Best Free Marketing Automation Tools in 2026
Two of the biggest products in this category are rated 3.9, and neither of them is a bad product. Understanding why is the most useful thing this article can give you, because the same distortion is sitting inside every marketing software comparison you will read this year.
The tools below carry more than 115,000 aggregated reviews, which makes this one of the best-evidenced categories anywhere. It is also the category where the review platforms disagree most violently about the same product, and where a single aggregate number does the most damage.
The ratings, and the split inside them
Aggregated by Toolradar across G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, TrustRadius and PeerSpot.
| Tool | Aggregated rating | Reviews |
|---|---|---|
| GMass | 4.8 | 2,628 |
| Freshworks CRM | 4.6 | 27,327 |
| Brevo | 4.6 | 5,959 |
| Omnisend | 4.6 | 1,996 |
| Klaviyo | 4.6 | 1,898 |
| Kit (ConvertKit) | 4.5 | 4,453 |
| Mailchimp | 3.9 | 31,952 |
| HubSpot | 3.9 | 19,112 |
Look at the bottom two rows. Mailchimp and HubSpot have the largest samples in the table and the lowest scores in the table. That is not a coincidence and it is not a verdict on the software.
Mailchimp's 3.9 is made of 4.5 on Capterra across 17,595 reviews, 4.3 on G2 across 12,946, and 2.6 on Trustpilot across 1,411. Thirty thousand people rating it between 4.3 and 4.5, and fourteen hundred rating it 2.6, and the aggregate lands closer to the small angry group than to the large satisfied one.
HubSpot's 3.9 works the same way: 4.4 on G2 across 13,374, 4.5 on Capterra across 4,417, and 1.8 on Trustpilot across 613.
We have now seen this pattern in four separate categories, including lead management and project management, where ClickUp shows 4.6 on G2 and 3.3 on Trustpilot. The mechanism is always the same. G2 and Capterra collect opinions about software. Trustpilot collects complaints about companies. People arrive at Trustpilot to write about a billing dispute, a contract they could not exit, or support that did not reply, and they are not rating the product.
Both numbers are true and they answer different questions. If you want to know whether the tool works, read the G2 and Capterra figures. If you want to know what happens when you try to leave, read the Trustpilot one. For free tiers, which involve no contract, the first is the relevant one. For an annual commitment, the second suddenly matters a great deal.
What each free plan gives you
Prices verified against Toolradar's pricing records, checked between 17 and 25 August 2026.
| Tool | Free plan | First paid tier | Price checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | Free | Starter, $9/month | 25 Aug 2026 |
| Mailchimp | Free | Essentials, $13/month | 25 Aug 2026 |
| Freshworks CRM | Free | Growth, $15/month | not recorded |
| Omnisend | Free | Standard, $16/month | 25 Aug 2026 |
| Klaviyo | Free | Email, $20/month | 25 Aug 2026 |
| GMass | Free | Standard, $25/month | 21 Aug 2026 |
| Kit | Newsletter, $0 | Creator, $33/month | 18 Aug 2026 |
| HubSpot | Free Tools | Starter, $15/month | 19 Aug 2026 |
One honest flag. HubSpot's other directory record carries a price last verified on 28 May 2026, three months stale at the time of writing, and we are not treating a three-month-old price as current in a category where pricing changes often. The 19 August figure above is the one we are standing behind, and you should check the pricing page before committing either way.
That is the whole reason we publish the check date. A price without one is not a fact, it is a memory.
The thing that actually decides your bill
Every price in that table is an entry price, and in this category the entry price is close to fiction.
Marketing automation is billed by contacts, and the tier is the floor. Brevo's $9 Starter and Klaviyo's $20 Email tier are what you pay at the smallest list size. At 10,000 contacts you are paying several times that, at 50,000 several times again, and the plan name has not changed.
So the useful question is not which tool has the cheapest starting tier. It is which tool charges you for the right thing, and there are two models.
Charged per contact stored, which is Mailchimp and Klaviyo's approach. Every subscriber on your list costs money whether you email them or not. A list with 40% dead addresses is a list you are paying 40% too much for, and cleaning it is the highest-return hour in email marketing.
Charged per email sent, which is Brevo's approach. You can keep a large list cheaply and pay only when you mail it. For a publication that sends occasionally to a big audience, this is dramatically cheaper. For one that sends daily to a small audience, it is not.
We run six newsletters totalling 810,000 subscribers and this distinction has more effect on the bill than every feature in this article combined.
Brevo, the
Brevo gives you 300 emails a day free, forever, with unlimited contacts, which is the most unusual free tier in the category: everyone else limits your list, Brevo limits your sending.
For a business with 20,000 customers who get a monthly announcement, that is genuinely usable at zero cost. For a daily newsletter it is not.
Starter is $9 a month, checked 25 August 2026, the cheapest paid entry in the table, and it includes SMS, transactional email and a basic CRM.
4.6 across 5,959 reviews, with G2 at 4.5 and Capterra at 4.6. No platform disagreement, which after the Mailchimp and HubSpot rows is worth noticing.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp's free plan covers up to 500 contacts and 1,000 sends a month, which is a trial in everything but name, and Essentials starts at $13, checked 25 August 2026.
The product is genuinely good, which is what its 4.5 on Capterra across 17,595 reviews is telling you. The templates are the best in the category, the editor is the one every competitor is imitating, and the analytics are clear.
What the 2.6 on Trustpilot is telling you is separate and also real: pricing that escalates as your list grows, and a support experience people write angry reviews about. Both facts belong in your decision.
Klaviyo, if you sell things
Klaviyo is the ecommerce specialist, and its advantage is that it knows what your customers bought.
Segmenting on purchase history, browsing behaviour and predicted lifetime value is not a feature the general-purpose tools do well, and for a store, that segmentation is where the revenue is. Free up to 250 contacts and 500 sends, then $20 a month for Email, checked 25 August 2026.
4.6 across 1,898 reviews, consistent across G2 and Capterra.
If you are not selling products, most of what makes Klaviyo expensive does nothing for you.
Omnisend
Omnisend is Klaviyo's closest competitor and consistently cheaper: free up to 250 contacts, then Standard at $16, checked 25 August 2026, with SMS and push in the same workflows rather than as add-ons.
4.6 across 1,996 reviews, level with Klaviyo on a similar sample. For a smaller store the arithmetic usually favours Omnisend, and the two products are close enough that price is a legitimate tiebreaker.
Kit
Kit, formerly ConvertKit, is built for creators rather than companies, and it thinks in sequences and tags rather than campaigns and lists.
The Newsletter tier is $0 and Creator is $33, checked 18 August 2026, which is the most expensive entry tier here.
4.5 across 4,453 reviews, of which 4,234 are on Capterra. Worth knowing that this score comes overwhelmingly from one platform.
HubSpot Free Tools
HubSpot's free tier is the most generous thing in this article and the most strategically designed. You get a full CRM, email marketing, forms, landing pages and live chat, for nothing, with no contact limit on the CRM side.
Starter is $15, checked 19 August 2026. Then the ladder: Professional at $890 and Enterprise at $3,600 on the marketing record.
That jump is the entire HubSpot conversation. The free tools are excellent and the step from Starter to Professional is a factor of nearly sixty. Companies adopt the free CRM, build their operations inside it, and meet that number two years later with all their data in the platform.
Use the free tools. They are genuinely the best free CRM available. Just know what the road ahead costs, and read the 1.8 on Trustpilot before signing anything annual.
GMass, the specialist
GMass has the highest rating in this article, 4.8 across 2,628 reviews, split evenly between G2 and Capterra, and it does one small thing: mail merge and sequences inside Gmail.
That is the pattern again. The narrowest tool in the category has the highest score, because a product that does one thing has fewer ways to disappoint. Free tier, then $25 a month, checked 21 August 2026.
It is not marketing automation in the platform sense and it is the right answer for a founder sending 200 personalised emails a week.
Choosing
Large list, occasional sends: Brevo, and the send-based pricing will save you more than any feature.
Ecommerce: Klaviyo if the store is established, Omnisend if it is not.
You want a CRM and marketing in one free account: HubSpot Free Tools, with the $890 tier written on a note somewhere.
Creator or newsletter: Kit, or read our newsletter growth guide, which has our own open and click rates in it.
Personalised outreach from Gmail: GMass.
And whatever you choose, clean the list before you pay per contact. It is the one recommendation in this article that saves money immediately and costs nothing to follow.
Related: free email marketing tools, free CRM software and free AI tools for digital marketing.
