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How to Make an Email List for Free (and What to Send First)

How to make an email list for free: what the five free plans really allow, the order to set it up in, and the first email to send. Limits read today.

Gizella Nagyne Palinkas

10/4/20266 min read

How to make an email list for free: pick the platform whose ceiling you will not hit, set it up in the right order, and write the welcome email before you need it. The catch is never the price — it is the ceiling, and the ceilings are nothing like each other: read on 4 October 2026, MailerLite's free plan holds 250 subscribers and Mailchimp's holds 250, while Kit's holds 10,000. That is a fortyfold gap between two things both called "free". Below are the real numbers, the setup order, and the first email to send.

The free plans are not comparable, so compare the ceiling you will actually hit

Here is what each provider's own pricing page said today.

The detail behind the bars matters more than the bars:

- Kit — 10,000 subscribers, no published send limit, unlimited landing pages and forms. But the visual automation builder and automated email sequences are not on the free plan, so you send broadcasts by hand.
- beehiiv — 2,500 subscribers, unlimited sends, landing pages included. beehiiv restructured its plans in October 2026 and the old "Launch" tier is now simply the Free plan.
- Zoho Campaigns — 2,000 contacts, 6,000 emails a month. Automation starts on the paid tier.
- Mailchimp — 250 contacts, 500 sends a month with a daily cap of 250. Go over 250 contacts and sending is put on hold until you upgrade or cut the list.
- MailerLite — 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails a month, and it does include three automations, one landing page and three signup forms.

Brevo is the odd one out and that is why it is off the chart. Its free plan stores up to 100,000 contacts but caps sending at 300 emails a day, and its automation is limited to 2,000 contacts. A 100,000-contact store you can only mail 300 a day is not the same thing as a list of 100,000 people.

So the honest way to choose is not "which is most generous" but which ceiling will you hit first — subscribers, or sends? If you post weekly to a small audience, MailerLite's 250 subscribers will bind long before its 2,500 monthly emails. If you want a big list and rare sends, Kit's 10,000 is extraordinary value. Free tiers also move: MailerLite's free plan is materially smaller than it once was, which is the whole reason these numbers were read off the pages today rather than remembered.

The order to set it up in, which is not the order most people use

Most people choose a platform first. That is backwards, and it is why so many accounts sit empty.

1. Decide the one thing you are giving. Not "tips". One finished thing that solves one problem for one person — a checklist, a template, a short guide. It can be two pages.
2. Make that thing. Finish it. This is the step that actually takes the time, and no platform helps you with it.
3. Write the welcome email. Four sentences is enough: here is the thing, here is who I am, here is what you will get from me, here is roughly how often.
4. Then pick the platform, on the ceiling test above.
5. Make one page whose only job is the signup. Not a form in a sidebar. A page you can send someone to.
6. Decide the one place you will link it from, and link it there this week.

Steps 1 to 3 cost nothing and need no account. If you do them in this order, the free plan is a detail. If you do them in the usual order, you end up comparing feature tables for an audience that does not exist yet.

What to send first, and what to send after that

The first email is not a newsletter. It delivers the thing, sets the rhythm, and gets a reply if it can. Something like:

> Here is the [thing] — the link is below, and it is yours to keep.
>
> I am Gizi. I write about building a small online business around a job and children, which is the only way I have ever done it.
>
> You will hear from me about [how often]. If it stops being useful, the unsubscribe link at the bottom works and I will not take it personally.
>
> One question, if you have ten seconds: what made you download this? Just hit reply.

That last line does more work than anything else in the email. Replies tell you what people actually want, and on most platforms they also help your later emails arrive at all.

Then write emails two, three and four before you need them, so a new subscriber gets a run rather than a single hello and silence. Each one does one job: a specific problem and one thing to try. Short is fine. Consistent is the part that is hard.

The legal bit, in two sentences per side

This is the part people skip and it is genuinely simple at your scale.

In the UK, the ICO's guidance on electronic mail marketing states that "you must not send electronic mail marketing to individuals, unless: they have specifically consented to electronic mail from you", and that "you must not disguise or conceal your identity, and you must provide a valid contact address so they can opt out or unsubscribe." So: consent first, identity visible, unsubscribe working.

In the US, CAN-SPAM works differently. The FTC's compliance guide tells businesses to "tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future marketing email from you" and to "honor a recipient's opt-out request within 10 business days." Notably, CAN-SPAM does not impose a general prior-consent rule — the FTC guide says "while you don't need to get members' consent to send them marketing emails, subscribers and members don't lose their ability to opt out."

That contrast is worth knowing: if any of your audience is in the UK or EU, the stricter consent standard is the one to build to. Build to consent anyway. A list of people who asked is worth more than a bigger list of people who did not, and it is the only kind that produces replies.

What this actually buys you

An email list is the one link in the chain you own. Content brings people, the list keeps them, and a product is what you eventually offer the people who stayed. Nothing here promises that the offering sells, and no number in this article is a result — they are the published limits of free software and two regulators' own words. What a list changes is that you stop starting from zero every time you publish.



Take the quiz

Not sure whether you are ready for a platform or still at the "make the thing" stage? — six questions, no email required, and it tells you the one step to do next rather than all of them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I really build an email list for free, or is the free plan a trap?
A: You can genuinely build one for free. Every platform above has a free tier that sends real emails to real subscribers, with no trial period. The constraint is the ceiling, not the quality: free plans cap subscribers or sends, most put the provider's branding in your emails, and several hold back automation so you send by hand. For your first few hundred subscribers that is rarely a problem.

Q: How many subscribers do I need before an email list is worth it?
A: Far fewer than people think, because what matters is how many asked to be there. Twenty people who downloaded something specific and replied to your welcome email are more useful than a thousand who do not remember signing up. At Ella Wealth Community the working view is that a list becomes useful the moment it changes what you do. That happens at double digits, not thousands.

Q: How do I grow my email list when almost nobody reads my site?
A: Pick one place you already publish and link one page from it, repeatedly. The usual mistake in how to grow your email list is spreading a weak signal across five platforms instead of making one route obvious. Give the link a reason to be clicked — the specific thing someone gets — and put it where people already are. Consistent email list building beats a scattered launch.

Q: Do I need a website to start an email list?
A: No. Kit and beehiiv both include landing pages on their free plans, and MailerLite includes one, so you can host the signup page on the platform itself and send people straight to it. A website is useful later, for the content that brings people in. It is not a prerequisite, and waiting to build one is a common reason people spend a year not starting.


Q: Which free plan should I choose if I only want to pick once?
A: If you expect to pass a few hundred subscribers and can live without automation for now, Kit's 10,000-subscriber free plan has the highest ceiling by a wide margin. If you want automation from day one and will stay small, MailerLite includes three automations at 250 subscribers. Check both pages before committing — these limits changed during 2026 and will change again.


Before you go

The free one, and it is complete. How to Build an Email List https://ellawealthcommunity.com/build-your-email-list-from-scratch

walks the whole setup end to end — choosing the tool, the page, the welcome email and the first few sends. The whole thing, free. No upsell at the end →

When you want the method written down in order. The E-Mail Marketing Playbook https://ellawealthcommunity.com/e-mail-marketing-playbook is the step-by-step version: sequences, what goes in each email, and how to keep sending when you do not feel like it. Seven euros. The method, written down, in order →

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