives in 2026 After the Price Rise](https://saasandstacks.com/kajabi-alternatives/): The best Kajabi alternatives in 2026, compared on real cost including the transaction fees most lists ignore. Plus when leaving Kajabi is a mistake. ## Pages - [Cookie Policy (EU)](https://saasandstacks.com/cookie-policy-eu/) - [How we test software](https://saasandstacks.com/methodology/): Most “best software” articles are written by companies selling software. Search for alternatives to almost any popular tool and the... - [About](https://saasandstacks.com/about/): This site exists because choosing business software is unreasonably hard, and most of the internet isn’t helping. Search for the... # # Detailed Content ## Posts > Webflow vs WordPress compared on ownership and total cost, not features. Plus the January 2026 change that decides it for membership sites. - Published: 2026-09-23 - Modified: 2026-09-10 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/webflow-vs-wordpress/ - Categories: Website and hosting Webflow retired native user accounts in January. One platform can change what your site is allowed to do. The other can't. In January 2026, Webflow retired native user accounts. Any site with a membership area now needs a third-party tool, and Memberstack runs around $499 a month once you pass 200 members. That single decision, made by a company you don't control, is the clearest lens on Webflow vs WordPress there is. One platform can change what your site is allowed to do. The other can't, because you own it. Which doesn't automatically settle Webflow vs WordPress in WordPress's favour. It makes the trade-off a different one from the feature lists you've been reading. Table of contentsWebflow vs WordPress: what happens if you stop payingWhy Webflow's prices are wrong everywhere you read themWebflow vs WordPress: the honest cost comparisonSecurity, and what the numbers actually sayWho edits the site after launchPerformance out of the boxDesign, SEO and content at scaleWhat WordPress gained in 2026Webflow vs WordPress by situationFrequently asked questions Webflow vs WordPress: the short verdict Choose Webflow if nobody is being paid to maintain the site after launch. Choose WordPress if someone is, or if you need to own the stack outright. Sticker prices: Webflow $14 to $39 a month for site plans. WordPress is free software on $5 to $100 hosting. Real three-year cost: Webflow $4,500 to $15,000. WordPress $8,000 to $40,000 once maintenance is counted. The question that settles it: six months from now, when something breaks, who fixes it? Webflow vs WordPress: what happens if you stop paying Start here, because it's the difference every Webflow vs WordPress feature table treats as a footnote. Run the Webflow vs WordPress test on ownership. Stop paying for WordPress hosting and your site goes offline, but you still have the files and the database. Move them to another host and you're back, with every post, page and setting intact. The software is yours under an open licence and nobody can revoke it. Stop paying Webflow and the site stops existing. There's an HTML export, but it doesn't carry the CMS, the forms, or anything dynamic. What you get back is a snapshot, not a website. The January 2026 proof Webflow sunsetted native user accounts. Sites built around member logins had to move to Memberstack or an equivalent, which costs roughly $499 a month above 200 members without transaction fees. Nobody did anything wrong. A platform made a product decision, and businesses built on it absorbed the cost. That's the risk you accept when the platform is the landlord rather than the tenant. For a marketing site that publishes pages and collects enquiries, this changes nothing and you should ignore it. For anything with logins, subscriptions or data you'd struggle to reproduce, it's the whole Webflow vs WordPress decision. $14Webflow Basic site plan, billed annually $39Webflow Business, where most SMBs land 96%Of WordPress vulnerabilities found in plugins $499Monthly memberships add-on after the sunset Why Webflow's prices are wrong everywhere you read them A technical detail with real consequences for anyone researching Webflow vs WordPress. Webflow's pricing page is fully JavaScript-rendered, so fetching... > ActiveCampaign alternatives compared by reason for leaving. Plus the two fixes that cut your bill without migrating anything. - Published: 2026-09-21 - Modified: 2026-09-10 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/activecampaign-alternatives/ - Categories: Email marketing ActiveCampaign bills you for unsubscribed contacts, and the $15 plan has no real automation. Fix both and a lot of migrations stop being necessary. Most people searching for ActiveCampaign alternatives are leaving over the bill. Before you migrate anything, two facts worth knowing. Before comparing ActiveCampaign alternatives, know this. ActiveCampaign charges you for unsubscribed contacts. A business with 50,000 contacts and 20,000 active subscribers pays for all 50,000. And the $15 Starter plan contains almost none of the automation people buy the platform for, which pushes most users onto Plus at $49 or Pro at $79 whether they use that depth or not. Fix those two and a lot of migrations stop being necessary. Table of contentsCut the bill before you consider ActiveCampaign alternativesWhy teams leave, in order of frequencyWhat ActiveCampaign costs against the alternativesThe best ActiveCampaign alternatives in 20261. Brevo: for the bill, not the features2. MailerLite: for the complexity3. GetResponse: automation plus the things around it4. Klaviyo: if you sell products5. HubSpot: sales and marketing in one placeWhen staying is the right answerWhich of these ActiveCampaign alternatives fits youFrequently asked questions The quick answer Before switching: clean unsubscribed contacts and check your tier. Both cut the bill without a migration. Leaving on price? Brevo, which charges by sends rather than contacts stored. Leaving on complexity? MailerLite, with automation included at $12. Need automation plus webinars? GetResponse. Selling products online? Klaviyo, where revenue attribution matters more than branching logic. Cut the bill before you consider ActiveCampaign alternatives Every page about ActiveCampaign alternatives skips this. It costs us money and belongs at the top anyway. Two fixes that take an afternoon Clean your contact list. ActiveCampaign's contact count includes unsubscribed and inactive contacts. On a list that's been running a few years, 20 to 40% of what you're paying for is people who will never open anything. Removing them can drop you a pricing band without changing a single workflow. Check your tier against your usage. Open your automations and count how many run conditional branching, lead scoring or split paths. If the answer is none, you're on Plus or Pro for features you don't touch, and Starter at $15 does what you're actually doing. Do both and the gap between your bill and the ActiveCampaign alternatives below shrinks considerably. For a lot of readers it closes entirely, and migration is weeks of rebuilding automations for a saving you'd already captured. If the number still looks wrong afterwards, keep reading. Why teams leave, in order of frequency Knowing which reason is yours matters more than reading feature tables, because each points at a different alternative. The bill grows while usage doesn't. Contact-based pricing charges more as your list grows even when your sending stays flat. This is the most common reason by a distance, and it's the one most often fixable without leaving. You use a fraction of the platform. A newsletter and two simple automations don't need a deep automation suite. Teams routinely pay $200 to $350 a month for something used at 20% capacity. Nobody maintains the workflows. Powerful software creates no value when the person who understood it left, or when... > Course platforms for beginners compared, starting with the question none of them ask: should you pay before anyone has bought your course? - Published: 2026-09-20 - Modified: 2026-09-10 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/course-platforms-for-beginners/ - Categories: Courses and funnels Four guides, four different winners. None asks whether a first-time creator should buy a platform at all before someone has paid them. Four of the guides currently ranking for course platforms for beginners name a different winner: Kartra, Teachable, Thinkific and Kajabi. All four are defensible, which tells you the label is doing very little work. More usefully, none of the guides to course platforms for beginners asks the question a first-time creator should be asking, which isn't which platform to buy. It's whether to buy one at all before somebody has paid you. Table of contentsBefore you compare course platforms for beginners, validateWhy the free plans disappearedThe best course platforms for beginners in 20261. Systeme. io: build before you pay2. Teachable: the fastest launch3. Thinkific: the better builder4. Podia: courses plus everything else you sell5. Kajabi: only with a reasonWhy every guide names a different winnerWhich of these course platforms for beginners fits youFrequently asked questions The quick answer Don't pay first. Pre-sell the course before you build it. The platform decision can wait a month. Systeme. io is the only genuine free plan left in this category, so it's where to start at zero. Teachable is the fastest route to a working storefront once you're paying. Thinkific is the better builder if teaching quality matters more than launch speed. Watch the transaction fees. At $500 a month in sales, the cheap plan is the expensive one. Before you compare course platforms for beginners, validate The most expensive mistake with course platforms for beginners isn't picking the wrong one. It's paying $40 to $179 a month for twelve months while building a course nobody has agreed to buy. The pre-sale test Write the outline. Write a sales page describing what someone gets and what it costs. Send it to whatever audience you have, however small, and ask people to pay now for access when it launches in six weeks. If five people pay, you have a business and the platform decision becomes easy. If nobody pays, you've learned that for the cost of an afternoon rather than a year's subscription. You can run that test without touching any of the course platforms for beginners below, using a free landing page and a payment link. No course platform required, and the sales page you write becomes the one you'll use at launch. Every guide to course platforms for beginners skips this step, because every guide is written by someone earning a commission when you subscribe. Including, to be clear, this one. Why the free plans disappeared This reshaped the whole market for course platforms for beginners, and it happened recently. Thinkific retired its free plan in 2024. Teachable and Kajabi never had one. All three now offer trials only, so the category that used to let you build before paying no longer does. Both also raised prices in 2026: Kajabi restructured in January, removing the entry-level Kickstarter plan, and Thinkific increased roughly 10% on 13 August. Neither grandfathered existing customers. 0Free plans left at Thinkific, Teachable or Kajabi 7. 5%Teachable Starter's cut of every sale $143Kajabi's cheapest plan, annual billing 4Different "best... > Kajabi vs Thinkific compared on total stack cost, not sticker price. The tier where Kajabi becomes the cheaper option. - Published: 2026-09-18 - Modified: 2026-09-08 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/kajabi-vs-thinkific/ - Categories: Courses and funnels Everyone compares $143 against $40. Match the feature sets and it's $203 against $143, which flips the answer for a lot of creators. Every Kajabi vs Thinkific comparison opens with the same number: $143 against $40 on annual billing. One is three and a half times the other, and the conclusion writes itself. The trouble is that Kajabi vs Thinkific at those numbers compares two different products. Kajabi Basic includes email marketing, funnels and a website. Thinkific Basic includes none of them, and also excludes certificates, quizzes and memberships. Price the equivalent setups and the answer inverts for a large group of creators. Here's the arithmetic. Table of contentsKajabi vs Thinkific: what each entry plan leaves outThe Kajabi vs Thinkific comparison that inverts the answerA note on who writes these comparisonsWhere Thinkific winsWhere Kajabi winsWhat both platforms do badlyMigrating either directionHow to test both properlyKajabi vs Thinkific by situationFrequently asked questions Kajabi vs Thinkific: the short verdict Choose Thinkific if you already have an email tool you like and you don't need to remove its branding. Choose Kajabi if you'd otherwise buy email, funnels and a website separately. The bundle genuinely undercuts the stack. The sticker prices: Thinkific from $40/month annual, Kajabi from $143. The real comparison: often $203 against $143, once you match the feature sets. Both do this: charge a surcharge if you use your own Stripe, and treat community as an add-on. Kajabi vs Thinkific: what each entry plan leaves out The Kajabi vs Thinkific price gap only makes sense once you know what's missing. Thinkific Basic at $40 a month annual gives you courses and the ability to sell them. It excludes certificates, assignments, memberships and payment plans. Removing Thinkific branding from your school requires the Grow plan at $164. Kajabi Basic at $143 includes native email marketing, a funnel builder, a website builder, coaching products and automations. Its own restructure in January 2026 retired the Kickstarter plan and raised every tier, with no grandfathering for existing customers. What you needThinkificKajabiSell a courseBasic, $40Basic, $143Certificates and quizzesStart, $82IncludedMembershipsStart, $82IncludedRemove platform brandingGrow, $164IncludedEmail marketingExternal toolIncludedFunnels and websiteExternal toolIncluded Verify before you commit Prices from both vendors' public pages, September 2026, on annual billing. Thinkific raised prices roughly 10% on 13 August 2026 and Kajabi restructured in January. Sources also disagree on Thinkific's trial length, quoting both 14 and 30 days. Any article quoting Kajabi at $89, $149 or $199 predates January 2026 and is wrong. The Kajabi vs Thinkific comparison that inverts the answer Run Kajabi vs Thinkific on total stack cost instead. Take a creator who sells a course with certificates, runs a membership, and wants their own branding rather than Thinkific's on every page. SetupMonthly costThinkific Grow$164Email tool at 5,000 subscribers~$39Thinkific stack total~$203Kajabi Basic, everything included$143 Sixty dollars a month in Kajabi's favour on this Kajabi vs Thinkific scenario, or roughly $720 a year, on the exact comparison the entire first page of results says goes the other way. The reverse case is just as real. A creator selling one course with no certificates, happy with platform branding, already paying for email: Thinkific Basic at $40 plus $12... > A Brevo review with the crossover point nobody calculates: where send-based pricing stops saving you money and starts costing more. - Published: 2026-09-17 - Modified: 2026-09-08 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/brevo-review/ - Categories: Email marketing Brevo charges by emails sent, not contacts. That's cheap until it isn't, and the crossover sits around 9,000 sends a month. Every Brevo review tells you the same thing: it's cheap because it charges by emails sent rather than contacts stored. True, and incomplete. Every Brevo review stops at that sentence. The model has a crossover point, and past it Brevo becomes the expensive option rather than the cheap one. Nobody publishes where that point sits, so this Brevo review works it out. Table of contentsBrevo review: where the volume model turns against youThe free plan isn't quite freeThe transactional risk worth reading twiceWhat this Brevo review rates highlyWhere it falls shortWhat Brevo includes beyond emailHow Brevo compares to the obvious alternativesBrevo review by user typeFrequently asked questions Brevo review: the quick verdict What it is: email, SMS, WhatsApp, automation, transactional sending and a CRM, used by over 600,000 businesses. French, GDPR-native. The model: priced by emails sent. Contacts are unlimited on every plan, including free. Where it wins: large lists you email occasionally. The saving there is enormous rather than marginal. Where it loses: small lists you email frequently. The volume model turns against you. The risk to know: account suspensions also stop your transactional email, including password resets. Brevo review: where the volume model turns against you Start with the arithmetic no Brevo review publishes. Brevo's free plan allows 300 emails a day, roughly 9,000 a month, with unlimited contacts. Paid tiers raise that ceiling. Any useful Brevo review has to compare against the other model. Contact-based platforms invert both variables: your list size sets the price and sending is effectively unlimited. So the question isn't which is cheaper in the abstract. It's how many emails you send per month, which is list size multiplied by frequency. Your listFrequencyMonthly sendsBetter model20,000Twice a year~3,300Brevo, by a mile5,000Monthly5,000Brevo2,000Weekly8,000Roughly level1,000Twice weekly8,000Roughly level500Daily15,000Contact-based3,000Weekly12,000Contact-based The crossover this Brevo review calculates sits around 9,000 to 10,000 monthly sends. Below it, Brevo's free or entry tier is remarkable value. Above it, a $12 contact-based plan with unlimited sending often costs less. Which produces the counterintuitive result: a business with 500 subscribers emailing daily pays more on Brevo than a business with 20,000 subscribers emailing twice a year. No Brevo review we found states that plainly. Verify before you commit Limits and pricing sourced from Brevo's public pricing page, September 2026. Brevo restructured to a five-tier model in 2025 and volume thresholds shift over time. Annual billing saves around 10%. Run your own arithmetic, sends per month rather than subscribers, before trusting any headline figure including ours. 300Free emails per day, about 9,000 a month ∞Contacts on every plan, including free $10. 80Monthly cost to remove branding from free 600k+Businesses using the platform The free plan isn't quite free The detail most Brevo review pages omit entirely. Every email sent from the free tier carries Brevo branding. Removing it costs around $10. 80 a month, which is more than the entry paid plan itself. So the practical entry point is higher than the $0 on the pricing page, and it's the detail most reviews skip. If your... > A GetResponse review that leads with the no-refund policy and the real $59 price. Plus why its 99% deliverability claim measures 81%. - Published: 2026-09-15 - Modified: 2026-09-08 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/getresponse-review/ - Categories: Email marketing GetResponse advertises 99% deliverability. Independent tests measure 81%, and that was the best score in the test. Plus the refund policy to read first. Every GetResponse review repeats the same figure: a deliverability rate of around 99%. Independent testing measures 81%. Before you write the platform off, the second half of that finding matters more than the first. In a test of 64,855 emails, that 81. 10% inbox rate was the highest score any provider achieved. GetResponse ranked first. So this GetResponse review starts by recalibrating the whole category: vendor deliverability numbers are marketing, the real ceiling is around 81%, and GetResponse is at it. Table of contentsGetResponse review: start with the refund policyThe $19 plan is a doorway, not a destinationWhat this GetResponse review rates highlyThe affiliate policy nobody mentionsWhere it falls shortGetResponse review: the free plan and the trialHow it compares to the obvious alternativesWho it's for, and who should look elsewhereFrequently asked questions GetResponse review: the quick verdict What it is: email, automation, landing pages, webinars, funnels and courses in one platform. Founded 27 years ago, bootstrapped, around $150M annual revenue. The real price: $59/month, not the $19 on the pricing page. More on why below. What it does best: deliverability, and webinars nobody else in this price bracket offers. The risk to know first: no refunds under any circumstances, on any plan. Unusual advantage: an explicitly permissive affiliate link policy, where competitors reject those accounts. GetResponse review: start with the refund policy Most reviews put billing near the bottom. This GetResponse review puts it second, because it's the thing most likely to cost you money. No refunds. None. GetResponse does not refund unused time, and annual billing is non-refundable outright. Not after a month, not after a day. Across Trustpilot, Capterra, BBB and Sitejabber the pattern repeats: users describing difficulty cancelling, no refunds under any circumstances, and charges continuing after cancellation attempts. Capterra's aggregated summary names account and payment issues directly, including unexpected charges, inflexible policies and delayed support responses. The practical consequence shapes how you should buy, and it's the part of this GetResponse review worth acting on today. Use the 30-day trial, which requires no card, and test properly. Then start on monthly billing rather than annual, even though annual saves around 18%, until you're certain. That discount is not worth locking in a year you can't exit. None of this makes the platform fraudulent. It makes it unforgiving, and any GetResponse review that doesn't say so up front is doing you a disservice. 81. 1%Measured inbox rate, ranked first in test 99%Rate GetResponse advertises $59The tier most people actually need 1Automation workflow on the $19 plan The $19 plan is a doorway, not a destination Every GetResponse review quotes $19. Starter costs $19 a month at 1,000 contacts and includes a single automation workflow. One workflow means a welcome sequence, or a purchase trigger, or an abandoned cart recovery. Not two of them. The moment your business has a second customer journey, you're on Marketer at $59. Segmentation based on scoring, tags, ecommerce data or events also sits on Marketer or above. So does unlimited automation, cart... > Thinkific raised prices 10% in August 2026. Five alternatives compared against the tier you'd actually need, not the $40 headline. - Published: 2026-09-14 - Modified: 2026-09-03 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/thinkific-alternatives/ - Categories: Courses and funnels Thinkific raised prices 10% in August. But first: which Thinkific plan were you actually going to be on? Most comparisons get that wrong. Thinkific raised prices by roughly 10% on 13 August 2026, and existing customers get the new rate at their next renewal rather than being grandfathered. That's why you're here, and why searches for Thinkific alternatives spiked in August. But before you compare Thinkific alternatives on price, there's a question worth settling first: which Thinkific plan were you actually going to be on? Almost every comparison benchmarks against Basic at $40 a month. Most course businesses can't use Basic, and that changes the maths considerably. Table of contentsCompare Thinkific alternatives against the tier you'd actually needThe transaction fee question, and why sources disagreeThe best Thinkific alternatives in 20261. Systeme. io: the largest cost gap2. Teachable: cheapest entry, steepest fee3. LearnDash: own the platform4. Podia: the simple storefront5. LearnWorlds: the premium endWhen staying on Thinkific is rightWhich of these Thinkific alternatives fits youFrequently asked questions Compare Thinkific alternatives against the tier you'd actually need Here's what the Thinkific alternatives roundups get wrong at the first step. Thinkific Basic excludes certificates, assignments, memberships and payment plans. Removing Thinkific branding from your school requires the Grow plan. So if you issue certificates, run a membership, offer instalments, or want your own brand on the page, your real Thinkific price isn't $40. It's $82 or $164 a month on annual billing. PlanMonthlyAnnualWhat unlocks itBasic$54$40Courses and selling, little elseStart$109$82Certificates, assignments, membershipsGrow$219$164Removing Thinkific brandingPlusCustomLifting the student cap, SSO, SCORM The cap buried under "unlimited" Thinkific markets unlimited courses, and that's true. Every standard plan is separately capped at 10,000 students. Only the custom-priced Plus tier lifts it. For most creators that ceiling is theoretical. For anyone selling a low-priced course at volume, or running free lead-magnet courses to build a list, it arrives faster than expected and the only exit is a sales conversation. Reframe the comparison that way and the gap between Thinkific alternatives and the incumbent stops being $40 versus $29. It becomes $164 versus $29, which is a different conversation entirely. 10%Price rise on 13 August 2026 $164Annual-billing cost to remove branding 10,000Student cap on every standard plan 0Free plans, discontinued in 2024 The transaction fee question, and why sources disagree Search this topic and you'll find confident claims that Thinkific charges 5% on Basic if you use your own Stripe, alongside equally confident claims that it charges nothing. Both appear to be true, and the variable is geography. Thinkific Payments is its native processor, available in its primary markets. Where it's available and you opt out in favour of Stripe or PayPal, a surcharge applies, reported at 5% on Basic, 2% on Start and 1% on Grow. Where Thinkific Payments isn't offered, there's nothing to opt out of. Verify before you commit Prices and fees sourced from the Thinkific pricing page and third-party analyses, September 2026. Check the surcharge position for your own country before assuming either version applies to you, because it materially changes what the platform costs at volume. At $5,000 a month in sales, a 5% surcharge is $250 monthly... > A MailerLite review that starts with the account approval process, the suspension thresholds, and who gets rejected before they can send. - Published: 2026-09-12 - Modified: 2026-09-03 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/mailerlite-review/ - Categories: Email marketing Clean editor, fair price, strong deliverability. All true. What nobody leads with is that MailerLite might not let you in. Most of what you'll read in a MailerLite review is accurate. Clean editor, fair price, strong deliverability. Every MailerLite review says so, and they're right. What almost none of them lead with is that MailerLite might not let you in. Every new account goes through manual approval, and rejection is common enough to be the platform's most complained-about feature. If you're planning to migrate an existing list, that's the thing worth knowing first, so this MailerLite review starts there. Table of contentsThe approval process every MailerLite review skipsThe suspension thresholds worth writing downHow to get approved first timeMailerLite review: what it does wellWhere it falls shortMailerLite pricing in 2026Who it's forFrequently asked questions MailerLite review: the quick verdict What it is: email marketing with automation, landing pages, forms and a website builder, aimed at small senders. The price: free for 250 subscribers, Comfort from $12/month, Power from $25/month. What it does best: deliverability and ease of use. Inbox placement measured in the 88 to 95% range. The risk nobody flags: manual account approval that rejects affiliate-heavy sites and unverifiable lists. Who should skip it: anyone needing lead scoring, a CRM, or automation reporting beyond opens and clicks. The approval process every MailerLite review skips Start here, because it changes the order of operations. MailerLite manually reviews every new account before it lets you send. The purpose is legitimate: keeping spammers off shared infrastructure protects inbox placement for everyone, and it's a large part of why the deliverability numbers are good. The cost is that legitimate businesses get caught. Of 88 Capterra reviews mentioning account approval, 60% were negative, describing rejections, unexpected suspensions and difficulty running multiple accounts. Reasons accounts get declined Thin website details. List sources MailerLite can't verify. Affiliate-heavy content. Industries it treats as high risk. Read that third one twice if you run an affiliate site or a newsletter that monetises through partner links. It's a documented decline reason, not a rumour, and it's the single most useful thing this MailerLite review can tell that audience. Timings, since no MailerLite review seems to state them plainly: approval usually completes within a few hours. It takes longer when your profile is incomplete or your contact list looks unusual, and you can normally reply with detail about how the list was built and what you intend to send. The sequence that hurts is discovering this after you've moved everything across. Open the account and get approved before you export anything from your current platform. The suspension thresholds worth writing down Approval isn't permanent, which is the part a MailerLite review written at signup can't tell you. MailerLite publishes the metrics that trigger a review of an existing account, and one of them catches people out. MetricThresholdSpam complaintsAbove 0. 2%Bounce rateAbove 5%Unsubscribe rateAbove 1%Open rateBelow 3% The last row is the one that surprises people and the reason this MailerLite review puts the table so high up. You can be flagged for a disengaged list without a single spam complaint. A... > Systeme.io vs ClickFunnels compared on price, funnels and the payment lock-in that costs more than the subscription gap. - Published: 2026-09-11 - Modified: 2026-09-03 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/systeme-io-vs-clickfunnels/ - Categories: Courses and funnels ClickFunnels locks recurring payments to its own processor. Systeme.io doesn't. That matters more than the price gap, and nobody compares it. Every Systeme. io vs ClickFunnels comparison you'll read today argues the same thing: one is cheap, one is powerful, pick according to your budget. That framing skips the difference that costs the most money, and it isn't on either pricing page. ClickFunnels locks recurring subscriptions to its own payment processor. Systeme. io connects directly to yours. If you sell anything on a monthly plan, that single fact matters more than the entire price gap, and this Systeme. io vs ClickFunnels comparison starts there rather than ending there. Table of contentsSysteme. io vs ClickFunnels: the payment lock-in nobody comparesSysteme. io vs ClickFunnels pricing, and why the number keeps changingWhere ClickFunnels genuinely winsWhere Systeme. io winsWhat Systeme. io vs ClickFunnels costs over a yearLearning curve and supportWhat neither platform does wellWhich one fits your situationFrequently asked questions Systeme. io vs ClickFunnels: the short verdict Choose Systeme. io if you sell subscriptions, you're pre-revenue, or the monthly bill has to justify itself against what you earn. Choose ClickFunnels if funnels are your product, you run multi-path flows with conditional logic, and the training ecosystem is worth paying for. The price gap: Systeme. io runs $0 to $97. ClickFunnels starts at $97. The hidden cost: ClickFunnels' lower tiers expect you to bring your own email provider and video hosting, roughly $50 a month on top. The one that surprises people: ClickFunnels' webinar tooling is worse than Systeme. io's. Systeme. io vs ClickFunnels: the payment lock-in nobody compares Start here, because it reframes the rest. ClickFunnels lets you connect your own Stripe account for one-off sales. For recurring subscriptions, it doesn't. Those have to run through Payments AI, ClickFunnels' own processor. Why this costs more than the subscription Recurring payments cannot be transferred between processors. Not by you, not by the platform, not by Stripe. If your membership revenue runs through ClickFunnels and you later want to leave, every single member has to re-subscribe manually on the new platform. Some percentage won't. That churn is the real price of the decision, and it's invisible on day one. There's a secondary cost too. Using your own gateway for one-off sales carries a 1% platform fee on top of Stripe's own rate. No Systeme. io vs ClickFunnels feature table we found mentions either point. Systeme. io vs ClickFunnels inverts here. Systeme. io connects Stripe, PayPal, Razorpay, Flutterwave, Xendit and Apple Pay natively, including for subscriptions. Your recurring revenue sits in an account you own. If you leave, your customers come with you. For a business selling one-off products this changes nothing. For anyone running a membership, it's the whole Systeme. io vs ClickFunnels decision. $0Systeme. io entry price $97ClickFunnels entry price ~$50Monthly add-ons ClickFunnels expects 1%ClickFunnels fee on your own gateway Systeme. io vs ClickFunnels pricing, and why the number keeps changing Search Systeme. io vs ClickFunnels and you'll find ClickFunnels quoted at $97, $147, $297 and $305 across the first page of results. All four are defensible, which is why the confusion persists. Systeme. ioClickFunnelsFree planYes,... > Free email marketing software compared after four plan cuts in 2026. What each one still gives you, with dates, and which limits changed last week. - Published: 2026-09-09 - Modified: 2026-09-03 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/best-free-email-marketing-software/ - Categories: Email marketing Four platforms cut their free plans in 2026 and most comparisons still quote the old numbers. Here's what survived, with dates. Almost every guide to free email marketing software you'll find today is quoting limits that no longer exist. That isn't laziness. It's that 2026 has been the year the free tier collapsed across every free email marketing software provider worth naming, with four significant cuts between January and September, and most articles get written once and updated never. Here's what actually survived, with dates, and which free email marketing software still gives you a working product rather than a demo. Table of contentsWhat got cut in 2026, and whenThe best free email marketing software in 20261. Sender: the most generous plan left2. EmailOctopus: cheapest when you outgrow free3. Brevo: free contacts, capped sending4. MailerLite: most features, smallest allowance5. GetResponse: unlimited sending, small list6. Systeme. io: free plan that isn't only emailFree plan or free trial? They're not the sameWhich one fits your situationFrequently asked questions What got cut in 2026, and when This is the section no other free email marketing software comparison gives you, and it's the reason their numbers are wrong. Dates below are cross-checked against vendor pricing pages and the independently maintained change log at EmailToolTester. DatePlatformWhat changedJanuary 2026MailchimpFree cut to 250 contacts, 500 emails/month, automation removed entirely16 June 2026MailerLiteFree cut from 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails to 250 and 2,500. Paid prices raised across every tier13 August 2026MailerLiteFree accounts capped at 3 automations, 3 forms, 1 landing page, 1 website17 August 2026BenchmarkFree plan limits reduced3 September 2026KitAutomations removed from the free plan Verify before you sign up Limits sourced from public pricing pages and change logs, September 2026. This category is moving faster than published comparisons can keep up with, which is exactly the problem this page exists to solve. Check the vendor's own page before committing, including against anything written here. The pattern is consistent. Platforms are keeping the word "free" while hollowing out what it contains, and the feature that gets removed first is almost always automation. That matters, because free email marketing software without automation is a newsletter sender, not a marketing tool. 4Significant free-plan cuts in 2026 250Mailchimp and MailerLite free subscribers 2,500Sender free subscribers, the highest here 0Automation on Mailchimp's free plan The best free email marketing software in 2026 The best free email marketing software in 2026 is Sender, which allows 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 monthly emails with automation included. EmailOctopus is the strongest runner-up, Brevo suits large dormant lists, and MailerLite still offers the widest feature set on a free plan despite the smallest allowance. Some links below are affiliate links. It doesn't change what you pay, and it doesn't decide what we recommend. How we make money. ToolFree subscribersFree monthly emailsAutomation free? Sender2,50015,000YesEmailOctopus2,50010,000Yes, 3 workflowsBrevoEffectively unlimited300/day, ~9,000LimitedGetResponse500Unlimited sendsNoMailerLite2502,500Yes, 3 maxMailchimp250500No Verified September 2026. Read the automation column first: it's the one that decides whether a plan is usable. How we assessed this free email marketing software: MailerLite and Systeme. io we've set up and used. Sender, EmailOctopus, Brevo and GetResponse are researched rather than run in production, meaning... > An honest Systeme.io review from an affiliate. The automation limit that stops the free plan, and three groups who should choose something else. - Published: 2026-09-08 - Modified: 2026-09-03 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/systeme-io-review/ - Categories: Courses and funnels Systeme.io pays reviewers 60% forever, so most reviews you'll read are sponsored. Here's the free plan limit none of them lead with. Before you read this Systeme. io review, one thing you should know about every other one you'll find today. Systeme. io runs a 60% lifetime recurring affiliate programme. Not 60% of the first payment. Sixty percent of every payment, forever. That has produced an ecosystem of reviewers with a permanent financial stake in your signing up, and it's why the first page of results is unusually enthusiastic. We're in that programme too. So this Systeme. io review leads with the limit none of the others put near the top, and the one that decides whether the free plan works for you. Table of contentsThe limit that actually stops peopleWhat Systeme. io actually isPricing, and what each tier unlocksWhat it does wellWhere Systeme. io falls shortWho it's for, and who should look elsewhereFrequently asked questions Systeme. io review: the quick verdict What it is: funnels, email, courses, memberships and affiliate management in one dashboard, from a French company profitable since 2018. The price: free plan with no card required, $17/month Startup, $97/month Unlimited. The real ceiling: automation rules, not contacts. Free gives you one. Startup gives ten. Where it loses: page design. Reviewers who dislike it almost always mean the templates. Who should skip it: anyone whose landing pages are a competitive asset, and anyone sending to 50,000+ subscribers. The limit that actually stops people Every Systeme. io review lists the free plan's headline numbers: contacts, funnels, emails. Those are generous and they're not what stops anyone. The number that stops people is automation rules. The free plan allows one. Startup allows ten. What one automation rule means in practice A rule is a trigger and its actions. Send a welcome email when someone subscribes: that's your one rule, used up. Now you want to tag buyers when they purchase, or start a different sequence for people who joined through a webinar, or remove someone from a list when they buy. You can't. Not without paying. This is the most common complaint from users who try to run a real funnel on the free plan, and it doesn't appear on the pricing page in any prominent way. So the free plan works beautifully for what it's actually for: proving that people want your thing before you spend money. Build a landing page, capture emails, send one welcome message, sell something. That's a complete validation loop and it costs nothing. The moment your business has two customer journeys, you're paying $17. Which is fine. It's just worth knowing on day one rather than three weeks in, and it's the single most useful thing a Systeme. io review can tell you. 1Automation rules on the free plan 10Automation rules on Startup, $17/mo 60%Lifetime commission paid to reviewers 2018Founded, profitable since launch What Systeme. io actually is Aurelien Amacker launched it in 2018 on a simple premise: a solopreneur shouldn't need $200 a month in subscriptions to run funnels, email, courses and an affiliate programme. The company is French, headquartered in France, and has... > AWeber vs MailerLite compared after MailerLite cut its free plan in June 2026. The free tier flipped, and no ranking article has updated. - Published: 2026-09-06 - Modified: 2026-09-06 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/aweber-vs-mailerlite/ - Categories: Email marketing MailerLite cut its free plan in June. AWeber's is now double the size, and every comparison ranking today still says the opposite. Every AWeber vs MailerLite comparison currently ranking says the same thing about free plans: MailerLite's is far more generous. The AWeber vs MailerLite free-plan verdict stopped being true on 16 June 2026, when MailerLite cut its free tier from 500 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails. On 13 August it added caps of three automations, three forms, one landing page and one website. AWeber's free plan covers 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails a month. It is now double MailerLite's, and none of the articles above this one have updated. Table of contentsAWeber vs MailerLite: the free plan comparison everyone got wrongAWeber vs MailerLite on priceWhere AWeber winsWhere MailerLite winsThe account approval differenceDeliverability and list healthMigrating between themAWeber vs MailerLite by user typeFrequently asked questions AWeber vs MailerLite: the short verdict Free plan size: AWeber, 500 subscribers against MailerLite's 250. Free plan capability: MailerLite, which includes three automations. AWeber's free tier has none. Paid price: MailerLite, comfortably, and the gap widens as your list grows. Support: AWeber, with 24/7 access on paid plans against MailerLite's email-only. For most small businesses: MailerLite. AWeber earns its premium on support and predictability, not features. AWeber vs MailerLite: the free plan comparison everyone got wrong The free tier used to settle AWeber vs MailerLite in about ten seconds. MailerLite's was the reason to choose it for years. Two changes in 2026 removed that advantage, and published comparisons haven't caught up. Free planAWeberMailerLiteSubscribers500250Monthly emails3,0002,500AutomationsNone3Landing pagesLimited1Credit cardNot requiredNot required Why the numbers you'll read are wrong Articles ranking for AWeber vs MailerLite today variously state MailerLite's free plan at 1,000 subscribers, or 500 subscribers with 12,000 emails. Both figures were correct before 16 June 2026 and neither is correct now. MailerLite also renamed its tiers that month. Any comparison mentioning a Growing Business or Advanced plan is describing a pricing structure that no longer exists. The honest reading of the AWeber vs MailerLite free-tier round is a split decision. AWeber gives you twice the list, MailerLite gives you automation. Which matters depends entirely on whether you need a welcome email to fire by itself, and for most people building a list, it does. 500AWeber free subscribers 250MailerLite free subscribers since June 0Automations on AWeber's free plan 1998Year AWeber launched AWeber vs MailerLite on price Both charge by subscriber count, so entry prices tell you very little about what AWeber vs MailerLite will actually cost you. List sizeAWeber LiteAWeber PlusMailerLite Comfort500$12. 50 annual$20 annual$12/mo5,000ScalesScales~$39/mo10,000Scales~$149/mo~$73/mo Verify before you commit Prices sourced from the AWeber pricing page and the MailerLite pricing page, September 2026. Published figures for AWeber at 10,000 subscribers range from $69 to $149 depending on the source, because they're quoting different tiers and different billing cycles. Check your own list size on the vendor's calculator rather than trusting a table, including this one. What's consistent across every AWeber vs MailerLite source is the direction. At 10,000 subscribers MailerLite runs roughly half what AWeber Plus costs. AWeber's own defenders don't argue the price... > Email marketing software for freelancers compared after Kit removed free automations in September 2026. What the free plans still give you, and where the wall is. - Published: 2026-09-06 - Modified: 2026-09-05 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/email-marketing-for-freelancers/ - Categories: Email marketing Email marketing for freelancers compared after Kit removed free automations in September 2026. Where the free plans still work, and where the wall is. Most guides to email marketing for freelancers are written for businesses with a marketing budget and someone whose job is to spend it. Email marketing for freelancers works differently. Your list is small. Your sending is irregular, because you email when a project ends rather than on a content calendar. Nobody is going to learn the platform for you. Those constraints change what good email marketing for freelancers looks like, and one of them changed again on 3 September 2026 when Kit removed automations from its free plan. That's the wall this page is built around, because it's the one you'll hit first. Table of contentsEmail marketing for freelancers: the automation wallThe best email marketing for freelancers in 20261. Kit: the longest runway, if you only broadcast2. Sender: automation without paying3. MailerLite: the best paid option at this scale4. Brevo: for the list you barely email5. GetResponse and Systeme. io: when email isn't the only jobIf you send email for clientsEmail marketing for freelancers by situationWhat freelancers actually needFrequently asked questions The quick answer Kit has the largest free tier at 10,000 subscribers, but no automations since September 2026. Pays us nothing. Sender is the best free plan that still includes automation: 2,500 subscribers, 15,000 emails. Also pays us nothing. MailerLite is the best paid option at freelancer scale, $12/month with automation included. Brevo wins if you have a big list you email two or three times a year. The wall arrives at a few hundred subscribers, not ten thousand. Budget for it. Email marketing for freelancers: the automation wall Every comparison of email marketing for freelancers ranks free plans by subscriber allowance. That's the wrong number, and it's the reason most of these guides send you to the wrong platform. Kit's free plan holds 10,000 subscribers, genuinely the most generous in email marketing for freelancers. You'll never reach it. What you will reach, usually within three to six months, is the moment you try to build a welcome sequence. What changed on 3 September 2026 Kit removed automations from the free Newsletter plan. Before that it allowed one basic automation and no sequences, which was already tight. Now a welcome email that fires on signup requires the Creator plan at $33 a month on annual billing, or $39 monthly. Articles published before September still describe the free plan as including automation. It doesn't. So the real question for anyone comparing email marketing for freelancers is not how many subscribers a free plan holds. It's what the first paid step costs when you outgrow it, and Kit's is the steepest here: roughly triple MailerLite's entry price. 10,000Kit free subscribers, the highest available 0Automations on Kit free since 3 Sep 2026 $33Kit's first paid step, annual billing $12MailerLite's, with automation included The best email marketing for freelancers in 2026 The best email marketing for freelancers in 2026 is Kit if you only need to send broadcasts to a growing list, Sender if you want a welcome sequence without paying, MailerLite once... > Landing page builders compared on the variable nobody leads with: traffic caps. Plus why the published prices never match. - Published: 2026-09-05 - Modified: 2026-09-05 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/landing-page-builders/ - Categories: Website and hosting Some landing page builders raise your bill when a campaign works. Compared on traffic caps and the tier where A/B testing actually starts. Most articles ranking for landing page builders are published by companies that sell landing page builders. Leadpages ranks Leadpages first. Convertri ranks Convertri. You can guess the rest. We don't sell one. So here's the variable those landing page builders bury in their own comparisons, and the one that decides what you'll actually pay: traffic caps. Several of these platforms raise your bill when a campaign succeeds. That's a strange thing to buy, and it's rarely mentioned above the fold. Table of contentsTraffic caps: what landing page builders charge you for winningWhy the prices you'll read never matchThe best landing page builders for small business1. Leadpages: no caps, predictable bill2. Unbounce: for people who test seriously3. Carrd: one page, almost free4. Webflow: design control, longer runway5. Systeme. io: pages plus everything elseWhich of these landing page builders fits youFrequently asked questions The quick answer Leadpages for most small businesses: no traffic caps, from $37/month on annual billing. Unbounce if you run paid ads and test seriously, but watch the visitor limit. Carrd for a single page at $9 to $49 a year. Genuinely that cheap. Systeme. io if you need landing pages plus email and checkout in one free plan. The trap: comparing entry prices when A/B testing lives two tiers up. Traffic caps: what landing page builders charge you for winning Start here, because it changes which landing page builders make sense for you. Some landing page builders charge by visitors. Unbounce's Build plan caps you around 20,000 monthly visitors before a surcharge or a forced upgrade. Instapage caps traffic on every tier. Leadpages doesn't cap traffic, leads or pages on any plan. What a cap does to a working campaign You launch an ad that converts. Traffic climbs. The page does exactly what you built it for, and the platform responds by raising your bill or blocking the page until you upgrade. For a small business testing a channel, that's the wrong direction of risk. The month you most need cash flow predictability is the month the invoice moves. Caps aren't automatically disqualifying. If your traffic is predictable and you're optimising heavily, the tooling can justify the model. But for anyone whose visitor numbers swing month to month, uncapped landing page builders remove a variable you don't need. 20,000Unbounce Build monthly visitor cap $0Leadpages charge for extra traffic $19Carrd Pro, per year not per month $149Unbounce tier where A/B testing starts Why the prices you'll read never match Search landing page builders and Unbounce appears at $99 a month almost everywhere. G2 lists an Unbounce Starter plan at $22. Both are accurate. The comparisons benchmark against Build at $99 because that's the tier people actually use, and because A/B testing, the reason most teams buy Unbounce at all, doesn't appear until the $149 Experiment plan. Starter exists but omits the features the platform is bought for. The same pattern runs through every one of these landing page builders. Leadpages Standard is $37 on annual billing; Pro with A/B... > MailerLite vs GetResponse compared at real list sizes. The automation tier gap most comparisons miss, and who each one is wrong for. - Published: 2026-09-05 - Modified: 2026-09-03 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/mailerlite-vs-getresponse/ - Categories: Email marketing The $12 versus $19 comparison is wrong. Where the real gap sits, and the list size where GetResponse turns out cheaper. Every MailerLite vs GetResponse comparison starts by putting $12 next to $19 and calling MailerLite the cheaper one. That comparison is wrong, and not by a little. The tier most people actually end up on costs $12 with MailerLite and $59 with GetResponse, because GetResponse puts its automation engine two plans up. Which doesn't mean GetResponse is bad value. It means you're comparing two different products, and the price only makes sense once you know which one you're buying. Table of contentsMailerLite vs GetResponse: the short verdictThe entry-tier trapMailerLite vs GetResponse pricing at real list sizesAutomation: two different philosophiesWhat only GetResponse doesWhat MailerLite does betterTwo things to know before you commitWho each one is wrong forFrequently asked questionsIs MailerLite cheaper than GetResponse? Which has better automation? Do both have free plans? Can I run webinars in MailerLite? Which is better for deliverability? Can I switch between them later? MailerLite vs GetResponse: the decision MailerLite vs GetResponse: the short verdict Choose MailerLite if you send newsletters and campaigns to a list, want automation without paying a premium for it, and value an interface you can use without training. Choose GetResponse if you need webinars, courses or paid ad management alongside email, or your automation involves conditions and branching that a simple builder can't express. For most small businesses and creators, MailerLite. GetResponse earns its price when you're using the parts that aren't email. Some links below are affiliate links. It doesn't change what you pay, and it doesn't decide what we recommend. We're in both programmes, so this comparison pays either way. How we make money. MailerLiteGetResponseFree plan250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/mo500 contactsEntry paid plan$12/mo (Comfort)$19/mo (Starter)Automation included from$12/mo$59/mo (Marketer)At 10,000 contacts~$73/mo$79/mo (Starter)Email sendsUnlimited on paidUnlimited on allWebinarsNoYes, Creator planCoursesNoYes, up to 500 studentsRefundsStandard policyNone Prices verified 1 September 2026, monthly billing at the smallest published tier. Annual billing saves roughly 10% with MailerLite and 18% with GetResponse. How we assessed this MailerLite vs GetResponse comparison: we've set up and used MailerLite directly. GetResponse is researched rather than run in production, meaning documentation, pricing pages and user reviews at volume. See how we test software. The entry-tier trap Here's the mechanic that makes headline prices useless in any MailerLite vs GetResponse write-up, including the ones ranking above this page. MailerLite Comfort at $12 includes the automation builder. Multi-step sequences, triggers, conditions. The thing you signed up to do. Confirm it yourself on the MailerLite pricing page. GetResponse Starter at $19 includes basic automation only. Unlimited workflows, event-based triggers, advanced segmentation and abandoned cart recovery all live on Marketer at $59, as their own pricing page sets out. So the real comparison, for anyone who wants a welcome sequence and a couple of behavioural triggers, is $12 against $59. Nearly five times the price for the same job. GetResponse users mostly land on Marketer. That's the tier the platform is designed around, and the $19 figure functions more as a doorway than a destination. MailerLite vs GetResponse pricing at real list sizes Both... > The best Mailchimp alternatives in 2026, priced at real list sizes. Plus the ten-minute fix that drops your bill without switching. - Published: 2026-09-04 - Modified: 2026-09-03 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/mailchimp-alternatives/ - Categories: Email marketing Mailchimp charges you for contacts who unsubscribed. Five alternatives priced at real list sizes, plus the ten-minute fix worth trying first. Mailchimp charges you for people who asked you to stop emailing them. Unsubscribed contacts still count toward your contact limit. So do non-subscribed ones. Your list grows, the bill climbs, and a meaningful slice of what you're paying for is people who will never open anything again. Add the January 2026 free plan cut, down to 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, and the reasons to look at Mailchimp alternatives stack up quickly. Here's what the switch actually saves, and the ten-minute fix worth trying before you move anything. Table of contentsWhat changed with Mailchimp in 2026Try this before you switchThe best Mailchimp alternatives at a glanceThe choice that matters more than the price1. MailerLite: the straightforward replacement2. Brevo: for big lists you rarely mail3. GetResponse: when you need more than a newsletter4. Systeme. io: email plus everything else5. ActiveCampaign: for automation that gets complicatedWhen Mailchimp is still worth itMoving your list without losing itFrequently asked questionsWhat are the best free Mailchimp alternatives? Is MailerLite cheaper than Mailchimp? Does Mailchimp charge for unsubscribed contacts? Why did Mailchimp cut its free plan? Can I move my list to one of these Mailchimp alternatives? Which Mailchimp alternative has the best automation? How to choose your Mailchimp alternative What changed with Mailchimp in 2026 The free plan is now a demo. It covers 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, with a 250-per-day cap. In 2022 it was 2,000 contacts and 10,000 emails. There's no scheduling, no multi-step automation, and Mailchimp branding on every send. You pay by list size, not by sending. A month where you send nothing costs the same as a month with twenty campaigns. The meter runs on storage. Unsubscribes stay on the meter. This is the one that catches people. Someone unsubscribes, they're still in your audience, and they still count toward the tier you're paying for. Send caps sit on top of contact caps. Standard limits you to 12 times your contact count per month, so a 5,000-contact list gets 60,000 sends. Weekly emails to a segmented list eat that faster than you'd think. The advertised $13 on the Mailchimp pricing page is real. It's also for 500 contacts. At 5,000 that becomes $75, and at 10,000 it's $110. Standard runs $20, $100 and $135 at those same tiers. That gap is why Mailchimp alternatives get searched for as hard as they do. Try this before you switch Open your audience and check how many contacts are unsubscribed, cleaned or non-subscribed. On a list that's been running a few years, 15 to 30% is normal. Archive them. Archived contacts stop counting toward your limit, and their history stays intact if you ever need it. Plenty of people sitting at 5,200 contacts paying $100 a month are actually mailing 3,800 people. Drop below the 5,000 threshold and the bill falls without moving a thing. Do this first. If the number still looks wrong afterwards, then the Mailchimp alternatives below are worth your afternoon. The best Mailchimp alternatives... > The best ClickFunnels alternatives in 2026, compared on what you're actually paying for. Plus the payment lock-in most reviews never mention. - Published: 2026-09-02 - Modified: 2026-09-03 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/clickfunnels-alternatives/ - Categories: Courses and funnels Every ClickFunnels plan includes unlimited funnels, so what are you paying for? Six alternatives, and the payment lock-in nobody mentions. We may earn a commission if you buy through links on this page. It doesn't change what you pay, and it doesn't decide what we recommend. How we make money. Open the ClickFunnels pricing page and you'll notice something odd. Every plan includes unlimited funnels, unlimited pages, unlimited visitors. Launch at $97 a month gets the same funnel builder as Optimize at $297. So what are you paying the extra $200 for? Contacts and emails. That's the thing to understand before you go looking at ClickFunnels alternatives. You're not paying for a funnel builder. You're paying for a CRM and an email platform that happens to have a funnel builder attached, and the bill grows with your list rather than your usage. Which means the right replacement depends on which of those jobs you actually need. The six ClickFunnels alternatives below each solve a different one. Why people go looking for ClickFunnels alternatives The entry price is high for what most people build. $97 a month, or $81 on annual billing, buys capability that a solo creator with three landing pages will never touch. Recurring payments are locked to ClickFunnels' own processor. This one deserves more attention than it gets. You can connect your own Stripe for one-off sales, but subscriptions have to run through Payments AI. If your business is membership-based, your recurring revenue lives inside ClickFunnels rather than in an account you control. Leaving later means asking every member to re-subscribe. Using your own gateway costs extra. There's a 1% platform fee on third-party Stripe transactions, on top of Stripe's own cut. The course side is thin. Course limits run from 3 to 20 depending on plan, where dedicated platforms offer unlimited on every tier. There's no quiz builder at all, so assessments mean bolting on Typeform or Google Forms. None of that makes ClickFunnels a bad product. It built the category and its templates still convert. But it's a funnel platform that grew a CRM, an email tool and a course area, and each of those is weaker than the specialist you could buy instead. That gap is what the ClickFunnels alternatives here are competing on. The best ClickFunnels alternatives at a glance The best ClickFunnels alternatives in 2026 are Systeme. io for the lowest all-in-one cost, GetResponse for email-led funnels, Kartra for a premium all-in-one, Leadpages for landing pages alone, GoHighLevel for agencies managing client accounts, and ThriveCart for checkout-driven selling. PlatformEntry priceThe job it doesTransaction feeSysteme. ioFree, then ~$17/moAll-in-one, cheapest0%GetResponseFree, then $19/moEmail-led funnels0%Kartra$52/mo annualPremium all-in-one5% on entry planLeadpages$99/moPages only0%GoHighLevel$97/moAgencies, client accounts0%ThriveCart$495 onceCheckout and upsells0% Prices verified 1 September 2026, at the smallest published contact tier. ClickFunnels Launch sits at $97/month monthly or $81 annual for comparison. How we assessed these ClickFunnels alternatives: Systeme. io we've set up and used. The rest are researched rather than run in production, meaning documentation, pricing pages and user reviews at volume. See how we test software. Work out which job you're paying for Before comparing prices, answer this. Open... > The best Kajabi alternatives in 2026, compared on real cost including the transaction fees most lists ignore. Plus when leaving Kajabi is a mistake. - Published: 2026-09-01 - Modified: 2026-09-03 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/kajabi-alternatives/ - Categories: Courses and funnels Kajabi raised prices and cut contact limits in January 2026. Six alternatives compared on real cost, including the fees most lists ignore. We may earn a commission if you buy through links on this page. It doesn't change what you pay, and it doesn't decide what we recommend. How we make money. Kajabi restructured its pricing in January 2026. Basic went from $149 to $179 a month. Growth went from $199 to $249. Pro went from $399 to $499. The $89 Kickstarter plan vanished from public pricing. Then there's the part that stung more than the price. Basic's contact limit dropped from 10,000 to 2,500. Same plan. More money. A quarter of the list. So you're looking at Kajabi alternatives. Below are six worth considering, what each actually costs once fees are counted, and the cases where switching would cost you more than staying. Four things happened at once, which is why the reaction was louder than a normal price bump. Why people are leaving Kajabi in 2026 The entry point disappeared. Kickstarter at $89 was how a lot of people started. Without it, the cheapest way into Kajabi is $143 a month on annual billing, and that's a different decision for someone who hasn't sold anything yet. The caps tightened while prices rose. Paying more for less is the specific thing that makes people start browsing competitors, and 2,500 contacts is a ceiling you can hit in a year of decent list growth. Existing customers were moved onto the new structure. No grandfathering. If you'd built your business on the old numbers, the new ones arrived anyway. A surcharge appeared for using your own Stripe. Kajabi still advertises zero transaction fees, and that's accurate if you use Kajabi Payments. Use your own processor and there's now a platform fee on top. On r/CourseCreation, the recurring theme isn't outrage about the price. It's people describing how much they'd built inside the platform and realising how expensive it would be to leave. That's the actual trap, and it's worth understanding before you start shopping. The best Kajabi alternatives at a glance The best Kajabi alternatives in 2026 are Systeme. io for the lowest cost, Podia for the closest all-in-one experience, Thinkific for serious course structure, Teachable for a small catalogue, ThriveCart for one-time pricing, and a self-assembled stack for people who only use part of what Kajabi offers. PlatformEntry priceTransaction feeBest forSysteme. ioFree, then $17/mo0%Cutting cost to near zeroPodia$42/mo annual5% on entry planClosest all-in-one feelTeachable$29/mo annual7. 5% on entry planSmall catalogue, low volumeThinkific~$40–54/mo0%Serious course structureThriveCart$495 once0%Checkout-led sellingYour own stackFrom ~$10/moProcessor onlyPeople who like controlPrices verified 1 September 2026. Kajabi Basic sits at $143/month on annual billing for comparison. A word on how we assessed these. We've set up and used Systeme. io and MailerLite directly. Thinkific, Teachable, Podia and ThriveCart are researched rather than run in production, which means documentation, pricing pages, and user reviews at volume. We think that distinction matters enough to state it. More on that in how we test software. The number most alternative lists leave out Almost every roundup compares subscription prices and stops. That's how you end... ## Pages - Published: 2026-09-01 - Modified: 2026-09-01 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/methodology/ Most "best software" articles are written by companies selling software. Search for alternatives to almost any popular tool and the first page is full of vendors explaining, at length, why the best alternative happens to be their own product. That's not a conspiracy, it's just marketing. But it means the reader has no way to tell whether a recommendation came from evidence or from a product roadmap. This page explains how we work, and — more usefully — the limits of what we can tell you. We're not selling software We don't make a tool. We have nothing to protect, no product to position, and no reason to bury a competitor. That's the one thing this site has that a vendor blog structurally cannot have, and everything below follows from it. How much we've used a tool, stated on the page Reviews on this site fall into three levels, and we say which one applies: Used in production We run our own business on it, or have done. These reviews include screenshots from our own account and cover the things you only learn after months — where it slows down, what breaks at volume, what the support experience is actually like. Hands-on We've created an account, set the tool up, and used it enough to judge the interface, the setup process and the real cost. Enough to recommend or rule out. Not enough to tell you what year three looks like. Researched We haven't run it ourselves. The assessment comes from documentation, pricing pages, verified user reviews at volume, and comparison against tools we do know. Useful for narrowing a shortlist, not for making the final call alone. Most "best of" articles blur these three together and present all of it with the same confidence. We'd rather tell you which one you're reading. What we look at Real cost at your size, not entry price. Advertised pricing is close to meaningless in this market. Plans are billed annually to make the monthly number look smaller, contact limits reset the price as your list grows, and features move into higher tiers between plan revisions. We work out what a tool costs at the volume you actually have, and we flag when an entry price is promotional. The ceiling. Where the tool stops working for you. Every product is fine at the start; what matters is the point at which you have to migrate. Export and lock-in. Whether you can get your data out, in what format, and how much of your setup survives the move. A tool that's hard to leave deserves more scrutiny before you arrive. Who it's wrong for. Every recommendation on this site names the reader who should skip it. A tool that suits everybody suits nobody in particular. What we don't do We don't score out of ten. A number implies precision we don't have. We say who a tool is right for and who should avoid it, because that's the actual question. We don't cover enterprise.... - Published: 2026-09-01 - Modified: 2026-09-01 - URL: https://saasandstacks.com/about/ This site exists because choosing business software is unreasonably hard, and most of the internet isn't helping. Search for the best CRM for a two-person business and you'll get a page written by a CRM company. Search for alternatives to a tool you're unhappy with and you'll get a list from a competitor of that tool. The advice is everywhere and almost none of it is disinterested. We don't make software. We just use a lot of it. What this site is for SaaS and Stacks helps small businesses, freelancers, agencies and creators choose tools and put them together into something that works. That second part is the reason for the name. Most software advice treats every purchase as if it happened in isolation, but nobody buys one tool. You buy an email platform that has to talk to a CRM that has to talk to a form that has to talk to whatever you use to get paid. The pieces matter less than the fit between them, and almost nothing written about business software takes that seriously. So alongside reviews and comparisons, this site publishes stacks: complete setups for a specific kind of business, with what each piece costs and why it's there. Who writes it I'm Andreu. I build and run websites, and I've spent a long time on the other side of this problem — signing up for tools, paying for tools, and occasionally paying for tools I ended up not using. I also run a Spanish-language site covering the same ground for readers in Spain and Latin America. This is the English version of the same obsession: fewer generic listicles, more useful answers to the question people actually have, which is usually not "what's the best X" but "what should someone like me use". How this site makes money Through affiliate commissions, disclosed on every page that carries one. You pay the same price either way, and commission rates play no part in how anything is ranked. The full explanation is on the affiliate disclosure page, and how we assess tools is on how we test software. What to expect Recommendations that name who they're wrong for. Pricing with the date it was checked. Tools we like that don't pay us a cent, when they're the better answer. And corrections when we get something wrong, written down where you can see them. Get in touch Disagree with something here, or think a recommendation is off? I'd rather hear it than not. hello@saasandstacks. com